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As much as you ever wanted to know about 155M artillery shell production
- ganeshkrishnan 3y ago[flagged]
- tiku 3y agoOur continent was free of war for a long time, never would have guessed Russia would attack something almost European. With asshole countries like that, we need it. And then we wonder why the alien's won't show themselves haha.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoI knew a Ukrainian who said he would go back to fight when Russia invaded. This was in 1997, before Putin took power.
- consumer451 3y agoI agree. You can’t necessarily blame all this on Putin because Russian imperialism goes back for centuries.
- dmoy 3y ago> continent was free of war for a long time Was it though? Within the last 30 years you've got Yugoslavia, Kosovo, Russia/Georgia, and the Russia/Chechnya civil stuff. I guess no super lengthy wars in 20 years, sure.
- schainks 3y agoAll of us tech people have the military to thank for the creation of this industry, lest anyone forgets.
- iso8859-1 3y agoWhat do you mean? The first computer (the Antikythera mechanism) had nothing to do with the military.
- atlasunshrugged 3y agoI think this is in reference to how important the defense industry has been to Silicon Valley in particular. For example, Steve Blank has this lecture on the Secret History of Silicon Valley https://steveblank.com/secret-history/ https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
- schainks 3y agoI have attended this lecture in person, it was amazing and informative.
- peteradio 3y agoSurely the greeks were simply using the Antikythera to find more tribes to war with.
- MOARDONGZPLZ 3y agoOff the top of my head, in this space DOD invented: CPUs/registers, random access memory, packet switched networks, internetworking, TCP/IPv4. I’m sure there’s more.
- icegreentea2 3y agoMore directly, ENIAC was literally designed and commissioned to calculate ballistic trajectory of shells.
- adrian_b 3y agoDoD did not really invent anything, but they have financed the research required to invent things according to their requirements, without which the things enumerated by you might have been invented only decades later. All the modern semiconductor industry, including the discovery of transistors and of solar cells, has its origin in the research done during WWII, mostly at Bell Laboratories, to make improved detectors for the military radars, which lead to the development of the technologies needed to make pure germanium and pure silicon and of semiconductor diodes made with them. Without DoD money, an electronic computer of the complexity of ENIAC would have been built only many years later. Nevertheless, both ENIAC and the British cryptographic electronic machines (and the Atanasoff computer) have been enabled by the invention of various kinds of electronic digital counters during the decade that has preceded WWII (mostly in UK), all of which had been invented for the use in experiments for the study by physicists of radioactive substances and of cosmic radiation, so there are also decisive civilian contributions (like also the discovery of nuclear fission as a precondition for the nuclear bombs and reactors).
- shiroiuma 3y agoSo you think everyone should just allow Russia to take over any country it wants?
- zmgsabst 3y agoNo — but perhaps we could have negotiated a peace during a conference at Minsk a decade ago or in Feb 2022 at the outbreak of hostilities, rather than frantically send Boris Johnson to subvert it. Russia has consistently angled for Ukraine to be a neutral border between two blocs to facilitate trade — and that clearly would have been better for Ukraine than a senseless slaughter which destroyed a generation, by maiming or killing hundreds of thousands and displacing millions. But that wouldn’t have satisfied warhawks like Victoria Nuland and the geriatric Cold Warriors (TM) who are intent on their senile, unhinged drive to destroy Russia as a nation.
- consumer451 3y agoLet me skip over a bunch of your points and just get to the end. Would any of your theoretical compromises have satisfied the Cold Warriors in the Kremlin? These people literally believe that NATO is coming to invade Moscow. How do you negotiate with someone who lives in a place so disconnected from reality?
- toss1 3y agoIt is worse than that - No one in the Kremlin believes that NATO is coming for them. There are many proofs, but one is that Russia PULLED troops away from the Finnish border when Finland joined. That line is merely one of dozens of bullshirt excuses they trot out to claim victimhood and "justify" their relentless aggression.
- XorNot 3y agoYep. The actual answer is they believe the West is weak and easily bored. The Russian government has never cared about dead Russians, and believes just waiting us out will win them what they need at a cost they don't care about. I mean, it's going to absolutely wreck Russia, but again: the Russian government for basically the last 1,000 years sees the citizen as a resource to be expended for it's greatness.
