By Christopher Overfelt

While Kansas City, Missouri, plays a critical role in our nation’s nuclear weapons program through the National Security Campus located on 150 Highway in south Kansas City, the wider Midwestern corridor plays an equally important role in our nation’s conventional weapons program. The United States military refers to its capacity to produce conventional weapons as its Organic Industrial Base, and efforts are now underway to increase the United States weapons-making capacities. (Editor’s note: Christopher Overfelt will present this issue of Midwest Weapons Report at the time/place noted above. Do come!)

In 2022, Congress created the Commission on the National Defense Strategy as an independent body charged with assessing the 2022 National Defense Strategy. The Commission released its final report on July 29, 2024.The following passages are taken directly from the text of the Commission on National Defense Strategy. The commission states that:

“Congress should pass a supplemental appropriation immediately to begin a multiyear investment in the national security innovation and industrial base. Funding should support U.S. allies at war; expand industrial capacity, including infrastructure for shipbuilding and the ability to surge munitions production; increase and accelerate military construction to expand and harden facilities in Asia; secure access to critical minerals; and invest in a digital and industrial workforce.”

• The commission goes on to state that “the American public (…) have not internalized the costs of the United States losing its position as a world superpower.” When they say this, what they mean is that the American people must be ready to sacrifice their own lives in order to secure the enormous profits that US foreign policy brings to the billionaire class. The weapons platforms that I will be examining with you today are all produced here in the Midwest and they all form the lynchpin to violent US foreign policy. They are the lynchpin to all the enormous profits raked in by the billionaire class. Without the Mark 80 bomb series that is produced by General Dynamics in Dallas, Texas, and filled with explosives in McAlister, Oklahoma, without the JDAM guidance kits and the GBU-39 250 pound bombs made by Boeing in St. Louis, Missouri, and without the 155mm artillery shells made by American Ordnance in Parsons, Kansas, and Middletown, Iowa, the United States cannot inflict upon the world the mass amounts of violence that is required to secure billionaire profits.

• The MK-80 bomb series, manufactured by General Dynamics Ordinance and Tactical Systems at its munitions plant in Garland, Texas, is the single most important weapons system used by the American Empire to commit genocide. Its ease of manufacture, cheap production cost, and mass lethality rate make it the primary choice of the American Empire for destroying civilian infrastructure, committing mass slaughter, and effecting mass displacement. This has been clearly illustrated in Gaza, Lebanon, and Syria over the past year, where the number of MK-80 bombs dropped by the American Empire is in the tens of thousands. Between the dates of Oct. 7 – Nov. 17 in 2023 alone, the American Empire dropped over 600 MK-84 bombs on Gaza. The MK-84 is the heaviest and deadliest of the MK-80 bomb series, and documentation shows that many of the bombs resulted in civilian casualty rates of over fifty to one hundred deaths for each bomb dropped.

• The MK-80 bomb series has been produced in its current form since the 1940s. It has a very basic explosive filled pipe design with a simple fuse. Because of its simple design and ease of manufacture, it is used by the American Empire for almost exclusively terroristic purposes. The rudimentary design of the bomb requires the combat aircraft carrying it to fly very close to its target, rendering the MK-80 bomb series obsolete by modern air defenses. The result is that the MK-80 bomb series is used exclusively against defenseless civilian populations who lack a modern military to defend them. The MK-80 bomb series is used to murder as many members of a population as possible, as cheaply and efficiently as possible. There is no other purpose for these bombs. They are terroristic by their very nature, used to coerce defenseless civilian populations into serving the interests of American Empire. As more and more communities across the global south seek to shed the yoke of American Empire, the MK-80 bomb series will be used in ever greater numbers to effect mass slaughter.

• The GD-OTS plant where the individual components of the MK-80 bomb series are initially gathered together and assembled is in the northern suburbs of Dallas at 1200 N. Glenbrook Dr. in Garland, Texas. The plant sits squarely in the middle of a suburban neighborhood, immediately across the street from Garland High School’s football and baseball fields. The raw materials that are used to forge the casings of the MK-80 bomb series (iron and aluminum alloys) and the internal components are sourced from several different locations and then shipped to the Garland, Texas, plant. The shipments arrive by truck at the loading docks on the north side of the plant on Travis Street. The components are carried by private commercial contractors in semi-trucks. The plant’s loading docks on Travis Street have been the location of multiple protests in 2024, organized by the Palestinian Youth Movement and Texas for Palestine. On March 7, 2024, 23 people were arrested while blocking the entrance to the loading docks of the plant on Travis Street. The trucks bringing shipments into the plant were delayed several hours while the protesters were arrested. 

