Wednesday short takes – Mass school buses and rockets

Let’s get the old blood pressure up, shall we?

Fox has an article headlining a license-less woman who is unable to get her kid on a bus to school and can’t afford to Uber him dozensof  times a week. The school district says it is unable to provide busing from more than K-6 grades to all…. but can provide busing for more than 200 immigrant families recently arrived.

Superintendent of Schools Joseph Baeta insists that isn’t the reason for the problem.

In a separate letter to parents, Baeta said the state of Massachusetts does not require bus transportation for students in grades 7-12, but the state does require transportation for those living in hotels and shelters. Fox News

This is a nuanced problem – the kid in question got himself kicked out, rendering him ineligible for the bus, and Baeta says the number of upper-graders needing transport skyrocketed this year. But the Mass legislature mandating that the immigrants get top priority – the optics are pretty bad.

Another transportation shortage in the offing. Not a stunning development, this – demand for rocket engines is booming (primary law of war: you can never have too much stockpiled, as you will use many times as much as you think you will. ) There is a reason why logisticians are highly prized – getting those stockpiles to the folks using them is key. Tone of high explosives thousands of miles from where they are needed – doesn’t help. But nowadays, Ukraine is using rockets, Israel is using rockets, WE’RE using rockets: rocket engines are sort of essential. And we have two companies building ’em, and they have as many supply chain issues as the carmakers did four years ago. Not good.

What do Iranian drones have in common with Russian hypersonic missiles and China’s DF-21D “aircraft carrier killer” rocket? All three pose a clear and present danger to U.S. forces and their allies, and all three require air defense missiles to protect against this threat.

Well, today, slow shortages of rocket engines pose a bottleneck to the production of rockets by America’s defense companies, too.

The Wall Street Journal reports that Northrop Grumman and L3Harris are the two defense giants that dominate the production of missile engines. Both have caught flak from Lockheed and RTX for their failure to produce enough to meet demand.

Makes you want to mandate that if they can’t meet PRESENT contracts, they can’t get new ones, huh…

To remedy this situation, Lockheed Martin has proposed that it get into the rocket engine-making business itself.

It’s a big job, though, and Lockheed can’t do it alone. Last week, the company confirmed it would form a joint venture with defense rival General Dynamics aiming to develop a new generation of military missile motors to supplement the constrained supply produced by Northrop and L3Harris.

General Dynamics will do the actual manufacturing at its Camden, Arkansas, munitions factory and then ship them next door to Lockheed Martin’s Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) rocket assembly plant. GMLRS is one of the primary weapons launched by HIMARS rocket launchers. Having General Dynamics fulfill all of Lockheed’s motor needs for this one type of missile should diminish demand for motors for other missiles, thus helping to unkink the supply chain both for Lockheed — and for everyone else.

Making the supply chain more vertical can’t hurt. Might even be a good idea to diversify the sourcing some.

What does seem clear is that the new joint venture has the potential to benefit Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics quite a lot. Northrop Grumman earns a respectable 8.7% operating profit margin on its “space” business, while L3Harris’s Aerojet unit generates even better profit margins of 11.6%. Motley Fool

Better than wringing their little military-industrial hands over it.

Category: "Your Tax Dollars At Work", Reality Check, Schools, Science and Technology