
The US Marines' Love Affair with 3D Printing - dfsegoat
https://breakingdefense.com/2018/03/marines-love-affair-with-3d-printing-small-is-cheap-beautiful/
======
chriselles
This is probably one of the very few topics I may be able to add value here on
Hacker News.

As a service, the USMC are approaching bottom up innovation very seriously.
[https://mobile.twitter.com/marinemakers](https://mobile.twitter.com/marinemakers)

The USAF is also very active in bottom up innovation.

Another program is Hacking 4 Defense founded by Steve Blank, Pete Newell, and
Joe Felter(leave of absence now performing role of US Assistant Undersecretary
of Defence for South & Southeast Asia).

Pete Newell(retired Army Colonel) stood up the Rapid Equipping Force a numbe
of years ago to rapidly accelerate the development and deployment of tools to
mitigate IED related casualties.

Hacking 4 Defense(H4D) is running across a growing number of University campus
to solve complex Defense problems using the Lean Start Up methodology using a
modified lean canvas called the Mission Model Canvas.

[https://www.h4di.org](https://www.h4di.org)

I am working to expand the use of H4D/MMC down here in Australasia.

Happy to share more if anyone is interested.

It’s great to see Marines given the latitude to experiment.

It’s also great to see the often inaccurate stereotypes of Marines being
rigidly disciplined and inflexible in thinking give way to the reality that
Marines have very often conducted comprehensive tactical experimentation and
innovation.

~~~
gascan
What in particular would you say is driving the USMC to this approach to
innovation, compared to the other branches? Are they simply more exposed to
unconventional warfare? Is it something about the type of person selected to
be a Marine vs another branch? Something unique to their command staff? Etc.

~~~
dfsegoat
I am not a Marine. But I would venture to guess it has to do with the tide of
maintenance & resulting readiness issues the Corps. has historically had to
deal with (their budget is tiny compared to USAF/Army), and the demands of
running combat deployments non-stop since 9/11/01.

Recently, they literally were pulling wings off of F-18s from museums, because
several of their combat aircraft set to deploy in +2 weeks to places like
Afghanistan and Iraq, were missing wings.

~~~
grkvlt
I'm not convinced about the 'pulling wings off of F-18s from museums' story -
you're suggesting that aircraft about to deploy (in two weeks time, no less)
had no _wings_ and therefore combat missions ended up being flown with planes
using the flight surfaces from museum exhibits?

You may be thinking of the following story, when an F/A-18 that flew in the
raid against Libya in 1986 needed a part (the hinge for the front left door of
the nose wheel landing gear) which was no longer manufactured, and was
eventually found on an aircraft on the USS Yorktown museum ship - although it
didn't fit. [0]

0\. [https://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/marines-scrounge-
yorktow...](https://breakingdefense.com/2016/03/marines-scrounge-yorktown-
museum-f-18-for-spare-parts-how-bad-is-it/)

~~~
dfsegoat
Yep I was mistaken. It seems the article you cited may have been the origin
story.

What I read, (and it changed in my head over time obviously to the point of
perpetuating an urban legend) was from the military times in 2016 - which
cites anecdotes that House Armed Services Cmte. Chairman, Mac Thornberry
received firsthand [0].

Thanks for correcting me on this.

[0] - [https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-
military/2016/03/30/...](https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-
military/2016/03/30/congressional-failures-just-forced-the-marines-to-raid-a-
museum-for-aircraft-parts/)

~~~
grkvlt
NP. There's a lot of urban legend style stories about the military (multi
thousand dollar hammers, that sort of thing) passed around, both in the US and
the UK, and I think it's important that where there are cases of _actual_
incompetence or negligence they get reported, but it's counterproductive to
invent things so it's useful to correct any false impressions.

------
evrydayhustling
An army officer once gave me an amazing rundown of the ways deployed units
have to recreate so many layers of infrastructure we take for granted.
Military units really have to carry a whole version of their civilization with
them, and how long they can maintain it determines their effectiveness (which
is why most of military history is about logistics improvements creating newly
dominant forces).

The challenges have a lot in common with space travel - not surprising that 3D
printing has spurred so much imagination on both sides.

Side note: there's a quote in the article where Gen. Walters is envying what
young engineers can do with this stuff. That's one of my favorite signals for
tech that's not hype -- when it makes successful pros wish they were born a
little later.

~~~
seastonATccs
The US Military is a logistics organization that happens to fight wars.

~~~
0xdeadbeefbabe
I'm trying to think of a logistics company that doesn't fight wars. Maybe USPS
or Fedex?

