ProPublica: General Dynamics' $533M artillery plant produced no usable shells
NEW: General Dynamics opened a Texas factory to churn out artillery shells for Ukraine, but the machines kept breaking. Robot arms smashed into things. Hunks of metal crashed to the floor. There was even a real-life dumpster fire.
Fred Davies46"Made nothing" is such BS. It made the shareholder and the C-Suite at general dynamics a ton of money.
Jack who wrote Aether Torrent27"A robot was on fire. Again." A great opening line to a novel.
Local Resister16No one should expect anything less from a no bid contractor.
OutJustInTime14Made nothing? No. It made profits. That is what the war machine is about. So it was a smashing success, so to speak.
jaimi.bsky.social8Gosh, this sounds so familiar —here’s a thread about Russian military procurement corruption in their drone industry bsky.app/profile/chri...
James Fuller5UCAs have always been and will continue to be a giant giveaway of taxpayer funds to contractors.
jaimi.bsky.social6This sounds like one of @chriso-wiki.bsky.social threads about Russian military contractor corruption caused fiascos —but it was us, and started before Trump got back in power. And everyone told me I was exaggerating our corruption problem… #BipartisanFuckery
jaimi.bsky.social5Meanwhile here in the US, we can’t even make new ammo factories, despite artillery shells being one of the most basic technologies, because corruption and shiny things (pre-Trump, too) bsky.app/profile/prop...
burn it all down5the mcdonalds ice cream machine of weaponry
edolis 🇪🇺🇮🇹4Great success with the military production ramp-up in the US.
Anthony B,3Oh yeah the US will be speeding up the production of subs for AUKUS any time now. They just need to do simpler stuff first. Like figure out how to build more artillery shells which have been in production for 150 years. That's ok, they're gonna try using AI! (I wish the last bit was sarcasm)
Katiesaurus2"The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor...publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back."
Das gute A.2I must admit that "Fiasco at the Factory" is an even better name for a band than "Fury in the Slaughterhouse", given the circumstances
".. The robot arms would swing out of control, smashing into carefully calibrated equipment, and sometimes they would unexpectedly drop hunks of steel 5 feet down to the floor." @propublica.org $GD www.propublica.org/article/gene...
A. Torch10So much winning, I can hardly stand it. ☠️
Michael Peterson6US defence spending seems to be shovelling money into furnaces and into crony bank accounts.
Donna6Another must-read from ProPublica. Unbelievable the WASTE. Yet Hegseth is there in front of Congress with his hand out.
Otis Redfoot5Isn't it strange they'll shut down programs for screwworm, checking for parasites in food, climate programs but a military programming that produces nothing that works...nah that's fine.
Invictus Ghost5My son works with a robot at a USPS package sorting center. They are extremely slow, bulky, awkward and they slow the whole process down.
Dr. Steven Quest5Is Elon Musk involved in this? 🤔
Andrew Lawrence305i am so sick of wasting all of our goddam money on stupid bull shit that doesnt work
Regime Accountant, CPA ☠️🎢39It’s nice to see the old guard win sometimes, it’s not just defense tech startups that sell vapor ware
Isaiah Bishop29Notably this is also who is building the nitrocellulose plant for canada so like hope we're watching them
The Joy🐇7I thought we had factory arms down to a science lol
Aaron Mehta6Is it bad when an article contains the line "For one thing, the flaming robot arms also kept smashing into things."
TriCap6Feels like there’s a Solyndra once a quarter now.
Taco3The problem is the customer They wanted shells asap, but their bottom line was that they needed guaranteed production Instead of paying for the sure thing and then trying the untested option as a side investment, they put all their eggs in the untested basket (nb: this is a pre-Trump2 DoD failure)
Jean-Marc Liotier3Fucking up such mature manufacturing process as hydraulic press and lathe requires innovative talent.
PPP Grifter 🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️🏴☠️3God dammit, someone stole my idea @anadarkocapital.bsky.social
WaterBluSky 🇺🇸 🌻 🇺🇦2“The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics or a key Turkish subcontractor — which provided the factory’s much-hyped but little-proven equipment — publicly accountable for the failures.”
NEW: Flaming robots. Haywire Turkish machines. An actual dumpster fire. General Dynamics received $533 million from the Army to produce artillery but hasn’t made a single usable shell. ProPublica got the inside story of what went wrong. It’s a wild ride: www.propublica.org/article/gene...
C_Sriracha17Hmmmm...surprising that DOGE couldn't find this waste of taxpayer dollars. Maybe they were just happy getting our personal information
Matthew Budman, book guy10Just brutal—and a critically important exposé as an indicator of "a deep-rooted culture at the Pentagon and in Congress in which expensive failures lead only to more spending." AI, needless to say, is not doing this work.
kehlkeh.bsky.social6brutal story, but amazing reporting. well done.
Stephen Spitewinter2We 🇬🇧 had this sort of bloody awful mess with PPE suppliers during COVID. Profit before Honesty, every time.
FIASCO ENBY MAUS2Ich hab gar nichts gemacht
Ugly Old Man1And nothing will be done.
Micah Corah145"A robot was on fire. Again." What an opening line!
Albert Burneko26great blog and the lede reads like it was laser-targeted for me personally
Colin McMillen8as a person with a robotics Ph.D.: i am willing to light the government's robots on fire for free
Relevant Ferret If Known5And the Canadian subsidiary of General Dynamics just won a similar no-bid contract from the Canadian government to build us new APCs, even though we just refreshed the LAV-III in 2021 -at the same London ON factory-
Glonzo the Bureaucrat 🇬🇱 🌹3Funny how DOGE didn't find any of this obvious government waste.
Doctor Cucumber2Damn I've really gotta get into government contracting if this is the kind of drek that makes half a billion dollars.
God damn is this @jessecoburn.bsky.social story good: “A robot was on fire. Again.” www.propublica.org/article/gene...
Christopher Coffman 🌹7gonna have to update that Eisenhower quote with “every shell that is paid for but not made is a theft from those who hunger”
Josh Busuito3I knew someone who worked for GD and once said, "They couldn't engineer their way out of a wet paper bag". Shit like this was the reason.
44 LIGHTS2Wow…this is scary AF. And yet completely not shocking. And that’s a worry.
Erratic Reader2Yet another example to hold up when these idjits ask for more military funding.
@dcEmerald 🍀1"The company (General Dynamics) has said that it 'met or exceeded requirements' according to the inspector general report." All Lies!!
“The fiasco has cost American taxpayers $533 million, according to the Army. But the Army has not held General Dynamics … publicly accountable for the failures. Nor has it made General Dynamics pay a penny back.” — www.propublica.org/article/gene...
Nolan Hicks8“But the lack of consequences for the companies involved, in the view of defense-spending critics, is symptomatic of a larger problem: a deep-rooted culture at the Pentagon and in Congress in which expensive failures lead only to more spending.” — www.propublica.org/article/gene...
the sam of the summer1when the tendency of the rate of profit to fall comes for the military-industrial complex