• After the initial forging and assembly of the bomb casings are completed at the Garland, Texas, plant, they are then shipped to the McAlester Army Ammunition Plant at 1C Tree Rd. in McAlester, Oklahoma, for final assembly. MCAAP is located in Pittsburg County, Oklahoma, 8.4 miles south of McAlester on US highway 69 South. The Indian Nation Turnpike also serves the area and Interstate 40 is only 40 miles to the north. Located 85 miles south of Tulsa and 120 miles southeast of Oklahoma City, McAlester is within easy driving distance to major metropolitan areas. MCAAP is the single largest ammunition depot in the United States. It serves as an assembly, storage and shipping site for dozens of different weapons platforms and works in conjunction with several different weapons manufacturers including General Dynamics and Raytheon. MCAAP not only serves as the final assembly site for these weapons platforms but it also directly facilitates the weapons sales and contracts that exist between private weapons manufacturers and foreign countries.

• At the MCAAP facility, the raw bomb bodies that are produced at the GD-OTS site in Garland, Texas, are packed and filled with explosives to the specifications requested by the purchasing organization. The MK-80 bomb series comes in different sizes, for example a 500 lb. bomb, a 1,000 lb. bomb, and a 2,000 lb. bomb. The type of explosive can also differ between bombs depending on desired effect, and a thicker outer shell and nose cone can be used for penetrator bombs.  

• The different sizes, attachments, and packing contents of the MK-80 bomb series all come with different model designations, for example the MK-84, BLU-109, etc. However, they are all produced from the same basic bomb bodies produced in Garland, Texas. To date, there have been no significant protests at the MCAAP facility in McAlester, Oklahoma.

• The MK-80 bomb series produced jointly by GDOTS and MCAAP can be modified with the Joint Direct Attack Munition or JDAM guidance kits produced by The Boeing Corporation. Not all of the MK-80 bombs are fitted with guidance kits, as the JDAM system adds significantly to the cost of the basic bomb design. It is estimated that the American Empire has conducted over 30,000 airstrikes on Gaza in the past year, and it is estimated that forty percent of those strikes consisted of unguided “dumb” bombs, or the basic MK-80 series bomb. The remaining sixty percent of the airstrikes incorporated some kind of guidance systems for the bombs, including the Boeing-produced JDAM kits.

• JDAM-equipped bombs are guided by an integrated inertial guidance system coupled to a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver, giving them a published range of up to 15 nautical miles (28 km). When installed on a bomb, the JDAM kit is given a GBU (Guided Bomb Unit) nomenclature, superseding the MK-80 or BLU (Bomb, Live Unit) nomenclature of the bomb to which it is attached. The key components of the system consist of a tail section with aerodynamic control surfaces, a (body) strake kit, and a combined inertial guidance system and GPS guidance control unit. Individual service members of the various militaries who buy JDAM kits from Boeing are trained and instructed on how to attach the JDAM kits to the individual MK-80 series bombs. They are sold separately from the bomb bodies themselves and are attached by the purchaser at the purchaser’s location, wherever that might be (usually various military installations around the world).

• The company and address to which the US government contract for the JDAM production is given is The Boeing Company at 6200 JS McDonnell Blvd., St. Louis, Mo. This address corresponds to an office building in the St. Louis suburb of Berkeley, adjacent to Lambert International Airport. The Boeing Company has many different manufacturing facilities in the area of Lambert International Airport and its adjacent suburbs. Boeing Defense, Space and Security is a division of The Boeing Company and it is this division that oversees the production and manufacture of the JDAM weapons platform. The facility where the JDAM manufacture takes place is Boeing Building 598, which is part of a separate manufacturing site in the St. Louis suburb of St. Charles, Mo. This site consists of several large manufacturing hangars, storage facilities for weapons and hazardous materials, as well as several waste-water lagoons. It sits right on the Missouri River, about 12 miles west of Lambert International Airport. The address for Boeing Building 598 is 2980 Mo-94 Hwy., St Charles, Mo 63301.

