US Weapons Manufacturing Capacity Issues

[DedicatedShooter]

Long read (50 minutes) but a pretty good article. Much of which we already know and have dealt with the last few years at least in the civilian sector. Not many surprises here but a good read nonetheless.

https://archive.is/ryrUX

And yes, this is a safe link. I archived it so you can still read it without hitting the subscription paywall.

PDF below now too!

 

[UKDslayer]

High-capacity magazines are only for known terrorist like the Taliban.

 

[Ruff 364]

Dead link....

 

[UKDslayer]

Dead link....

No it works, and it's actually kind of interesting. Downfall of the American military machine/industry. Even has a 53 minute audio for it if you're really lazy.

 

[Big Timber]

Thanks for the link. It is an interesting read.

I think we could ramp production up very quickly if we could get rid of OSHA and the EPA.

 

[Ruff 364]

No it works, and it's actually kind of interesting. Downfall of the American military machine/industry. Even has a 53 minute audio for it if you're really lazy.

Guess it doesn't like my VPN, you're correct it works.

 

[Edsel]

Long read but a pretty good article. Much of which we already know and have dealt with the last few years at least in the civilian sector. Not many surprises here but a good read nonetheless.

https://archive.is/ryrUX

And yes, this is a safe link. I archived it so you can still read it without hitting the subscription paywall.

That is a good read.

Any chance you could PDF (clean) it?

 

[c1steve]

I only read part of the article, but have read online in the last six months that at least one of the howitzer manufacturing sites is getting major upgrades so production will be tripled. Also there is a new plan going in somewhere, perhaps Texas, that will be much larger.

 

[Edsel]

While our infrastructure continues to decay.

Awesome priorities…

 

[375fan]

While our infrastructure continues to decay.

Awesome priorities…

Don't have the money to fix our infrastructure because the priority has been to send billions and billions to Ukraine. Which is a total waste of money except to those skimming and defrauding their cut out of said money.

 

[DedicatedShooter]

That is a good read.

Any chance you could PDF (clean) it?

Just did that, hopefully it works better for ya!

 

[Edsel]

Just did that, hopefully it works better for ya!

Got it, thanks!

 

[Eostech]

Holy fuck, the hide learns archiving. Christmas miracle.

 

[John?]

@DedicatedShooter

Thanks for sharing the Atlantic article. It’s good that people have a better idea of how things work or don’t in DoD procurement.

The bottom line is that shortfalls in sustainment and equipping fielded forces are baked into the cake. The DoD Acquisition Rules are set by law. Very difficult to work around those rules even with exceptions. Damned little incentive for the SES community to risk reputation and career by suggesting changes to program of record.

My penultimate Army job was working within those rules to field equipment during two active wars. Despite urgent need it was damned near impossible to speed the process or move the needle for any end item. Very frustrating. High adverse consequences for many young troopers on the line.

The need for investment in modern energetics production and delivery systems is long and well known. The major contractors aren’t interested so Congress isn’t interested. Army Science Board and Defense Science Board recommendations sit unread by the people who make decisions. So do Combatant Commander urgent need requirements lists.

The Replicator project is Kath Hick’s initiative. It hasn’t produced much yet. It will lose some steam when a new team heads up the Pentagon.

A short term solution would be for Congress to suspend joint acquisition rules and return budget authority to the service secretaries. Imperfect to be sure, but much better accountability for both readiness and expenditure of public treasury.

I’ll stop ranting. This is a deep rabbit hole.

 

[DedicatedShooter]

@DedicatedShooter

Thanks for sharing the Atlantic article. It’s good that people have a better idea of how things work or don’t in DoD procurement.

The bottom line is that shortfalls in sustainment and equipping fielded forces are baked into the cake. The DoD Acquisition Rules are set by law. Very difficult to work around those rules even with exceptions. Damned little incentive for the SES community to risk reputation and career by suggesting changes to program of record.

My penultimate Army job was working within those rules to field equipment during two active wars. Despite urgent need it was damned near impossible to speed the process or move the needle for any end item. Very frustrating. High adverse consequences for many young troopers on the line.

The need for investment in modern energetics production and delivery systems is long and well known. The major contractors aren’t interested so Congress isn’t interested. Army Science Board and Defense Science Board recommendations sit unread by the people who make decisions. So do Combatant Commander urgent need requirements lists.

The Replicator project is Kath Hick’s initiative. It hasn’t produced much yet. It will lose some steam when a new team heads up the Pentagon.

A short term solution would be for Congress to suspend joint acquisition rules and return budget authority to the service secretaries. Imperfect to be sure, but much better accountability for both readiness and expenditure of public treasury.

I’ll stop ranting. This is a deep rabbit hole.

I appreciate the deep dive and agree, suspension of the rules and pushing authorities back to the service chiefs would be great. At least in the short term to allow us to catch up. I also think the regulatory hurdles like someone else mentioned, OSHA/EPA, are a big reason why no one wants to open any sort of armament factory. It has to be close to unprofitable or just not worth their while.

I too am a cog in the DoD machine, I very much understand the things you were saying and it’s damn unfortunate that it’s all true! The old SES mafia…boy there’s a subset that rarely gets discussed…talk about power and influence though, what a group.

