A scathing new Pentagon Inspector General report found problems at the plant delayed the Army's 100,000 round-per-month goal.
  • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
    65·
    11 days ago

    Its a long article to answer the “why” raised by the headline.

    The “why” is this:

    • the government wanted this plant producing shells fast
    • the government wanted a newer version of the shell produced than was produced in the past
    • the fastest way was to buy tooling/machines that made the old version and try to adapt those toolings/machines. Everyone seemed to know this was “high risk and high reward”.
    • the “high risk” didn’t pay off. The tooling/machines built to make the old version simply couldn’t make the new ones at the right quality that was acceptable
    • the fix is to buy new tooling/machines capable of making the new version of the shells, and this is what’s happening, but it will take time before the new tooling/machines are in and new version of shells are being produced
    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
      4·
      11 days ago

      That’s almost exactly what I expected to be the answer, tends to be that way with munitions either you keep using the same machines from a hundred years ago or you can’t and you get the fancy new things.

      • partial_accumen@lemmy.world
        5·
        11 days ago

        This was a new factory with new machines purchased from Turkey. The contractor is spending $200 million to unwind the deal with the Turkish company. The replacement machines are from a US company (at likely an even higher cost).