- jmyeet 3y agoThis reminds me of the excellent series "Blueprint for Armageddon" in Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast [1]. It's about the First World War. WWI tends to get less attention than WW2 and while there are good reasons why we focus on the atrocities of WW2, in some ways WWI was far more devastating. The artillery production mentioned here reminds me of how scales changed from the beginning to the end of the war. At the outbreak, IIRC Russia produced ~35K artillery shells per month and was using ~25K per day. By 1917, there was a battle where a combined total of ONE MILLION artillery shells were fired (between the two sides) in a period of roughly 4 hours. Every war seems to have a defining technology that's new and makes it unlike previous wars. This is rarely clear to military leadership before the war starts so tends to mean the calculations are off. For example, the US Civil War was the first war fought with mass-produced, long-range, fast-loading and accurate rifles, which led to >600K deaths. By comparison, the US lost 400k servicemen in WW2. In WWI, that defining technology was really artillery. To a lesser extent it was machine guns too. Air power became a factor late in the war but the concepts of aerial bombardment, strategic bombardment and air superiority wouldn't really come into their own until WW2. The real solution to artillery and fixed positions ultimately became the tank But WWi ended before this really took off. Like air power, it would become a huge factor in WW2. Why this is important is because the war in Ukraine is in many ways similar to WWI. Air power isn't really a factor but the most defining factors are artillery, trenches, fortifications and terrain, most notably the Dnipro River. Russia has built 3 lines of impressive fortifications that mirror German positions in WWI. Russia's strategy is essentially to dig in, use the river as a barrier and wait for the West to get bored or lose patience with supplying Ukraine such that Ukraine sues for peace and Russia gains territory east of the river, creating a land bridge to Crimea. But in a WWI style war, artillery is incredibly important. It can be used to cover an advance into a fortified position (eg a creeping barrage [2]). These were tactics that were developed and learned through WWI. Oh and if you want to see how devastating this can be look no further than Verdun, the so-called "Red Zone" (Zone Rouge) [3]. [1]: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blueprint-for-armageddon-series/ https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-50-55-blu... [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_(artillery)#Creeping_barrage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrage_(artillery)#Creeping_b... [3]: https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/zone-rouge.html https://www.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-i/zone-rouge.html
- more_corn 3y agoThat was well researched. Weapons manufacture has an unfortunate overlap with the systems skills computer people possess. It’s easy to get sucked in. He says it best in the first paragraph. “I wouldn’t want to be on the other end of one” Never build a weapon you wouldn’t want to be on the other end of. The last part of creation is relinquishing control. The person operating it might not be as careful pointing it as you would.
- kspacewalk2 3y agoA fine pacifist attitude to have when someone else did the fighting and the dying and the building up a military industrial complex for you. Ukrainians, for example, don't have that option, which is why a ton of IT guys there are starting and joining all sorts of miltech startups, volunteer groups, etc. Their families and their future depend on using their talents to build yucky weapons they don't want to be on the other side of.
- TulliusCicero 3y agoYeah, these pacifist-style comments are really tone deaf and out of touch. Yes, we'd all prefer peace and leaving each other alone, but if some other nation comes to kill your countrymen and replace your democracy with a puppet, suddenly just relying on pacifist ideals doesn't work well anymore. Most of the time, these commenters don't want to engage with reality as it currently exists. If you ask them what exactly you're supposed to do without a war machine if some other guy invades, they just have the silliest deflections and hand waving. Ultimately, they just want to say "war bad" from atop their high horse, as if other people didn't believe that war was, in fact, bad. Ukraine is an obvious example. Ukraine wasn't doing anything to Russia other than choosing to gradually move culturally towards the West, which is their right. Before the big invasion in 2022, there were repeated attempts by Ukraine or by Western countries to try and forestall Russia's invasion by opening up negotiations and talking things out, and Putin didn't give a shit. Diplomacy didn't work there. What would've worked? Having a stronger military, or even better, being allied with other strong militaries. Putin doesn't invade the Baltics for a reason.
