Great American Brands Of 2022

With the renewed interested in American manufacturing, this would be a great time to list my favorite picks for brands that are made pretty much entirely in the U.S. What makes these picks special is they became famous in spite of unimaginative naming and almost entirely without advertising. Instead, they were built with what public relations professionals call earned media: content written about a company or its products that wasn’t paid for by that company. They rose on the backs of published news reports and viral Internet content. Here are my favorites.

Top Pick: HIMARS

HIMARS stands for High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System. It is a mobile multiple-launch rocket system developed by Lockheed MartinLMT
Missiles and Fire Control, that is mounted on a vehicle made by BAE Systems. As we know, the Ukrainians have brought this product widespread brand recognition through their high profile usage. It is an amazing product, with a fire control computer that apparently can receive target data over a secure data link. It takes a crew of three to operate, but with the aid of the fire control computer, they can aim and launch in tens of seconds, and then drive off to avoid retaliatory strikes.

The rockets used in this system are pretty incredible. They are GPS guided, which means there are actuators that control fins as well as canards on the nose to improve accuracy. Considering the precision with which these things can hit, it creates intense stress on the internal electronics as they are shot out of a barrel. This is a true testament to American manufacturing prowess, even though the product naming might not reflect the strongest branding vision. But the product has been extensively field-proven, and I imagine there will be great future demand in places like Eastern Europe or the Baltic Region, or anywhere else in our increasing insecure world that might become a future hot spot. If only we could produce them faster.

M777

This is another product with bland naming, but this 155 mm howitzer is a workhorse artillery piece. It started out as a U.K. design by Vickers Shipbuilding and Engineering, but then the company was bought by BAE Systems. It is assembled in Pascagoula, Mississippi by United Defense LP. It is lightweight, thanks to its titanium barrel and titanium castings, which made it 7,000 pounds lighter compared to the M198 which it replaced. That means it is easier to tow around after firing. People who know me know I love titanium for its strength to weight ratio and its resistance to corrosion. The Ukrainians have once again done a lot of great field demonstrations, and turned it into a great brand.

The M777 relies on GPS guidance as well for its precision. It uses either the Raytheon M982 Excalibur GPS-guided shell (made in Tuscon, Arizona) or other standard projectiles. The Excalibur uses a jam-resistant GPS receiver to update an on-board inertial guidance system, and it deploys fins after firing to get target accuracy within two meters. These things apparently have an on-board mission computer, which means you can apply software updates (and according to Raytheon there have been some). All of this is astounding when you consider the shells leave the barrel at a muzzle velocity of 827 meters per second. This is another great product that is made in America.

Switchblade

Now here’s some great branding right from the start. The Switchblade drone is made by AeroVironmentAVAV
, and if you go to the company’s website you can see wings and tail pieces automatically deploy after launch, which probably gave the idea for its name. It is a small precision “loitering” missile system, which means it can fly around and strike its target based on real-time feed of target coordinates and video monitoring. This product must have some pretty sophisticated electronics behind it, as well as some impressive software. And I never even heard about it until this year!

Top Pick: Javelin

This has to be one of the best-known brands of the year. This shoulder-fired anti-armor system (officially the FGM-148) is produced by the Javelin Joint Venture, a partnership of Raytheon Technologies and Lockheed Martin. It really demonstrated its credentials during the early days of the Russian invasion. It has two attack modes: top attack to hit the weakest point of a tank, and direct-attach for caves, bunkers, and soft targets. As the Ukrainians demonstrated, its self-guided rounds allowed a fire-and-forget mode to give defenders a lot of mobility. It’s a mainstay of the U.S. Army and Marine Corps, and its widespread accolades virtually guarantee that this made in America product will continue to be a hot seller. There’s even an Internet meme – Saint Javelin, a religious figure cradling this rocket launcher. Talk about earned media!

What makes all of these products special

All these products depend on sophisticated microelectronics, exotic chemicals and materials, and precision metal fabrication. The fact that they all use GPS for their guidance systems means there are components mounted on printed circuit boards (PCBs) connecting sensors, communications chips, and flight actuator controls, among other things. There are dozens of PCBs in the defense systems mentioned above.

The PCBs and electronic components must withstand staggering g-forces and vibration as they operate in the most challenging environments. Launching them with a rocket or explosive charge puts them under considerably more stress than say dropping your iPhone.

The ongoing conflict in Ukraine has highlighted the global demand for American made defense products. Though in the U.S. we only make four percent of the world’s PCBs and 12% of semiconductor chips, we rely on domestic supply for defense applications. But for critical infrastructure, we depend on other nations, primarily in Asia, for the microelectronics powering medical, telecommunications, and computing equipment. As we move to shore up domestic manufacturing capabilities, the Ukrainians have helped tell the world that we can manufacture some truly awesome products in the U.S.