America seeks its McDonald’s model for missile making

{"text":[[{"start":7.15,"text":"The building in north-east Virginia is squat and unremarkable. But inside, rows of missiles lie on worktops waiting to be primed by young technicians for America’s next war. "}],[{"start":18.85,"text":"“This is all set up for if we have to go very fast,” said Doug Denneny, a greying veteran whose defence group Co-Aspire rents the warehouse. He strides past a dozen workstations where warheads would be slotted into open-bellied missiles."}],[{"start":33.05,"text":"The workshop is designed to solve a simple problem: the US does not produce enough missiles, and those that it does are eye-wateringly expensive. As the country’s munitions stockpiles dwindled during the conflict with Iran, finding ways to produce quickly, cheaply and at scale has become an increasingly urgent challenge."}],[{"start":51.599999999999994,"text":"Working at full surge capacity, it would currently take the Pentagon years rather than months to replace missiles fired at Iran. America produces only 600 Tomahawks every year, and they cost about $2.6mn apiece. The PrSM and JASSM, two other mainstays, each cost around $1.6mn and $1.9mn."}],[{"start":75.25,"text":"“The American arsenal is based exclusively on expensive, exquisite and hard-to-produce weapons systems,” said Michael Horowitz, a former Pentagon official responsible for defence innovation. “We have entered a different era of warfare, and now the US needs to change.”  "}],[{"start":null,"text":"

"}],[{"start":92.9,"text":"There are signs it is starting to happen. There is an alphabet soup of experimental projects and acquisition programmes for missiles and drones. The US Air Force has requested some $12bn over the next five years for 28,000 missiles. Another Pentagon programme unveiled last month envisages buying 10,000 ground-launched missiles over the next three years."}],[{"start":115.2,"text":"Some of these missiles could in principle be mass-produced on a dime at facilities designed to mushroom across America when wartime comes. “You could build this in a high school gymnasium,” said Denneny, standing beside missiles whose scrabbly wires were waiting to be hooked on to circuit boards."}],[{"start":134.45,"text":"At Denneny’s workshop, which he likens to a McDonald’s model for missile making, there are no complicated machines. Every missile is simple enough to be built following instructions from a notepad; a new mechanic armed with hand tools could be trained to assemble them within a month. There are a handful of 3D printers producing parts that whirr round the clock beside office cubicles for engineers."}],[{"start":158.85,"text":"It is one of a number of defence start-ups and tech groups — such as Anduril, which produces out of Ohio — that have been trying to drive the pace of innovation. Co-Aspire, which is working on two missiles for the Pentagon, perfected the first in four months and is expecting to finish the second within five."}],[{"start":177.45,"text":"Castelion, a three-year-old start-up, has been contracted to produce more than 12,000 hypersonic missiles over five years. But once its site in New Mexico is running at full-tilt, it expects to be able to produce 6,000 every year at a cost of about $400,000 each. It is already looking to build new production facilities elsewhere."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":198.64999999999998,"text":"“Mass matters, cost matters, availability matters,” said co-founder Andrew Kreitz, a former SpaceX executive, adding that beating bottlenecks plaguing existing defence production requires piggybacking on parts that are already widely produced."}],[{"start":214.34999999999997,"text":"“You have to, from the outset, make something that is easy to manufacture and low cost, and this has to flow down to all your engineering decisions,” he said. "}],[{"start":224.24999999999997,"text":"Co-Aspire, for example, has designed its latest missile to be built mostly with parts that can be bought off-the-shelf, including engines that were originally made for hobbyists flying remote-controlled aeroplanes. Castelion has turned to components often found in cars."}],[{"start":240.19999999999996,"text":"“It is certainly feasible for there to be a ramp-up to thousands of missiles per year across each of these manufacturers in peacetime,” said Fabian Hoffmann at the University of Oslo, adding the funds flowing into production during wartime would allow them to churn out thousands every month."}],[{"start":257.44999999999993,"text":"The US has, for decades, prepared for shock-and-awe campaigns with sophisticated weapons. But Ukraine, which the Pentagon has studied closely, has served as a reminder that attritional, high-intensity warfare is a game of numbers."}],[{"start":null,"text":""}],[{"start":270.79999999999995,"text":"Now the Iran war experience has reinforced those conclusions: that producing missiles fit for the last war could well lose the next. The importance of mass production is no longer a matter of debate in the Pentagon. Analysts estimated before the war in Iran, based on war games simulations, that the US could exhaust some key stockpiles within weeks of a conflict with China."}],[{"start":294.29999999999995,"text":"Deeper stockpiles would ensure America can sustain a long war by firing hundreds of precise missiles a day, but with more punch and speed than the one-way attack drones which have become common in Ukraine and the Middle East."}],[{"start":308.94999999999993,"text":"The US has, similarly, begun to build its production of drones. It used the Lucas, a one-way attack drone reverse-engineered by start-up SpektreWorks from an Iranian Shahed-136, for the first time in combat in February. The Pentagon is looking to begin mass-producing them, and has requested to triple its spending on drones and related technologies to over $74bn next year."}],[{"start":332.19999999999993,"text":"In Virginia, Denneny was coy about who his missiles were being bought to fight against. But he was clear that it can have an impact, even in peacetime. “It creates a very impressive deterrent effect because our adversaries know we can replicate these missiles very quickly, affordably, and fill out stockpiles.”"}],[{"start":350.74999999999994,"text":"But it may not all be plain sailing, points out Tom Karako at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Pentagon will have to accept that cheaper weapons will not be as precise or as reliable as those in the past. That means the US armed forces may also need to be more flexible with their demands."}],[{"start":367.54999999999995,"text":"“We cannot get capacity without first fixing the customer,” Karako said, adding that defence industries are sectors developed over time by a single client. It will take big orders for the Pentagon to enable defence groups to scale, test and develop new weapons. "}],[{"start":383.94999999999993,"text":"But simpler missiles can have other benefits: they can reduce the time needed to train fresh soldiers to use them, particularly given how arcane the operating systems of older missile systems can be. "}],[{"start":395.49999999999994,"text":"“It has to be intuitive for them to use,” said John Ferrari, a former commanding general of the White Sands Missile Range where the Pentagon tests new missiles. “You have to design the software so that soldiers are using it in the same way they use their iPhones.”"}],[{"start":417.29999999999995,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1782627939_7502.mp3"}