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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

#71

Post by phpisthebest »

heywoodlh wrote: post #70
phpisthebest wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>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…

Not that I disagree, but I'm curious, what benefit to the public is provided by this information being known? It seems to me like this information being public does not really lend to (or take away from) a free society. > Why would it not be [public knowledge]? I can think of multiple ways in which this information could be useful in the hands of enemies of the United States. An example: this publicizes weaknesses in…

Both..

First and foremost it shows the incompetence of leadership, and misaligned priorities when it comes to public finance. Why was there only one factory, were funds not allocated properly to ensure a more robust supply chain? where political favors exchanged for the monopoly? As a result of the monopoly was the military paying more per unit of product since there was no competition? That is just off the top of my head for questions from the story.

Hiding things like this ensures corruption will follow

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

#72

Post by jacquesm »

akiselev wrote: post #38
nordsieck wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Based on what happened with the Strategic National Stockpile [1] right before COVID hit, I don’t have much confidence in government run capacity either: > From 2017 to 2019, the Trump administration failed to replace masks and other supplies used in earlier disasters. In May 2020, in a House subcommittee meeting, whistle-blower Dr. Rick Bright, previous director of Department of Health and Human Services’ Biomedical…

One problem with masks is that they are statically charged and that charge depletes pretty rapidly. So it's not as if you can create a bunch of stock for 'some unspecified time in the future', you'll have to continuously renew it at that level every couple of months. This is certainly going to raise eyebrows if there isn't a demand for a longer period of time and someone figures they can cut that cost without impacting safety. Which works. Right up until the next pandemic and then you're back where you were before. This sort of vigilance is very costly and it is hard to get everybody to agree on the appropriate level over time.

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

#73

Post by Chrontius »

fwlr wrote: post #47
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…

Black powder is used in booster charges. In artillery fuzes, there can be up to four different types of explosive in the explosive train which ignites the main charge, according to my half-assed Googling and Wikipedia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train

In addition, black powder in particular is used in recoilless rifles, perhaps the most famous example being the RPG-7.

http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Preview/2016/01/31__04_23_48...

In this image, the olive-drab component is the warhead-and-rocket assembly, and the forest-green component is a full fucking pound of black powder which launches the rocket to a minimum safe range before the ignition of the main propulsion motor.

I'm presently unsure about the propellants used in other recoilless systems, but I can presume that there exist designs other than the RPG-7 which are currently being provided in bulk to Ukraine, while simultaneously utilizing some amount of black powder in the propulsion system, while some further subset of those will prove difficult to redesign to use more modern double- or triple-base smokeless propellants due to the much higher operating pressure of these propellants, especially in the context of thin-walled light-weight launchers.

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

#74

Post by Chrontius »

Clubber wrote: post #10
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I assume they're talking about trace amounts being used in primers and detonators.

I thought that might be it, but primers use lead styphnate. https://www.virtusammo.com/primers-101-how-are-ammunition-pr... .

Lead-free primers are a thing. The US military prefers to minimize lead wherever reasonably feasible, because the VA is expensive, and when they have to pay to clean up their ranges during routine maintenance, extremely high amounts of lead dramatically increases the price of this scheduled maintenance.

Their primary objective is still to close with and destroy the enemy, so if they still need to use lead or uranium to get the job done, the mission comes first. But if they can save money by using lead-free training ammo, that's more money they can spend on training the troops and ammo for them to practice with. And more money to issue everybody a bazooka of some flavor or another, as Ukraine is demonstrating is a really useful idea right about now.

Remember: Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics!

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

#75

Post by Chrontius »

wmf wrote: post #17
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

This factory isn't the supply chain; it's one small part. It's probably in Louisiana in the first place to satisfy that district's rep.

From the article, they moved to Louisiana for the humid climate, which prevents static electricity buildup and reduces the risk of the whole plant blowing itself sky-high.

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

#76

Post by Chrontius »

syngrog66 wrote: post #62

related to a bigger risk I see for the US. if the US gets into a war with China its going to hurt us massively. We're heavily dependent on them now during peace time as it is -- and all those two-way flows can stop in war. and they have much greater ship building capacity.

We have much greater ship sinking capacity. Uncle Sam's Misguided Children have even practiced putting truck-mounted launchers on the decks of under-armed ships and using them from that platform; in tests, I believe it worked well.

I'm not the only one who has doubts about Chinese missiles, both their numbers and their performance. I think it's probable that only the high end of their systems will work, and of that, the precision components will all have to be made in Russia because the extreme precision and insensitivity required of missile guidance systems is silly hard to get right.

Low-tier systems don't need precision parts to work acceptably, so they'll have plenty of that.

But all the medium-tier stuff like Harpoon equivalents will be hamstrung by a lack of Russian parts because they're a little … ah, distracted right now by current events.

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

#77

Post by Chrontius »

zmgsabst wrote: post #63
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Most folks on HN realize that "the military", in the sense of "the current general and admirals", have damn little influence over these outsourcing, single-sourcing, etc. decisions. That is mostly controlled by Congress, I think your claim is way to optimistic in light of the fact there are other people claiming that the LCS boondoggle is the fault of faulty procurement and not Congress.

And yet, you don’t have the stomach to reply to me about it — or to discuss the procurement failure regarding munitions outlined by CSIS. The LCS is the fault of the Navy in at least three ways: - they didn’t bother to make sure the gearbox worked - they didn’t bother to make sure the structural framing was sufficient, leading to shoulder cracks - they didn’t design it to have sufficient arms or ability to perform AS…

What's really irritating about the LCS is that the Danish StanFlex system is exactly the capability the LCS was supposed to offer, and StanFlex works. Pure NIH syndrome. In addition, someone has already done the legwork to make sure that a half-dozen different hulls compatible with StanFlex modules are proven technology…

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

#78

Post by brightball »

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…

I’d suggest that strategic military secrets are warranted and beneficial for national defense.

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

#79

Post by fwlr »

Chrontius wrote: post #73
fwlr wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Black powder is used in booster charges. In artillery fuzes, there can be up to four different types of explosive in the explosive train which ignites the main charge, according to my half-assed Googling and Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explosive_train In addition, black powder in particular is used in recoilless rifles, perhaps the most famous example being the RPG-7. http://previewcf.turbosquid.com/Prev…

Yes, I suspected that if there were dependencies on black-powder, it was because it was being used in older weapons systems and those were being supplied to Ukraine.

There are plenty of black-powder substitutes that are carefully designed to match various characteristics of standard black-powder, including 1:1 volumetric substitution and similar pressures https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_powder_substitute

If black-powder is strictly necessary and not just convenient, these substitutes would be used.

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

#80

Post by slowhand09 »

SubiculumCode wrote: post #55
slowhand09 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

You mean both the current and last president? Our military strategic leaders well know the predicament, and have been pulling back outsourcing of strategic necessities. Look at their actions, not the bluster. And for factual information, try The Truth of the Matter podcast by CSIS.

Thanks, I just semi-retired from DoD.
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