Redirecting the resources will take years: during WW2, for example, US started mobilizing for war, incrementally, in 1939 or even earlier. Started mobilizing more overtly in 1940--peacetime conscription and all that. But US industries and manpower were not "fully" mobilized until mid 1943 at earliest and most ppl who served during WW2 …
Redirecting the resources will take years: during WW2, for example, US started mobilizing for war, incrementally, in 1939 or even earlier. Started mobilizing more overtly in 1940--peacetime conscription and all that. But US industries and manpower were not "fully" mobilized until mid 1943 at earliest and most ppl who served during WW2 did not go anywhere near actual war zone (depending on how "war zone" might be defined, I suppose) because the war was already nearing the end when they would have been ready to go there. And this was in a setting where political tools for direct govt intervention in the economy were numerous and people were much more receptive to it, in the aftermath of the Great Depression.
I don't think there will be another Pearl Harbor moment: I thought 9/11 was one, but it wasn't. US government did not bother trying to mobilize the nation seriously: maybe they knew it wouldn't work so well this time or they were blinded by their ideology, who knows? I'm not so sure if there will be another and, if there were one involving Russia or China, we won't live through it anyways. So maybe the industries and populations could be mobilized...or not. We can't be sure now.
I agree with what you wrote in a directional sense, but I don't think you have looked closely enough at the literal quantitative differences between WW2 and now.
For one thing: there is no benefit whatsoever for the US to be building 3 Liberty ships every day. Even if these were usable, the reality is that cruise and hypersonic missiles coupled with modern radar and satellite reconnaissance would make any number of Liberty Ship Mk2022, literally suicidal.
The same can be said for weapons platforms. GM was making literally thousands of tanks per month at their peak. In comparison: the entire US armored corps today is 6600. Ukraine started the conflict with 1462 tanks vs. Russia having 10000 tanks in existence and probably 3000 or so in active service.
Granted, the weapons platforms of WW2 are not the qualitative same as today - but it isn't like WW2 tanks were made of papier mache. Sherman tanks were 40 tons vs. Abrams 75 tons, for example.
So while I would certainly agree that there would be material and technology challenges to re-arming today - the raw material inputs plus modern manufacturing capabilities, coupled with industrial innovation to replace Ukraine's losses, for example, would be a small fraction compared to the output of the US in World War 2 at full mobilization.
The far greater issue is that the US would need to go on a full war footing in order to do this - which would require active American population support and curtailment of standards of living. 9/11 was not a full mobilization - it was a bump up of budgets but with little accountability. The same can be said for the ongoing "arming" of Ukraine: the literal emptying of US and European warehouses of multi-decade old weapons sprinkled with a dusting of more modern systems, for which both the old and the new(er) are sadly undersupplied with ammunition.
Just to give you a basic idea, how tank production used to work.
1963 - Collaboration with FRG, on MBT-70 started.
1969 - MBT-70 is shaping up to be impressively capable, gets canceled. By the time production price was calculated, it was 5(five) times the original estimated cost.
XM1 program starts, attempts to save parts of MBT-70 work.
1976 - First prototypes by Chrysler and GM delivered for testing. Chrysler Defense won.
1979 - M1 Abrams Low Rate Initial Production spooling up
1980 - M1 enters Army service.
1982 - 1000+ M1 tanks delivered. General Dynamics Land Systems buys out Chrysler Defense, takes over the contract.
1985 - 3,273 M1 Abrams
Switched to M1A1 and produced many more (Got tired of writing this out).
The US didn't start producing thousands of thanks per month in WW2 immediately. It took 2+ years to hit that point under full mobilization, and that was with basically the full cooperation of the US population.
I'd also note that the timeline you put above regarding the M1 and variants was also not under a full mobilization scenario.
Certainly there would be enormous challenges due to basic materials production: steel to start with as well as basic chemicals, energy, metals and commodities and more. And equally certainly, US industry (or European) no longer dominates in terms of raw industrial output.
But could the US produce 1000-M1 tanks if the US economy and population were fully mobilized? i.e. willing to sacrifice standard of living and sacred cows in order to meet a core survival requirement?
I think it would be very naive to think it is impossible. It might take 2 or 3 years or longer but the absolute level of inputs required is simply not that high in full US economy terms.
Did you have a chance to check out the article? It's about "Ajax" program, the new UK AFV, sorta like the US M2/M3 Bradley.
