In December 2018, 574th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron maintainers installed a metallic 3D printed part on an operational F-22 Raptor during depot maintenance at Hill Air Force Base.
“One of the most difficult things to overcome in the F-22 community, because of the small fleet size, is the availability of additional parts to support the aircraft,” said Robert Lewin, 574th AMXS director.
The use of 3D printing gives maintainers the ability to acquire replacement parts on short notice without minimum order quantities. This not only saves taxpayer dollars, but reduces the time the aircraft is in maintenance.
The printed bracket will not corrode and is made using a powder bed fusion process that utilizes a laser to build the part layer by layer from a titanium powder. A new bracket can be ordered and delivered to the depot for installation as quickly as three days.
A new metallic 3D printed part alongside the aluminum part it will replace on an F-22 Raptor during depot repair at Hill Air Force Base, Utah, Jan 16, 2019. The new titanium part will not corrode and can be procured faster and at less cost than the conventionally manufactured part.
(U.S. Air Force photo by R. Nial Bradshaw)
The printed part replaces a corrosion-prone aluminum component in the kick panel assembly of the cockpit that is replaced 80 percent of the time during maintenance.
“We had to go to engineering, get the prints modified, we had to go through stress testing to make sure the part could withstand the loads it would be experiencing — which isn’t that much, that is why we chose a secondary part,” said Robert Blind, Lockheed Martin modifications manager.
The part will be monitored while in service and inspected when the aircraft returns to Hill AFB for maintenance. If validated, the part will be installed on all F-22 aircraft during maintenance.
“We’re looking to go a little bit further as this part proves itself out,” said Blind.
The printed titanium bracket is only the first of many metallic additive manufactured parts planned through public-private partnerships. There are at least five more metallic 3D printed parts planned for validation on the F-22.
“Once we get to the more complicated parts, the result could be a 60-70 day reduction in flow time for aircraft to be here for maintenance,” said Lewin.
This will enable faster repair and reduce the turnaround, returning the aircraft back to the warfighter.
Defense Secretary Ash Carter kicked off a visit to DoD’s nuclear deterrence enterprise, telling airmen at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, that DoD will invest, innovate and sustain to rebuild that enterprise’s capabilities that remain the bedrock of U.S. defense strategy.
The secretary spoke at a hangar on the flightline of the base. He thanked the airmen at the base, and by extension, thanked the thousands of other technicians who man, maintain, guard and operate the bombers, ICBMs, ballistic missile submarines and the command-and-control systems around the world.
“As you know, everyone has their role to play,” he said, “and while each physical piece is important, it’s really the people who make the whole greater than the sum of the parts.”
An unarmed LGM-30G Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test at Launch Facility-4 on Vandenberg Air Force Base Calif. The Minuteman III ICBM is an element of the nation’s strategic deterrent forces under the control of the Air Force Global Strike Command. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Lael Huss)
The secretary emphasized throughout his talk with the airmen that America’s nuclear deterrence is the bedrock of U.S. security and the highest priority mission in the Defense Department.
“Because while it is a remarkable achievement that in the more than seven decades since 1945, nuclear weapons have not again been used in war, that’s not something we can ever take for granted,” he said. “And that’s why today, I want to talk about how we’re innovating and investing to sustain that bedrock.”
Carter has a long history with the nuclear mission, working in the 1980s on basing for the MX missile system. He speaks from experience when he says the deterrence mission has both remained the same and changed.
“At a strategic level, of course, you deter large-scale nuclear attack against the United States and our allies,” he said. “You help convince potential adversaries that they can’t escalate their way out of failed conventional aggression. You assure allies that our extended deterrence guarantees are credible — enabling many of them to forgo developing nuclear weapons themselves, despite the tough strategic environment they find themselves in and the technological ease with which they could develop such weapons.”
The nuclear deterrent also provides an umbrella under which service members accomplish conventional missions around the world, the secretary said.
But the nuclear landscape has changed and it will continue to pose challenges, Carter said.
“One way the nuclear landscape has changed: we didn’t build new types of nuclear weapons or delivery systems for the last 25 years, but others did, at the same time that our allies in Asia, the Middle East, and NATO did not,” the secretary said, “so we must continue to sustain our deterrence.”
