Main entrance to Joint Systems Manufacturing Center. An M1A1 Abrams, the main product of the plant, sits on a display platform to the left of the entrance gates. To the right of the gates sits the "Department of Defense - Joint Systems Manufacturing Center" sign, visible in the background to the right of the picture. (Photo: Jade Phoenix Pence)
LIMA, Ohio — David Berger was sworn in as mayor of this one-time industrial boomtown on Dec. 5, 1989. A month later, he was hit with his first dose of bureaucratic reality.
It had been decades since businesses and people in Lima were coming instead of going. But in January, 1990, then-Defense Secretary Dick Cheney upped the ante. He revealed during a visit here plans to close the Lima Army Tank Plant, news that set Mr. Berger into action and foreshadowed much of what would happen with the plant over the next three decades.
Since it opened in 1941, the plant's work force has risen and fallen with the tides of defense spending and the military's needs overseas. Mr. Berger's first brush with the Pentagon led to his earliest battles to secure the city's manufacturing base. The wars have never stopped coming.
Russian T-14 tanks drive during rehearsal for the Victory Day parade in Moscow. (Reuters/Sergei Karpukhin)
It's hard to wage war when nature calls, so Russia is installing toilets in its troubled third-generation T-14 main battle tanks, Russian state media revealed Thursday.
The days of relieving themselves in fuel and ammo cans or hopping out to dig single-use latrines are apparently over for Russia's tank crews, at least those manning the T-14 Armata tanks, Ilya Baranov, a senior official at the Ural Design Bureau of Transport Machine-Building in Yekaterinburg, told TASS News Agency.
It's official: the Russian military has adopted the Uran-9 unmanned ground vehicle developed by weapons manufacturer Kalashnikov Concern despite a reportedly dismal performance during combat testing in Syria, Russian state media reported on Thursday.