- nickthegreek 3y agoWSJ YT released a short informative video on 155mm shell 2 weeks back as well. https://youtu.be/NZOEgFLCvLU?si=xJP3jzXN69QFqOeb https://youtu.be/NZOEgFLCvLU?si=xJP3jzXN69QFqOeb
- duped 3y agoI don't think it's a "problem" that we don't have enough munitions to launch at other humans. It's a testament to our time that there aren't incentives for manufacturing death.
- Tostino 3y agoI tend to agree. However, knowing just how hungry modern warfare is for munitions, not having the capacity already in place to vastly ramp up production seems extremely short sighted.
- MattGaiser 3y agoIt is a problem when other humans are launching and we cannot launch back.
- epistasis 3y agoIt's a huge problem when an army with a larger amount wants to take your land, abduct your children, kill anyone who speaks and writes in your language, and tortures all your leaders to death. All told, better to have fewer shells in general, but in particular, one must have at least as many shells as the murderous invaders that want to kill you. And towards that end, the more that Ukraine destroys Russia's military, the less shells everyone else needs to build to defend themselves. Because if Ukraine falls, one only has to look on YouTube to find the translations of Russian TV that show all the other places their population is geared up to invade, rape, conquer, and subjugate.
- kspacewalk2 3y agoI don't think enough people understand quite what Russia has in store for Ukrainians in case they win. For example, some think Bucha or the mass graves in Izyum are one offs. But those who speak Ukrainian or Russian can find dozens of interviews with Ukrainian POWs who have come back in exchanges, and after watching them it becomes quite clear the Russians have tortured and/or brutally murdered many thousands of captives, and have a clear game plan what to do with anyone who isn't completely submissive and has any shred of Ukrainian identity in them once they occupy an area. But even aside from what happens to Ukrainians, if this goes Russia's way it will embolden many other regimes to solve their problems through fascism and colonial invasions too. Pacifism is very nice and weapons of war are absolutely an evil thing, but if you don't have them your pacifism quickly becomes appeasement and/or submission when someone who's not as nice as you decides they're gonna go ahead and institute a few changes in their neighbourhood.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoRather 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.
- seo-speedwagon 3y agoI 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.
- c_o_n_v_e_x 3y agoTo 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.
- seo-speedwagon 3y agoGuns 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.
- balderdash 3y agoIn the commodities business there’s an old saw that long-term contracts solve supply problems, and spot prices solve inventory problems And this seems like a perfect example of the first part of that. The thing I didn’t see was how much it would cost to build a facility that produces x/k rounds a month. I find it hard to imagine these facilities are that expensive (in the context of US defense spending) so it makes me feel there was a something else going on here…
- jltsiren 3y agoArtillery had become a niche branch in the Western doctrine, and people didn't see a point in investing in large-scale shell production. Air forces and guided missiles had replaced artillery in many of its traditional roles. In the Soviet doctrine, artillery had a much larger role. Both Russia and Ukraine inherited that doctrine, and they went on to fight the war they were prepared for.
- StillBored 3y agoOh, right lets replace cheap simple and dumb artillery we can't produce with super complex guided missiles with 1/10000th the production capability.
- Spooky23 3y agoThe rationale is that the ordnance on target ratio is way higher with missiles. 10,000 shells can be displaced by 100 missiles. A conflict like Russia/Ukraine isn’t happening with the US. A US / Russia conflict would have resulted in US air supremacy or a nuclear exchange.
- StillBored 3y agoThe Russians apparently have 600 tanks queued up right now for an advance. And while apparently they don't use the tanks as mobile guns for their infantry there is probably a good number in support of those tanks, and it seems unlikely one would fire missiles at infantry. Which is why we were dumping 50 year old stockpiles of dumb bombs in Afganistan. Which leads to the question of how one maintains air superiority for flying bombers in the face of more advanced MANPADS...
