Thread by @TrentTelenko

Since most people are not old enough to remember. The meme shown below is normal for the US military procurement system.

Peacetime & wartime US procurement has this two faced Janus-like property. It will take years in peacetime & ordnance appears in weeks during a war.🧵
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The Phoenix Ghost is a quad-copter mixed with a winged lifting body with five cameras in several spectra that is radio-silent and can systematically map an area for up to six hours.

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timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/europe/p…

The story of the Desert Storm era GBU-28 5,000-pound (2,268 kg) class laser-guided "bunker busting" bomb is similar.

To get Iraqi bunkers too deep for 2000lb bombs, the Watervliet Arsenal, Watervliet, New York converted an 8-inch artillery gun barrel from deactivated...
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...M110 howitzers into a bomb casing for the US Air Force Air Armament Division at Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

Per the wikipedia article:

"The initial batch of GBU-28s was built from modified 8 inch/203 mm artillery barrels (principally from deactivated M110 howitzers),
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...but later examples are purpose-built[5] with the BLU-113 bomb body made by National Forge of Irvine, Pennsylvania.[3] They weigh 5,000 pounds (2,268 kg) and contain 630 pounds (286 kg) of high explosive.

The GBU-28 C/B version uses the 5,000-pound BLU-122 bomb body,
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...which contains AFX-757 explosive in a 4,000-pound casing machined from a single piece of ES-1 Eglin steel alloy.[6][7]"

In the 1952-1964 Cold War period, there was the USAF Electronic Warfare "Quick Reaction Capability" Program."
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See:

AIR FORCE QUICK REACTION CAPABILITY PROGRAMS, 1952 TO 1964

In 1952, mid-way through the Korean War, the US Air Force issued a new directive entitled "Quick Reaction Capability (QRC) for ECM". This procedure was to be used when it was necessary to procure quickly limited
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...quantities of new equipment, to counter new enemy electronic threats as they were discovered. The program used production procurement funds, which are larger than those for research and development. The ECM Branch of the Aircraft Radiation laboratory at Wright Field was...
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... assigned technical responsibility for the resultant QRC equipments designed for airborne use, and the Air Force Supply Depot at Gentile AFB held procurement responsibility. Early in the program an in-house QRC facility was established at the Rome Air Development Center...
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,,, for building ground-based systems. Following a competitive bid the Hallicrafters Company at Chicago won the contract to become sole source contractor to built QRC systems, and held the position throughout most of the 1950s. As electronic warfare increased in importance...
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...the company did well out of the program. It also enjoyed an advantage over competitors, when the Air Force wanted QRC equipments placed in production. In 1959, following strong representations from competing companies, the Air Force revised the QRC program to...
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...allow any suitable company to bid for the work.

Usually a QRC program would provide engineering prototypes or a few production models of an equipment, plus sufficient spare parts for one year's operation. In a very few cases, however, as many as 100 examples of...
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...a specific equipment might be built. Later the Navy and the Army would initiate QRC programs of their own, though the other two services would use them far less than the Air Force. The Navy equipments built under QRC contracts carried regular equipment designators...
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...rather than QRC designators, making them difficult to identify. The Army ran its own system of QRC designators in parallel with that used by the Air Force, also starting from QRC-1."

designation-systems.net/usmilav/electr…
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I was personally involved in a US Army "QRC-like" program to up-armor FMTV truck cabs in 2003-2007. The name of the project was the "Low Signature Armored Cab" AKA LSAC.

I was there from the 1st prototype the contractor blew up, to...

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...their shipment & deployment in Iraq...

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...to feedback from their use there...

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...including this highly memorable series of photographs where all the crew lived...

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...to their return to the USA at the Red River Army Depot (RRAD).

[It's part of how I learned about the logistics of trucks on trains.😉]

Yes, that's me 15 years & 50 fewer pounds ago.
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All war is waste, a waste of lives, money, homes & civilizations at its worse.

Yet all of these are examples of how the USA wages war since WW2 as a "Money Solvable Problem."

It is something the USA's friends & enemies need to remember for the future.

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