Thomas register has a search. Key armor steel in and you get a fair number of hits.
But steel is steel, and can be made by almost (but not quite) any steel plant that can pour general steel.
Its all in the recipe. Just like any brewery can (and do under contract) make almost any kind of beer.
Just because some firm pours metal somewhere does not mean they are capable in producing armored doors for HMMWVs or anything else dealing with armor for that matter.
The steel plant does not make the doors, the guy complaining about the lack of steel made the doors.
This is the whole point - THESE are the questions we (and supposedly the Old Media) should be asking. THIS is the dialogue that should be taking place. What's happening instead? The Old Media keeps shoving the question at the military, not at the Defense Industry and those in charge of IT. They are not asking business leaders, or congressional leaders, or anyone else who could actually DO anything about it. There are ways to make this armor, but they are looking to ask questions about how to bring it about.
Why? Because the Old Media doesn't really care about armor.
They only want to manufacture "stories" to try and damage the military. God forbid that they should actually ask a question of someone who could actually HELP the soldiers get the armor they need...
It's not that simple.
I may be wrong and if you know better please explain. (I mean no sarcasm)
Much of the casting work you may see is for commemorative plates, church bells, busts and other things. A lot of these firms are INCAPABLE of producing the types of products we are talking about here.
Example (I'm not 100%, but fairly sure about this). The particular vehicle I work out of has a 5083 Aluminum Alloy inner hull and 7017 Alloy outer hull. The outer hull is a laminate and is rolled. The inside then still has a polyaramid fiber pressed into a resin. All of this makes for a sandwich of materials that is highly resistant to cracking from a blast, while being bullet resistant, yet low spalling if penetrated by something really big. It won't rust, is fairly light and so makes for a good all around protection while being long lived and low maint.
I do believe there is ONE place in the whole US that makes the actual armor for the M1 in Indiana which is then later put together in Lima OH.
I have no insight nor claim to be an expert. Yet I bet that our subs are made to a SPEC out of special materials which only one or two firms in all the US could possibly make. The stuff needs to be strong as hell, resistant to oxidation in a horrid environment with low magnetic properties, be predictable, take repeated stress, rapid change in load……….. This is some complex stuff we’re talking about!
There are many different types of alloys and casting processes. Just the size of the vessel containing the molten metal will eliminate some already. The QC (If the metal cools wrong it will be defective even though it looks OK to the naked eye), ability to mass produce, desire to do this............ I truly suspect that before all is said and done you end up with not many out there who are really capable of this type of work. You are not dealing with a Sherman tank. Today when we talk of armor on vehicles we deal with specialty materials even at the HMMWV level. Even the Stryker uses Ceramics overtop of special alloy with a Kevlar liner. Look at our body armor itself. That stuff is Alumina I do believe. There is body armor out there made with boron carbide! You need special bits on the mills to work with some of these materials. You have to cast the stuff just right or else you end up with tension in the material and it could fail if hit. Some of these materials are not cast at all. Building armored carriages is a science of its own today. Or so I see it.
Our government has its agendas and makes mistakes. However, when they say they are trying all they can to get armored vehicles to the troops I 100% believe them. I don’t think it was neither bad planning or a lack of concern. I think it’s a sheer bottleneck in capacity. You must understand, this capacity is not dedicated to HMMWVs solely. There are Strykers, HMMWVs, armored civilian look a like cars, MP vehicles, HEMMTS, HETTs, The Marines 5 ton truck……..all kinds of stuff that is armored and being built now. So our capacity is divided among several competing projects.
I don’t think it’s as simple as you say.
Red6