• The Boeing Company does not offer many specifics on the Building 598 site. The only reference it mentions is a short blurb on its website which states, “More than 500,000 Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits have been built at Boeing’s award-winning, modern production facility in St. Charles, Mo.” In 2017, The Boeing Company gave a tour to reporters of Building 598. Jeffrey Meywes, the production manager of Building 598 at the time, referenced the production of the Small Diameter Bomb, a different weapons platform which is also produced at Building 598, and the JDAM kits. He told reporters, “We often get bomb damage assessment within 48 hours.” Meaning that within 48 hours, the Small Diameter Bombs and JDAMS are trucked to the airport, flown nine time zones to the Middle East, unloaded, assembled, taken to the flight line, mounted on a combat jet, programmed, flown to the target area, and released, after which the pilot returns and debriefs the mission, and the USAF forwards to the company an assessment of how well the bomb worked (as reported in Air and Space Magazine, 2017).

• Building 598 has been the site of many protests in 2023 and 2024. Protests have been organized by We Are Dissenters, St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee, Black Men Build St. Louis, the Boeing Arms Genocide campaign and Resist St. Louis. On Nov 6, 2023, protesters succeeded in blockading the gate to the loading docks of the St. Charles facility and Building 598, and temporarily shut down shipments for the day.

• As mentioned above, the Small Diameter Bomb weapons platform is also produced by Boeing at Building 598 in St. Charles, Mo. The Small Diameter Bomb, designated the GBU-39 in military nomenclature, is a 250-pound bomb that is manufactured with a GPS guidance system incorporated into its casing. The American empire has used this bomb extensively in the Gaza genocide. In October of 2023, Boeing expedited a delivery of over 1,000 Small Diameter Bombs to Israel.

• The 155mm artillery round has been a primary munition used in the American Empire’s genocide of Gaza. Shortly after Oct 7, 2023, tens of thousands of these artillery rounds were expedited to occupied Palestine for use in the Empire’s genocide. In anticipation of future worldwide wars, the United States has rapidly increased its manufacturing capabilities of the 155mm artillery round in the last two years. The U.S. Army awarded contracts worth $1.5 billion in the last two weeks of September 2023 to increase artillery round production capacity. New locations for processing these munitions have been established in Mesquite, TX, Parsons, KS, Niceville, FL, and Westerville, OH. These new processing sites have been set up within the last two years to supplement the already established processing and manufacturing sites for the 155mm round in Scranton, PA, Lonestar, TX, and Middletown, IA. Production is slated to increase to 100,000 rounds produced per month in the US, up from only 10,000 per month previous to 2023.

• The 155mm artillery round is 2.5 feet long and weighs 100 lbs. It is fired from a howitzer cannon, which can be towed or self-propelled, resembling a tank with its long barrel mounted atop mechanized tracks. The facilities producing the 155mm artillery round are divided into forging and production facilities and load and pack (LAP) facilities. The primary contractor forging the 155mm metal outer shells or casings is General Dynamics Ordinance and Tactical Systems, Inc., while the primary contractor providing the load and pack services is Day and Zimmerman through its subsidiary American Ordnance, LLC. Production facilities can encompass forging processes, taking raw materials and producing the shells, production of the propelling charge cartridge cases, or LAP facilities (Load and Pack) which only encompass gathering materials and assembling the completed munitions. These separate facilities, and the two primary contractors GD-OTS and American Ordnance, LLC, all work in conjunction to produce the complete 155mm artillery round.

• Forging Processes – A majority of the outer shells for 155mm artillery rounds are produced by General Dynamics Ordinance and Tactical Systems at the Scranton Army Ammunition Plant in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and at the GD-OTS plant in Mesquite, Texas. The Scranton Army Ammunition Plant, operated by GD-OTS, has produced the 155mm artillery shell for several decades now, and the plant has been expanded in the last two years to increase its production to approximately 36,000 shells per month.

