Bring back the Federal Armories

[Zor]

This would be a policy for the benefit to the United States, as well as Canada, Britain and other such countries. But for sake of argument we shall talk about it in terms of the US.

Basically, in its simplest form it goes like this...

1-The US Federal Government buys a few plots of land near several large American cities
2-The US Federal Government builds on said land factories designed to produce guns, ammunition and other military equipment
3-The US Federal Government operates these factories to supply the US military as well as Police and so forth with their guns.

Why do this, two big reasons, first off in the long run this will be cheaper. "How would it be cheaper?" you might say. It is quite simple, consider what goes into determine the price that will be paid by building a gun...

• You need to buy Raw Materials, steels and plastic and stuff to make the guns out
• You need to pay for power to run the machinery to make the guns with
• You need to pay for maintenance and spare parts to keep the factory running so that it can make guns
• You need to pay a workforce to work the machines that make the guns, as well as employee benefits, safety codes and so forth

You give the factory the money to make those guns, they make the guns and you give them to the soldiers and policemen. Now consider the costs that come from making the gun in a private factory...

• You need to buy Raw Materials, steels and plastic and stuff to make the guns out
• You need to pay for power to run the machinery to make the guns with
• You need to pay for maintenance and spare parts to keep the factory running so that it can make guns
• You need to pay a workforce to work the machines that make the guns, as well as employee benefits, safety codes and so forth
• And on top of all the money required to operate the factory that makes the guns, you add to the final price tag as to run a profit as to satisfy the shareholders

So more tax payer money is spent per rifle or pistol made by private firms. And if the government is short on cash, it can sell surplus gear to the US's citizens and to the United States' allies.

But do you need another reason as to why this is a good idea, well here is it is. In the words of this guy...



"Beware the Military Industrial Complex"

There are a fair number of defense contractors who work in support of the Arms Industry. They like war, war is good for business. War means the US government won't be spending money on space exploration or disaster relief programs or schools or healthcare, but will be buying up lots and lots of tanks and planes and bullets and bombs. So they will try to lobby for more hawkish presidents and more hawkish policies, getting the US into wars whenever it can. They also like to support democracy hating dictators because said dictators generally like big armies with lots of guns. If the US government is making its own guns, they have less influence.

Finally some of you guys might say "THIS IS THE COMMUNISMS! WE NO ADOPT THE COMMUNISMS! WE MURICANS! MURICA FUCK YERH!" My response to you is that this is what the Founding Fathers did. They established and ran two arsenals operated by the government to provide them with muskets and latter rifles (the Springfield Armory and the Harper's Ferry Armory). During the Civil war they built other arsenals such as the Rock Island Arsenal for the same purpose. Factories which helped devise modern manufacturing methods. It was only in the twentieth century that this moved away from government operation to private operation. This is not some radical new policy, its getting back to the not horribly sexist and/or racist policies on which the US was founded on!



Would you support such a program?

Zor

[madd0ct0r]

on the other hand, your proposal would create entire sub-sectors of the government and civil service who rely on war for their jobs, why would that be better then lobbyists?

[Gaidin]

And the design engineers? How do they get paid?

[Purple]

And the design engineers? How do they get paid?

My guess would be that there would be no design engineers. The government would just buy a few licenses to produce the guns.

[Gaidin]

And the design engineers? How do they get paid?

My guess would be that there would be no design engineers. The government would just buy a few licenses to produce the guns.

Because new guns will never be designed on contract from the government. Right.

[Purple]

And the design engineers? How do they get paid?

My guess would be that there would be no design engineers. The government would just buy a few licenses to produce the guns.

Because new guns will never be designed on contract from the government. Right.

If current trends are indication they won't. Unless criminals start using powered armor or something to necessitate the change I can't imagine your police force investing in firearms research to swap what they have out.

[Arthur_Tuxedo]

This is an issue that I have been pondering for several years now. Economic theory tells us that private enterprise produces more efficiently than government because of competition. Without competition, people get lazy, management gets bloated, leaders lose sight of what they are trying to accomplish to the point that for profit companies can actually produce better and cheaper even with a profit margin. In the real world, however, these companies can become just as bloated and lazy, make friends with and capture the people who are supposed to regulate them, and not only become just as inefficient as any government agency, but bilk the taxpayer for a fat guaranteed profit on top of it. PG&E is a prime example. Without public-private partnerships (or at least the credible threat of it), government agencies seem to slack off and do a piss-poor job. Without the threat of having to compete against Uncle Sam, for-profit contractors become increasingly lazier, greedier, and their regulators develop an increasingly severe case of on-the-job narcolepsy.