Russia has modernized its nuclear arsenal, and there is some doubt about Russian leaders’ strategies for the weapons.
“Meanwhile, North Korea’s nuclear and missile provocations underscore that a diverse and dynamic spectrum of nuclear threats still exists,” Carter said. “So our deterrence must be credible, and extended to our allies in the region.”
North Korea is building nuclear warheads and the means to deliver them, the secretary said. The North Korean threat spurs spending on missile defense in the United States and the deployment of systems to South Korea, he added.
“We back all of that up with the commitment that any attack on America or our allies will be not only defeated, but that any use of nuclear weapons will be met with an overwhelming and effective response,” Carter said.
India and China are behaving responsibly with their nuclear enterprises, the secretary said.
“In Iran, their nuclear aspirations have been constrained and transparency over their activities increased by last year’s nuclear accord, which, as long as it continues to be implemented, will verifiably prevent Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon,” Carter said. “The last example I’ll cite is Pakistan, where nuclear weapons are entangled in a history of tension, and while they are not a threat to the United States directly, we work with Pakistan to ensure stability.”
Despite the changes since the end of the Cold War, the nature of deterrence has not changed, the secretary said.
“Even in 2016, deterrence still depends on perception — what potential adversaries see, and therefore believe — about our will and ability to act,” he said. “This means that as their perceptions shift, so must our strategy and actions.”
A large-scale nuclear attack is not likely, the secretary said. The most likely scenario is “the unwise resort to smaller but still unprecedentedly terrible attacks, for example by Russia or North Korea, to try to coerce a conventionally superior opponent to back off or abandon an ally during a crisis,” Carter said. “We cannot allow that to happen, which is why we’re working with our allies in both regions to innovate and operate in new ways that sustain deterrence and continue to preserve strategic stability.”
NATO is reexamining the nuclear strategy to integrate conventional and nuclear deterrence to deter Russia, he said.
Meanwhile, across the Pacific, the United States engages in formal deterrence dialogues with its allies Japan and South Korea, Carter said, “to ensure we’re poised to address nuclear deterrence challenges in Asia.”
Carter said the U.S. is taking steps to ensure that its nuclear triad — bombers, ICBMS and ballistic missile submarines — do not become obsolete.
“We’re now beginning the process of correcting decades of under-investment in nuclear deterrence,” the secretary said.
The Pentagon has underfunded its nuclear deterrence enterprise since the end of the Cold War, Carter added.
“Over the last 25 years since then, we only made modest investments in basic sustainment and operations, about $15 billion a year,” he said. “And it turned out that wasn’t enough.”
The fiscal year 2017 budget request invests a total of $19 billion in the nuclear enterprise, Carter said. Over the next five years, he said, plans call for the department to spend $108 billion to sustain and recapitalize the nuclear force and associated strategic command, control, communications, and intelligence systems.
The budget also looks to modernization, the secretary said. Plans call for replacing old ICBMs with new ones that will be less expensive to maintain, keeping strategic bombers effective in the face of more advanced air defense systems, and building replacements for the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines, the secretary said.
“If we don’t replace these systems, quite simply they will age even more, and become unsafe, unreliable, and ineffective,” Carter said. “The fact is, most of our nuclear weapon delivery systems have already been extended decades beyond their original expected service lives. So it’s not a choice between replacing these platforms or keeping them. It’s really a choice between replacing them or losing them. That would mean losing confidence in our ability to deter, which we can’t afford in today’s volatile security environment.”
While these plans are expensive, they are only a small percentage of total defense spending, the secretary said.
“In the end, though, this is about maintaining the bedrock of our security,” Carter said. “And after too many years of not investing enough, it’s an investment that we as a nation have to make, because it’s critical to sustaining nuclear deterrence in the 21st century.”
U.S. Army Sgt. Dustin McGraw is stationed with the 101st Airborne Division at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, the culmination of a life-long dream of being a paratrooper like the heroes of World War II movies that he watched as a child. But as he made his way up, he discovered a love of World War I that has led to him re-enacting battles in France.
