Posted on 06/21/2024 4:41:53 PM PDT by Mariner
To compare the MICs of today with US military needs being met by the industry of pre and during WWII is what’s incoherent, IMO.
There are too many examples; one is the prototype for the P51. 120 days from design contract to first flight. MICs today can’t even produce a vastly over-inflated bill in that time period.
“I suggest ypu call your congressman to back Mariners idea to place a 10,000 unit order with Raytheon.”
Well that is quite a bloodthirsty suggestion, are you related to vampiressVicky or tons of Raytheon stock?
i.e. What is our damn mortal national interest to “defend’ Ukraine for everything and forever?
Answer this: Will the absolute controlling entity USG allow an end to this conflict as is, not status quo ante (which ain’t gonna happen no way no how) ?
If not, then because Ukraine has already had it’s kids killed off, it can only continue with NATO kids from here on out.
-fJRoberts-
The US (and presumably Taiwan and other allies) is also learning from Ukraine. This is a two-way street. Ukraine has already produced many innovations in the use of SAM systems, in defensive use vs cruise missiles, plus “offensive” operations vs fighter bombers.
Tech upgrades are always ongoing, but we are unlikely to hear anything about them within the time frame that they are relevant.
Also, Patriot will not be the primary US weapon system at the beginning of a China war. Those would be Navy shipboard systems. US bases with Patriot deployed will not face the worst of Chinese capabilities, they are too far away from most Chinese missile types.
Taiwan will depend on Patriot for some of its air defense needs (they have a bunch of other relevant, shorter range systems), but the odds are that these will be swamped by initial waves of Chinese cruise and ballistic missile attacks. I figure they have 42x4 cell launchers in 7 batteries, plus a reload. It will take too long to reload, the missiles in any given wave will get through. China can generate much larger numbers of missiles than Russia could or can. Whatever is going to Ukraine will be a drop in the bucket.
I am assuming that a Chinese operation vs Taiwan will be a medium term thing, unless current tensions escape beyond the control of the Chinese high command.
Then I suggest you fix that inefficiency problem. The fundamentals are the same, no matter the decline in efficiency. If you want more missiles, you will have to order them. If you want more production capacity you will have to order a lot of them.
Ukraine is a minor problem here.
You are facing China as a primary opponent, and that is something an order of magnitude worse. Thats why you need to build out your production capacity.
Regardless, Ukraine is what WE are in right now to the last dollar, to the last life no matter what. and for no reason.
If the bloodthirsty USG neocon deepState would get off it’s demonic ‘hurt Russia’ addiction, it could conceivably address other serious matters. But in it’s narcissistic delusional nature it has determined to bullheadedly follow it’s own will, consequences be damned.
As I have pointed out many times, the US is spending very little on Ukraine relative to your vast scale of spending on stupid things.
The “Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act” of 2021 cost 1.2 trillion all by itself. Thats 10x Ukraine. And did nothing but generate inflation. This is just one case.
You have done... what... about this? Are you 10x as angry? Are you posting 10x as much?
off topic red herring
Taiwan needs nuclear weapons. That’s it.
“Ukraine is what WE are in right now to the last dollar,”
And etc.
Well, that’s what I am responding to. The “last dollar” went elsewhere than Ukraine. Ukraine is, in the context of US problems and political concern, a minor matter.
Furthermore we are propping up an overextended obsolete NATO structure. Defending Estonia is a lot different than defending Taiwan. I agree that China sees Taiwan as medium to long term and the mechanics of war will change a lot by then.
you choose to not get it
The State/CIA deepstate Ukraine cartel is so frothingly rabid they would literally throw down the last US taxpayer dollar.
Obama.
It isn’t an ‘inefficiency’ problem nor one of just increasing capacity to meet a need. The Americans that drove and supported the industrial base that supplied the US and Allies simply don’t exist in numbers that matter anymore. To boot, the government that fostered them doesn’t either. The government that encouraged the B-24, B-17 (and the B-29 project larger than Project Manhattan), P-51, P-47, P-38, Willys Jeeps, Liberty Ships - the whole gamut of production successes just doesn’t exist anymore. The last time it came close was for the A-10, IMO.
Back then, there were more than on industry leaders who took on that task for a dollar a year. They converted their typewriter factories, headlamp factories, car factories - a whole myriad of peace-based endeavors to fight a war everybody agreed needed winning.
The only thing we can get now is the MIC and Congress and Biden, et al agreeing we need to support some skirmish war and supply weapons with money we should be spending on our poor, our homeless and our own defenseless citizens fighting on their own to hold back the illegal invasion hordes.
The US builds, annually, more military aircraft than anyone else in the world. And that includes China. Also, I think, more guided missiles of all kinds.
Add to that more civilian aircraft than anyone else, unless you take Europe as a whole to account for Airbus.
The US has made more F35’s than A10’s -
1,000 as of Jan 2024 vs 716.
You vastly exaggerate the situation, however much it is not ideal.
Exaggeration (or under exaggeration) is in the eye of the beholder.
US WWII production on some of the more famous produced.
B-29s - 3,970
B-4s - 18,500
B-17s - 12,000
B-25s -10,000
P-51s - 15,000
P-47s - 15,600
P-38s -10,037
F4Fs - 12,571
F4Us - 7885
M-4 Shermans - 48,234
M155 Howitzers - 6,000
M155 shells - 49,000 per month 1942, almost 300,000/ month by 1945
US M1 Garand - 5 million
M1 Carbine - 6 million
1911A1 - 19 million.
We had ‘dollar a year’ men running companies like Singer, Saginaw, Ford motor co the big b-29 plant). We’ll never get participation like that again.
While we still build big numbers of current Aircraft it’s not like we used to. It used to be we were the ‘swarm’ and now aircraft, tank and ship industries have to deal with drone swarms. 1000 or more drones against Nimitz or Ford class carrier? We’d loose at least half our inventory (12)
A. You are correct about the numbers;
but
B. Its all relative.
The US is superior, by far, to the other side in this comparison, currently.
There is no current demo of drone swarms as a long range, high speed weapon system, which is what they would have to be, to be of use as a naval weapon. High speed and long range means they would be large weapons. And then, at that point, how would they be much different from a saturation attack by a similar number of individually targeted cruise or ballistic missiles? From a defensive point of view they would just be a given number of targets to be intercepted.
You don’t drone swarm a carrier and/or Arleigh Burke while they way out at sea headed towards you. You wait until they get close enough to you to launch their fighters.
And, frankly, it doesn’t matter what a carrier group does even at long range.
The Chinese have had long programs for exo-atmospheric BMS with MIRVs in them to target the group (e.g., DF-21D, 1800 NM range and a 100-300M CEP.)
I’m afraid that carrier battle groups are really only for policy projection out against very asymmetrical potential enemies. And we can thank Bill Clinton for letting Loral give China the boost technology all those years ago.
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