[TheForge] OT rant (armor)

[Ries Niemi]

Its a cool idea to make armor for troops.
But a lot of ugly reality gets in the way.
Political Reality.
Military Purchasing Procedure Reality.
Limited Capitalism Allowed in Government Procurement Reality.

There is a company that makes armor kits for Humvee's- Armor Holding 
Inc., in Florida.
They make as many as the government orders from them. They have told 
reporters in the last week that they are nowhere near at capacity- that 
if the military orders more units, they can do it.
So for Humvee's, at least, it is a political and purchasing decision to 
spend x amount of dollars, and they werent planning on spending more 
until all this media hubbub came along.

If they really needed more than Armor Holding could supply, it would be 
a pretty simple matter to tell Armor Holding that as a matter of 
national security, they had to email the cad drawings over to another 
CNC sheet metal shop, and have 2 companies make them. There are 
probably several hundred shops in america set up with CNC laser/punch 
machines, and big CNC press brakes, and my guess would be one more shop 
of that scale, working 1 shift, could probably double the output. And 
currently almost 75% of the Humvees over there are already armored.
So with a small application of money and willpower, all the Humvees in 
Iraq could be armored in a couple of months, outside. If the powers 
that be decided it was a politically necessary thing to do.

As far as the other vehicles there, its a little more complicated, 
because there are so many different makes and models, and at least some 
of them dont have the horsepower to pull a few extra tons of armor. But 
the military could hire a contractor next week, who would do an 
inventory of vehicle types, along with cab measurements, for every 
non-armored vehicle in Iraq, and the ones left on bases here at home. 
Again, if somebody decided this HAD to be done, it could get knocked 
out in a month or two.
Then armor kits would have to be designed for all of those vehicles, 
and fabricated. Again, the capability of american industry to do this 
is no problem at all- if money and influence were applied, it could get 
done pronto.

I am not sure of the exact alloys used for all of these things- some of 
the armor we use now is harder alloys like T-1, and a fair amount is 
aluminum. And more and more, vehicle armor is titanium- for instance 
the commanders hatches on Bradleys are all made from forged titanium 
now.
So the fabricating processes and machines for some of this armor is 
probably pretty high tech and expensive- I can cut all of those alloys 
with my plasma, but welding titanium requires an inert atmosphere, and 
forging those parts is probably the realm of some pretty big presses.

So the actual fabrication of a lot of this armor is probably out of the 
range of many of our shops. But there are plenty of shops in the US 
that could- its just that no one has asked them to.

We all have romantic notions of WW2, where garage machine shops all 
over the US were cranking out airplane parts with south bend lathes and 
bridgeport mills. But the fact of the matter is, the march of 
automation means that the manufacturing base left in the US, even after 
all those factories closing and moving to China, is still so efficient, 
that running 2 or 3 shifts we could probably make 100 times or even 
1000 times the war material we make now. It would require shifting the 
US to a wartime footing, which of course would be political suicide, 
but it could be done. But we dont need to- the amount of stuff we would 
need to make to fully equip every reserve and national guard unit is a 
pittance, and our industry could crank it out right quick like, if 
somebody told them they had to.
There are probably some geniune supply chain bottlenecks, like titanium 
or aluminum alloys that are only made in russia, or even parts that 
come from china. But they could be worked around if need be.

So as blacksmiths, we are probably not gonna get called on to make 
armor.

ries