His re-enactment group spends a lot of time at a park in Tennessee a few hours from Fort Campbell, allowing McGraw to indulge his passion while maintaining his active duty career. (That park is named for famed Doughboy and Medal of Honor recipient Sgt. Alvin C. York, making it a pretty appropriate place to host re-enactments.)
And there is more crossover between the passion and the job than one might initially assume. While re-enactors, obviously, do not face the dangers and many of the hardships endured by soldiers in combat, they do work hard to portray their chosen period accurately. That means that they have to get uniforms, tactics, weapons, and other details right.
And it’s hard to steep yourself that deeply in military history without learning an appreciation for the discipline and perseverance that it takes to succeed in combat. As McGraw points out in the video, maintaining your cool in wool uniforms and metal helmets in the broiling sun isn’t always easy. And, practicing World War I tactics can still help reinforce an understanding of modern warfare. After all, machine guns and rifles haven’t changed all that much.
But that leads to another benefit for McGraw and other soldiers who choose to re-enact past periods of military history: They learn a deep appreciation of modern systems, from weapons to logistics to medicine to gear.
Where modern troops have GPS, Kevlar, lightweight automatic weapons, aid bags, and helicopters, World War I Doughboys had to make do with maps, cotton, rifles of wood and steel, field bandages, and horses. So, while it’s easy to complain when your helicopters are late to the LZ, most people would be more appreciative of the challenges if they spent their weekends trying to simulate logistics with horses.
As the war in eastern Ukraine rages on, so too does Russia’s invasive electronic warfare — and it’s changing how war is fought by sending threats to individual soldier’s phones, and those of their families.
Since the war began in 2014, Russian-backed separatists have repeatedly employed all kinds of electronic and cyberwarfare tactics against Ukrainian troops.
Although Russia’s use of electronic warfare was limited during its 2008 invasion of Georgia, Russian-backed separatists, who are funded by the Kremlin and at times commanded by Russian troops, have used it proficiently in the Donbas, a section of southeastern Ukraine where the war is fought.
Russian-backed separatists are “adept at identifying Ukrainian positions by their electrometric signatures,” US Army Col. Liam Collins wrote in late July 2018.
Ukrainian soldiers.
(Ukrainian Ministry of Defense photo by Lt. Col. Taras Glen)
They “use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ground systems to conduct electromagnetic reconnaissance and jamming against satellite, cellular and radio communication systems along with GPS spoofing and electronic warfare attacks against Ukrainian UAVs.”
Russian-backed separatists are adept at psychological warafre tactics too, often in the forms of threatening text messages from cell-site simulators meant to shatter morale.
“Soldiers of [Ukraine Armed Forces], reverse your offensive to Kyiv while Kyiv hasn’t destroyed you yet,” read one text message several Ukrainian soldiers received in July 2018 near Krymske, according to UNAIN, a pro-Ukrainian media outlet.
“Murderer from UAF [Ukrainian Armed Forces]. The East won’t forgive you and the West won’t remember you!” another text Ukrainian troops at a checkpoint received in November 2015 said.
But sometimes, the separatist texts are disguised as being sent by Ukrainian troops themselves and meant to sow confusion and discord.
“The company commander ran away to Kramatrosk. It smells like trouble. Tonight we are also leaving,” one text Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve received in February 2015 read.
“The natsyky [servicemen of the National Guard of Ukraine] vamoosed. Dnipro [volunteer batallion] was hatcheted. We should run away,” another text Ukrainian troops in Debaltseve received in February 2015 read.
Other times, the texts appear to come from the Ukrainian government in Kyiv.
“Balance of you account was reduced on 10UAH. Thank you for supporting ATO,” read one text that Ukrainian troops have received.
UAH is the Ukrainian currency, and ATO is the Anti-Terrorism Operation (now called Joint Forces Operation), which commands Ukrainian forces and law enforcement in the Donbas.
In 2017, the Associated Press compiled a spreadsheet of several such Russian-backed separatist texts that have been sent since the war began.
Russian hackers were reportedly even tracking and targeting Ukrainian artillery units with a once popular Android app between 2014 and 2016.
But Russian-backed separatists appear to have taken the game to a whole new level, sometimes coupling the texts with artillery strikes and even bringing the families of Ukrainian troops into it.
