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I think the issue is that there should have been a plan in place to create an equivalent in functionality even if it isn't an exact copy. The US doesn't need St

I think the issue is that there should have been a plan in place to create an equivalent in functionality even if it isn't an exact copy. The US doesn't need Stingers, they need something/anything that functions as a MANPAD. Not having a way to increase production of Stingers is acceptable, but they've apparently done nothing since 1987 to make sure they have a viable blueprint for scaling production of a critical part of any modern military. That's the real story here, because it shows a fundamental problem in how the US military procures things and there is most likely similar issues all over the place for other critical things(artillery shells have similar shortages). How does the military not have a plan for war breaking out and needing to scale production? That's supposed to be their core job

CydeWeys 3y ago
Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military though. We go for air supremacy through fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs. The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.
- ren_engineer 3y ago
  Stingers are just a symptom of the bigger problem like I mentioned, US also has shortages in artillery, Javelins, rockets, and many other things https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-price-gauging-new-u-s-military-arms https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric... https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning
  - appplication 3y ago
    I don’t disagree that it shows these issues, but identifying these empirically is one of the reasons the US likes to constantly inject itself into international conflict.
  - adventured 3y ago
    It's a symptom of the US itself having no intention nor need of fighting a very protracted war in the style of WW1 utilizing artillery. The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies. Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.
    - lostlogin 3y ago
      > almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.
      - hkpack 3y ago
        We in the eastern Europe were screaming about Russian plans for invasions for at least a decade, and were brushed off because grownups knew better.
- dsr_ 3y ago
  Yup. The US uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin for portable antiarmor, and it's still in production. If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.
- anigbrowl 3y ago
  Weird edge case? Nonsense, proxy wars are the norm. Just because Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military doesn't mean you throw away the documentation and specification. Any military procurement should include reference material on the entire manufacturing pipeline as part of the deliverables - the manufacturer can keep the rights but military assets are too important to risk permanent loss.
  - LorenPechtel 3y ago
    Yup, all documentation and tooling should be retained except when specifically ordered otherwise by the DOD. (I'm thinking of the F-14 where they deliberately destroyed the ability to maintain them when they were retired because they wanted to ensure Iran couldn't maintain theirs.)
  - greedo 3y ago
    The article doesn't say anything about the documentations and specs being destroyed, just that the tooling etc will need to be dusted off and new workers trained. The biggest issue is legacy chips and electronics that are no longer made. These will need to be replaced and the Stinger basically redesigned with a new seeker head. Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  But they are. In any remotely evenly matched conflict neither side will have air supremacy. Patriots and NASAMs can not kill things they can't see--against aircraft flying a treetop level their engagement range is very short. However, aircraft flying at treetop level are very vulnerable if they fly too close to a MANPAD launcher. Flight time will be a few seconds and the desired engagement is from behind--about your only chance of beating it is automated flare dispensers or anti-missile lasers (blinding the seeker, not actually killing the missile.) An aircraft that could fly home crippled from a marginal hit will still go in because the pilot has no altitude to trade for time. Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.
  - chasd00 3y ago
    If you find yourself in a fair fight then you need to rethink your strategy.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      If you're the attacker, then sure.
  - ameister14 3y ago
    Currently, there is no air force in the world that will match the US. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to see a combination of aircraft that can match up. The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so. That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.
    - HelloNurse 3y ago
      None of that airplanes, except perhaps a few very secret ones, is going to fight in Ukraine. As other comments explain, the important point is what air defense weapons can be sent.
- flakeoil 3y ago
  And can they produce "fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs" fast enough when they run out of them?
jandrewrogers 3y ago
You are overlooking a critical fact: the US capacity is optimized for US military doctrine and practice i.e. how the US fights wars. For those purposes, they have plenty. The US doesn't have vast numbers of artillery shells, for example, because the US doesn't need them nor would have any use for them if they were produced en masse. It would make no sense for the US to maintain the supply chain for a Soviet style military if the US isn't a Soviet style military. The shortages now are only relative to the military doctrine of other countries, not intrinsic to the US military.
- brutusborn 3y ago
  What if we need to support a country that does need lots of artillery shells like Ukraine? Surely they should have a plan for that contingency? I can understand not having full production facilities due to expense, but at least plans for those facilities if they need to be built in a hurry?
  - mschuster91 3y ago
    Common sentiment was that the US would go more isolationist, no more foreign adventures with the exception of maybe shooting some rockets on some djihadists.
  - alephnerd 3y ago
    > What if we need to support a country that does need lots of artillery shells like Ukraine? We have allies to do that for us. Before the Russia-Ukraine war escalated in 2022, Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany, and combat training from Canada and the UK. If we began directly providing offensive weaponry to Ukraine before 2022, we would have ended up escalating the conflict much sooner. By allowing our allies to handle procurement we were at least able to buy Ukraine enough time to rebuild their army after it collapsed in the aftermath of 2014.
    - mensetmanusman 3y ago
      "Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany" Don't you mean artillery from Deutschland? :)
jdm2212 3y ago
just FYI, it's MANPADS -- the S isn't for plural, it's for "System" (as in "MAN Portable Air Defense System)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vonnik 3y ago
There’s a deeper structural problem that affects almost all military supply chains. Modern military equipment is incredibly expensive, complex, bespoke, and made in small batches. Even in cases when that is not true, as with artillery shells, peacetime supply chains cannot meet wartime demand. Ramping them up takes time, and maintaining them in a constant scaled state of readiness entails an opportunity cost that most societies are not willing to pay. HN readers should know that military supply chains are not like global commercial supply chains. The supply chains that say Apple or Walmart have built are global scale and quickly responsive to demand. That simply does not apply to many military components from manufacturing through assembly and deployment. The timelines are much longer. There are things Ukraine needs that money cannot immediately solve. These bottlenecks are an example. (Fears of escalation are another…) Ukraine is fighting a poor man’s war with a lot of second-hand Cold War equipment and Stingers that served the mujahedeen just as well decades ago. This is partially due to US funding mechanisms. It’s very easy for Biden to exercise discretion in what he sends (and therefore regulate the intensity of the war) through the mechanism of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which can only draw upon existing DOD stocks. He relies heavily on PDA, thus the nature of the second-hand stuff. What’s interesting is the dual-use piece of the equipment used in Ukraine. By paying frontline soldiers some 5x what they would normally earn, Ukraine has created a market driven by the demand of infantry, usually pooling their purchases in small groups. They are buying all sorts of equipment, notably power banks, satellite ground terminals, mobile devices, from much more responsive supply chains. That is, we have strong revealed preferences of the kind of equipment soldiers buy when their lives depend on it, and it looks very different from the bloat purveyed by primes to the Pentagon. Disclosure: I work with Ukraine Defense Fund to send dual-use tech to the AFU.(Ukrainedefensefund.org)
r00fus 3y ago
The DOD can’t even tell you what is made in which country. That’s how completely mismanaged the defense industry is in the US.
manvillej 3y ago
this isn't just a military production issue. Industry has always been bad at contingency planning. Healthcare was blindsided by the covid pandemic, even though the flu has been the most prominent pandemics in human history. Finance industry was blindsided housing crash. Supply chain disruptions make waves through the entire system. Businesses barely do any contingency planning because there is no money to be made in it and it takes away from making money. so when a contingency finally hits, they're all caught with their pants around their ankles

