The administration of US President Joe Biden refuses to transfer long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, despite requests from Kyiv and pressure from US lawmakers.
It’s a tragedy that these have not yet been sent. There should already be a production line set up to deliver hundreds per month.
They’ve been out of production since 2007
In sure someone still knows how to make them.
That’s a complicated one. Military tech tends to all be 10+ years old at time of deployment and the ones stockpiled are probably late 90s designs that went into production in the early 2000s. Most of the parts for the control and guidance systems are likely no longer produced at all and haven’t been for a decade+ (think the kinds of computer chips you’d find in a SNES, maaaaybe an N64) so it’s not that they don’t have the blueprint somewhere, they would have to re design large parts of it to work in a modern supply chain. Yes, they could do emulation/simulation shenanigans to get some stuff to be compatible on modem COTS hardware but they’d still need to re qualify everything because nobody wants a 500lb ballistic warhead going stupid and killing someone in the wrong country.
That sounds like it might be true, but is it? I’ve heard many things in relation to this weapon, but not anything about the inability to produce them.
Shrug? This is what the budgets have indicated. The military isn’t interested in pursuing this weapon anymore. They’re actively trying to replace it but also don’t want to give up the capability until it is fully replaced.
I have inside knowledge on this because I support[ed] production for a part of this system. I can’t divulge too much information obviously, but we can still manufacture ATACMS. The real issue is a lot of the components and manufacturing processes are terribly out-of-date so it’s questionable whether it’s worth it when the replacement is on the horizon.
They might not.
There’s been a couple cases where the US military has classified something so heavily that they needed to re-spend millions in R&D in order to learn how to make the material again.
Can you specify any such case?
FYI (source: ChatGPT 4)
ATACMS stands for Army Tactical Missile System. It is a surface-to-surface missile system designed and manufactured by Lockheed Martin for the United States Army. This system is designed to be extremely mobile and can be fired from the Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) family of launchers, including the M270, M270A1, and the M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS).
The ATACMS is a short-range ballistic missile with a range of about 165 km for early versions, and more than 300 km for later models. It carries a large payload, up to 500 lb, which can include unitary warheads or submunitions depending on the specific model of the missile. The missile is designed for precision strikes against a variety of target types, including enemy artillery, air defenses, and concentrations of troops or armored vehicles.
As of my knowledge cutoff in September 2021, the ATACMS was set to be replaced by the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM), a next-generation surface-to-surface weapon system being developed for the U.S. Army.
Really weird how much ChatGPT knows. I wonder how much comes from Lockheed’s public promotional material, and how much comes from sources that should not exist.
