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The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

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Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#41

Post by 0zemp2c »

brightball wrote: post #25
phpisthebest wrote: post #16

When it comes to defense spending this is abnormal Most of the time they want to put the supply chain across as many congressional districts as possible to make it politically hard to close any program as it would "cut jobs" in more districts much hard to cut spending if 10,000 jobs across 250 districts are impacted, then if 10,000 job across 5 districts are impacted

That has always been my understanding as well. The DoD would insist production be spread across multiple companies. Additionally, why in the world is this even public knowledge?

> The DoD would insist production be spread across multiple companies.

rarely

typically it is a bid/bake-off process and the winner gets a production contract

even for firearms...Sig won the handgun contract and the new rifle contract...they'll be the sole producer of both

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#42

Post by zmgsabst »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #7

I get that this sort of headline makes for a great circle jerk but let's be real here, the military isn't as stupid as HN likes to imply. Rife with perverse incentives that keep things from being done ideally? Yes, but not stupid. The military is also rife with ass-covering careerists so if some nobody on HN can think of a way they can do it better then someone in the system has almost certainly thought about it and…

How does this theory explain the LCS failure?

To me, that seems a fractal of stupid choices — which make sense when viewed through the lens of financial corruption and backroom dealing, but not through the lens of capable careerists succeeding by preventing problems.

Also, it fails to predict the reality that we can’t build munitions to fight a serious war — because we can’t even build them to fight a year-long proxy war. Or does CSIS not understand the MIC either?

https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-inventories-six-...

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#43

Post by bell-cot »

simonh wrote: post #20
bell-cot wrote: post #3

Ah, the [cough] wisdom of [gag] outsourcing mission-critical military activities to private enterprise. If you look at history - the British Crown started making their own gunpowder at the Tower of London, in the middle of the 13th Century . The British Board of Ordnance was formally constituted in 1683 , by HRM King Charles the Second . And if you look at the more-recent era, when the US started shutting down most o…

In the west almost all but a small fraction of military procurement is satisfied by private industry. That was just as true in WW2 as it is today. The question is how you manage that.

At the height of a massive modern war, yes. But look at (say) the histories of most of the weapons used in WWII. How many of the major small arms, artillery pieces, guns, tanks, warships, etc. of WWII were developed directly by the government, in-house, and then produced at scale during the war at government armories?

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#44

Post by slowhand09 »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #35
pjc50 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Private companies will no longer discriminate against overseas staffing or, perhaps more importantly, ownership.

The US doesn't allow critical military production infrastructure to be foreign owned.

Look at every computer monitor on every military desk. I bet it says "Made in ____".

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#45

Post by slowhand09 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #14

This is frustrating to square with the large military expenditures we make in this country. What is the use of the most advanced weaponry if you cannot produce them yourself when shit hits the fan?

If only we had some sort of national leader saying "Made in America" is good...

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#46

Post by bell-cot »

0zemp2c wrote: post #22
bell-cot wrote: post #3

Ah, the [cough] wisdom of [gag] outsourcing mission-critical military activities to private enterprise. If you look at history - the British Crown started making their own gunpowder at the Tower of London, in the middle of the 13th Century . The British Board of Ordnance was formally constituted in 1683 , by HRM King Charles the Second . And if you look at the more-recent era, when the US started shutting down most o…

https://www.jmc.army.mil/About.aspx?id=About lists the DoD munitions sites

Yes...but at the bottom of that web page - "JMC employs 21 military personnel, more than 5,000 Army civilian personnel and more than 6,000 contractors nationwide throughout the organic industrial base."

So more contractors (head count of corporations) than army folks (head count of humans)? Sounds like the Army's side of it amounts to little more than "Purchasing Dept." and "Warehouse". :(

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#47

Post by fwlr »

Clubber wrote: post #5

>Today, it is a specialty commodity with few commercial applications—mostly for rocket hobbyists—but it’s still used in more than 300 munitions, from cruise missiles, to bullets for M16 rifles, to the vital 155mm shells. I don't know about the others, but M16 rifle rounds don't use black powder, they use modern smokeless powder. By modern, I mean invented in 1884. I would be surprised if any of those other things men…

Yes, the author is confused.

This factory produces black-powder, which is a mixture of charcoal, sulfur, and saltpeter.

All modern ammunition uses smokeless powder, which is stabilized nitrocellulose and nitroglycerin.

(This confusion likely is due to the term gunpowder, which when used as a technical term only refers to black-powder. Unfortunately it is also used colloquially to mean any kind of explosive powder put into cartridges that are detonated to launch projectiles from guns. In this sense of gunpowder, almost all of it is smokeless powder, and thus its colloquial meaning is almost completely at odds with its technical meaning.)

To my knowledge, the US military does not rely on blackpowder in any meaningful way. Even if my knowledge is incomplete and they do depend on it in some odd way (e.g. I suppose they might have a pre-existing inventory of weapons designed to use black powder primers, where it is cheaper to keep sourcing black powder rather than retrofit the weapons to use smokeless powder primers) there are several corporations manufacturing large quantities of 1:1 black powder substitutes.

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#48

Post by Ancapistani »

bell-cot wrote: post #3

Ah, the [cough] wisdom of [gag] outsourcing mission-critical military activities to private enterprise. If you look at history - the British Crown started making their own gunpowder at the Tower of London, in the middle of the 13th Century . The British Board of Ordnance was formally constituted in 1683 , by HRM King Charles the Second . And if you look at the more-recent era, when the US started shutting down most o…

> If you look at history - the British Crown started making their own gunpowder at the Tower of London, in the middle of the 13th Century. The British Board of Ordnance was formally constituted in 1683, by HRM King Charles the Second.

This is true, but is far more about the scarcity of saltpeter at the time than anything else.

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#49

Post by diegoholiveira »

nordsieck wrote: post #23
diegoholiveira wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m not convinced that outsourcing it to private enterprise is bad. Outsourcing it overseas, that’s a really big issue.

> I’m not convinced that outsourcing it to private enterprise is bad. Counterpoint: In every war that involves a substantial conventional component, there has been a huge ammunition shortage. Even though people know this, the phenomenon still exists. Private industry isn't going to maintain huge "burst" capacity. It's simply completely uneconomical. It's possible that a sort of public-private partnership could exist…

> Private industry isn't going to maintain huge "burst" capacity.

IMO, private industry produces, the government buys and store it. I'm thinking wrongly here?

Re: The U.S. Military Relies on One Louisiana Factory. It Blew Up

#50

Post by scottyah »

phpisthebest wrote: post #31
brightball wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That has always been my understanding as well. The DoD would insist production be spread across multiple companies. Additionally, why in the world is this even public knowledge?

>>Additionally, why in the world is this even public knowledge? Why would it not be. Government Secrecy should be opposed by anyone that wants a free society You can not have a "Government for the people by the people" if the government is allowed to keep secrets from the people. Nor can voters properly select and hold representatives accountable if those people do not know what the government is doing We have a MASS…

You can't have a free society without secrets, unless it's composed of creatures that act nothing like humans today.
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