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Comment by c_o_n_v_e_x | Hacker News Reader

Rather than come up with a new manufacturing process for the existing munition design, why not develop a new munition (presumably with a new scalable process) that can be fired from existing weapons?

No rounds seems like a worse condition than having equal-or-poorer performing rounds.

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I don’t understand? The problem isn’t that 155mm shells are inferior tech or not fit for purpose; it’s the US let it’s capacity to manufacture them wither.

To summarize the author, no one wants to invest in ammo plants because of upfront costs and economics of dealing with .gov

Author suggests applying a new manufacturing technology, 3d printing, to help alleviate a supply shortage, but then says new mfg tech probably wont work (I'm inferring that it will not work with the existing design).

I'm proposing an alternative - make a 3d printer friendly design (OK, it may not be as good as the legacy version) but you're able to build the munition in plants that can be repurposed as soon as the "peak demand" goes away.

Guns and what they fire really haven’t changed since the First World War, not fundamentally at least. There’s incremental improvements in design and materials and manufacturing process but it’s a fundamentally mature technology. This gives them relatively low profit margins which makes them unappealing for privatized defense companies with shareholders to please.

Now the classic way to charge the government more money for the same old gun is to say there’s other benefits like nebulous “performance” and “efficiency” improvements. This also has the added benefit when your deliveries “show promise” but display at best marginal improvements, you can sell carry-on contracts, sometimes for a decade or longer!

So to bring this all back around, the author is correct that it won’t work. Enterprising defense contractors may one day attempt to replace factories to roll and stamp and mass-produce bulk firepower with bespoke 3D printable, multifunctional, agile, just-in-time shell production solutions. But if they do it’ll produce a lot more shareholder value than actual product.

If you really think artillery didn't change since WW1, you have no idea what you are talking about. Im both regards, doctrine (which changed a lot during WW1 alone) and technology (range, precision, fire control...).

This was an idea I considered, but I'm not enough of a metallurgist to know how feasible it is. In a crisis, I imagine we would try lots of things, but it's easiest to start by just getting out of our own way with proven tools and processes. After all, they're co-designed with weapons systems that are well understood and highly effective, and we'd be replacing all that with entirely new systems in a conflict. It's messy.

It’s not that the US doesn’t produce these weapons as much as Eastern Europeans approach to modern warfare is yeeting rounds 24/7.

I mean, Israel has demonstrated much the same approach (confined to a much smaller territory) nonstop over the past four months (first missiles and now 155mm artillery and tank shells), so it’s definitely not just an Eastern Europe thing.

Many Israelis are from Eastern European backgrounds, and it's plausible that they may have inherited some military culture from there.

I’m not sure it has much to do with culture but almost everything with cost.

Missiles are extremely expensive and you’ll soon run out of them during a long war of attrition (especially in a symmetrical conflict like in Ukraine)

I don't actually understand why missiles are so expensive. You can buy an off-the-shelf turbojet engine for $1,000, and cheap toy drones are equipped with sophisticated guidance electronics. I'd have thought it shouldn't be hard to build a cruise missile with INS for under $20,000.

The “cute” gotcha here is that Israel doesn’t have to foot the bill, the USA is happily paying.

Of you want to level a city, you either use obe big bomb, a lot of small ones (Israel doesn't have strategic bombers so) or a shit ton of ground fired shells and explosives.

Culture has nothing to with that.

Disclaimer: I consider leveling cities with the goal to displace people to be disgusting, and a borderline war crime. Regardless of the parties or reasons involved.

That's just called war. People just haven't seen it in long while.

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