/ world today news/ The US defense complex deals with industrial archaeology
One of the leaders of the American military-industrial complex, Raytheon Corporation, has called on its retirees, even over 70 years old, to try to resume production of the Stinger missile. They will have to use blueprints compiled during the administration of President James Carter, reports the military portal Defense One.
„The Stinger was discontinued 20 years ago and suddenly within the first 48 hours [от войната] he became the star of the show and everyone wants more,” said Wes Kremer, president of Raytheon’s RTX division.
„The US sent nearly 2,000 heat-seeking missiles to Ukraine, which used them to shoot down Russian planes. All of these missiles come from US military stockpiles. And the Biden administration said this week it would send more Stingers to Ukraine.” writes Defense One columnist Markus Weisgerber.
In May 2022, Rayteon received an order to produce 1,700 Stinger missiles from the US Army Contracting Command’s Redstone Arsenal. The Pentagon said those missiles could be delivered no earlier than 2026. Wes Kremer said it would take the company at least 30 months to build a production line for the Stinger, largely because of the time it takes to create new plant and for employee training.
„We’re bringing back 70-year-old retirees… to teach our new hires how to actually make a Stinger,” Kremer said. “We’re pulling test equipment out of storage and blowing the cobwebs out of it.”
In fact, the prospects for resuming production of these American missiles are much dimmer than Raytheon executives paint them. For two decades, the Pentagon has not bought a single Stinger, the components for these missiles are no longer available on the market, so there will be no and no replacement for the thousands of Stingers sent to Ukraine. The head of Raytheon Technologies, Greg Hayes, explained in April 2022 that it is necessary to redesign all the electronics of the rocket, that is, to actually make the rocket from scratch, and this is not even a matter of tomorrow.
Pentagon official Ellen Lord then openly stated that the situation with the Stingers was much worse than Raytheon painted it. The lion’s share of the complexes’ stocks was sent to Ukraine. “This is a serious threat to our security”said Ellen Lord. She warned that it would take at least five years for America to rebuild its stockpile of anti-tank missiles.
It’s been a year since then, in which Ellen Lord was proven right. Raytheon is recruiting aging company veterans who can read old blueprints from a time long before the advent of the digital age. This means that Raytheon cannot build new Stingers from scratch and are forced to engage in industrial archaeology.
A whole generation of engineers and constructors who could read traditional blueprints retired or even went to another world, while young people simply do not understand what is depicted and written on them. Therefore, it is necessary to look for old operating instructions and technical descriptions, handling and commissioning manuals from the “ancient” engineers who compiled them.
It’s not just Rayteon that will have to tackle industrial archaeology. The Stinger and Javelin warhead plant in Middleton, Iowa, the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, owned by American Ordnance, a subsidiary of the privately held conglomerate Day and Zimmerman, was built in 1941 and has not been modernized since then, let alone and received one cent of the investment. The company widely uses manual labor, the use of new industrial technologies is impossible there. After a series of accidents and explosions, the plant began to be reconstructed, but this work will not end soon.
Over the past 20 years, the production of Javelin complexes in the United States has collapsed from 10,000 to 2,000 units per year. Engineering staff have fled and there is an acute shortage of production capacity. Ramping up production will take years.
While America focuses on supplying its weapons to Ukraine, military analysts “look at America’s vulnerable and aging missile industrial base, reflecting on the challenges of preparing aging production facilities to meet unexpected wartime production needs.
Few realize that the Javelin anti-tank missiles and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles are supported by an outdated and unreliable manufacturing infrastructure full of potential vulnerabilities and supply issues.
In the American tank industry, the engineering personnel potential that was able to design the Abrams battle tanks, then advanced for its time, was lost. This is due to the fact that the Pentagon once decided that the US army does not need heavy battle tanks, as they are being replaced by the latest types of weapons.
„For three years, beginning in 2012, Pentagon officials at numerous congressional hearings aggressively promoted a plan that effectively halted the construction and modernization of American tanks for the first time since World War II. The Army suggests that production lines can still be kept open through overseas sales.”
Recommendations to halt tank production came from US Army Chief of Staff General Ray Odiorno, among others.
In an interview with the Associated Press, he said that “if we had a choice, we would use that money in another way, not spend it on 70 ton Abrams tanks”. Then Congress took a break and allocated money to upgrade the Abrams sights and sensors.
When the military conflict in Ukraine began, it soon became clear that it was impossible to conduct intensive military operations against an equal enemy without heavy tanks. But with the modernization of Abrams, the Americans were seriously late, perhaps for this reason they are delaying their delivery to Ukraine. The spectacle of burning American tanks in the Ukrainian steppes will not benefit their manufacturer, General Dynamics Land System.
Corporations General Electric Aviation and Pratt & Whitney failed, as we wrote, in the development of an adaptable aircraft engine of the sixth generation.
In early 2022, the US Air Force abandoned its developments, although both companies loudly expressed their disagreement with such a decision. In just a few days, the Pentagon unveiled a new program to develop an adaptive jet engine and issued the corresponding contracts.
American analysts were surprised that three of the five companies awarded contracts (Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman) had never built or developed engines. Such a decision could mean a loss of confidence in General Electric Aviation and Pratt & Whitney, wasting time and money. The crux of the Pentagon’s conflict with these aircraft-building monsters is precisely in this area.
The military told the heads of the defense giants: “You haven’t been able to reconstruct the old adaptive engine developments, industrial archeology will help you. We’re giving you money so you don’t go bankrupt and three other companies, start from scratch.”
The toolkit of “industrial archaeology” is today actively discussed in world engineering forums. The problems facing the military-industrial complex of the United States and its allies will someday be overcome, but it will not happen tomorrow, and, it seems, not even the day after. The loss of the science and engineering school is more severe than the loss of gold and foreign exchange reserves.
These problems of the Western defense industry do not upset us. Until bottlenecks in collective defense production are removed, the United States and its allies are not ready for direct military conflict with adversaries of equal strength.
This gives us time to prepare for what sooner or later cannot be avoided.
Translation: ES
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