MANUFACTURING THE NEWS: Why We Don't Have Armor

The Question Fairy ^ | 12/09/04 | Becki Snow

[snopercod]

Used Armored Vehicles

...For high end of threat levels, we utilize the only certified armor plate manufacturer in the market today, Clifton's High Hard Ballistic Steel. Clifton's is the only actual armor plate on the market today. Competitors of this manufacturer use steel renamed as "wear plate" as their version of armor plate. Wear plate is used to protect dump truck beds and bucket liners in the mining industry.

This material is manufactured from start to finish to meet MIL-A-46100D and MIL-A-46177B Armor Plate as per the rigorous U.S. Military's Armor Specifications. It is tested at Aberdeen Proving Grounds to meet the military standards. Once the product conforms to the MIL standards, it must pass additional ballistic testing to meet the Underwriters Laboratory and National Institute of Justice standards. These standards are met through independent tests at certified laboratories.

[OXENinFLA]

Any mill can make steel to the required specifications

I don't think so. I think the mills need to meet certain criteria in order for the DoD to approve them during the bidding process.

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to turn it into armor plate, it must be heat treated, then tempered......Then, it must be fabricated into the required shapes, an operation requiring very special tools on hardened steel.

I know, I've worked in Machine shops and have worked with tool steel and the like.

[OXENinFLA]

This isn't for armor plating but if you ever need a TUFF wear plate, this stuff gets harder as it's pounded on.

Rhino-Tuf

[bandleader]

The"HumVee"was NEVER intended to be an"armored"vehicle!It's an updated"Jeep"(general purpose vehicle).These so-called"journalists"have forgotten(or never knew)that their function is to REPORT THE NEWS(NOT CREATE IT)!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bandleader]

Right On!Bob Grant(WOR/710/NYC)has always referred to the senior senator from mass as"Teddy,The Swimmer"!!!!!!!!!!!!

[bandleader]

As we all know,"Slick Willie's"major accomplishments occurred while his trousers were down around his ankles!!!!!!!

[Austin Willard Wright]

I thought freepers wanted the best for the troops.....yet all I see is criticism of the troops and reflesive covering for Rumsfeld.

[Toddsterpatriot]

According to Page 7 of the USGS document "Iron and Steel Statistics" the number of U.S. imports for steel in the year 2002 stood at about 30%, give or take a few percentage points. Check me please, I'm no mathematician.

Can't get the numbers to tie out but if production is 91.6 million tons and imports are 29.6 million tons that makes imports about 25% in 2002.

However, according to the trade doc "Paradise regained for scrap prices"U.S. imports rose by almost 20% in 2004 - despite an increase of U.S. steel production of 3.2% - due to a increase in demand of 12%.

If we assume 2003 steel imports and production were the same as 2002, (I'm sure they both increased) these increases would make production 94.5 million tons and imports 35.5 million tons. Imports would be 27.3% of that total.

Like I said, couldn't get the numbers to tie, Apparent Consumption=Production+Imports-Exports should equal 107 million tons.According to the chart it's 115.75.

Anyway, imports rose but still not close to 50%.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

are these companies majority American-owned

Yes.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Because the steel unions hate them and want to pretend that the rusting hulks of Pennsylvania are the entire steel industry.)

Most steel in Pennsylvania is produced in union shop electric-arc furnace "mini-mills". The largest are at AK Steel-Butler, ISG-Coatesville, ISG-Steelton, Allegheny Ludlum-Natrona, Allegheny Ludlum-Brackenridge, and Allegheny Ludlum-Midland. The Unions don't "hate" mini-mills. They work at them. Lets not drag union bashing in where it is not needed.

There's no need for an anti-union diatribe here.

[Paul Ross]

We will not get tough on trade with China because we need their help to eliminate the nuclear threat from NK. Meanwhile, China is stalling and not putting enough pressure on North Korea so they can continue to use this issue against us. The Chinese government is not a friend of ours, but is really a two-faced adversary.

If you think we are getting "their help" to "eliminate the nuclear threat from NK" then I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you. NK would have no nukes today, if China hadn't been backing them the whole way. You are right to finger NK as merely a proxy for China. What you missing is how blatant it really is...so blatant that ONLY the U.S.'s MSM and some liberal Panda-Huggers in the US Navy Admiralty could fail to see it. Deaf, and Blind. But with a billion-watt megaphone, in CBS/ABC/NBC/NPR. There are none so blind as those who WILL NOT SEE.

By the time they realize we have no choice, but to exercise the "Nautilus Solution"...it will be too late. China will have all the nuclear submarines. Ours will be retired...and we will have no industry capable of building any.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

Ask Bush why the tariff on steel at the beginning of the war? It raised prices on the steel itself and further raised costs for those in the industry.

You clearly don't have any work related to the steel industry.

If you did, you'd know that steel prices fell when the tarriff was put into effect, and rose, when it was lifted.

Yes, that is counterintuitive to free-marketeer doctrine, but it is what really happened in the marketplace. The tarriff stimulated domestic companies to restart more domestic capacity than foriegn capacity was constricted by the tarriff (think the LTV mill in Cleveland, for example). A greater overall supply available in the US meant that prices fell.

Around the time the tarriff was removed, the Chinese steel market started overheating, sucking in scrap and finished steel wherever it could be found and thus raising overall prices worldwide for these products.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

There are still a number of plants in the US producing the raw materials, many of them in the South.

Most steel in the US is still produced in the Pittsburgh-St. Louis-Chicago triangle, not down south.

[Paul Ross]

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Republican Party Platform.

Adopted at St. Louis, June 16, 1896.

