Having a screw loose ...

A ball screw prototype designed by Saginaw Precision, based Michigan.
Only a handful of American companies are capable of making these screws for the U.S. military.

Yours truly love stuff like this. Precise, kinda odd looking and serving one purpose really really well brings back fond memories when America used to make things like this with pride and competency. Sadly, no more. Ronnie contributed to this lack of making anything anymore in off shoring manufacturing to gin profits for stockholders and now, the Trump administration amplifies the disaster tenfold by becoming the one entity people now properly identify as having a screw loose when it comes to trying to do anything of consequence without making it worse.
Think the reflecting pool fiasco as example No. 1.

The reflecting pool on 2 May, 28 May, 7 June, 12 June, 16 June and 18 June of this year.
Composite: Reuters

It’s a spiral carved into metal, attached to a mechanism that might not look out of place in a junk drawer. Almost no one outside a small, obsessive community of machinists and engineers has ever heard of it. But this humble component, called a precision ball screw, is essential to producing Patriot missiles, airplanes and humanoid robots.

As the Trump administration works to replace or upgrade weapons systems depleted by the war in Iran, these screws are in short supply, adding months or even years to the time it takes to make a missile.

“It has created a choke point,” said Nick Kolar, executive vice president of sales for aerospace, defense and space at Umbragroup, an Italian ball screw maker with a factory in Saginaw, Mich. He estimated that demand has increased as much as 50 percent since 2020.

Ball screws are far from the only component of a missile that can be hard to source. Rare-earth magnets, solid rocket motors and high-grade explosives also pose a challenge. But the long lead times on something as seemingly simple as a screw illustrate a festering problem with the American industrial base.

A tiny metal ball is inserted into the nut mechanism of a precision ball screw, an essential component for producing technologies as varied as Patriot missiles and humanoid robots.