{"id":160368,"date":"2024-08-28T07:01:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-28T11:01:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=160368"},"modified":"2024-08-27T14:35:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-27T18:35:32","slug":"wednesday-short-takes-mass-school-buses-aand-rockets","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=160368","title":{"rendered":"Wednesday short takes &#8211; Mass school buses and rockets"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-154289 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/short-bus-window-lick-bastards-1710102165.1123-300x284.png\" alt=\"short-bus-window-lick-bastards\" width=\"300\" height=\"284\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/short-bus-window-lick-bastards-1710102165.1123-300x284.png 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/03\/short-bus-window-lick-bastards-1710102165.1123.png 720w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Let&#8217;s get the old blood pressure up, shall we?<\/p>\n<p>Fox has an article headlining a license-less woman who is unable to get her kid on a bus to school and can&#8217;t afford to Uber him dozensof\u00a0 times a week. The school district says it is unable to provide busing from more than K-6 grades to all&#8230;. but can provide busing for more than 200 immigrant families recently arrived.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Superintendent of Schools Joseph Baeta insists that isn&#8217;t the reason for the problem.<\/p>\n<p>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. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.yahoo.com\/news\/massachusetts-moms-kids-left-without-143648027.html\">Fox News<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a nuanced problem &#8211; 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 &#8211; the optics are pretty bad.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-medium wp-image-86349 aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large-300x137.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"137\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large-300x137.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large-500x229.jpg 500w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large-630x290.jpg 630w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large-315x145.jpg 315w, https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/defense-large.jpg 710w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Another transportation shortage in the offing. Not a stunning development, this &#8211; 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 &#8211; getting those stockpiles to the folks using them is key. Tone of high explosives thousands of miles from where they are needed &#8211; doesn&#8217;t help. But nowadays, Ukraine is using rockets, Israel is using rockets, WE&#8217;RE using rockets: rocket engines are sort of essential. And we have two companies building &#8217;em, and they have as many supply chain issues as the carmakers did four years ago. Not good.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>What do Iranian drones have in common with Russian hypersonic missiles and China&#8217;s DF-21D &#8220;aircraft carrier killer&#8221; 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.<\/p>\n<p>Well, today, slow shortages of rocket engines pose a bottleneck to the production of rockets by America&#8217;s defense companies, too.<\/p>\n<p><em>The Wall Street Journal <\/em>reports that <strong>Northrop Grumman<\/strong>\u00a0and <strong>L3Harris<\/strong> 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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Makes you want to mandate that if they can&#8217;t meet PRESENT contracts, they can&#8217;t get new ones, huh&#8230;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>To remedy this situation, Lockheed Martin has proposed that it get into the rocket engine-making business itself.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a big job, though, and Lockheed can&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>General Dynamics will do the actual manufacturing at its Camden, Arkansas, munitions factory and then ship them next door to Lockheed Martin&#8217;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&#8217;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 &#8212; and for everyone else.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Making the supply chain more vertical can&#8217;t hurt. Might even be a good idea to diversify the sourcing some.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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 &#8220;space&#8221; business, while L3Harris&#8217;s Aerojet unit generates even better profit margins of 11.6%. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fool.com\/investing\/2024\/08\/25\/why-lockheed-martin-and-general-dynamics-just-decl\/?source=eptyholnk0000202&amp;utm_source=yahoo-host-full&amp;utm_medium=feed&amp;utm_campaign=article&amp;referring_guid=63e583f8-cb1c-4985-bd72-df3eedfc3e8c\">Motley Fool<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Better than wringing their little military-industrial hands over it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let&#8217;s get the old blood pressure up, shall we? Fox has an article headlining a license-less &hellip; <a title=\"Wednesday short takes &#8211; Mass school buses and rockets\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=160368\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Wednesday short takes &#8211; Mass school buses and rockets<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":668,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[213,188,145,503],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-your-tax-dollars-at-work","category-reality-check","category-schools","category-science-and-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160368","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/668"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=160368"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160368\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=160368"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=160368"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=160368"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}