Posted on 11/19/2022 3:34:13 AM PST by TigerLikesRoosterNew
In some of my earliest coverage of the Ukraine war, I noted that just comparing defence spending between countries was extremely difficult and not all budgets are created equal.
Today following a Patron vote, I'm going to try and unpack that a little more by diving into the world of defence economics and production 101. In doing so, we're going to try and answer some questions.
Why does America dominate the global arms market? How can a 5th generation fighter be cheaper than those decades older than it?
And why do so many nations chose to buy in arms rather than build their own despite the fact it leaves them highly reliant on other countries?
Timestamps:
00:00 -- Opening words
01:33 -- What am I covering?
02:46 -- SPONSOR: GROUND NEWS
04:20 -- What's in a defence budget
05:56 -- People Costs
07:03 -- System Costs
09:04 -- System Sourcing
09:36 -- Example 1: Bring it in
12:29 -- Example 2: Domestic production
14:58 -- The make or buy decision
16:49 -- The hard decisions
17:58 -- Foreign Import
19:01 -- Kit Assembly
20:28 -- Licensed/local production
22:22 -- Domestic productions
23:07 -- Why not indigenise
23:28 -- Barriers to domestic production
23:56 -- Complexity and cost of entry
27:03 -- Indigenous fighter programs
29:16 -- Manufacturing scale
31:50 -- Development risks
33:59 -- Competitive advantage
36:55 -- Case Study: The US advantage
37:21 -- Dominant consumer & producer
39:59 -- Production costs
41:13 -- Scale
43:17 -- Learning curves
45:03 -- Risk mitigation
46:54 -- Accumulated advantage
49:40 -- American arms ecosystem
52:42 -- A tale of two aircrafts
55:26 -- A question for another time…
55:57 -- Conclusion
57:13 -- Channel update
US Production advantage?
What production advantage?
US production industry can’t even keep up with just 155 artillery shells for example.
Takes a year to produce 1000 javelins.
LMAO.
US is being deindustrialized.
EU is being deindustrialized.
UK being deindustrialized.
Where is industry?
Russia.
China.
We have ONE shipyard to make/repair capital ships in. ONE.
The Navy is so screwed by deindudtrialization. Of all the services it is the Navy that is the most dependant on heavy industry.
That was really enlightening, a fantastic post.
LOL
All of that might be true. But the IMPORTANT aspect never changes. The DC oligarchs still in government and those already out of politics and in their Military Industrial Complex payoff jobs are paid in a timely manner. After moving the show from the Middle East to Europe those ghouls are guaranteed mega profits for the rest of their and their children’s lives.
Author’s Nasal voice should be in a less reverberated room. Would help a bit with the palatability of the sound and production value.
Our ships take forever to get built. It wasn’t always like this.
The proliferation of anti-ship missiles will make surface ships ever more vulnerable for the coming decade or two. Lasers and other antimissile defenses could change that in time, and along with new power generation and propulsion technologies, may lead to potent new model surface vessels that make China's current fleet obsolete.
If so, the US Navy may then have the opportunity for a comeback as the world's dominant surface fleet -- assuming that we recover our heavy industrial capacity and that the USN relearns how to design new models of ships in a timely manner.
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