Made up of 23 depots, arsenals and ammunition plants, the U.S. Army’s organic industrial base is a vital part of the service’s success on a modern, complex battlefield. To keep pace with Army efforts to transform continuously while facing fast-moving threats and evolving technology, the service is investing close to $100 million to modernize its organic industrial base facilities and equipment.

As the 15-year modernization plan unfolds, the depots, arsenals and ammunition plants continue to clank, hum and whir their way into the future of modern warfare, rapidly innovating and adapting to meet technological advances.

Automation and robotics have impacted manufacturing and maintenance, but it still takes experienced minds and skilled hands to meet the mission.

At the core of the organic industrial base is a 16,000-strong workforce of artisans, resource managers and trainers committed to outfitting the joint warfighter with needed capabilities to fight, win and return home safely.

Here are some of their stories.

Anniston Army Depot

While his friends were flipping burgers or selling baubles at the mall, Cortez Calix was building a career at Anniston Army Depot in Alabama. He was a 16-year-old high school student when he entered the depot’s electronics training program that “all the kids wanted to be part of, because the depot provides one of the best jobs in the local region,” he said. “The skill set they were preparing me for also was preparing me for the professional work environment,” said Calix, who is now 35 and a seasoned electronics integrated systems mechanic in the depot’s laser thermal division. “Never working before, being around adults, I felt like it helped mature me a lot faster.”

After graduating from college with all expenses paid by the depot, Calix was off and running into an electronics career, periodically moving into jobs of higher responsibility. A move into management is possible, but he is fulfilled by the work he does in the shop and the people with whom he works.

“The thing about the electronics job is always something new, it’s always a new program, a new electronic system that I have to learn so I can teach the rest of the electronics workers,” he said. “A lot of electronics are getting smaller, more compact, but at the same time more complicated.”

Calix and his team work on “anything electronic in a combat vehicle,” he said, explaining that when vehicles are disassembled in another part of the depot, the electronics components come to his shop to be torn down and rebuilt with new hardware, updated software and fresh paint before being reinstalled.

He likened his team to the “pit crew for the American warfighter,” where there is a culture of camaraderie and teamwork, and no one is “too proud to help anyone out.”

“Everything you’re working on, there’s a life behind it,” he said. “You really can’t walk anywhere in our building and not be reminded that this is who we’re doing it for. We’re doing it for the warfighter.”

Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center

Scott Ambort was once a machinist at Illinois’ Rock Island Arsenal-Joint Manufacturing and Technology Center, known since the Civil War as a manufacturing and production hub for parts and systems critical to the Army’s combat readiness. “I came in as an apprentice, hired off the street,” said Ambort, who graduated from the center’s four-year machinist apprenticeship program in 2009 and “spent almost a decade on the shop floor.”

In 2019, Ambort took over as director of the apprenticeship program, which has been closed and restarted multiple times since 1910, as needs and conditions fluctuated, he said.

Now is one of those times for the program, which has been shuttered since 2023 because “we had no more apprentices,” said Ambort, who is temporarily working as chief of the methods and standards division. “I keep counting down the days that we can hire some more apprentices.”

The program historically has had trouble attracting young candidates because they don’t test well, “they haven’t lived enough life,” Ambort said. “I was 35 when I came in, … and I wasn’t even close to the youngest person in my class, so there’s a real struggle.”

There also is a dearth of people qualified in the skill trades, Ambort said, adding that with a program like the center’s apprenticeship, “you earn while you learn.”

“You can go to college and spend $250,000, or I’m going to pay you $250,000 over four years to learn a trade, then you’re going to make almost $100,000 a year every year afterwards, with no debt,” he said.

Despite the slowdown in new apprentices, Ambort said the center still hums with plenty of work to go around. He recalled the days in the early 2000s of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan when it was the norm to work two months straight of 12-hour days manufacturing up-
armor kits for troops downrange.

“Instead of building a gun to do some damage, we shifted our focus into armor to protect our soldiers and make sure they could get back home,” Ambort said. “I’d go back and do that in a heartbeat.”

Letterkenny Army Depot

Soldiers who operate Patriot missile systems may well know Mike Rogers. As an equipment specialist working on Patriots at Letterkenny Army Depot in Pennsylvania, Rogers also deploys to provide in-field technical assistance and to teach soldiers more about the systems they operate.