CydeWeys 3y ago

Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military though. We go for air supremacy through fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs. The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.

ren_engineer 3y ago
Stingers are just a symptom of the bigger problem like I mentioned, US also has shortages in artillery, Javelins, rockets, and many other things https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-price-gauging-new-u-s-military-arms https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric... https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning
- appplication 3y ago
  I don’t disagree that it shows these issues, but identifying these empirically is one of the reasons the US likes to constantly inject itself into international conflict.
- adventured 3y ago
  It's a symptom of the US itself having no intention nor need of fighting a very protracted war in the style of WW1 utilizing artillery. The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies. Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    > almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.
    - hkpack 3y ago
      We in the eastern Europe were screaming about Russian plans for invasions for at least a decade, and were brushed off because grownups knew better.
dsr_ 3y ago
Yup. The US uses https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FGM-148_Javelin for portable antiarmor, and it's still in production. If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.
anigbrowl 3y ago
Weird edge case? Nonsense, proxy wars are the norm. Just because Stingers aren't a critical part of the US military doesn't mean you throw away the documentation and specification. Any military procurement should include reference material on the entire manufacturing pipeline as part of the deliverables - the manufacturer can keep the rights but military assets are too important to risk permanent loss.
- LorenPechtel 3y ago
  Yup, all documentation and tooling should be retained except when specifically ordered otherwise by the DOD. (I'm thinking of the F-14 where they deliberately destroyed the ability to maintain them when they were retired because they wanted to ensure Iran couldn't maintain theirs.)
- greedo 3y ago
  The article doesn't say anything about the documentations and specs being destroyed, just that the tooling etc will need to be dusted off and new workers trained. The biggest issue is legacy chips and electronics that are no longer made. These will need to be replaced and the Stinger basically redesigned with a new seeker head. Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.
LorenPechtel 3y ago
But they are. In any remotely evenly matched conflict neither side will have air supremacy. Patriots and NASAMs can not kill things they can't see--against aircraft flying a treetop level their engagement range is very short. However, aircraft flying at treetop level are very vulnerable if they fly too close to a MANPAD launcher. Flight time will be a few seconds and the desired engagement is from behind--about your only chance of beating it is automated flare dispensers or anti-missile lasers (blinding the seeker, not actually killing the missile.) An aircraft that could fly home crippled from a marginal hit will still go in because the pilot has no altitude to trade for time. Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.
- chasd00 3y ago
  If you find yourself in a fair fight then you need to rethink your strategy.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    If you're the attacker, then sure.
- ameister14 3y ago
  Currently, there is no air force in the world that will match the US. In fact, I'd be hard-pressed to see a combination of aircraft that can match up. The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so. That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.
  - HelloNurse 3y ago
    None of that airplanes, except perhaps a few very secret ones, is going to fight in Ukraine. As other comments explain, the important point is what air defense weapons can be sent.
flakeoil 3y ago
And can they produce "fighters, Patriots, and NASAMs" fast enough when they run out of them?

