Profits can't be sustainably high over the long-run without maintenance
US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
- Start date
Matt Yglesias is just wrong here. I remember reading this article and a number of others as a rebuttal to the "Infrastructure Report" and all of those rebuttals don't engage with the subject.
I don't particularly care that United States is failing less than the EU. What I care about, is that commute times have increased over time. That road fatalities have increased, that public transportation is quite bad (even if it has improved relative to 20 years ago).
I can also find economic stats that say we're actually doing great, especially relative to EU cousins, that's not a refutation that infrastructure has not kept pace with population growth, that other measures of outcomes and performance have gotten worse, and that infrastructure in general has not gotten either the funding, or the political attention it deserves.
Even the most recent Biden plan demonstrates that merely throwing money at the problem is not going to solve the issue. Infrastructure is not easy, and while alarmist articles and publications like ASCE report are not ideal, articles like Matt Yglesias (and ironically, conservative publications from Heritage and Hoover and other similar vomit) are even worse because they brush the issues aside.
Money on war wasn't money taken out of infrastructure.
I.E. if we didn't spend $2 trillion on Afghanistan, we wouldn't have suddenly spent it on American infrastructure.
All publicly listed companies report profits using the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) which defines very clearly what can and cannot be counted as "profit" and what each line on all the financial statements mean. Intentionally misstating operational expenses as profit would be fraud. If your claim is that companies retain profits, I'm not sure how that is relevant. A company uses profits to fund its capital structure (stock buybacks, dividends or debt prepayment) or is reinvested in the company either as cash reserves or used for capital projects/
My point was that suboptimal (as most things are) and "crumbling" are not the same. US infrastructure is unambigiously suboptimal and has been for quite a while. Crumbling, it is not and even then (such as with commute times and public transport), a lot of that is lobbying local governments for minimum lot sizes and construction restrictions and whatnot that inherently increase commute times and public transport
Too bad the leaker didn’t think to look up NGAD, RQ-180 or any other classified aircraft.
Single point of failure...
An American M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) firing during the joint exercises in Capas, Philippines, October 13, 2022 © AFP / Jam Sta Rosa
American arms manufacturers are struggling to obtain enough rocket motors to build missiles for Ukrainian forces, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. With multiple contractors relying on a single supplier, production targets have already been pushed back.
In a quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday, Lockheed Martin said that although its overall sales rose from a year earlier, sales of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) fell due to a “lower volume” leaving its factories.
GMLRS projectiles are artillery rockets, and are fired from Lockheed Martin’s M142 HIMARS platform. According to the most recent Pentagon figures, the US has given Ukraine 38 HIMARS platforms, and while the Defense Department does not disclose how many GMLRS projectiles have been sent to Kiev, a Reuters put the figure at over 5,000 last November, more than the 4,600 Lockheed Martin can make in a year.
A shortage of rocket motors has hindered the company’s efforts to boost production, the Wall Street Journal reported. Other missile makers like Raytheon Technologies have also been affected, the newspaper’s source said.
Lockheed Martin also uses solid-fuel rocket motors in its Javelin anti-tank missiles, of which more than 8,500 have been sent to Ukraine over the last year. During a visit by President Joe Biden to the company’s Javelin manufacturing facility in Alabama last May, CEO Jim Taiclet vowed to double production of the shoulder-fired missiles by 2024. However, the company and the Pentagon told the Wall Street Journal that the date has since been pushed back to 2026.
“We thought we could get there earlier,” Lockheed Martin’s Chief Financial Officer, Jay Malave, told the paper.
US missile makers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies source their rocket motors from a single supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings. However, although the Pentagon awarded Aerojet a $216 million contract last week to boost production, it said it was still recovering from a fire at one of its factories last year, while the sale of the company to aerospace giant L3Harris Technologies is still being scrutinized by antitrust authorities.
While rocket artillery and guided missile production are apparently hindered, Ukraine is also grappling with a shortage of conventional artillery rounds. Leaked Pentagon recently suggested that the shortfall is delaying a planned spring offensive by Kiev’s forces, while the US is reportedly looking to its allies to its depleted stockpiles.
Russia has repeatedly warned that the influx of Western weapons will only prolong the conflict in Ukraine. The West’s involvement “is rising gradually,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month, adding that the West’s support for Kiev “cannot influence the final outcome of the special operation.”
US military industry struggling to meet Ukraine demand – WSJ
A shortage of rocket motors is interrupting the supply of missiles to Kiev
An American M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) firing during the joint exercises in Capas, Philippines, October 13, 2022 © AFP / Jam Sta Rosa
American arms manufacturers are struggling to obtain enough rocket motors to build missiles for Ukrainian forces, the Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday. With multiple contractors relying on a single supplier, production targets have already been pushed back.
In a quarterly earnings report released on Tuesday, Lockheed Martin said that although its overall sales rose from a year earlier, sales of Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS) fell due to a “lower volume” leaving its factories.
GMLRS projectiles are artillery rockets, and are fired from Lockheed Martin’s M142 HIMARS platform. According to the most recent Pentagon figures, the US has given Ukraine 38 HIMARS platforms, and while the Defense Department does not disclose how many GMLRS projectiles have been sent to Kiev, a Reuters put the figure at over 5,000 last November, more than the 4,600 Lockheed Martin can make in a year.
A shortage of rocket motors has hindered the company’s efforts to boost production, the Wall Street Journal reported. Other missile makers like Raytheon Technologies have also been affected, the newspaper’s source said.
Lockheed Martin also uses solid-fuel rocket motors in its Javelin anti-tank missiles, of which more than 8,500 have been sent to Ukraine over the last year. During a visit by President Joe Biden to the company’s Javelin manufacturing facility in Alabama last May, CEO Jim Taiclet vowed to double production of the shoulder-fired missiles by 2024. However, the company and the Pentagon told the Wall Street Journal that the date has since been pushed back to 2026.
“We thought we could get there earlier,” Lockheed Martin’s Chief Financial Officer, Jay Malave, told the paper.
US missile makers like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies source their rocket motors from a single supplier, Aerojet Rocketdyne Holdings. However, although the Pentagon awarded Aerojet a $216 million contract last week to boost production, it said it was still recovering from a fire at one of its factories last year, while the sale of the company to aerospace giant L3Harris Technologies is still being scrutinized by antitrust authorities.
While rocket artillery and guided missile production are apparently hindered, Ukraine is also grappling with a shortage of conventional artillery rounds. Leaked Pentagon recently suggested that the shortfall is delaying a planned spring offensive by Kiev’s forces, while the US is reportedly looking to its allies to its depleted stockpiles.
Russia has repeatedly warned that the influx of Western weapons will only prolong the conflict in Ukraine. The West’s involvement “is rising gradually,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said earlier this month, adding that the West’s support for Kiev “cannot influence the final outcome of the special operation.”
I was thinking wrongly that that program was going good... Boeing will make it slip for 4 more years minimum ! They will milk tax again until it turn sour.