- elintknower 3y ago[flagged]
- MilStdJunkie 3y agoI really really enjoyed the piece[0], but boy, you think this is bad, wait until we're exchanging missiles with a peer military. Hundreds, maybe even thousands, of missiles[1] in the air at the same time, in a kaleidoscopic dazzle of altitudes, velocities, sensor profiles. Every combat simulation seems to turn into what you might call a "magazine fight" - i.e., who runs out of bullets first. We'll probably burn through the RAM/SM inventory in weeks . . but not before leaving a whole bunch of ships with empty magazines, because they can't UNREP top off their VLSs. We're just now getting a taste of this problem in the Gulf of Aden, and that's in an AoR surrounded by safe/friendly ports, versus a bunch of Iranian second stringers. This is the core reason for the "Replicator" initiative in DoD, but, Pentagon being the Pentagon, their "replicator" systems are on course for being too expensive by orders of magnitude. They need to get focused on cheap commodity DEWS, and do it yesterday; the fact that a teenage youtuber[2] hacked up a kilowatt-class DEWS capable of burning 2-3mm steel at 200m says to me - emphatically - that there is ZERO reason to not have these things ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Having air defense missiles and light strike also being built on commodity would also be dandy, but harder, and also not as critical as getting mass defensive DEWS CIWS up. [0] DoD procurement and business process is . . it's something else. I'm not sure I can communicate it to outsiders. Fighting inertia inside of defense organizations has basically turned into my career focus, although in a tiny little bubble of technical content production, and at the cost of chopping a zero off my salary. I think, at the end of the day, I'm just tired of twenty million dollar PDF files - that are also late, and wrong. [1] I'm including armed UAS in this. They're basically missiles built on dual use chassis - the more fight you fit into commodity UAS, you get exponential returns. China's close link with their dual use industry gives them a depressing advantage here, but that might be a double edge sword in a EW-heavy AoR. [2] https://youtu.be/xNmbvaUzC8Q?si=FZcAwGRTLjyNlrQu https://youtu.be/xNmbvaUzC8Q?si=FZcAwGRTLjyNlrQu
- dmoy 3y ago> because they can't UNREP top off their VLSs Wait, for real? That seems crazy to me. Lot of those ships minus the vls are pretty useless. I guess they rely on bases all over
- 3y ago
- cameron_b 3y agoIt should probably be restated that instead of the conflict in Ukraine catching our production capacity off guard, that rather it was our production posture along with denuclearization and disarmament of Ukraine that set the stage for the conflict. I’m not a “team America world police” advocate, much more the opposite. Even as stated in the article, most production is more interested in a deterrent. Hate ‘em or hate ‘em, nukes are a deterrent to open war. Reference our posture toward retaliating against Iran-backed groups this week. Russia didn’t like a nuclear neighbor, it said. So the US brokered a nuclear disarmament of Ukraine with the interests of reducing the tension (sic) with Russia, and on the assurance of support from the US should they need it. The stage was set on the thin hope of peace.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- butterknife 3y agoUkraine only housed Soviet nuclear missiles. They (Ukraine) would never ever had access to launch codes. That it is stated in Budapest memorandum along with the rest of the Soviet army leaving does not in any way make Ukraine a former nuclear power. We had Soviet nukes stationed in Czechia too. Does that make us a former nuclear power? I thought not... Slava Ukraini
- MagnumOpus 3y ago> would never ever had access to launch codes What do you think, how many hours does it take to remove and jury-rig launch signal electronics for a motivated nation state at the cutting edge of weapons technology? If the Soviet troops had agreed to leave the bombs in situ, Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week. (And even if the Russians had sabotaged it, Iran and NorK prove that obtaining or refining the fissile material is far harder than explosives lensing and ballistic missile delivery.)
- inglor_cz 3y ago"Ukraine would have had some sort of nuclear capability within the week." For how long? Nukes need maintenance. To maintain them, you will need to rebuild the entire supply chain on Ukrainian territory. Do you even have the necessary know-how? What percentage of GDP are you willing to spend on it? Until today, Ukraine has lower GDP than Czechia. In the 1990s, it was even worse. With their economy destroyed by decades of Soviet rule, they were happy to survive somehow. Tangentially, it is well possible that Russian nukes are actually under-maintained, for the very same reason: it is expensive to keep them in working order, and Russian economy is not very strong. Perhaps most of them would not explode. But we'd better not find out.
- petermcneeley 3y agoA slightly larger shell (280mm) can produce much more significant damage https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goMNAxFqGbk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goMNAxFqGbk
- stickfigure 3y agoAnd give your supporting army a nice tan at the same time!
