Posted on 04/29/2023 10:31:06 PM PDT by kiryandil
Decades of consolidation have left the Pentagon vulnerable to mishaps—including when the sole maker of a crucial type of gunpowder went offline
MINDEN, La.—Nearly two years ago, an errant spark inside a mill caused an explosion so big it destroyed all the building’s equipment and blew a corrugated fiberglass wall 100 feet.
It also shut down the sole domestic source of an explosive the Department of Defense relies on to produce bullets, mortar shells, artillery rounds and Tomahawk missiles.
The ramshackle facility makes the original form of gunpowder, known today as black powder, a highly combustible material with hundreds of military applications. The product, for which there is no substitute, is used in small quantities in munitions to ignite more powerful explosives.
No one was hurt in the June 2021 blast. But the factory remains offline, unable to deliver its single vital component to either commercial or Pentagon customers.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
But it is used for an igniter in several types of larger caliber weapons and rockets.
Skilled people in the trades can always network with their fellow pros in other trades [you typically work with the others in housing construction, for example], and swap work that you need done, if you can't do it yourself.
Just finishing the work of destroying the military that Clinton started when he shut down so many bases and downsized the military, traitor that he is.
Here’s the DoD news release on the Estes Energetics takeover.
Retail gun shops don’t carry real black powder because of local fire codes. You can, however order it on the Internet.
And there are several foreign firms that make Holy Black and sell it here. I frankly prefer Swiss (brand) to Goex.
Black powder is used in artillery shell fuses as a initiator charge that in turn causes the main explosive to detonate. It was also used in the big naval guns to start the main propellant charge burning. Substitutes don’t work as well, and also deteriorate with age. Black powder never deteriorates unless you get it wet.
Checking the internet, I find that Estes was expecting to start shipping powder at the end of 2022. This did not happen, and the new ship date was first quarter 2023. No new news about that that I can find.
The Goex explosion had nothing to do with politics or who was President. It had more to do with the previous owner (Hodgdon) failing to properly manage the plant.
That’s what I am thinking. There has to be a half dozen manufacturers who can provide a substitute that is good enough quickly.
WSJ Article is paywalled.
Full article at https://archive.ph/8npg4
archive.ph is a useful tool in the days of paywalls.
Right.
One of the reasons this article caught my eye is that I know someone who uses Hodgdon products for black powder firearms [Pyrodex].
As you say, this Hodgdon product isn't ACTUAL black powder, for safety reasons.
Exactly.
Let’s Go Brandon
The facility was located way out in the sticks in a southeastern state on about 50,000 acres of government land, heavily wooded. I think I heard banjos playing in the background.
The manufacturing building was long and narrow. The interior was a corridor running the length of the building along the exterior wall. Running along the corridor most of its length were the manufacturing cubicles back to back. Each cubicle was heavily built for explosion containment. Automated equipment inside would perform one step of the assembly than pass the munition through a trap door down the line to the next room.
The door to each cubicle was steel about 6in thick, locked from the outside and had a small 6in thick glass viewing port. In case of fire, a deluge water system would flood any or all 12ft x 12ft cubicles floor to ceiling in less than 15 seconds. The manufacturing is all automated now. In WW2, there were 2 or 3 people in each room. No escape, like I said, the doors locked from the outside.
The fire fighting system I designed for the outside equipment and adjacent tanker truck loading dock would bury everything under a mountain of firefighting foam in about 30 seconds. An additional water tower was installed so this was not in short supply.
Why bury everything under a mountain of foam? Sometimes you need to design something to an extreme level of KISS (keep it simple stupid). For redundancy though, I equipped 2 fire monitors in the area with quick connects for the foam chemical and built a small garage building to house a tanker trailer that fire fighters could rapidly hook up to a pickup truck. This portable foam chemical tank could also hook to the primary equipment's foam deluge system as a redundant supply.
Black Powder Matters.
Thank you!
rfp1234 FTTW! :)
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The real “whoops!” Is in giving away every weapon that uses gunpowder to support corrupt nations that will think nothing of turning those weapons on us while we are vulnerable and can’t do a damn thing to stop it. WHOOPS!
We definitely need more tradespeople. I was a machinist for over 40 years. One can make a decent living and be productive, unlike some of the college educated idiots out there now.
Notice I said “some”- like the Marxist trained types and their so-called “professors”…
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