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Originally Posted by CDAT
we had a USMC FAST (not sure what this stands for)
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Fleet Anti-terrorism Security Team. They're intended for rapid reaction short term deployments to cover areas with temporarily heightened risk profiles.
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Originally Posted by RN7
The XM1-FSED was developed in 1977-78, that's 40 years ago.
So as I stated "this might be true with older equipment not built for decades, but not if we are talking about equipment currently being made or reconditioned such as M1 tanks". The M1 has been reconditioned for the past 20 years, if there were major problems redeveloping parts, metals etc for the M1 then this would not be happening.
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This was part of upgrading M1s to newer variants. The GAS is what's in the little hole below the coaxial machinegun on all Abrams tanks. The problem was likely because it hadn't needed manufacturing since the original production run (we weren't even updating that part, just replacing ones that had become irreparably damaged and left in place on M1s that were now scheduled for upgrade as they got cannibalized for spares for more modern Abrams). My suspicion is that there was a stockpile of the old metal left, and someone got lazy and specced it in as the only acceptable material, then the drawing was left untouched for 35 years or so, at which point we went to make more of these sights and the stockpile was gone. It was only a small problem (there was a readily available substitute), but it needed a little bit of engineering time for the original material's characteristics to be researched and an adequate substitute found among currently-produced metals. The problem's going to come when spares stockpiles start running short, since there may be other things where a "lifetime buy" ends up not actually being a lifetime supply at higher operational tempos, and parts for an active piece of equipment might have had production line shutdowns for years or decades after that lifetime buy.
It's possible we're talking past each other, so if you were stating that parts currently being manufactured should be scalable to a higher production rate, then yes, I agree to a large extent. However, the point I'm trying to clarify is that even on items currently in active service, there may be components that haven't been manufactured in a long time, and those components may be difficult to re-start and to get to a decent volume of production.