Texas factory cost $469M using old equipment, makes zero artillery shells | Hacker News Reader

Texas factory cost $469M using old equipment, makes zero artillery shells

taskandpurpose.com

24 pointsilamont14 comments

> The Mesquite factory was commissioned with a series of expedited contracts in 2022 and 2023...

> The facility, in Mesquite, Texas, was brought online in 2024...

> [now] the facility has yet to produce a single round in two years...

Vs. WWII-era America needed less than 3 1/2 year to go from Pearl Harbor to Eisenhower commanding 61 US Army Divisions as they overran Germany. Where 40,000 tons of artillery shells might be provided for offensives so (relatively) minor that only a few military history buffs remember them today.

Why the difference? Because back then, a Mesquite-style failure would have had devastating social, financial, and probably legal consequences for the managers and companies involved.

> A "high-risk" plan to use old machines to produce modern M795 artillery shells backfired, an Inspector General report found.

I would say that this indicates that the decision makers adequately appreciated the possibility this wouldn't work. This is generally what a high risk plan is.

I can see that USA and Russia are more similar than one could expect. This kind of corruption of opening a factory and then delivering nothing or delivering overpriced garbage is so typical for Russia and one of the reasons why they struggle so much in Ukraine.

What's so amazing is that with two years of effort they've managed to produce zero shells. Not a handful a month but absolute zero. I mean, I could get an apprentice to produce at least one shell a week using a grinder and a file but they've produced zero in two years with access to all manner of machinery, that requires quite some incompetence.

An apprentice with a grinder and a file. Producing shells that contain high explosives. That might not be the wisest production plan...

On the one hand - you're correct that "an apprentice with a grinder and a file" could not possibly produce a modern-era artillery shell. They're just too complex.

But OTOH - nobody forges, molds, machines, etc. an artillery shell body with the HE filler already in place. Same as nobody molds plastic or glass milk bottles with the milk already inside.

The reason for the "grinder and a file" metaphor was because that's roughly the tech level at which Khyber Pass guns are made. Now I wouldn't necessarily put a +P load through them, but the better ones are reasonably functional.

Also, how do you think the DPRK makes it shells? :-).

> What's so amazing is that...

You, for better and for worse, are thinking like an honest person. Who wants to actually produce a badly-needed product.

Please try to understand that General Dynamics managements' ethics and motivations bear no resemblance whatever to yours. And that "incompetence" is just not the right word for this kind of situation.

EDIT:

> ...with two years of effort...

Two years since the factory "was brought online". There was another two years before that, setting it up.

I recall a story some years back of a tank plant in Ohio that was producing tanks that went straight to a landfill.

The military just did not need so much tanks for their modern conflicts. However that tank plant was the one major employer in this town and losing that could cost a career politician his seat!

I’m so glad that the lack of term limits allows for such long term thinking and political expertise.

The low level employees were probably raising concerns. This stuff makes me sick.

Typically if I don't work, I don't get paid.

Perhaps we could learn something here.

I am glad that anyone is still looking into or complaining about amounts less than $500MM. Still, it's the usual suspects, won't make a difference, can't get blood back from a tick.

This is atypical for the MIC/DoD who wasted trillions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Still can't pass an audit, gave out pallets of cash, built diesel power plants that were uneconomical to run, and let contractors embezzle money for unnecessary repairs and nonexistent deliveries.

The garden variety waste is losing inventory of $100k aviation parts or damaging and then replacing similarly expensive parts on maneuvers without concern for damage or cost.

For a depressing read on this there's "We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People", Peter Van Buren's first-hand account of the catastrofuck that was post-war Iraq.

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