The Republicans of the United States, assembled by their representatives in National Convention, appealing for the popular and historical justification of their claims to the matchless achievements of thirty years of Republican rule, earnestly and confidently address themselves to the awakened intelligence, experience, and conscience of their countrymen in the following declaration of facts and principles:

For the first time since the Civil War the American people have witnessed the calamitous consequences of full and unrestricted Democratic control of the Government. It has been a record of unparalleled incapacity, dishonor and disaster. In administrative management it has ruthlessly sacrificed indispensable revenue, entailed an unceasing deficit, eked out ordinary current expenses with borrowed money, piled up the public debt by $262,000,000 in time of peace, forced an adverse balance of trade, kept a perpetual menace hanging over the redemption fund, pawned American credit to alien syndicates, and reversed all the measures and results of successful Republican rule. In the broad effect of its policy it has precipitated panic, blighted industry and trade with prolonged depression, closed factories, reduced work and wages, halted enterprise and crippled American production, while stimulating foreign production for the American market. Every consideration of public safety and individual interest demands that the Government shall be rescued from the hands of those who have shown themselves incapable of conducting it without disaster at home and dishonor abroad, and shall be restored to the party which for thirty years administred it with unequalled success and prosperity. And in this connection we heartily endorse the wisdom, patriotism and the success of the Administration of President Harrison.

Allegiance to Protection Renewed.
We renew and emphasize our allegiance to the policy of Protection as the bulwark of American industrial independence and the foundation of American development and prosperity. This true American policy taxes foreign products and encourages home industry; it puts the burden of revenue on foreign goods; it secures the American market for the American producer; it upholds the American standard of wages for the American workingman; it puts the factory by the side of the farm, and makes the American farmer less dependent on foreign demand and prices; it diffuses general thrift and founds the strength of all on the strength of each. In its reasonable application it is just, far and impartial, equally opposed to foreign control and domestic monopoly, to sectional discrimination and individual favoritism.

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[HIDEK6]

This would be an interesting post, if true.

However there are many more than ONE steel fabricating plants in America.

Let's make these distinctions:

A steel fabricating plant takes steel that has been made somewhere else, then bends, punches, cuts, welds it into a product.

The problem is that there is only one MILL that rolls the required alloy.

Lead time for a special mill rolling is from 3 months to 9 months.

After the material is rolled, it then has to be sent to a fabricating plant to be manufactured or fabricated into the finished product.

[ninenot]

Nice explanation.

Even guns utilize specific alloys, some 4140, some other types, depending on the requirements (land/groove millings, anticipated heat-load from various types of ammo, durability, weather-resistance, etc.)

[ninenot]

Since only a fraction of this work is being "contracted out" to Amrican industry and since there is the capacity to produce more armor that is not being used, then this has exactly nothing to do with 'free trade' or china or protecting American jobs despite the fervent hopes of the protectionist crowd.

Your conclusion is not based on the concerns expressed by the Congressmen.

The fact is that 450/day is a VERY low number. There are more than 450 Humvees in National Guard and Reserve garages in Milwaukee, ALONE!

The larger point, however, is that industrial capacity in the US is simply LESS than it used to be. We have had trouble obtaining the crystals necessary for smart bombs/guidance systems, because they came ONLY from Switzerland. We have had trouble producing .223 and 9mm ammo for the purposes of the war. Now this.

Finally, your gratuitous and un-informed remark about "protectionism" demonstrates that you either don't understand FAIR trade, or you don't wish to.

Frankly, I hope it is the latter, but suspect that it's the former, caused by a simple lack of intelligence.

[ninenot]

If China is the big threat militarily in the future why do they still have MFN status?

Ask the Definition of Treason, Bill Clinton, and the pointy-headed serial-screwing ex-Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

THEY jammed MFN/PNTR through for Red China.

[ninenot]

HermCher, you will find some of the most vile anti-union postings you've EVER seen on these 'econ' threads.

...and unions only represent 14% of workers, with about 1/2 of them being GUMMINT workers!

Everybody seems to forget that somebody GAVE the unions their wages and benefits--which also accrued to the 'management' team which negotiated the contracts in the first place.

[Hermann the Cherusker]

I said: Why is it taking one year? He said: Because there is only one steel-fabricating plant left in America, and it is in Pennsylvania. It makes the steel that we can convert into the armor plating for these doors. We are using everything they produce as fast as they produce it.

Total BS. The steel for 8400 Hummers could be produced in few days at most mills. We aren't talking millions of tons here. And there is certainly more than one steel-fab plant in the US. Perhaps he means one steel fab plant has greased enough palms to get "pre-approved" by the DOD to manufacture this plate steel armor.

Never mind that Durbin never points to the fact that this decimation of American Steel and the manufacturing industry happened as a whole under the Clinton Administration.

That's a lie.

The all-time peak of US Steel and Metals Production was December of 1973. Production fell of 10% to the next peak in December of 1978. Production then collapsed another 20% to the next peak in January of 1989, with most of the fall occurring in industry recessions in 1973-1975, 1978-1982 and 1984-1987. Production grew 15% under Clinton, including the steel industry recession starting in December of 1999. Production under Bush has completely recovered to the level when he took office from the 2001 recession. The major hit to US Steel production int he past 30 years has been the decline in market share of integrated mills producing pig iron from iron ore.

US Steel Fabrication, on the other hand, is up 50% from the levels of the 1970's, went up 40% under Clinton, but is off around 5% under Bush due to the recession, because much of the steel we import is brought here to be finished and fabricated.

Peruse this:

http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/ipdisk/ip.sa

Now most of our steel comes from China. Remember?

Again, untrue. Imports total around 20-30% of domestic production, and most steel imports are from Brazil, Russia, and Korea, not China.