~~~
wizardforhire
FedEx was started by a marine.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_W._Smith)

------
DanielBMarkham
_The only hitch? The parts weren’t approved for installation on an aircraft.
“I said, put the button on,” Neller told the National Defense Industrial
Association last week. “Print a bag of them and hang them there.”_

This is a great story about disruption. The Marines seem to be on top of
trying to continue thinking outside the box. That turns out to be very
difficult to do in any large, old organization. I heard an interview with the
Commandant last week. They asked him what kind of tech he wanted most.

"Better batteries"

Bingo. Better batteries would change everything, not just the Marine Corps.
There are few technologies like batteries. Cost-to-orbit tech is one of them.
If we change those technologies, we change the entire rest of the economy. I
believe the service used to call things like that "force multipliers". It's
neat to see 3D printing _perhaps_ becoming a force multiplier in many areas.

Putting on my cynic hat, expect to see a lot of pushback form the
establishment where this technology disrupts the most. Those folks with button
standards aren't going to go down peacefully.

~~~
paulmd
Intercom buttons are one thing... I was less enthused to read about the
impeller fan. It's all fun and games until it shatters under load and blows up
a turbine.

~~~
unit91
Short-term, that's not the worst thing on earth when you've got a combat
mission to execute, and you need working tanks.

Long-term, you're absolutely right. Somebody needs to solve the problem.

~~~
coldacid
Good way of thinking of something like that is that it's a "spare tire". It's
not meant to completely replace the busted part, but just last long enough
until you can get a proper replacement installed. In the military, that could
be the difference between life and death.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
A guy who had been in the air force told me about their electrical generators.
They used them to set up temporary air traffic control installations to guide
fighters to targets and stuff. The generators would kick off after X hours of
continuous operation, to protect them from destroying themselves (due to heat,
I presume). That's standard on civilian versions of the generators. But the
air force wouldn't buy them unless there was an override. If you _need_ that
generator so that you can control the 10 more minutes of an air battle, even
if it destroys the generator, you can get it.

~~~
NickNameNick
Generally known as BattleShort

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleshort](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleshort)

Or, Id rather damage the bilge pump, than not have it when we're flooding...

------
spacestuff387
The more each marine knows and the more tools each has at his/her disposable,
the more flexible each individual and unit will be. Flexibility can be
important in fighting.

A Marine unit with multiple materials and multiheaded 3D printers could print
more than replacement parts for downed war fighting machinery. Specific
weapons or other gear could be adapted to fit the situation.

For example, a particular part isn't working (like the altimeter in the
previous comment) due to poor design in bad testing. Marines with access to
the raw CAD files of the part could modify the cowling/housing shape to make
it more visible. The finished model could be stress tested in a physics
modeling program. When it passes, a metal part could be printed and installed.
A thermistor could even be added to provide heat to stop frosting. If it works
in one plane, it could be duplicated to the whole squadron. And this quick
adaptability in changing design method could be applied to anything: backpacks
that are the incorrect shape and cause backpain, bump stocks that cause damage
on the recoil, or a new water checkvalve screen could be designed to better
force water out of soaked boots and stop foot rot. The design work could even
happen remotely back on the mainland with more design resources.

This could happen within 24hrs from a supply unit stationed just off the front
lines doing most of the work. At the end of a 6month engagement, the vehicles,
equipment and gear could all be substantially different than how they started.

This extreme adaptability could end up being a huge advantage.

------
joncrane
I love the Commandant's attitude. He seems to get it.

I've come across many Marines in my personal history as a diplomat brat
(Marines protect all US Embassies abroad) and worker (the best boss I've ever
had is a Marine). I've only met one I don't respect and/or admire, and he was
drunk and belligerent on the Metro (not towards anyone in particular, just
being a loud ass).

------
Pigo
From contracting with the Air Force, I can tell you that they have a love
affair with spending money. Most of the projects I seen revolved around making
sure everyone spent as much as possible, so that they could get more.

~~~
smacktoward
This comment gives me the opportunity to tell a joke I learned while working
on an Air Force base.

One of the things most civilians don't understand about the U.S. military is
that the various branches all speak different languages. The same words can
mean very different things, depending on the branch of service of the person
you are saying them to.

Take, for example, the simple order "secure the building."

If you ask a _Marine_ to "secure the building," they will hand-pick a team of
a dozen Marines, who will chopper onto the roof of the building at midnight
with knives clenched in their teeth. They will then work their way down floor
to floor, slitting the throats of everyone they meet along the way, including
the cleaning staff, because why not. When they reach the lobby, they will form
up in neat ranks and scream at the top of their lungs that the building has
been secured.

If you ask someone from the _Army_ to "secure the building," they will put in
a request for an artillery strike, which will pummel the building as well as
most of the surrounding block into a pile of rubble. When the artillery fire
stops, the highest-ranking officer available will run up to the top of the
pile, plant an American flag, and tell anyone who happens to be standing
around that the building has been secured.

If you ask someone from the _Navy_ to "secure the building," they will send an
encrypted message via satellite to a submarine 900 miles away. The submarine
will then fire a Tomahawk cruise missile, which will fly at 500 miles per hour
100 feet off the ground into the building's HVAC exhaust. The explosion of the
warhead will cause the building to collapse in on itself. The Navy will then
issue a press release stating that the building has been secured.

If you ask someone from the _Air Force_ to "secure the building," they will
get you a seven-year lease with an option to buy.

