Our next door neighbor invited us to the General Dynamics open house yesterday. CP and I went and had a great time. The Lincoln plant produces filament-wound pressure tanks, launch tubes, rocket motor casings and rocket body tubes. Most of their stuff is made of carbon fiber, but they also use fiberglass and kevlar filaments.
We got our picture taken in front of a Patriot-3 rocket body. If you look close at the upper end, you'll see a shiny section that has a bunch of little round things. Each of these is a single-use rocket engine that can be fired to provide last-instant guidance as the missile intercepts an incoming rocket. In the lunchroom, they had some amazing videos playing showing all the GD products in action. It was something out of a Dick Cheney wet dream.
I'm used to seeing sales literature for mowers or general manufacturing components, not products designed to kill and maim. This flyer is for a 120 mm Armor-Piercing Fin-Stabilized Discarding-Sabot Tracer round. It has a big tungsten rod that can go thru anything. Muzzle velocity: 5200 feet per second!!!
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