{"id":197579,"date":"2008-01-24T06:03:00","date_gmt":"2008-01-24T11:03:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/24\/ok-its-official-i-am-a-purveyor-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction\/"},"modified":"2008-01-24T06:03:00","modified_gmt":"2008-01-24T11:03:00","slug":"ok-its-official-i-am-a-purveyor-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2008\/01\/24\/ok-its-official-i-am-a-purveyor-of-weapons-of-mass-destruction\/","title":{"rendered":"OK, It&#8217;s Official, I am a Purveyor of Weapons of Mass Destruction"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I worked at <strike>Loral Vought Systems<\/strike>&#8230;..<strike>Lockheed Martin Vought Systems<\/strike>&#8230;..Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control<sup>*<\/sup> in Grand Prairie, TX.<\/p>\n<p>One of the items that I worked on was the <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">M<\/span>edium <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">E<\/span>xtended <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">A<\/span>ir <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">D<\/span>efense <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">S<\/span>ystem, or MEADS.<br \/>I&#8217;ve also worked on the Armies ongoing but truly misbegotten Future Combat System<sup>\u2020<\/sup> (FCS), it&#8217;s largest procurement program.<\/p>\n<p>So now, I&#8217;m beginning to see just how tied into the Military Industrial Complex I am.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I should ditch engineering and become a Klezmer<sup>\u2021<\/sup>.<br \/><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHI4SBTI\/AAAAAAAAASg\/BJuMwSiwHgE\/s1600-h\/ORD_SAM_PAC-3_MSE_Drawing_lg.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHI4SBTI\/AAAAAAAAASg\/BJuMwSiwHgE\/s400\/ORD_SAM_PAC-3_MSE_Drawing_lg.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159136279074571570\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Yes, I worked on this, and that little flare behind the head is for additional volume for the motor to increase range.  The original PAC-3 had straight sides.<\/p>\n<p>It looks like they are still using ProEngineer<sup>\u2122<\/sup> as the CAD package.  After a while, you can kind of get a sense of which cad packate it is from how it renders.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHY4SBUI\/AAAAAAAAASo\/bfHeXxOwjx0\/s1600-h\/LAND_MEADS_Launcher_lg.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHY4SBUI\/AAAAAAAAASo\/bfHeXxOwjx0\/s400\/LAND_MEADS_Launcher_lg.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159136283369538882\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a>Yep, worked on this too, looking at a more flexible launch cannister than the PAC-3 launch cannister.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHY4SBVI\/AAAAAAAAASw\/pu6FVakSOus\/s1600-h\/LAND_FMTV_Family_lg.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer;\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_8Psnm0b0g1E\/R5jvHY4SBVI\/AAAAAAAAASw\/pu6FVakSOus\/s400\/LAND_FMTV_Family_lg.jpg\" alt=\"\" id=\"BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5159136283369538898\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Worked on most of these too.<\/p>\n<p>Worst place I ever worked.  It was so bad that people who never worked at Stewart &amp; Stevenson, Tactical Vehicle Systems would <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">hang up<\/span> when they heard Sealy, TX.<\/p>\n<p>Made Dilbert<sup>\u2122<\/sup> and his workplace look like &#8220;Nerdvana&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>They ended up screwing up in reverse.  Their final drawing package was bad enough that no one else wants to bid on FMTV contracts, because they can&#8217;t make heads or tails of the drawings.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">It was all the same place, it just went through one merger, and two name changes.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2020<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">Note to self, need to finish article about FCS for my blog.  It&#8217;s been sitting in my draft folder for months.<\/span><br \/><sup>\u2021<\/sup><span style=\"font-size:85%;\">An itinerant Jewish musician, more specifically, one who plays music typical of Eastern European Jews.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I worked at Loral Vought Systems&#8230;..Lockheed Martin Vought Systems&#8230;..Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control* in Grand Prairie, TX. One of the items that I worked on was the Medium Extended Air Defense System, or MEADS.I&#8217;ve also worked on the Armies ongoing but truly misbegotten Future Combat &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1008,975,1096],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-defense-procurement","category-employment","category-missile-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197579"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=197579"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197579\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=197579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=197579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=197579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}