because the single army-owned, small-calibre ammunition factory in Lake City, Missouri, can produce only 1.2m bullets annually, the army is suddenly scrambling to get private defence contractors to help fill the gap.
From the article. We are using more then this factory can make. That is all.
I suppose they could buy another one but start-up would take a while. Not sure how I feel about the army owning factories in the first place. Just seems wrong somehow.
The government owns the ammunition production facility in Lake City, Missouri but private industry operates it.
You've never owned a Springfield Armory M1903 or M1 Garand have you? Some of the finest military produced rifles of their day. And the plants were darned efficient, too. At it's peak in WWII, SA was putting out almost 90,000 M1 Garands a month.
Maybe so, but it's traditional. Most bombs and other heavy stuff is made in government owned factories even today. Oh the guidance equipment and so forth are made by private industry, but the ordance part is made in government owned factories. The same holds for missles, motars and so forth. The famous M-1 Garand was a product of a government Arsenal (and John Garand worked for the government), as was the follow on M-14. Of course the M-1 Carbine was not, nor was the M-16. During WW-II much of the production was done by private industy, including many that had never been involved in making guns or ammunition before. Prior WW-I, most of the military small arms, and the big guns too, were made in government owned arsenals. Harper's Ferry in Virgina for example, or Springfield in Massachusetts for example. The big overhall and modification depots of the Air Force (Air Logistics Centers) are government owned factories for all practical purposes, although more of the support work in now done by contractors than was the case 30 years ago.
Aircraft companies such as Lockheed, Boeing, Sikorsky, etc., lease the facilities and equipment from the government to produce the aircraft.