Compare this to parcel delivery, an industry that has both private and public participants. UPS and FedEx can't collude to fix prices and buy off regulators because people will stop using them in favor of the post office. The postal service can't slack off too much because UPS and FedEx will out-compete them into the ground. The government participant keeps the private companies honest and forces them to deliver on the efficiency promise of private enterprise, and the private companies put a spot light on the government agency and make its leaders look bad (and ripe for replacement) if it becomes bloated and inefficient. Defense contracting could probably benefit from this arrangement, and I would support a federal armory that must compete against the likes of Colt.

[Purple]

and I would support a federal armory that must compete against the likes of Colt.

I imagine this would be relatively easy to do just by allowing the federal armory to also sell to the private market.

[Gaidin]

If current trends are indication they won't. Unless criminals start using powered armor or something to necessitate the change I can't imagine your police force investing in firearms research to swap what they have out.

Bullshit. This is a very general thread shooting at the military production complex as a whole. Designs will be rolled out for many things over and over and over and you as a general citizen won't have a damn clue. But guess what, the military will need it. You're wanting law requiring the military to produce their own artillery whether it's guns or actual artillery. Well you're(whoever wrote) asking the government to redesign the system from the ground up from design of the guns(which is typically a competition between companies) to production of the guns. Now add this to the hilariously lacking post that is the OP.

[TimothyC]

First of all Zor, you seem to not understand that significant production facilities are government owned, but contractor operated (GOCO). These include the Lima Tank Plant, USAF Plants 4, 6 & 42, most of the Joint Munitions Command facilities, Parts of FERMILAB, and large sections of Kennedy Space Center. Ergo, most of what you want is not to establish new facilities, but to simply have the government operate the facilities. The organization that has the largest total GOCO contracts by dollar figure is actually the Department of Energy followed by NASA and the US Navy.

And if the government is short on cash, it can sell surplus guns to the US's citizens and to the United States' allies.

Have you heard of the Civilian Marksmanship Program? Or are you suggesting a rolling back of 18 USC 922(o)?

[Channel72]

There are a fair number of defense contractors who work in support of the Arms Industry. They like war, war is good for business. War means the US government won't be spending money on space exploration or disaster relief programs or schools or healthcare, but will be buying up lots and lots of tanks and planes and bullets and bombs. So they will try to lobby for more hawkish presidents and more hawkish policies, getting the US into wars whenever it can. They also like to support democracy hating dictators because said dictators generally like big armies with lots of guns. If the US government is making its own guns, they have less influence.

The top 3 companies with defense contracts are Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and Northrup Grumman. They all have space exploration/aerospace divisions and often contract with NASA, so I'm not sure if defense-spending vs. space exploration is necessarily mutually exclusive - space exploration (while it has stagnated, obviously) is still considered critical in terms of defense. Companies like Lockheed Martin have many sources of revenue generation besides munitions.

But that's a nitpick. Yeah, federal armories are probably a good idea. I think a combination of federal armories and private contracts are the best way to go. I like Arthur_Tuxedo's analogy with the private shipping companies vs USPS.

[Purple]

If current trends are indication they won't. Unless criminals start using powered armor or something to necessitate the change I can't imagine your police force investing in firearms research to swap what they have out.

Bullshit. This is a very general thread shooting at the military production complex as a whole. Designs will be rolled out for many things over and over and over and you as a general citizen won't have a damn clue. But guess what, the military will need it. You're wanting law requiring the military to produce their own artillery whether it's guns or actual artillery. Well you're(whoever wrote) asking the government to redesign the system from the ground up from design of the guns(which is typically a competition between companies) to production of the guns. Now add this to the hilariously lacking post that is the OP.

Artillery? I thought we were talking small arms and the like. You know, stuff that does not get redesigned that often. Than again, neither does artillery or anything else. I can count all the new weapon systems that entered service in the last 20 years on the fingers of one hand.

[HMS Sophia]

Than again, neither does artillery or anything else. I can count all the new weapon systems that entered service in the last 20 years on the fingers of one hand.

From the USAF we have the F-18E/F, F-22, F-35, B-2 spirit and the V-22.
US Army? The M4 carbine, just. The M26 MASS. The XM2010. The FGM-148 Javelin. M777 Lightweight Howitzer. M142 HIMARS. The Stryker.

