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Yes, a branch of the Army Corps of Engineers did make a cat calendar

44 points| shaftoe444 | 3 years ago |stripes.com | reply

13 comments

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[+] wing-_-nuts|3 years ago|reply
I used to work for the army and the particular section I worked under published 'comic books' that covered how to maintain various military hardware.

Ever wanted to learn how to disassemble and clean a 240B machine gun? You can do that! Examples:

https://www.psmagazine.army.mil/Archive-Index/

[+] BlueTemplar|3 years ago|reply
Impressive, I picked a random one and it had a multi-pages The Martian spoof in the middle with a moral of doing regular maintenance procedures and reading technical manuals !
[+] carapace|3 years ago|reply
Those are awesome!

- - - -

Skimming the Preventative Maintenance comics just a little made me realize that our military heavy machinery is incredibly terribly badly designed. Like it's blindingly obvious from these manuals that these machines have been designed to funnel money from the military to the "industrial complex"! ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military%E2%80%93industrial_co... for those too young to have heard it yet. https://xkcd.com/1053/ )

These comics read like satire (or is it parody?) E.g. Page 3 of https://www.psmagazine.army.mil/Portals/74/PDFs/Archive%20Nu... titled: "M119A2 Howitzers... Stow Before You Go"

> Your M119A2 howitzer’s M137A2 panoramic telescope doesn’t travel well. If you leave it installed during travel, the telescope won’t be working for long.

> Stow the M137A2 for travel. If it’s installed, vibration damages both the telescope and the M187A1 mount.

> Install the canvas fire control telescope mount cover, NSN 1240-00-819-4527, before you tow. That protects the M187A1 mount from debris.

> After you remove the M137A2, install the plastic quick-release protective cover, NSN 5340-01-042-1330. Without the cover, the quick-release handles can loosen and fall off.

Basically, the thing is junk, and has lots of ways to break such that you need to replace (no doubt expensive) subsystems regularly.

Would you want to fight a war with a howitzer like this?

[+] drbeast|3 years ago|reply
Bloody hell I love it. You're never going to forget how to clean a gun now.
[+] jollyllama|3 years ago|reply
Those are Hitachi machines, not CAT.