Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!uwm.edu!wuarchive!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!pacific.mps.ohio-state.edu!linac!att!cbnews!cbnews!military From: wmartin@STL-06SIMA.ARMY.MIL (Will Martin) Newsgroups: sci.military Subject: Using up obsolete stocks Message-ID: <1991Feb26.012713.7033@cbnews.att.com> Date: 26 Feb 91 01:27:13 GMT Sender: military@cbnews.att.com (William B. Thacker) Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories Lines: 34 Approved: military@att.att.com From: Will Martin The list references to the Lance caused me to think about the opportunity the Gulf war is giving us to actually use up weaponry that would otherwise just be scrapped and surplussed. What with all the MLRS bombardments we've seen, wouldn't this be a perfect opportunity to fire off all the Lance missles with conventional warheads we have in the inventory? If they are not in the current operational inventory, surely some of the activated Reserve or Nat'l Guard units have personnel who were trained on and used the Lance during their active duty, and thus we would have a source of experienced personnel to fire them. Wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to use up these and any other equivalent previous-generation weapon systems as opposed to retiring them unused? Basically, we'd just have to pay the cost of shipping them to the Gulf; the actual cost of the weapons themselves could be considered nil. It makes me wish the timing of this had coincided more closely with the scrapping of the Pershing missles. We wasted all of those by static firing and unproductive launches as a result of the treaty with the Soviets to reduce the IRBM forces. Makes me wish we could have used them with conventional warheads in this war, maybe with the Soviets bringing their equivalents to the Turkish border and lobbing them into Iraq from the North. What better way to use them up? (We probably could have gotten Turkey to agree to the overflights... :-) What else have we got filling warehouses and in old pre-positioned war reserve stocks that would fit in this scenario? I suppose missiles are the best bet... Or have we peddled just about all of our preceeding- generation hardware to other countries and don't really have much in this category? Regards, Will wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil Brought to you by Super Global Mega Corp .com