- Animats 3y agoThe US government-owned facilities are not the only US source of 155mm rounds. NAMMO [1] is a major manufacturer, and they have a facility in Mesa, AZ. Here's their marketing video for 155mm rounds.[2] Nammo's management complains that they are being offered 3-4 year contracts, and they need 10-15 year contracts to build new factories. Peacetime demand for large-caliber ammo is very low, so when there's not a war on, factories are mothballed. BAE and Rheinmetall also make 155mm rounds, and many of those are going to Ukraine. Israel is unhappy that the US stores of ammo in Israel are being sent to Ukraine, and is ordering domestic manufacture from Elbit. The article doesn't make a clear distinction between the foundry and machining steps in the process. The first part involves casting and forging molten metal, and the second is ordinary machining. They don't have to be carried out in the same plant. Either or both can be outsourced separately. Filling, where explosives go into shells, is done in dedicated plants with lots of separation between buildings, buried storage bunkers, and many other safety precautions. That's the dangerous part but not the bottleneck. Here's a modern 155mm shell forging plant in Germany.[3] [1] https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-caliber-ammunition/155-mm-series/ https://www.nammo.com/product/our-products/ammunition/large-... [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUV1uktRZg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrUV1uktRZg [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNtmrYeBwWQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNtmrYeBwWQ
- fransje26 3y ago> Israel is unhappy that the US stores of ammo in Israel are being sent to Ukraine Yes, they have their own ground-leveling to do after all..
- peeters 3y agoTypo in original and submission: 155mm, not 155M (which could be interpreted as 155 million something--dollars?) as in the submission, nor 155m (metres) as in the original.
- somat 3y agoThe author appeared surprised that 3d printing would not help. Is this a common misconception? I always figured it was common knowledge that 3d printing is a great prototyping tool. tolerable in some low-rate processes, and terrible in a high volume process.
- rob_lh 3y agoAuthor here. In short, no, I wasn't surprised, I just wanted to cover it. I worked in 3D printing, albeit on the polymer side. On the metal side, there's been a lot of progress and 3D printed thruster nozzle assemblies are one of the key advancements SpaceX has made. It would never be a high volume process, but I was curious if you could get the kind of steel you needed for "surge" demand when the price matters less than total throughput.
- sherr 3y agoNoah Smith (Noahpinion) had a decent post up a few weeks ago about this aspect of war - war production. He titled it "People are realizing that the Arsenal of Democracy is gone" [1]. It was quite a sobering read. The thought that we might ever need this level of commitment in the future is frightening. War is always full of nasty surprises. [1] https://archive.is/Ih3pm https://archive.is/Ih3pm
- somenameforme 3y agoThat piece is not well thought out in my opinion. The "magical shield" that's been protecting people in developed nations is simple - nukes. Countries with nukes don't get invaded. Countries without nukes, do. It doesn't matter if you're a democracy (which Iran was until they dared question our control over their oil, and so naturally had to be have... monarchy... brought to them), or a little dictatorship with an affinity for rocket building. The primary point of conventional weaponry (from the perspective of a nuclear power) is to fuel proxy wars and enable the invasion of non-nuclear nations. Of course he's right that if there is a WW3, the United States will lose. As will every other single major power. And how many artillery shells you have won't matter a lick in this. The goal in WW3 will not be to destroy the other nation's military, but to destroy the other nation, such that it can never recover to pose a threat to you again. Every single juicy high-density economic zone in every single country will end up getting nuked to oblivion. New York City, Moscow, San Francisco, Berlin, Paris - these places will, in all probability, simply no longer exist. Striving to win an unwinnable war is not only painfully myopic, but also just seems like a great way for humanity to kill itself off.
- roenxi 3y agoThe US is a fairly aggressive power that gets involved in a lot of overseas wars. If you backcast the same logic to WWII; the US could have had a nuclear shield then and been perfectly safe from invasion, but what it actually wanted was the ability to get involved in Europe and the Pacific. Having an impenetrable defence is nice, but the US hasn't fought a defensive war in ... I don't know how long. Maybe a century for all I care.
- syngrog66 3y ago155mm?