“There’s nothing greater than having the opportunity to show the soldiers out there what they have, give them in-depth knowledge, something they just don’t get as the handler, and they suck it up like sponges,” said Rogers, a Navy veteran who retired in 2003 after 20 years of service in shipboard aviation ordnance.

“When I was in the Navy, we would get technical assistants come out to the ships to help us with our various missiles, the stuff we didn’t get through our normal maintenance books,” he said.

Rogers and his wife, who is from Pennsylvania, moved there after he retired, and he picked up a job as a truck driver, passing Letterkenny all the time and not giving it much thought until a friend suggested he apply for a job there.

That was 12 years ago. Since then, working as an ordnance equipment mechanic, electronics technician and equipment specialist, Rogers’ experience has made him an inspector, trainer and floor leader.

Training future artisans is what he likes best, he said, because he’s committed to ensuring that when he retires, his knowledge doesn’t retire with him. “The Patriot missile system is designed to intercept incoming threats, so you are protecting the soldier, the base, you’re protecting potential innocent civilians. That’s the way I look at it,” Rogers said. “I never dreamt that I would have the opportunity to do this after my career in the Navy. I’m very proud to be serving the warfighter.”

Watervliet Arsenal

More than 18 years ago, Tom Mulheren sought to do something more interesting than sitting behind a desk. He found his future at Watervliet Arsenal, New York, the nation’s oldest operating arsenal where tank cannons, towed and self-propelled artillery and mortar systems are manufactured.

After completing the arsenal’s four-year apprenticeship program, Mulheren became a journeyman machinist, and today he is Watervliet’s business operations manager in the industrial operations and production directorate.

Over time, he said, he’s witnessed the modernization or replacement of tools used to make products and an increase in skills required to operate those tools.

“It’s a people business … it’s not an automated process,” Mulheren said. “No cannon barrel or breach mechanism is the same. Metal shifts and moves and twists, and you [need] skilled artisans on the shop floor who are trained in those specific operations and know how to utilize those machine tools.”

Zachary Jarboe is one of those rising skilled artisans. He started at Watervliet over seven years ago as a bench assembler. With his background in auto mechanics, it was a good fit, but he wanted to learn more. “I was seeing all these machines running around me and very interested in how they worked, and that prompted me to join the apprenticeship,” said Jarboe, who, after almost four years in the apprenticeship program, now oversees and trains other apprentices.

Jarboe soon will be one of those skilled artisans on the shop floor.

Many of the workers at Watervliet Arsenal are veterans who have been at the operational edge, but veterans and civilians alike share a distinct pride of mission.

“Most of the people I talk to about it do feel like I need to make this perfect because I know on the other end is going to be our service members using this,” Jarboe said. “Ultimately, it’s a giant weapon. It could be dangerous if it’s not machined properly.”

Tobyhanna Army Depot

When Keith Knecht applied to work at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Pennsylvania, he did so with a resume indicating more than two decades of machining and supervisory experience.

He gained his wealth of trade skills at his grandfather’s aerospace machining company where he began working at the age of 15 and, bolstered by studies at a trade school and hands-on experience, moved up through the company ranks.

Knecht’s father was a soldier who worked on the Army’s radios and communications equipment. He also worked at Tobyhanna, so Knecht was familiar with the depot and knew it as a “great place to work.”

“I had always heard of Tobyhanna Army Depot … a lot of good things, so eventually I applied,” said Knecht, who worked there for a year as a contractor before he “switched over to the federal side as a machinist.”

Knecht is now chief of the depot’s machining branch, where he said artisans use manual and automated equipment to fabricate precision parts out of materials like plastic, aluminum, steel and armor plates for robotics, electronics, radar and communications equipment.

The machining shop is “constantly modernizing with the latest and greatest technology because the machining-world technology is changing rapidly,” Knecht said.

“Back in the day, [soldier] systems were very large, now everything’s the size of your cellphone. We’re seeing that even in the machining world, where we’re machining a lot of smaller parts, more detailed parts, more high-tolerance type parts going into the field for soldiers,” he said.

In the summertime, the sight of soldiers visiting the depot for training reinforces the mission for the men and women who work there.

“They come into the shop, they’ll have their green uniforms on, and [the artisans] can actually see the person that they’re doing the work for, so we’re very proud of the fact that we work for the warfighter,” Knecht said.