“In one tactic, soldiers receive texts telling them they are ‘surrounded and abandoned,'” US Army Col. Liam Collins wrote.
“Minutes later, their families receive a text stating, ‘Your son is killed in action,’ which often prompts a call or text to the soldiers,” Collins wrote. “Minutes later, soldiers receive another message telling them to “retreat and live,” followed by an artillery strike to the location where a large group of cellphones was detected.”
“Thus, in one coordinated action, electronic warfare is combined with cyberwarfare, information operations, and artillery strikes to produce psychological and kinetic effects,” Collins added.
The US military has little experience fighting in conditions where soldiers and their families are being individually threatened through personal phones. The US military must not only understand these new threats, but also train to counteract them, Collins wrote.
Collins suggests that US “garrisons” should teach their troops more land navigation and map reading so that they don’t have to rely on GPS if it has been compromised.
He also suggests that US forces should use less technology at times and become more comfortable deploying small units without knowing every little move they make.
He lastly advises that tactical operation centers should move antenna farms far away from their location or bombard the area with false signals, that the military should teach troops about electronic warfare in the beginning of training, and continually “develop and refine [its] electronic warfare capabilities.”
This article originally appeared on Business Insider. Follow @BusinessInsider on Twitter.
Imagine the tension of being a British soldier waiting to be evacuated from the beaches of Dunkirk as the Nazi Wehrmacht closed in around you and your mates. Now imagine somehow being left behind after all 340,000 of your fellow troops were led back to Britain.
May joined the service in 1940, after World War II broke out. He enlisted to become a driver with the 13-division strong British Expeditionary Force in France. The British mission on continental Europe in the early days of the war did not go well. After Nazi Germany invaded Poland in September, 1939, the French and British declared war almost immediately. Just as fast, the British Expeditionary Force began arriving in France.
By June, 1940, they were all being evacuated by any British subject who had a boat that could float. Most of them, anyway.
The effort to rescue the trapped Allied troops was dubbed “Operation Dynamo” and was a mission to pick up distressed British, French, and Belgian troops waiting on the beaches at Dunkirk. By May 10, 1940, Nazi Germany had captured all of Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. They were already in control of much of Northern France and had the Allied forces on the ropes.
As the Nazis moved to push the Allies into the sea, British citizens and Royal Navy ships mounted the massive impromptu rescue effort, pulling any troops they could fit in their craft, and ferrying them back across the channel. Not everyone survived the wait on the beaches, as they were constantly harassed by the Nazi luftwaffe and threatened by German ground forces.
British troops waiting for evacuation on the beaches of Dunkirk.
In Dynamo, the British expected to be able to save some 30,000 to 45,000 troops who would then defend the British home islands. Using a still-unknown number of “little ships” piloted by civilians, they managed to save ten times that number. It truly was a miracle.
But James May and six of his fellow soldiers were somehow left behind. They did what any quick-thinking, resourceful bunch of soldiers would do in a lawless area with an determined enemy bearing down on them: They stole a car and beat it.
In their own, smaller version of the Miracle at Dunkirk, the group managed to drive out of the war zone in their stolen vehicle, evading the Wehrmacht for a full six days before finding a boat and captain that would ferry them home to England.
He was stationed in Northern Ireland for much of the war but he had his chance to hit the beach of France once more, and again as a driver. This time, however, he was driving a British DUKW amphibious vehicle, landing British troops in the battle to crack the walls of Hitler’s Fortress Europe.
Nothing screams Americana more than rock and roll, blue jeans, and the toughness of our fighting men and women. If you mix them all together, you get the Navy SEALs who fought in the jungles of Vietnam. They were unquestionably rugged, they were probably rocking out to some CCR, and they wore blue jeans throughout.
In a speech delivered to Congress in May, 1961, President John F. Kennedy recognized the need for special operations as a measure against guerrilla warfare. Meanwhile, the Navy was already putting together elite units for exactly that task. The Navy’s Underwater Demolition Teams grew into the SEALs we know today and they were baptized in the waters of Vietnam.
Navy SEALs are truly masters of both hiding and seeking.
