[Retain Mike]

"it takes years to manufacture new ones. We have also learned that the tooling needed to produce various types of PGMs no longer exists—indeed"

I have a hard time imagining an initial inventory of a munition is placed in a warehouse, never expended in exercises, and never upgraded.

[DugwayDuke]

Retain Mike wrote: “I have a hard time imagining an initial inventory of a munition is placed in a warehouse, never expended in exercises, and never upgraded.”

DoD has various computer models that are used to calculate how many munitions we need in the inventory. Usually, these models also calculate how many will be used for training. We produce to those amounts. Sometimes some are withdrawn from storage for reliability testing. Sometimes as munitions are expended they might be replaced with upgraded versions. The oldest in the inventory are the ones usually withdrawn for testing, etc.

[grobdriver]

We should be spoiling up long range drone factories - the small attack drones, not ISR stuff.

[magooey]

This supply chain dependence is a direct result of the globalization of industry and the offshoring of America’s manufacturing

The American elite chose to offshore its industry and dis-employ its citizenry. It further worked to inundate its high tech workers with a massive influx of foreigners starting with the Immigration Act of 1990.

It is difficult to believe that the American elite would suddenly change course and have a massive expansion in jobs for citizens. On the other hand, having trouble keeping up with the Russians during the artillary war portion of the conflict in Ukraine, the Amercian elites might realize that their internal policies threaten the ability to project power.

[SuperLuminal]

George Patton brilliantly wrote a lengthy poem in 1917 that documented this kind of stupidity...

[Tijeras_Slim]

It’s not just manufacturing new items, it’s maintaining existing hardware. Electronic components become obsolete. I’ve been to a facility where these components are stored in climate controlled bins in a circulating nitrogen environment.

[mass55th]

We shouldn’t be deploying anything to proxy wars, not weapons, not money, not troops...nothing.

[Alas Babylon!]

Hegseth orders consolidation and transformation of the Army

Drone swarm integration, a right to repair and increased forward logistical capacity are all on the table in the new proposals.

[Carry_Okie]

For each $30,000 Iranian drone we shot down, we employed two $2 million missiles.

What's wrong with Gatling guns? An oversized radar-directed shotgun would probably work too.

[Spktyr]

The main bottleneck in producing ‘PGMs’ is the lack of secure computer chips. We ran off most of the chip foundries.

Raytheon is on record as saying, repeatedly, that they have everything else ready to go in reasonable peacetime volume *except* the chips. No chips, no guidance and no flight controls.

[T.B. Yoits]

It takes years because many companies don't want to renew contracts for government work where they were screwed over.

The government then has to go find another sucker who has to find, hire, and train up staff before producing.

[Svartalfiar]

An important thing we learned very early on in the Ukraine War was that the incredibly expensive tanks we gave to the Ukrainians were defenseless against very inexpensive FPV drones.

They're actually very well defended against these small drones. It takes a pretty sizeable munitions to scratch an Abrams, much less hurt it, much less kill it. But if you leave the hatch open, the armor no longer matters. And that's where a couple tanks were killed by drones.

The biggest problem is the entire special military operation is just WWII-style trench warfare, plus drones. Neither Russia nor Ukraine have the capability to properly utilize combined arms warfare, much less joint fires and maneuver.