~~~
lightbyte
>If you ask someone from the Air Force to "secure the building," they will get
you a seven-year lease with an option to buy.

Can you explain this? All the other ones made sense, but I don't understand
what this is implying.

~~~
DoreenMichele
It may be, in part, a pay and benefits joke. I have heard the Air Force pays
better.

~~~
chimera77
Generally, pay is the same across all the branches and is public information.
Although, I've heard the AF will give additional "substandard housing" pay if
they require you to stay on an Army base.

It is usually joked that AF members are more office workers than soldiers,
which is kind of what this joke is implying. My recruiter for the AF embraced
that, telling potential recruits the AF has more college degree holders than
all the other branches combined (not sure how true it was).

~~~
DoreenMichele
I was an army wife. I was friends at one time with a former air force wife.
She told me that where army personnel generally get a pay cut during field
time, the air force gets extra pay during field time. Edit: She specifically
told me that where army wives were stressing about money during field
exercises, she was out shopping.

A high percentage of compensation in the military is in the form of benefits,
making it incredibly challenging to quantify or compare to a normal pay
package.

------
phkahler
I'm imagining climbing into a helicopter and seeing the panel with buttons and
switches that were printed in various bright colors - whatever they had on
hand when each part was made - and thinking I'm flying with Fisher Price.

------
solatic
In an era where global overnight civilian shipping is taken for granted, that
it takes the military so long to ship parts that 3D printing parts of
questionable ability to meet spec is considered an "innovative" solution is
just more evidence that the military's logistics are sad and ineffective.

Forget buttons for a second, the article references fans that took a _week_ to
3D print.

Yes, the military has to special-order a wide variety of parts and products
with no civilian market. This makes the argument that some products may be
more expensive. If the cost of manufacturing can be dramatically decreased
through 3D printing, then properly account for cost by front-loading R&D
costs, open-sourcing the designs which were developed with public money, and
buying from the cheapest contractor which meets spec. If that contractor uses
3D printing to offer the lowest cost, cool. If lowest cost doesn't require 3D
printing, who cares? Buy more than the military needs, but not so much as to
be inordinately wasteful, to keep the part constantly in stock across a
variety of globally distributed warehouses close enough to people who would
need that part to be able to deliver requested parts within a week. It's a
hard problem to be sure but more or less solvable (for reasonable
optimizations in the absence of a constantly renewing solution to an NP
complete problem).

Yes, the military has to be able to supply forces in areas where no civilian
infrastructure exists. And if you want to argue for 3D printers somewhere like
Antarctica where supplies can only be delivered for a few months of summer out
of the whole year then that would make sense. If you want to argue that
setting up a full warehouse with all parts which may ultimately prove
necessary in a brand-new FOB in a war zone is at the very least a very
difficult problem because of the difficulty of keeping track of everything
that goes into that FOB not to mention keeping sufficient stock levels then I
_may_ agree with you. Arguing that it's reasonable to wait for months or even
more than a year for parts to be delivered from a warehouse in the continental
US to large, major, permanent bases located within the continental US? No,
hell no, no freaking way, no way to excuse that other than general
incompetence.

Militaries are never going to be nearly as efficient or as quick as UPS /
FedEx / DHL for all their usecases. And that's fine. But taxpayers should not
allow that to serve as an excuse for perennially poor logistics performance
relative to what should be expected in comparison to the private sector.

------
surgeryres
Another use would be 3D printed surgical instruments. There is already a proof
of concept paper written on this topic:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27822724](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27822724)

~~~
jessaustin
Having recently purchased ~400 dental surgical instruments from some dude in
Pakistan for less than $2000 including shipping, and received them in less
than a month even though they were manufactured after I ordered them, I can
imagine no possible purpose of 3D printing surgical instruments. They are
stainless steel and will last approximately forever.

~~~
totallynotcool
>Having recently purchased ~400 dental surgical instruments from some dude in
Pakistan

Might want to look up the IFU or AORN standards for those. I know many places
either toss them out of their kits or are single use only. Something about
pitting and the metal they are made of.

------
bb88
Brilliant. In some cases you don't want someone tearing apart a $300k radio to
figure out what's wrong with it, but on the other hand, a small fix to save
$20k is awesome.

------
chad_strategic
When I was in the Marine Corps, we didn't need a 3D printer, we just
improvised.

Best job I have ever had.

