The issue is, American army did not see them anymore entering a war where American infantry needs to take out aerial threats. The army assumed future wars would be killing goat herders carrying AK-47s with drone strikes.
The idea was nobody would. E insane enough in the interconnected global economy to start to "real" war. And thus weapons production focused on anti-terrorism etc.
not exactly. near peer doctrine called for aerial dominance. only recently (last few years) has the US bought back SHORAD. manpads are seen as unnecessary because there’s bigger and better weapons systems for them
Different doctrine. Stinger is useful for LSCO (large scale combat operations) doctrine, but NATO thought it would be COIN doctrine (counter insurgency like in Afghanistan)
MANPADs have pretty low ranges. You're mostly shooting helicopters and very low flying planes. Wikipedia claims a maximum range of 11000 feet, but the hot probability at that height is likely quite low.
Well Poles took Igla, removed soviet electronics, put there new modern electronics and started making Grom, which then got a birth to Piorun. I would assume that Stingers need to go through similar development as electronics from 1970s/1980s will be hard to get or very expensive.
im thinking its doctrine, there simply havent been a need, us marines dont go in without air superiority, what good is a stinger if there are no targets?
The stinger discussion seems a sub-issue to the longer-term process of hollowing out US industrial production described in the foreign affairs article cited in the HN post
> I would assume a company like Raytheon has all their processes documented and can quickly spin up a new manufacturing line for a legacy product.
Do you assume that they had all of their processes documented 20 years ago, and that they have retained all of that documentation, and that the documentation is appropriate for a 2023 workforce and doesn't make assumptions about the audience that would be invalid today?
I've worked with engineering companies across Europe, and their documentation is always amazing, with full traceability of every component going back to the 80's. Everything from processes to weld inspections.
I'd assume that a company engineering weapons would be the same.
I got a call literally last week Tuesday because one of the usual operators had left his position at one of the top 5 US aerospace and defense contractors (other than Raytheon), and they didn't know how to reset the sequence for the machine my employer had built for them less than 10 years ago.
Sure, any controls engineer worth their Ethernet cable would be able to read the PLC code and reverse-engineer it, but the user manual for that machine is about 8 pages of mostly boilerplate and would take an intern about 15 minutes to generate. It would take 50 times as many pages and 500 times as much effort to generate a proper user manual that would guarantee the next operator can read the manuals and fully understand what needs to happen to make good parts.
Oh c'mon. I worked at RMS in Tucson. We had tons of this. Hell, in one lab we found test procedures for the Phoenix missile for our HWIL, which hasn't had a Phoenix in there for decades.
Yeah, most people nowadays spend their time and energy on making serving html websites more and more complex.
Complex missile systems? That's nothing compared to my vm running kube, running docker, running nextjs react emulating x86 and running kube again. Layers of more software surrounding software is the next big thing. Also microservices and LLMs.
Along with that the OPM had a huge data breach a few years ago that leaked all the private data about everyone who had gone through the security background investigation.
I'm not about to endure that anal exam again, which also demanded time from my friends and neighbors and former employers, just so that the government can divulge it all.
I'd consider doing classified work again but the cloak and dagger aspect of the hiring process has got to go. In this day and age all they need is my name and SSN to find out anything they need to know about me.
It's not just Raytheon, but all the subcontractors. Some may have gone out of business or shifted to different industries and lost the institutional knowledge of parts fabrication and assembly.
In a semi related point, this is a problem with off shoring mamufacting. Once your supply chain and labour base forgets hours to do something, it's incredibly difficult to relearn it.
Those skills and that value add opportunity is gone.
If the Vitebsk-25 defensive system works anywhere near as well as claimed, it would seem to be a really bad idea to resume production of this old technology.
They are mostly used to shoot down cruise missiles deep within Ukrainian territory, not planes (Russian planes don't fly over Ukraine controlled territory anyway, that would be suicide, and over frontline they have decent AAA).
There's nothing new in defence pods like Vitebsk-25 for aircraft, they existed for decades and even many civilian aircraft have them (like many Israeli passenger planes, knowing they can be subject to terrorist shootdowns).
The difference is training. Scores of operators on the ground are already trained and experienced on the Stinger platform and the development of complete already.
Backfilling a proven stock item is faster than infilling a new platform. Refer to the training cycles required for tanks provided by the UK. Those tanks have qualified operators ( with matching tactical-operational skills, but there are few personnel to back up their abilities. The Stinger is valuable because of the established user base compared to that.
Per the article, this production run is a stop gap. The next gen system they (US Army) want is not yet available. They're restocking to cover the interim.
The stinger works great against drones and cruise missiles. Whilst Vitebsk-25 may be on choppers and fixed wing aircraft, It won't be on Iranian drones. And having stringers take down the small stuff makes using the Patriot System most cost effective against bigger targets.
Readit News
I don't understand why they would not secure the production of that missile, or even replace it with something new.
It's not like they don't have enough money to cover all possible sorts of weapons that can exist.
The idea was nobody would. E insane enough in the interconnected global economy to start to "real" war. And thus weapons production focused on anti-terrorism etc.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterinsurgency
I get the sense Ukraine us using them as the insurgency rather than the counter-insurgency
The stinger discussion seems a sub-issue to the longer-term process of hollowing out US industrial production described in the foreign affairs article cited in the HN post
I would assume a company like Raytheon has all their processes documented and can quickly spin up a new manufacturing line for a legacy product.
Do you assume that they had all of their processes documented 20 years ago, and that they have retained all of that documentation, and that the documentation is appropriate for a 2023 workforce and doesn't make assumptions about the audience that would be invalid today?
Because I would bet that that isn’t all true.
I've worked with engineering companies across Europe, and their documentation is always amazing, with full traceability of every component going back to the 80's. Everything from processes to weld inspections.
I'd assume that a company engineering weapons would be the same.
As someone who has worked in this field, I almost spewed coffee out my nose. Thanks for the chuckles.
I got a call literally last week Tuesday because one of the usual operators had left his position at one of the top 5 US aerospace and defense contractors (other than Raytheon), and they didn't know how to reset the sequence for the machine my employer had built for them less than 10 years ago.
Sure, any controls engineer worth their Ethernet cable would be able to read the PLC code and reverse-engineer it, but the user manual for that machine is about 8 pages of mostly boilerplate and would take an intern about 15 minutes to generate. It would take 50 times as many pages and 500 times as much effort to generate a proper user manual that would guarantee the next operator can read the manuals and fully understand what needs to happen to make good parts.
Also, if the government isn't paying for it anymore, there's no reason to put overhead money towards keeping those manufacturing lines open anymore.
Complex missile systems? That's nothing compared to my vm running kube, running docker, running nextjs react emulating x86 and running kube again. Layers of more software surrounding software is the next big thing. Also microservices and LLMs.
I'm not about to endure that anal exam again, which also demanded time from my friends and neighbors and former employers, just so that the government can divulge it all.
I'd consider doing classified work again but the cloak and dagger aspect of the hiring process has got to go. In this day and age all they need is my name and SSN to find out anything they need to know about me.
Even if this is true, a map is not the terrain, and there’s no substitute for experience.
Yes, they're having problems with getting cleared people. It isn't the top-paying gig it used to be.
Dead Comment
Those skills and that value add opportunity is gone.
Backfilling a proven stock item is faster than infilling a new platform. Refer to the training cycles required for tanks provided by the UK. Those tanks have qualified operators ( with matching tactical-operational skills, but there are few personnel to back up their abilities. The Stinger is valuable because of the established user base compared to that.
Dead Comment