(U.S. Navy)
These men were experts in hand-to-hand combat, high-altitude parachuting, demolitions, and foreign languages — all skills that would prove useful in Vietnam. At the beginning of 1962, SEALs were mobilized into South Vietnam to take on an advisory role. Less than a year later, they were participating in the covert, CIA-sponsored Phoenix Program.
Details of the Phoenix Program are blurry (as covert CIA stuff tends to be), but what is known is that it involved the SEALs doing what they do best: Capturing and assassinating high-value targets. This meant that they would infiltrate deep behind enemy lines and directly engage the enemy when they thought they were safe.
The SEALs were constantly on the move through rough and unforgiving terrain to complete their mission. As anyone who’s ever donned a military uniform can tell you, the “lowest bidder” joke wears off after you’ve ripped a hole in the crotch of your seventeenth pair of trousers.
So, which one of these guys are you gonna scold for wearing blue jeans? None of them? Good choice.
(U.S. Navy)
So, SEALs wore whatever was durable enough to complete the mission — and Vietnam demanded blue jeans. It allowed the SEALs to sneak into enemy compounds without worrying about catching their pants on a branch, loudly ripping some fabric, and blowing the element of surprise. It also didn’t hurt that jeans are damn comfy.
SEALs, along with the rest of the Special Operations community, have an advantage over most conventional troops: No one outside of Special Operations is ballsy enough to walk up to a bearded SEAL and berate them for not being in uniform. Anyone who dared was quickly laughed at and then soiled their regulation uniform trousers as they watched the SEAL flex.
If you want to operate like a SEAL, then you need to dress like one. 5.11 Tactical‘s got you covered.
These soldiers from the 7th Sustainment Brigade, Airborne Corps, reenlisting at the South Pole. (Seriously, how often does anyone get to go to the South Pole?)
These soldiers prove their efficiency by taking a few minutes to reenlist while in transit aboard an Air Force C-17:
Photo: US Army
The soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division reenlisting in front of the Swords of Qādisīyah in Baghdad, Iraq:
Photo: Staff Sgt. James Selesnick/ US Army
These sailors taking their oath at Ground Zero, ten years after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center:
Photo: Mass Communications Specialist 2nd Class Eric S. Garst/ US Navy
This 23-year-old Marine, Cpl. Gareth Hawkins, who demanded to reenlist while being medically evacuated after suffering serious injuries caused by an improvised explosive:
The Battalion Executive Officer, Maj. Kevin Gonzalez, along with the Career Retention Specialist Staff Sgt. Chandrash Malapaka, and several others crammed into the tiny room for the ceremony.
“We’re going to do the short version of this,” said the Executive Officer.
Raising his right hand, Hawkins took the oath of enlistment by 1st Lt. Warren A. Frank, his platoon commander. With no time for the usual formalities of backslaps and handshakes, Hawkins was immediately carried out via litter and evacuated.
This damage control sailor who loves his job so much that he re-upped in full gear while being deployed to the Red Sea aboard the guided-missile destroyer USS James E. Williams (DDG 95):
Photo: Mass Communications Specialist 3rd Class Daniel Meshel/ US Navy
These soldiers taking their oath at CenturyLink Field before a Seahawks football game against the Baltimore Ravens:
Photo: US Army
This Belgian Malinois, Sgt. 1st Class Freida, who reenlisted with her human partner:
Photo: DVIDS
And this PAO serving with the U.S. Navy’s “Leap Frogs” who jumped out of a perfectly good airplane to take her reenlistment oath thousands of feet above Earth:
Chris Hemsworth may be best known for his recurring role as Thor in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but his new movie set to premier on Netflix called Extraction sees the leading man trade his magic hammers in for a different sort of nail driver: an M4.
The story, as depicted in this first trailer, seems to parallel plot points from the 2018 film Sicario: Day of Soldado, with Hemsworth playing a similar role to that of Benicio Del Toro’s “Alejandro.” Hemsworth is a mercenary tasked with rescuing the child of a drug lord from an unnamed (but desert-looking) city seemingly hell bent on the boy’s death.