 

[Oldloser]

Long read (50 minutes) but a pretty good article. Much of which we already know and have dealt with the last few years at least in the civilian sector. Not many surprises here but a good read nonetheless.

https://archive.is/ryrUX

And yes, this is a safe link. I archived it so you can still read it without hitting the subscription paywall.

PDF below now too!

Good read and true. The problem is the business model. Gov owned and contractor operated plants.

A modern plant to make 155 shells would look like a Nucor continuous casting plant, but with rate of production determined by feed rates.

Under Knudsen, during WWII, people were paid by the piece with him or his reps showing up and selling options to make batches of stuff at a given price and if you made it better, you got to keep the profit.

 

[Oldloser]

@DedicatedShooter

Thanks for sharing the Atlantic article. It’s good that people have a better idea of how things work or don’t in DoD procurement.

The bottom line is that shortfalls in sustainment and equipping fielded forces are baked into the cake. The DoD Acquisition Rules are set by law. Very difficult to work around those rules even with exceptions. Damned little incentive for the SES community to risk reputation and career by suggesting changes to program of record.

My penultimate Army job was working within those rules to field equipment during two active wars. Despite urgent need it was damned near impossible to speed the process or move the needle for any end item. Very frustrating. High adverse consequences for many young troopers on the line.

The need for investment in modern energetics production and delivery systems is long and well known. The major contractors aren’t interested so Congress isn’t interested. Army Science Board and Defense Science Board recommendations sit unread by the people who make decisions. So do Combatant Commander urgent need requirements lists.

The Replicator project is Kath Hick’s initiative. It hasn’t produced much yet. It will lose some steam when a new team heads up the Pentagon.

A short term solution would be for Congress to suspend joint acquisition rules and return budget authority to the service secretaries. Imperfect to be sure, but much better accountability for both readiness and expenditure of public treasury.

I’ll stop ranting. This is a deep rabbit hole.

Well said. I worked on two DOD programs before going to do commercial startups. They were a joke.

One program was large enough to where we could automate a lot of things and this really helped the end users. I automated the software release process from end to end and as a result we could get a fix or feature out in less than a week vs several months. It also showed that only about 20 of the engineers did the work vs the 200 on the program and did it quicker.

The second was to bring new types of communication and surveillance electronics to the infantry but the rules really prohibited innovation. The procurement had all kinds of design details and project management baked into the specs rather than just the functional ones: ten mile unjammamable encrypted voice and text for BN and below. A team of EE's could get anything breadboarded in a week and tested in another and then in the hands of the troops in two months but we spent a year in requirements review. Just to change the OS to realtime linux took three years. We had an unjammable encrypted two-way radio in our hands in three months talking all over town - and a contact at Cyrix who could make all that on a chip - but the program manager said it was not up to spec. We all left for the commercial sector. Today we could have multi-modes on those sets and adapters for power sources. There are advances in information encoding to make these virtually fool proof.

I know a half dozen young kids - really mad scientists - who can make anything. These kids should be rounded up, given free rein, work directly with the soldiers to iteratively test - and backed by a seasoned production team to mass produce stuff, and led by execs who can run the business. But the problem is the procurement rules.

 

[Gemsbok]

Remember the $640 toilet seat, $7622 coffee maker, $435 hammer, and $10,000 toilet seat covers?

My firm got pinged on one of those. 95% of the cost was the labor for property management/tracking paperwork.

 

[Franko]

The cynic in me says that these things aren't being addressed because the real money will be made as soon as a war kicks off and the blank checks from the US Government have to be written to keep us from running out of "whatever" it is that is critical to the war effort. Sure lots of soldiers will die while we are playing catch up but that's not a problem for our elites. After all, none of their family and friends serve.

 

[Edsel]

The cynic in me says that these things aren't being addressed…

Second that

 

[Emerson0311]

Well said. I worked on two DOD programs before going to do commercial startups. They were a joke.

One program was large enough to where we could automate a lot of things and this really helped the end users. I automated the software release process from end to end and as a result we could get a fix or feature out in less than a week vs several months. It also showed that only about 20 of the engineers did the work vs the 200 on the program and did it quicker.

The second was to bring new types of communication and surveillance electronics to the infantry but the rules really prohibited innovation. The procurement had all kinds of design details and project management baked into the specs rather than just the functional ones: ten mile unjammamable encrypted voice and text for BN and below. A team of EE's could get anything breadboarded in a week and tested in another and then in the hands of the troops in two months but we spent a year in requirements review. Just to change the OS to realtime linux took three years. We had an unjammable encrypted two-way radio in our hands in three months talking all over town - and a contact at Cyrix who could make all that on a chip - but the program manager said it was not up to spec. We all left for the commercial sector. Today we could have multi-modes on those sets and adapters for power sources. There are advances in information encoding to make these virtually fool proof.

I know a half dozen young kids - really mad scientists - who can make anything. These kids should be rounded up, given free rein, work directly with the soldiers to iteratively test - and backed by a seasoned production team to mass produce stuff, and led by execs who can run the business. But the problem is the procurement rules.

And the rules are there to drive profit/control/$$ influence for business and bureaucratic growth. Change is hard because the status quo exists on purpose to benefit certain groups. It is actively defended by them.