(BTW, watch "Pentagon Wars" to understand what a shitshow that development program was. Despite of it being a comedy, they did not have to invent additional silly plot points, mostly.)
So the "Ajax" is a Spanish design from the 90s. The company was bought out, and an updated version got the contract from UK MOD in the 2010. None have passed trials, or have been accepted into service, as far as I understand. The year is 2023. 90s design, already previously mass manufactured for Spain and Australia. The list of issues still present is extensive.
This is the same company, "General Dynamics," that bought out the Chrysler's defense branch and was in charge of manufacturing the Abrams tanks. I wrote about these 2 examples together for a reason.
I mean, look at any new defense program, what came on time, within budget, and fully delivered as advertised? It's the same in civilian market, remember the randomly nose-diving new Boeing jumbo jet, that had to be grounded? All the buried by hype issues with new Teslas?
America lost much of it's professional manufacturing labor force. Many, seemingly basic, practices have to be re-discovered and re-implemented. When you offshore your real industry, and become a service/marketing/finance based economy for decades, shutting down most factories—you can't just as easily move it all back later.
Everyone was laughing at Russian military industry, that kept designing and producing tiny batches of new equipment because the funding was so minimal. Like the few dozen nearly hand-made Armata tanks. I think that "budget optimization crowd" is currently discovering, how astronomical the price is, for resurrecting dead sectors of manufacturing.
I don't need any convincing that the Western military platform procurement strategy is 99% about profit generation or that Western military industrial policy is bad.
But yet again, this is under peacetime conditions.
My view is that peacetime military procurement is like peacetime military officer advancement. In peacetime, the beancounter, suckup, political types flourish in the military officer corps just as the profiteers and junk salesmen profit in the military industrial suppliers.
The problem is that all the money thrown away by the West, so far, is not the last of the money the West possesses. The West can continue to throw away hundreds of billions for at least a few more years - until de-dollarization hits it apex. Even then, the US is the 3rd largest country by population, 2nd largest by area, and 2nd wealthiest in absolute terms with the EU being not far behind - meaning the economic and manpower potential is still there.
The exposure of the US and EU militaries' lack of artillery supplies, for example, has to have been noticed. Ditto the performance of pretty much every Western system deployed in Ukraine thus far - certainly net quality and quantity impact has clearly been underwhelming.
My point is still the same: it is a mistake to think that the US/EU could not field a competitive military force if either/both of those societies chose to mobilize.
Russia is doing well at least partly because it has always maintained higher levels of both military industrial mobilization and field force mobilization relative to its population and size of economy, but don't mistake that for outright dominance under any and all scenarios or for more than the most short term of periods.
Your point about peace time procurement is not wrong, but not exactly right either. Aurelius has actually made a point here in his blog about the deficiencies of Western defense industry that is beyond just their industrial production, but also socio-political. Mobilization of your population requires a large effort and political legitimacy that the West simply lack. Meanwhile both Russia and China have this legitimacy as they rightfully frame their position as being on the defense against Western constant harassment of their national security.
But most importantly in regards to military production mobilization is the workforce. Three decades have passed since NATO reorient their doctrine to work as counter-insurgency land force, not to mention its primary doctrine is always reliant on Airforce superiority. Where will you get these engineers who not only designed but also produce the much needed weapons? The thing with Western arms being over-designed and over-complex means that it requires a much more educated workforce to assemble it. Good luck finding engineers who are not already employed in much more lucrative civil sector and that is assuming they exist in sizeable quantity three decades after Western economic doctrine pushed their people into studying financial engineering instead.
This compounding problems, one after another, is the main point that Alexey to get across: that the West is systemically unable to ramp up their production even in the case of mobilization because they simply can't.
Your points are reasonable; the problem is that you are assuming that they cannot be overcome if there is the popular will.
The United States had the exact same problems prior to World War 2: its military and society had never fully mobilized even during World War 1; The Crash of 1929 as well as the ensuing decade of the Great Depression, as well as the pre-1929 decade plus of financialized shenanigans ranging from the Great Florida land scam/rush to the literal Charles Ponzi's enterprise and numerous lesser ones - did not see the US equipped with any form of a work force, an economy or a society geared towards full industrial war.
Yet the US accomplished the same type of military ramp up as the North executed in the later stages of the US Civil War.
It's not just a problem of political will and legitimacy.
Engineers take years to train up. So too do skilled trades workers. The US doesn't have as many of those with a background in industry and the service economy has taken a larger slice of the pie. There is not even an apprenticeship program on the scale that Germany has.