As the trailer comes to a climax, Hemsworth’s character (named Tyler Rake) is presented with a choice: he can either desert the boy to be killed in order to escape the city, or choose to stay and continue protecting him with no clear way out. While the trailer doesn’t specifically show Hemsworth making a decision, the trailer (or movie tropes in general) make it pretty clear that he makes the good-guy call and sticks with the young man.
In another strange plot parallel with the Sicario sequel, Hemsworth’s character is depicted as a man with a death wish and singular purpose, broken inside over the loss of his own son years ago. In Day of Soldado, Alejandro spends the film saving a drug lord’s daughter–despite being broken inside over the death of his own family (which was ordered by the girl’s father).
So sure, the story may not be all that original, but when was the last time you saw an action flick break new ground in the plot department? This movie may have a lot in common with another tactical thriller, but that doesn’t mean it won’t be a blast to watch.
And in truth, the vibe of this movie seems pretty far off from the Sicario approach of leveraging darkness and quiet to create suspense. Instead, Hemsworth is shown fighting his way through a city in an action packed three minutes that managed to sell me on watching this movie despite that apparent re-tread of a plot.
That action and lighter tone may be credited to the movie’s producers: the Russo brothers that helmed some of the most successful Marvel films, like Avengers: Endgame and Captain America: Winter Soldier. The Russo brothers have mastered the art of delivering gut wrenching scenes in films that are otherwise little more than action-extravaganzas, and it seems likely that we’ll see more of that in Extraction.
Netflix’s Extraction starts streaming on April 24.
This article originally appeared on Sandboxx. Follow Sandboxx on Facebook.
As you were busy buying big bags of charcoal and forming hamburger patties in preparation for a Memorial Day cookout, the Chinese flew nuclear-capable bombers around Taiwan. This sort of passive aggression isn’t anything new — it happens pretty often, so it’s not a big deal to most of us. But for the island of Taiwan, seeing two H-6 Badgers fly overhead is certainly cause for concern.
China carried out a similar orbit of the so-called “Nine-Dash Line” using a Badger shortly after the freshly-elected President Trump took a congratulatory call from the Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen in 2016. China has been seeking to isolate Taiwan, which it views as a renegade province, and has forced a number of countries, the latest being Burkina Faso, to end diplomatic relations with island nation.
Republic of China Air Force AIDC F-CK-1 Ching-kuo fighters scrambled to intercept the Badgers.
(Photo by Toshiro Aoki)
In potential hot spots, like Taiwan or the South China Sea, “training missions” like these are often used to probe opposing forces — and the tactic isn’t exclusive to China. The United States prefers the deceptively innocuous term “freedom of navigation exercises” for similar missions, which are conducted by ships or aircraft. On rare occasions, such passive provocations can devolve into shootouts.
On three instances in the 1980s, American forces ended up in combat with the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi. In 1981, two F-14 Tomcats shot down Libyan Su-22 Fitters after taking enemy fire. 1986 saw extensive naval combat that resulted in the sinking of two Libyan missile boats. In 1989, two F-14s shot down two MiG-23 Floggers.
The 1986 freedom of navigation exercises in the Gulf of Sidra led to a sharp naval engagement, in which this Nanuchka-class corvette was sunk.
(U.S. Navy)
This may be a routine practice, but historical precedent also makes it a big deal. China may not be aggressing on Taiwan outright, but should Taiwan react forcefully, the fallout could be deadly.
President Donald Trump toured the US’s last tank facility on March 20, 2019, in a move to highlight the impact of his soaring defense spending in a politically crucial state.
The Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio, has been building Army tanks and armored vehicles since World War II. It nearly shuttered in 2012 under the drastic “sequestration” cuts, but it now produces about 11 tanks a month and employs a growing workforce of 580.
The plant’s assembly line is roaring back under Trump’s defense spending hikes, including $718 billion proposed for fiscal year starting in October 2019.
“In terms of economic security, the Trump defense budget is helping to create good manufacturing jobs at good wages, including in communities like Lima that have fallen behind economically,” Peter Navarro, White House director of trade and manufacturing policy, wrote in a New York Times op-ed. “The revitalized Lima plant will directly employ a little more than 1,000 employees.”
