Weapons contractors hitting Department of Defense with inflated prices

>Shay Assad: We have nowhere else to go. For many of these weapons that are being sent over to Ukraine right now, there's only one supplier. And the companies know it.

>It wasn't always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants.

Fed.gov asks you to ramp up production from 100 military widgets a month to 500.

You are running your assembly line 6 hours a day to make 100 a month, with maintenance after hours.

You put on 2 more shifts, and run 3 different 8-hour shifts. An MBA would say you are better utilizing your capital investment in your assembly line, and are better utilizing your fixed overhead (e.g., rent on the manufacturing plant.) The guy who fixes the drill press is worried about the lack of maintenance and that burning smell from the drill press' drive belt. So you buy another drill press on credit, with no guarantee that this whole Ukraine thing will not be over tomorrow. You can not just buy another drill press. Your contract says you get partial reimbursement if it's "Made in America." You could get a deal if you could wait for delivery, but you need it tonight, so you send a gopher to Elliot's Hardware with your debit card and instructions to do his best, but to come back with a big bad drill press no matter what.

Your HR people spent the money to recruit a bunch of FNGs (F#$@% New Guys) and are now trying to get every competent employee to change shifts and to train FNGs. This means extra pay to the competent people who can train someone. Adding more people to a late project makes it later, for a while.

Your production slows and you are burning cash. QA has scrapping most of what you produce. As you increase your orders from your suppliers, they are going a something similar ramp-up, and know you have no choice, so they are raising their prices.

You know people are dying, and are spending cash to make this work. You think of that Ukrainian girl in your kid's class at school. She has the meanest face you've ever seen on a kid that age. You literally just bet your company's future on the orders continuing for a minimum of 2 more months, with tears in your eyes. People are dying. In the past, Fed.gov sometimes came through and paid for your effort, and sometimes they screwed you. It's way too common for Fed.gov to cancel orders and expect that since they cancelled the order before it was delivered that they should not pay anything.

Then the lamestream noise media at 60 minutes runs a story accusing you of price gouging.

I've been there, I've done that, and I'm pretty sure I've been blamed for selling some $600 hammers. If you need it now and lives are on the line, I can spend money to get it sooner, but that is going to be expensive. The alternative is January, 1942 when American kids were training with brooms because they did not have enough rifles.

We need to be mass producing missile frigates, oil-tanker-conversions as escort carriers, 1,000s of F35s, 1,000s of F22s, renovating every single plane in the Bone Yard that can be turned into a drone, and sending $1 Billion a month to SpaceX to get the StarShip operational for the High Frontier. It's not going to happen.

/rant