- tehjoker 3y ago[flagged]
- Throw73747 3y agoAnd shelling Donetsk City is somehow different?
- tehjoker 3y agoI am also against the Ukraine war and believe a peaceful settlement is possible. NATO (the US) is using Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, though having to fight two wars at once is causing them to rethink their position. ICJ did rule against Russia, and it makes sense since they invaded, but the roots of the conflict go back to attacks on Donetsk like you say since 2014 and various aggressive moves by NATO since 1991 in violation of the gentleman's agreement. Basically, the US should not be supplying arms to these conflicts.
- Zetobal 3y agogentleman's agreement... what a weird way to say there was no agreement.
- clarionbell 3y agoDon't you know. Russians never mastered the art of written treaties. The Soviets were confused and thought that pinky swear (after all of the deception of cold war) is guarantee of future power sharing :D
- tehjoker 3y agoIt's not a big deal to admit that Gorbachev was a weak leader that gave away too much and aided the fall of the USSR.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago> :D It's always refreshing to see what the West never does what it says, never did.
- tonetegeatinst 3y agoTo be fair, while the barriers by manufacturing and engineering are no small thing people seem to forget that your average american can't male these. They would need all kinds of license's and regular inspection from the BATFE and shit. I was interested in doing some hobby and research chemistry sorta like a combination of the precision projects I see from https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8i-4EpLBXMzekETNXwcZjA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8i-4EpLBXMzekETNXwcZjA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC06HVrkOL33D5lLnCPjr6NQ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC06HVrkOL33D5lLnCPjr6NQ And more focused on the energetics stuff combines with just technology and research. Well I did some digging and the ATF is regulated the industry to hell and back. And while I can recognise the importance of safety, I think that it also creates more additional barriers to entry. Especially considering this would a been a weekend hobby if it would have been possible. TLDR: a lot of people talk about the logistics or the funds to start doing something like artillery production or silicon chip fabrication....and yes I agree but I think the regulation of everything has created so many barriers....you can't experiment in the backyard like you could in the 90's. Were the 90's safe? No. But we also didn't know the real risks back then when it came to certain chemicals. Also, the growing population makes it more and more hard to have land where you can safely do things....in the north east coast its hard to find and long gun ranges, some states basically banned all the good fireworks, and all this regulation means having just more and more money to figure out how to navigate this issue....which means its not a hobby but a job. I see plenty of cool things on YouTube from chemistry to engineering and part of me is not sure if the feds are just ignoring what these people do....because it dosnt seem legal, or if they are just lucky that they live somewhere with loosed regulations.
- Kourovsky 3y ago[dead]
- threadssky 3y ago[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- _xnmw 3y agoNone of this explains HOW is it that the Russians are able to produce artillery shells at 7 times the rate of the entire Western world, while being sanctioned? If they can do it, why can't we? [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ammunition-manufacturing-ukraine-west-officials-2023-9 https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-ammunition-manufactur...
- snowpid 3y agoI give it a try: - Russia gives more into DIB. Putin sees the war as essential. - Day and Night Production. - No enviroment laws involved.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago> while being sanctioned Sorry? When did Russia became dependent on the Western steel or explosives?
- _xnmw 3y agoThey may not need raw materials, but they need the equipment for manufacturing.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago... Do you seriously think Russia in 2024 can't do 1956 level tech?
- mrguyorama 3y agoPutin doesn't have to convince the manufacturers that this will be a long term profitable endeavor for their business. It doesn't matter to Putin if a company "overinvests" because the company is not a separate entity. If the US wants that kind of control we have the Defense Production Act to force businesses to build up capacity. It's like how during the pandemic, pretty much nobody invested in increased toilet paper or mask production in the US, because "if I invest and the pandemic goes away, I will have "wasted" my investment" Basically its just another failure of capitalism as theorized. Turns out, it's very uncommon for someone to decide to build brand new capacity in an existing market without extreme incentives because it's too easy for them to be burned. If we want businesses to ramp up production, we need to either convince them it will be profitable, by signing expensive, long term contracts that can't be torpedoed by a future administration getting bitchy about the debt, or force them through law.
- lucidpare 3y ago[dead]