During WW II, we could design, manufacture, and field weapons with alarming speed.
For example, the P-51 went from drawing on a napkin to a flying prototype in 102 days.
This cannot occur today. It take years, sometimes decades, to field weapons systems.
Wars are "come as you are."
If war breaks out with Russia, China, or Iran, we are more than screwed. Years of deep budget cuts, with Sequestration on top of those cuts, have made our military readiness a disaster waiting to happen.
Add morale killing policies and using the military as a Marxist social experiment, and the next conflict will become a bloody mess in very short order.
Nothing is being done to correct the problem - we are in 5th gear at 90 mph and heading straight for the brick wall.
“During WW II, we could design, manufacture, and field weapons with alarming speed.”
A zeal that cost the lives of many test pilots.
“For example, the P-51 went from drawing on a napkin to a flying prototype in 102 days.”
People love throwing that number around but forget that it took YEARS longer before the design was perfected.
The complexity different between a P-51 and an F-22 is several orders of magnitude.
"Years of deep budget cuts, with Sequestration on top of those cuts, have made our military readiness a disaster waiting to happen."
NO!
The cost of the welfare state is the problem. We can't even afford our welfare state.
Liars like McCain who blame 'sequester", or anything else but our bread and circus economy for the military's reduced abilities are just BSing.