SaladShooters and real bullets

Many makers of familiar products used to make weapons for the U.S. military. In tough times, the practice could be making a comeback.

Editor's note: This piece originally appeared on TomDispatch.com.

By Nick Turse

Read more: Military, Vietnam, Cold War, Pentagon, General Motors, Opinion, Nick Turse

Dec. 18, 2008 | Is it possible that one of the Pentagon's contractors has a tripartite business model for our tough economic times: one division that specializes in crockpots, another in adult diapers, and a third in medium-caliber tactical ammunition? Can the maker of the SaladShooter, a hand-held electric shredder/dicer that hacks up and fires out sliced veggies, really be a tops arms manufacturer? Could a company that produces the Pizzazz Pizza Oven also be a merchant of death? And could this company be a model for success in an economy heading for the bottom?

Once upon a time, the military-industrial complex was loaded with household-name companies like General Motors, Ford and Dow Chemical that produced weapons systems and what arms expert Eric Prokosch has called "the technology of killing." Over the years, for economic as well as public relations reasons, many of these firms got out of the business of creating lethal technologies, even while remaining Department of Defense (DoD) contractors.

The military-corporate complex of today is still filled with familiar names from our consumer culture, including defense contractors like iPod-maker Apple, cocoa giant Nestle, ketchup producer Heinz, and chocolate bar maker Hershey, not to speak of Tyson Foods, Procter & Gamble, and the Walt Disney Co. But while they may provide the everyday products that allow the military to function, make war, and carry out foreign occupations, most such civilian firms no longer dabble in actual arms manufacture.

Whirlpool: Then and now

Take the Whirlpool Corp., which bills itself as "the world's leading manufacturer and marketer of major home appliances" and boasts annual sales of more than $19 billion to consumers in more than 170 countries. Whirlpool was recently recognized as "one of the World's Most Ethical Companies by the Ethisphere Institute." The company also professes a "strong" belief in "ethical values" that dates back almost 100 years to founders who believed "there is no right way to do a wrong thing."

In the middle of the last century, however -- as Prokosch has documented -- Whirlpool was engaged in what many might deem a wrong thing. In 1957, Whirlpool took over work on flechettes -- razor-sharp darts with fins at the blunt end -- for the U.S. military. While International Harvester, the prior Pentagon contractor producing them, had managed to pack only 6,265 of these deadly darts into a 90mm canister round, Whirlpool set to work figuring out a way to cram almost 10,000 flechettes into the same delivery vehicle. Its goal: to "improve the lethality of the canisters." (In addition, Whirlpool also reportedly worked on "Sting Ray" -- an Army project involving a projectile filled with flechettes coated in a still-undisclosed chemical agent.)

In 1967, an Associated Press report noted that U.S. troops were using new flechette artillery rounds to "spray thousands of dart-shaped steel shafts over broad areas of the jungle or open territory" in Vietnam. "I've seen reports of enemy soldiers actually being nailed to trees by these things," commented one Army officer.

On a recent trip to Vietnam, I spoke to a Vietnamese witness who had seen such "pin bullets" employed by U.S. forces many times in those years. In one case, Bui Van Bac recalled that a woman from his village, spotted by U.S. aircraft while she was walking in a rice paddy, was gravely wounded by them. Local guerillas came to the woman's aid and brought her to a hospital where a surgeon found a number of extremely sharp, 3-centimeters-long "pins" inside her body. Medically, it was all but hopeless and the woman died.

A top player in lethal technologies back then, Whirlpool is now among the tiniest defense contractors. While, in recent years, the company has ignored requests for information from TomDispatch.com on its dealings with the Pentagon, records indicate that last year, for example, it received just over $105,000 from the Department of Defense, most of which apparently went toward the purchase of kitchen appliances and household furnishings.

Similarly, Whirlpool's predecessor in the flechette game, International Harvester, is now Navistar International Corporation. Navistar Defense, a division of the company, remains one of the Pentagon's stealth "billion dollar babies." But while it did more than $1 billion in business with the DoD last year, Navistar appears to have been building vehicles for the Pentagon, not creating anti-personnel weaponry. There are, however, companies that can't seem to say goodbye to lethal technologies.

National Presto Industries

National Presto Industries traces its history to the 1905 founding of the Northwestern Iron and Steel Works in Eau Claire, Wis., according to the Business & Company Resource Center. By 1908, the company was making industrial steam pressure cookers and, in 1915, began making models for home use. On the eve of the U.S. entry into World War II, the company entered the arms game when it scored a multimillion-dollar contract to produce artillery fuses. Even with that deal in hand, it was reportedly on the verge of bankruptcy when its new president, Lewis Phillips, landed a series of other lucrative military contracts.

In the early years of the Cold War, about the time Whirlpool was getting into the flechette business, National Presto Industries had just introduced "a revolutionary new concept in electric cooking ... a complete line of fully immersible electric cooking appliances employing a removable heat control" -- and was about to launch "the world's first automatic, submersible stainless steel coffee maker." The company was also still churning out war materiel.

In 1953, National Presto announced plans to build a multimillion-dollar plant to produce 105mm artillery shells. In 1955, it was awarded millions to make howitzer shells for the Army, and the next year, millions from the Air Force for fighter-bomber parts. By 1958, company president Lewis Phillips would declare, "The future of this company in Eau Claire and hence the security of our jobs here is now almost wholly dependent upon defense contracts awarded by the U.S. Government." When the Army canceled its contracts with Presto in 1959, Phillips lamented, "With little or no notice, this Government decision has forced us completely out of the manufacturing business here in Eau Claire."

Next page: Death is our business and business is good