jandrewrogers 3y ago

You are overlooking a critical fact: the US capacity is optimized for US military doctrine and practice i.e. how the US fights wars. For those purposes, they have plenty. The US doesn't have vast numbers of artillery shells, for example, because the US doesn't need them nor would have any use for them if they were produced en masse. It would make no sense for the US to maintain the supply chain for a Soviet style military if the US isn't a Soviet style military. The shortages now are only relative to the military doctrine of other countries, not intrinsic to the US military.

brutusborn 3y ago
What if we need to support a country that does need lots of artillery shells like Ukraine? Surely they should have a plan for that contingency? I can understand not having full production facilities due to expense, but at least plans for those facilities if they need to be built in a hurry?
- mschuster91 3y ago
  Common sentiment was that the US would go more isolationist, no more foreign adventures with the exception of maybe shooting some rockets on some djihadists.
- alephnerd 3y ago
  > What if we need to support a country that does need lots of artillery shells like Ukraine? We have allies to do that for us. Before the Russia-Ukraine war escalated in 2022, Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany, and combat training from Canada and the UK. If we began directly providing offensive weaponry to Ukraine before 2022, we would have ended up escalating the conflict much sooner. By allowing our allies to handle procurement we were at least able to buy Ukraine enough time to rebuild their army after it collapsed in the aftermath of 2014.
  - mensetmanusman 3y ago
    "Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany" Don't you mean artillery from Deutschland? :)

jdm2212 3y ago

just FYI, it's MANPADS -- the S isn't for plural, it's for "System" (as in "MAN Portable Air Defense System)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

vonnik 3y ago

There’s a deeper structural problem that affects almost all military supply chains. Modern military equipment is incredibly expensive, complex, bespoke, and made in small batches. Even in cases when that is not true, as with artillery shells, peacetime supply chains cannot meet wartime demand. Ramping them up takes time, and maintaining them in a constant scaled state of readiness entails an opportunity cost that most societies are not willing to pay. HN readers should know that military supply chains are not like global commercial supply chains. The supply chains that say Apple or Walmart have built are global scale and quickly responsive to demand. That simply does not apply to many military components from manufacturing through assembly and deployment. The timelines are much longer. There are things Ukraine needs that money cannot immediately solve. These bottlenecks are an example. (Fears of escalation are another…) Ukraine is fighting a poor man’s war with a lot of second-hand Cold War equipment and Stingers that served the mujahedeen just as well decades ago. This is partially due to US funding mechanisms. It’s very easy for Biden to exercise discretion in what he sends (and therefore regulate the intensity of the war) through the mechanism of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which can only draw upon existing DOD stocks. He relies heavily on PDA, thus the nature of the second-hand stuff. What’s interesting is the dual-use piece of the equipment used in Ukraine. By paying frontline soldiers some 5x what they would normally earn, Ukraine has created a market driven by the demand of infantry, usually pooling their purchases in small groups. They are buying all sorts of equipment, notably power banks, satellite ground terminals, mobile devices, from much more responsive supply chains. That is, we have strong revealed preferences of the kind of equipment soldiers buy when their lives depend on it, and it looks very different from the bloat purveyed by primes to the Pentagon. Disclosure: I work with Ukraine Defense Fund to send dual-use tech to the AFU.(Ukrainedefensefund.org)

r00fus 3y ago

The DOD can’t even tell you what is made in which country. That’s how completely mismanaged the defense industry is in the US.

manvillej 3y ago

this isn't just a military production issue. Industry has always been bad at contingency planning. Healthcare was blindsided by the covid pandemic, even though the flu has been the most prominent pandemics in human history. Finance industry was blindsided housing crash. Supply chain disruptions make waves through the entire system. Businesses barely do any contingency planning because there is no money to be made in it and it takes away from making money. so when a contingency finally hits, they're all caught with their pants around their ankles