The situation the US faced is nothing like right before WW2. The Great Depression has large numbers of recently unemployed people and the US back then led the world in manufacturing output.
The same is not true in the 2020s. China has multiples of engineers. Most American manufacturers depend on China, even when the factory is located in North America for various items in their supply chain, including critical capabilities not built or easily replaced in the US. For example (and I live in Canada), at my work, we are importing electricity transformers from China.
Today the US is in a situation where it has not had that manufacturing base for decades and large amounts of the labor force don't have the experience. In many industries, it would involve learning a new skill from ground up, which takes years and in some cases, decades to perfect.
There is also the matter that China is rapidly improving its basic research, and in some areas has already surpassed the US at scientific research. It's likely that the US would be facing a situation where the rest of the world has access to better technology.
It would mean a major reform to the university system and to the short term profit oriented culture of the US. Not to mention, in many cases, the professors and mentors for certain disciplines do not exist. It's like entering a new industry.
What you are proposing would take decades to do, if it is possible at all. Political will is only a small part of the bottleneck.
What you wrote is quite true - manufacturing and operational excellence does require both skill and experience. Those people aren't all dead but they are certainly fewer and old.
I don't have the links right at hand, but there are a number of articles highlighting specific examples of this: how a certain pasta ceased being available because there is no production in the US anymore, or how Apple failed to onshore some of its iPhone assembly significantly because it could not source screws. Unlike software, manufacturing requires an ecosystem of suppliers - this has to be recreated. Thus your estimate of decades is very possible.
But without the political and social will - the work has not even started. That is my primary point - not that political will is the only component.
As for research: my view from history is that wealthy civilizations enable research. The US' past research capability was significantly because of its wealth attracting capable people from all over the world - Indian, Chinese, ex-Nazi Germans are just a few examples of this. I am working with another example - the majority of the plasma physics people, formerly from the Turchatov Nuclear Physics university in Russia, are now regrouped in New Jersey....
While China has a lot of people and puts out a lot of patents - it is less clear to me that they will be able to replace the above dynamic with sheer volume of STEM graduates. Again, not saying it is impossible but it absolutely would be a very different situation than any in the recent past.
Redirecting the resources will take years: during WW2, for example, US started mobilizing for war, incrementally, in 1939 or even earlier. Started mobilizing more overtly in 1940--peacetime conscription and all that. But US industries and manpower were not "fully" mobilized until mid 1943 at earliest and most ppl who served during WW2 did not go anywhere near actual war zone (depending on how "war zone" might be defined, I suppose) because the war was already nearing the end when they would have been ready to go there. And this was in a setting where political tools for direct govt intervention in the economy were numerous and people were much more receptive to it, in the aftermath of the Great Depression.
I don't think there will be another Pearl Harbor moment: I thought 9/11 was one, but it wasn't. US government did not bother trying to mobilize the nation seriously: maybe they knew it wouldn't work so well this time or they were blinded by their ideology, who knows? I'm not so sure if there will be another and, if there were one involving Russia or China, we won't live through it anyways. So maybe the industries and populations could be mobilized...or not. We can't be sure now.
I agree with what you wrote in a directional sense, but I don't think you have looked closely enough at the literal quantitative differences between WW2 and now.
For one thing: there is no benefit whatsoever for the US to be building 3 Liberty ships every day. Even if these were usable, the reality is that cruise and hypersonic missiles coupled with modern radar and satellite reconnaissance would make any number of Liberty Ship Mk2022, literally suicidal.
The same can be said for weapons platforms. GM was making literally thousands of tanks per month at their peak. In comparison: the entire US armored corps today is 6600. Ukraine started the conflict with 1462 tanks vs. Russia having 10000 tanks in existence and probably 3000 or so in active service.
Granted, the weapons platforms of WW2 are not the qualitative same as today - but it isn't like WW2 tanks were made of papier mache. Sherman tanks were 40 tons vs. Abrams 75 tons, for example.
So while I would certainly agree that there would be material and technology challenges to re-arming today - the raw material inputs plus modern manufacturing capabilities, coupled with industrial innovation to replace Ukraine's losses, for example, would be a small fraction compared to the output of the US in World War 2 at full mobilization.
