Possible Terror Plot Thwarted at U.K. Base, and Amazon Drones Overwhelm a Texas Town

The Headlines

This episode of The Headlines covers a series of high-stakes developments involving U.S. national security and domestic policy. It explores the

Key takeaways

• Precision ball screws are a critical single-point failure for U.S. national defense due to manufacturing bottlenecks.
• The U.S. military faces lead times of several years to restock essential air defense missiles and weaponry.

Main topics

• U.S. weapons manufacturing bottlenecks
• Iran-U.S. diplomatic tensions

Notable quotes

An immediate single-point failure for our national defense.

Conclusion

The episode highlights how global geopolitical tensions and rapid tech

Transcript preview

Speaker 6 (0:00) Hey, it's Anna Martin from The New York Times. What if I told you you'll never have to hear this line again? Speaker 2 (0:06) Wherever you get your podcasts. Speaker 6 (0:08) Yeah, no, I actually can't tell you that. But you know what I can tell you? A place I think you might want to go. It's the Shows tab in The New York Times app. The place to listen to and now watch full episodes of New York Times shows. The Shows tab. Find it in The New York Times app. Explore The Shows tab and follow a show today. Speaker 5 (0:31) From The New York Times, it's The Headlines. I'm Traci Mumford. Today's Monday, September 28th. Here's what we're covering. Speaker 5 (0:43) President Trump's war against Iran has depleted U.S. weapons stockpiles to troubling levels, according to senior officials. And the timeline for stocking back up on air defense missiles and other critical weaponry is long. A recent report from the Congressional Budget Office said it could take, quote, at least five years. With those warnings in mind, the Times has been looking at some of the factors that make rebuilding the U.S. arsenal so difficult. One of them is a little piece of metal that honestly wouldn't look that out of place in a junk drawer. Speaker 4 (1:17) Ball screws are highly engineered components. They might not look that special, but they are incredibly precise. If it goes in a missile, they can easily be $1,000 screws. And so it just changed my whole concept of what a screw is. Speaker 5 (1:35) Farrah Stockman covers manufacturing for The Times. She says, Precision ball screws, which contain tiny metal balls to reduce friction, are essential not just in missiles, but also planes and other modern technology. And they require incredible attention to detail at the factory level. The ones used in missiles, for example, must meet specs measured in units roughly 100 times smaller than the width of a human hair. And Farah says only a handful of companies are capable of making the ball screws the U.S. military needs. Speaker 4 (2:08) I traveled to like the epicenter of U.S. ball screw manufacturing, which is Saginaw, Michigan. It's where General Motors had a division that made ball screws for steering wheels in the 1930s. And some of these guys still use World War II era machines to make them. And a lot of them have gone bankrupt in recent years or they've been bought up by bigger companies. And that's happening. Exactly at the same time that demand is increasing because all of a sudden we need them for humanoid robots. We need them for submarines. We need them for missiles. You come across these bottlenecks in American manufacturing. There might be a component that no one's even heard of. And all of a sudden it's the thing that's preventing us