this post was submitted on 02 Jul 2023
16 points (100.0% liked)

Credible Defense

475 readers
1 users here now

An unofficial counterpart to the subreddit r/CredibleDefense, intended to be a supplementary resource and potential fallback point. If you are an active moderator over there, please don't hesitate to contact me to be given a moderation position.

Wiki Glossary of Common Terms and Abbreviations. (Request an addition)

General Rules

Strive to be informative, professional, gracious, and encouraging in your communications with other members here. Imagine writing to a superior in the Armed Forces, or a colleague in a think tank or major investigative journal.

This is not at all intended to be US-centric; posts relating to other countries are highly encouraged.

No blind partisanship. We aim to study defense, not wage wars behind keyboards. Defense views from or about all countries are welcome so long as they are credible.

If you have experience in relevant fields, understand your limitations. Just because you work in the defense arena does not mean you are always correct.

Please refrain from linking the sub outside of here and a small number of other subs (LCD, NCD, War College, IR_Studies, NCDiplomacy, AskHistorians). This helps control site growth (especially limiting surges) and filters people toward those with a stronger interest.

No denial of war crimes or genocide.

Comments

Should be substantive and contribute to discussion.

No image macros, GIFs, emojis or memes.

No AI-generated content.

Don’t be abrasive/insulting.

No one-liners, jokes, insults, shorthand, etc. Avoid excessive sarcasm or snark.

Sources are highly encouraged, but please do not link to low-quality sources such as RT, New York Post, The National Interest, CGTN, etc. unless they serve a useful purpose.

Be polite and informative to others here, and remember that we should be able to disagree without being disagreeable.

Do not accuse or personally challenge others, rather ask them for sources and why they have their opinions.

Do not ask others about their background as it is rude and not encouraging of others to have an open discussion.

Please do no not make irrelevant jokes, offtopic pun threads, use sarcasm, respond to a title of a piece without reading it, or in general make comments that add nothing to the discussion. Please refrain from top-level jokes. Humor is appreciated, but it should be infrequent and safe for a professional environment.

Please do not blindly advocate for a side in a conflict or a country in general. Surely there are many patriots here, but this is not the arena to fight those battles.

Asking questions in the comment section of a submission, or in a megathread, is a great way to start a conversation and learn.

Submissions

Posts should include a substantial text component. This does not mean links are banned, instead, they should be submitted as part of the text post. Posts should not be quick updates or short-term. They should hold up and be readable over time, so you will be glad that you read them months or years from now.

Links should go to credible, high-quality sources (academia, government, think tanks), and the body should be a brief summary plus some comments on what makes it good or insightful.

Essays/Effortposts are encouraged. Essays/Effortposts are text posts you make that have an underlying thesis or attempt to synthesize information. They should cite sources, be well-written, and be relatively long. An example of an excellent effort post is this.

Please use the original title of the work (or a descriptive title; de-editorializing/de-clickbaiting is acceptable), and possibly a sub-headline.

Refrain from submissions that are quick updates in title form, troop movements, ship deployments, terrorist attacks, announcements, or the crisis du jour.

Discussions of opinion pieces by distinguished authors, historical research, and research on warfare relating to national security issues are encouraged.

We are primarily a reading forum, so please no image macros, gifs, emojis, or memes.

~~Moderators will manually approve all posts.~~ Posting is unrestricted for the moment, but posts without a submission statement or that do not meet the standards above will be removed.

No Leaked Material

Please do not submit or otherwise link to classified material. And please take discussions of classified material to a more secure location.

In general, avoid any information that will endanger anyone.

#Please report items that violate these rules. We don’t know about it unless you point it out.

We maintain lists of sources so that anyone can help to find interesting open-source material to share. As outlets wax and wane in quality, please help us keep the list updated:

https://reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/wiki/credibleoutlets

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
qwamqwamqwam
16
Raytheon Calls in Retirees to Help Restart Stinger Missile Production (www.defenseone.com)
submitted 2 years ago by qwamqwamqwam to c/credibledefense
0 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Submission Statement

Part of the reason indigenous production is so attractive to countries is that once an assembly line shuts down, it can take significant investment to reopen. Workers develop best practices and optimizations to make their tasks more efficient, many of which are lost when they move on to other positions or retire. At best, losing that knowledge can result in slower production. At worst, a critical unwritten rule can be the difference between a part working or failing. This article provides a good example of the effort required to restart a production line.

Marcus Weisgerber is the global business editor for Defense One, where he writes about the intersection of business and national security.

Raytheon has called in retired engineers to teach its employees how to build the Stinger missiles heavily used by Ukraine’s military—using blueprints drawn up during the Carter administration.

It’s the latest example of a private company working to ramp up production of a now-in-demand weapon that the Pentagon hasn’t purchased in decades.

“Stinger's been out of production for 20 years, and all of a sudden in the first 48 hours [of the war], it's the star of the show and everybody wants more,” Wes Kremer, the president of RTX’s Raytheon division, said during an interview last week at the Paris Air Show.

When the U.S. Army placed an order for 1,700 Stingers in May 2022, the Pentagon said the missiles wouldn’t be delivered until 2026. Kremer said it will take about 30 months for Stingers to start rolling off of the production line largely because of the time it takes to set up the factory and train its employees.

On top of that, the electronics used in the missile are obsolete, said RTX CEO Greg Hayes.

“We're redesigning circuit cards [and] redesigning some of the componentry,” Hayes told Defense One in a June 14 interview. “That just takes a long time.”

While engineers these days often tout 3D printing and automation as a way to speed up the manufacturing process, that’s not possible with the Stinger—because doing so would not only mean redesigning the weapon, but also undergoing a lengthy weapon certification process.

“You'd have to redesign the entire seeker in order to automate it,” Kremer said.

That means they must build the weapons the same way they were built four decades ago: including installing the missile’s nose cone by hand.

no comments (yet)
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
there doesn't seem to be anything here