The far greater issue is that the US would need to go on a full war footing in order to do this - which would require active American population support and curtailment of standards of living. 9/11 was not a full mobilization - it was a bump up of budgets but with little accountability. The same can be said for the ongoing "arming" of Ukraine: the literal emptying of US and European warehouses of multi-decade old weapons sprinkled with a dusting of more modern systems, for which both the old and the new(er) are sadly undersupplied with ammunition.
Just to give you a basic idea, how tank production used to work.
1963 - Collaboration with FRG, on MBT-70 started.
1969 - MBT-70 is shaping up to be impressively capable, gets canceled. By the time production price was calculated, it was 5(five) times the original estimated cost.
XM1 program starts, attempts to save parts of MBT-70 work.
1976 - First prototypes by Chrysler and GM delivered for testing. Chrysler Defense won.
1979 - M1 Abrams Low Rate Initial Production spooling up
1980 - M1 enters Army service.
1982 - 1000+ M1 tanks delivered. General Dynamics Land Systems buys out Chrysler Defense, takes over the contract.
1985 - 3,273 M1 Abrams
Switched to M1A1 and produced many more (Got tired of writing this out).
Present day APC production:
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/emerging-insights/lessons-ajax-programme
Good luck to people expecting quick results.
I fully agree with you re: "quick results".
The US didn't start producing thousands of thanks per month in WW2 immediately. It took 2+ years to hit that point under full mobilization, and that was with basically the full cooperation of the US population.
I'd also note that the timeline you put above regarding the M1 and variants was also not under a full mobilization scenario.
Certainly there would be enormous challenges due to basic materials production: steel to start with as well as basic chemicals, energy, metals and commodities and more. And equally certainly, US industry (or European) no longer dominates in terms of raw industrial output.
But could the US produce 1000-M1 tanks if the US economy and population were fully mobilized? i.e. willing to sacrifice standard of living and sacred cows in order to meet a core survival requirement?
I think it would be very naive to think it is impossible. It might take 2 or 3 years or longer but the absolute level of inputs required is simply not that high in full US economy terms.
Did you have a chance to check out the article? It's about "Ajax" program, the new UK AFV, sorta like the US M2/M3 Bradley.
(BTW, watch "Pentagon Wars" to understand what a shitshow that development program was. Despite of it being a comedy, they did not have to invent additional silly plot points, mostly.)
So the "Ajax" is a Spanish design from the 90s. The company was bought out, and an updated version got the contract from UK MOD in the 2010. None have passed trials, or have been accepted into service, as far as I understand. The year is 2023. 90s design, already previously mass manufactured for Spain and Australia. The list of issues still present is extensive.
This is the same company, "General Dynamics," that bought out the Chrysler's defense branch and was in charge of manufacturing the Abrams tanks. I wrote about these 2 examples together for a reason.
If you need more examples, Littoral combat ships:
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/07/15/20-years-later-the-navy-says-its-littoral-combat-ships-kind-of-work-00046137
I mean, look at any new defense program, what came on time, within budget, and fully delivered as advertised? It's the same in civilian market, remember the randomly nose-diving new Boeing jumbo jet, that had to be grounded? All the buried by hype issues with new Teslas?
America lost much of it's professional manufacturing labor force. Many, seemingly basic, practices have to be re-discovered and re-implemented. When you offshore your real industry, and become a service/marketing/finance based economy for decades, shutting down most factories—you can't just as easily move it all back later.
Everyone was laughing at Russian military industry, that kept designing and producing tiny batches of new equipment because the funding was so minimal. Like the few dozen nearly hand-made Armata tanks. I think that "budget optimization crowd" is currently discovering, how astronomical the price is, for resurrecting dead sectors of manufacturing.
I don't need any convincing that the Western military platform procurement strategy is 99% about profit generation or that Western military industrial policy is bad.
But yet again, this is under peacetime conditions.
My view is that peacetime military procurement is like peacetime military officer advancement. In peacetime, the beancounter, suckup, political types flourish in the military officer corps just as the profiteers and junk salesmen profit in the military industrial suppliers.
The problem is that all the money thrown away by the West, so far, is not the last of the money the West possesses. The West can continue to throw away hundreds of billions for at least a few more years - until de-dollarization hits it apex. Even then, the US is the 3rd largest country by population, 2nd largest by area, and 2nd wealthiest in absolute terms with the EU being not far behind - meaning the economic and manpower potential is still there.
The exposure of the US and EU militaries' lack of artillery supplies, for example, has to have been noticed. Ditto the performance of pretty much every Western system deployed in Ukraine thus far - certainly net quality and quantity impact has clearly been underwhelming.