I can do the Marines and Navy if you want, but this is hardly an exhaustive list and I think I made my point, in that the above is bullshit.

EDIT: Oh, I see... you're talking about small arms.. Well, the mk16/17, the SDM-R, the SAMR, the Mk 12 SPR and the M27 would all dispute your assertion. That's on top of the M4, M26 and XM2010.

[Purple]

EDIT: Oh, I see... you're talking about small arms.. Well, the mk16/17, the SDM-R, the SAMR, the Mk 12 SPR and the M27 would all dispute your assertion. That's on top of the M4, M26 and XM2010.

Alright, it's 8 and not 5 in the last 20 years...

[LadyTevar]

I think the US started getting away from such things after our Civil War showed how easy it was for a invading force to capture such armories use the weapons themselves, and then burn down the factory. On top of that, you have incidents such as John Brown's Raid on the Harper Ferry Armory, where Brown hoped to give the weapons to slaves for an armed uprising against the Southern Landowners.

[LaCroix]

I think the US started getting away from such things after our Civil War showed how easy it was for a invading force to capture such armories use the weapons themselves, and then burn down the factory. On top of that, you have incidents such as John Brown's Raid on the Harper Ferry Armory, where Brown hoped to give the weapons to slaves for an armed uprising against the Southern Landowners.

I don't understand - are you claiming that in case of an invasion of the US, or another civil war, the factories of Colt, Browning,...,whoever, with their private security personal will be harder to capture than a Federal armory(which would be guarded by federal security personal, aka soldiers, I'd presume)?

[Sea Skimmer]

US military bases are guarded by civilian contractors anyway. Almost nowhere has troops at the gate because it makes no sense to have a career solider with a career of standing at a gate in the states.

Also the correct term is Arsenal, not Armory, an armory is purely a storage site and hundreds exist for the national guard, many of which have no full time guards at all. An Arsenal traditionally was production and storage, though the term can also be used for pure storage.

Arsenals still exist for certain bits of production that make sense to do that way, usually low rate stuff, besides all the military factories that are government own but contractor operated. That includes most ammunition plants. It makes no damn sense at all to produce something as simple as say an assault rifle at a federal facility though. You just will not beat the economics of ordering 450,000 M4 carbines from Colt at the same time. You could equal then sure, but then you'd be stuck with the facility after you finished cranking them out rapidly and didn't need large numbers for another 10 years. Meanwhile Arsenals mean a huge long term commitment of money and personal costs, and the personal will all be civilian anyway as they always were. That's why most died by the end of the cold war and the downscale of the US military, alongside most shipyards, which make rather more sense because of the major repair function, and air force depots which were purely repair and massively consolidated.

The surviving army Arsenals mostly exist for R&D purposes, and do not produce large numbers of weapons, except artillery barrels. Though as I recall all US artillery barrels including tank guns are also made by one single rotary forging machine.

[HMS Sophia]

The surviving army Arsenals mostly exist for R&D purposes, and do not produce large numbers of weapons, except artillery barrels. Though as I recall all US artillery barrels including tank guns are also made by one single rotary forging machine.

Do you know whether the US artillery that's Brit designed is license built or built in UK factories?
The barrels are produced at Watervliet Arsenal, which I think is the one you're talking about above. 70% of parts are made in the US (by a BAE subsidiary, but still...). I seem to have answered my own question

[Sea Skimmer]

Oh looks like its Watervliet and not Rock Island that absorbed all artillery production then. For a long time Rock Island was making all the army howitzers, while Watervliet made higher pressure tank guns and naval guns. I thought that had then all folded to Rock Island, looks like it was the other way around.

No idea where mortars are made, though a considerable number have been imported finished from France and Israel in recent history.

All small arms R&D work is eventually supposed to be at Picatinny Arsenal, but its been a long time since the US Army built any of its own guns for mass production. Some sniper rifles are still hand made by hand methods but it was in the low thousands a year even at the peak of that sudden demand for 7.62mm sniper rifles that came out of Afghanistan.

[Patroklos]

You know Ike had a lot more to say about the issue than the dozen odd lines certain conspiracy nuts like to trot out. In 1961 when he gave that speech military spending was north of 50% of the federal budget and 11% of GDP. His warnings have jack all to do with any situation that exists today. He would laugh at anyone making comparisons.

I work at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard now. I shutter at the thought of us building ships given the way we run things on just the maintenance and decommissioning side now.