• The General Dynamics-OTS plant in Mesquite, TX, completed construction in 2024 and began forging 155mm artillery shells on May 29, 2024 in anticipation of greater demand for the artillery round in wider world wars. Mesquite, Texas is an eastern suburb of Dallas, Texas. The 440,000-plus-square-foot manufacturing and warehousing facility sits indiscreetly in an industrial park near the intersection of I-635 and U.S. Highway 80 and employs more than 350 workers. The address of the GD-OTS plant in Mesquite is 19750 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy, Mesquite, TX 75150. The 155mm munitions plant is only a half hour south of the GD-OTS MK-80 bomb series plant in Garland, Texas, making the suburbs of Dallas, Texas, the heart of the Empire’s genocide in Gaza. Both of General Dynamics’ munitions plants in Dallas are entrenched indiscreetly among suburban houses and neighborhoods, directly endangering the lives of those who live around them as they could be prime military targets. The Mesquite plant forges 30,000 155mm artillery shells per month. The plant was constructed rapidly to accommodate the increased demand for artillery shells used by the empire in Ukraine, Lebanon, and Gaza.

• These two GD-OTS forging facilities work in direct coordination with the load and pack facility at the Iowa Army Ammunition Plant, operated by American Ordnance, LLC, in Middletown, Iowa. American Ordnance, LLC, is a division of and is owned by Day and Zimmerman, Inc. Middletown, Iowa, is located in southeast Iowa, right next to the Mississippi River along the Illinois and Missouri borders. While the GD-OTS facilities in Mesquite and Scranton forge the outer shells, IAAP gathers together the various parts of the 155mm artillery round and assembles them into the final product. Each artillery round is assembled from components manufactured across the country, including the projectile or case, bulk energetics, propellant, primer and a fuze. The 19,011-acre Iowa Army Ammunition Plant is located at 17571 DMC Highway 79, Middletown, Iowa 52638; 8 miles west of Burlington, Iowa. It contains 767 buildings, 271 igloos and a storage capacity of 1,100,775 square feet. It also has 143 miles of roads and 102 miles of railroads.

• General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems, Inc., also operates Load and Pack facilities in Camden and Hampton, Arkansas, for 155mm propelling charges. The propelling charges are explosive cartridges that provide the force to propel the 155mm shell out of its cannon and to its intended target. The addresses of GD-OTS’ Camden and Hampton munitions facilities are 6258 Spellman Rd., Camden, AR 71701 and 6345 AR 203 Highway, Hampton, AR. Camden, AR, and Hampton, AR, adjoin one another in southern Arkansas and are home to a munitions industrial park that houses the munitions making facilities of General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Armtec, and more. The area is thousands of acres in size and contains hundreds of storage facilities for explosive munitions.  

• The rapid expansion of the production of the 155mm artillery round has extended into Kansas, as well. Day and Zimmerman, Kansas, LLC, a division of Day and Zimmerman which owns American Ordnance, LLC, operates a munitions plant in Parsons, KS, at the now closed Kansas Army Ammunition Plant. The Day and Zimmerman munitions plant is located at 23102 Rush Rd., Parsons, KS 67357. The plant currently acts as a Load and Pack facility for 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm artillery round explosive cartridges.

• In February of 2023, American Ordnance, LLC, was given a contract to set up a Load and Pack facility at the Day and Zimmerman, Kansas, LLC, Parsons plant for the 155mm artillery round. This 155mm Load and Pack facility will supplement the already established 60mm, 81mm, and 120mm Load and Pack lines at the plant.

This concludes my presentation of the Midwest Weapons Report. As evidenced above, the Midwest US is the backbone of weapons manufacturing and weapons storage for the American Empire. The Empire is actively expanding existing weapons manufacturing locations in the Midwest while also building new manufacturing facilities. Those who determine American foreign policy have chosen unending, catastrophic warfare, and they expect us in the Midwest to follow along in compliance by providing our labor, our taxes, our sons and daughters, our silence, and our unwillingness to defy violent abusive power. 

–Christopher Overfelt served in the Air Force National Guard in Topeka, Kan., from 2002 to 2011 as an aircraft hydraulics mechanic. He deployed to Turkey and Qatar in 2009 in support of Operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. He is a member of the KC chapter of Veterans for Peace and serves on the board of PeaceWorks KC. © Chris Overfelt, Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 4.0 International License.