My point is still the same: it is a mistake to think that the US/EU could not field a competitive military force if either/both of those societies chose to mobilize.
Russia is doing well at least partly because it has always maintained higher levels of both military industrial mobilization and field force mobilization relative to its population and size of economy, but don't mistake that for outright dominance under any and all scenarios or for more than the most short term of periods.
Your point about peace time procurement is not wrong, but not exactly right either. Aurelius has actually made a point here in his blog about the deficiencies of Western defense industry that is beyond just their industrial production, but also socio-political. Mobilization of your population requires a large effort and political legitimacy that the West simply lack. Meanwhile both Russia and China have this legitimacy as they rightfully frame their position as being on the defense against Western constant harassment of their national security.
But most importantly in regards to military production mobilization is the workforce. Three decades have passed since NATO reorient their doctrine to work as counter-insurgency land force, not to mention its primary doctrine is always reliant on Airforce superiority. Where will you get these engineers who not only designed but also produce the much needed weapons? The thing with Western arms being over-designed and over-complex means that it requires a much more educated workforce to assemble it. Good luck finding engineers who are not already employed in much more lucrative civil sector and that is assuming they exist in sizeable quantity three decades after Western economic doctrine pushed their people into studying financial engineering instead.
This compounding problems, one after another, is the main point that Alexey to get across: that the West is systemically unable to ramp up their production even in the case of mobilization because they simply can't.
Your points are reasonable; the problem is that you are assuming that they cannot be overcome if there is the popular will.
The United States had the exact same problems prior to World War 2: its military and society had never fully mobilized even during World War 1; The Crash of 1929 as well as the ensuing decade of the Great Depression, as well as the pre-1929 decade plus of financialized shenanigans ranging from the Great Florida land scam/rush to the literal Charles Ponzi's enterprise and numerous lesser ones - did not see the US equipped with any form of a work force, an economy or a society geared towards full industrial war.
Yet the US accomplished the same type of military ramp up as the North executed in the later stages of the US Civil War.
It's not just a problem of political will and legitimacy.
Engineers take years to train up. So too do skilled trades workers. The US doesn't have as many of those with a background in industry and the service economy has taken a larger slice of the pie. There is not even an apprenticeship program on the scale that Germany has.
The situation the US faced is nothing like right before WW2. The Great Depression has large numbers of recently unemployed people and the US back then led the world in manufacturing output.
The same is not true in the 2020s. China has multiples of engineers. Most American manufacturers depend on China, even when the factory is located in North America for various items in their supply chain, including critical capabilities not built or easily replaced in the US. For example (and I live in Canada), at my work, we are importing electricity transformers from China.
Today the US is in a situation where it has not had that manufacturing base for decades and large amounts of the labor force don't have the experience. In many industries, it would involve learning a new skill from ground up, which takes years and in some cases, decades to perfect.
There is also the matter that China is rapidly improving its basic research, and in some areas has already surpassed the US at scientific research. It's likely that the US would be facing a situation where the rest of the world has access to better technology.
It would mean a major reform to the university system and to the short term profit oriented culture of the US. Not to mention, in many cases, the professors and mentors for certain disciplines do not exist. It's like entering a new industry.
What you are proposing would take decades to do, if it is possible at all. Political will is only a small part of the bottleneck.
What you wrote is quite true - manufacturing and operational excellence does require both skill and experience. Those people aren't all dead but they are certainly fewer and old.
I don't have the links right at hand, but there are a number of articles highlighting specific examples of this: how a certain pasta ceased being available because there is no production in the US anymore, or how Apple failed to onshore some of its iPhone assembly significantly because it could not source screws. Unlike software, manufacturing requires an ecosystem of suppliers - this has to be recreated. Thus your estimate of decades is very possible.
But without the political and social will - the work has not even started. That is my primary point - not that political will is the only component.
As for research: my view from history is that wealthy civilizations enable research. The US' past research capability was significantly because of its wealth attracting capable people from all over the world - Indian, Chinese, ex-Nazi Germans are just a few examples of this. I am working with another example - the majority of the plasma physics people, formerly from the Turchatov Nuclear Physics university in Russia, are now regrouped in New Jersey....
While China has a lot of people and puts out a lot of patents - it is less clear to me that they will be able to replace the above dynamic with sheer volume of STEM graduates. Again, not saying it is impossible but it absolutely would be a very different situation than any in the recent past.