Main entrance to Joint Systems Manufacturing Center. An M1A1 Abrams sits on a display platform to the left of the entrance gates.
Here’s a history of the sprawling tank plant, a still-operating legacy of World War II America’s so-called arsenal of democracy.
World War II
The facility opened in 1942 and soon began to build and test vehicles to be sent to the Pacific and European theaters. It built M-5 Light Tanks and T-26 Pershing tanks, according to the website Global Security. By the end of the war it had processed 100,000 combat vehicles.
The facility is owned by the US Army and operated by a contractor.
Korean War
An expansion began after the Korean War broke out in 1950. The Army built new structures, including two massive warehouses that each had 115,000 square feet of storage, according to an official history of the site.
Construction fell off sharply after the war and didn’t pick up much during the Vietnam War.
‘Supertank’
The Army introduced the M-1 Abrams in 1980 and called it a “supertank” that would be faster, better armored, and have more firepower than is predecessors.
The early M-1 Abrams tanks weighed 60 tons, carried a 105 mm cannon, and could speed across fields at 30 mph. The armor used a “new super alloy, composite-material” to protect against rockets and artillery, according to the history.
105-mm M1 Abrams tank of the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment at Grafenwöhr Training Area in Germany, 1986.
Chrysler Defense began production of the M-1 tanks at Lima in 1979.
In 1980, the first M-1 Abrams rolled out of Lima. It was named “Thunderbolt,” in homage to the name Gen. Creighton Abrams gave to his tanks in World War II, according to Global Security.
Trump’s tanks
General Dynamics Land Systems bought Chrysler Defense in 1982. The plant became the sole US tank factory in when the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant closed in 1996.
The deep sequestration budget cuts nearly shuttered the plant in 2012, and tank production languished under the Obama administration, which oversaw counter-insurgency wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, where a large force of tanks wasn’t needed.
In 2017, the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center was producing about one upgraded M-1 tank a month; a year later it was producing about 11, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Two factors have seen the Lima’s tank plant roar back to life: Trump’s massive defense-spending hikes and the US’s assessment that rivalries with China and Russia are now the country’s foremost threat.
Deterring a major power like them may rely on the US Army fielding the upgraded, 80-ton Abrams tanks now rolling off Lima’s assembly lines.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider. Follow @BusinessInsider on Twitter.
If you’re a fan of the Houston Astros, Friday, July 27, was a miserable night. The Astros suffered a humiliating 11-2 defeat on their home field, Minute Maid Park, at the hands of their same-state rivals, the Texas Rangers. But by the game’s end, nobody was talking about the 9-run deficit. Instead, they were talking about a Marine Corps veteran — and true American hero — dropped trow and ran across the field at the game’s conclusion, wearing only a pair of Ol’ Glory silkies and shoes.
Chris White, a Houston native and president of Freedom Hard, took to the field in front of 42,592 baseball fans in a display that would bring a tear of joy to any red, white, and blue-blooded American. He made it all the way across the outfield, dodging security guards who were no match for his skill. White eventually put his hands up, surrendering after earning the love and admiration of the country.
In case you’ve missed this beautiful display of patriotism, here’s the video:
All joking aside, Chris White’s Freedom Hard is a veteran owned and operated company that uses humor (like the now-infamous streak) to raise awareness of issues within the veteran community. When he was interviewed by Houston’s KPRC 2, he opened up about his motivations.
The streaking, as hilarious as it was, gave him a soap box to briefly stand on and speak to the world about a deadly serious issue that affects many veterans: suicide.
“If I can make you laugh for at least five minutes, then you’re not thinking about that dark space you could potentially be in,” he said. “If I can gear it toward patriotism, to me, I consider that the Holy Grail.”
You bring credit upon the Corps, the military community, and the United States of America.
(Freedom Hard)
A GoFundMe campaign was started in his honor (to post his bail) and it quickly raised 0.00. Instead of using cash, he donated every last cent to Camp4Heroes, a North Carolina resort that provides a tranquil environment for struggling veterans to enjoy nature.
Every aspect of Freedom Hard is geared towards giving back to the veteran community. A dollar of every sale is directly donated to the buyer’s choice of a non-profit organization supporting veterans.
