Except this Ukrainian conflict proved otherwise. Western MIC is making overpriced and difficult to use stuff in small numbers which is at best as capable as Russian stuff but mostly doesn’t come close. It is simply a post-Cold War racket geared toward milking the budgets through sub-nation state warfare.
It cracks me up every time I hear leaks about the inventories of this and that in the NATO countries and how the makers are promising to rump up production, on some items to the same amount per year as the Russians can afford to use per day.
We read in the press an article on this or that weapon system and it shapes our opinion. But when I’ve read those articles written about the systems I was working on, I wonder how on Earth the author got so much wrong. The articles are written not inform, but to get views or to pursue an agenda. Mostly, the military makes no effort to counter those articles, possibly because you can’t prove a negative. “You’re gay.” “No I’m not.”
What a lot of it comes down to in weapons like artillery is Circular Error Probability. If I can make a guaranteed hit on a target with one shot and those shot costs, say $50,000 and the competing system takes many shots and those shots are cheaper for each shot, which is better? The US has to manufacture, ship, store, ship again across an ocean, then truck to where it’s used then that shot is now very much more expensive. Further, you can only have so much capacity in that chain. So when the shot gets to the gun, if it kills the target, it doesn’t matter how much it costs as it can’t easily be replaced if it misses. Don’t forget, in a real war a lot of that chain will cease to function. So that one shot may be the only one you get.
Russia has always had internal lines of supply. Therefore, they can make lots of something cheap and send it by rail. They store thousands of rounds at each location in case the rail lines are destroyed. But having made that huge amount of ammo or systems, they must be maintained. They must be properly stored. While stored they are subject to pilfering, bugs, rats, and sabotage. And each time you fire a round, you wear down the gun it is fired from. On average a Howitzer can fire 2500 rounds before it becomes…first, less accurate, and then…dangerous. If you are firing fifty rounds per day, which is often necessary if your CEP is even mildly large, then you have to send that gun back to the plant to have a new barrel installed.
Staying with artillery as an example, though there are analogs in all US gear, it simply isn’t possible to send back every gun when it needs a new barrel. So every round must land on target. As for how much we can produce of any given system, that would require a lengthy answer. But the short version is, we do not produce huge quantities that we will not be consuming because it is expensive and wasteful. Then at some point whatever you built ages out and must be scrapped or it must be tested, refurbished, etc. We could produce more of anything Congress wants, but then you won’t be spending that money on other things. Everything is a tradeoff. But it is not the company that makes that decision. It is Congress.