During WW2, the combatants were turning out tanks, planes, ship, and artillery at an extremely fast pace. But the modern peacetime manufacturing processes are extremely slow, completely useless if we were losing equipment at the fast pace of a WW2-type conflict.
What are the contingency plans for mass production if we ever wage another long conventional conflict again? Would they just build the same extremely advanced weapons, just at hopefully a quicker pace, or would new, cheaper, dumbed down a little models be developed fairly quickly that could be turned out faster?
Or am I needlessly worrying, and we can throw F-22s and M1A2 tanks at the enemy faster than they can destroy them with some minor changes in the manufacturing process?
A war between Industrial Powers, which lasts long enough to require Industry to be involved to WW2 levels does not turn nuclear is pretty hard to imagine.
As it is, the rates of expension of munitions in modern wars are off the charts.
AFAIK, you’re not worrying needlessly. From what I’ve read, most modern armies just don’t have the material means to fight a lenghty war. In fact, it seems that staying supplied even for “minor” campaigns, like in the middle east and such is already an issue. And I understand that the issue isn’t so much tanks or planes, but plainly ammunitions, like missiles and such, which are now complex, very costly, and take a while to produce.
And even though it might be worst now, I believe it’s not even a new issue. I remember reading that during the late cold war, both NATO and Warsaw Pact armies were expected to run out of ammunitions very quickly.
What makes you say modern weapon production is slow? So far as I know, our tank-production rate is low only because we have relatively few factories making tanks. Put us in another WWII, and all of the factories currently making cars would instead be making tanks, just like they did then.
Given that modern weapons are vastly more complex, it’s unobvious to me that it would be as easy now to switch from car production to tank production as it has been during WW2.
Put it this way: imagine those tanks are firing MacBook rounds with iPhone warheads. Think how many tens of thousands of those you’d need to manufacture each day to fight a full-scale war.
And that’s just the tank munitions. The planes fire Priuses.
He said it’s slow because it IS slow relative to WWII. He mentioned various systems including planes, ships and specifically the F-22 – not just tanks.
The simple answer is the extreme complexity of modern systems precludes rapid production on a WWII scale, no matter how many resources are thrown at it. The degree varies with the particular weapon system.
Peak production of the F-35 is expected to reach one aircraft per day which is extremely high in modern times. By contrast in 1944 the US averaged manufacturing 106 fighter aircraft per day:
It is very unlikely the manufacturing rate of a modern fifth-generation fighter could be scaled up to WWII rates – they are just too complex.
OTOH if for some reason the goal was to build WWII fighter planes today – using modern manufacturing methods this could probably be done even faster than during WWII.
Although OP stated weapons production, this is only relevant to the extent a weapon can be developed for production in useful timeframe to the task at hand. The P-51 Mustang was developed from design to prototype in 102 days: North American P-51 Mustang - Wikipedia
A modern fifth-generation fighter cannot be developed that rapidly, no matter how many resources are thrown at it. The software alone would take years.
In WWII it was relatively straightforward to convert manufacturing lines of (say) automobiles to aircraft or tanks. In fact automotive manufacturers made many aircraft. That was possible since the vehicles were much simpler – both automobiles and aircraft were basically simple (by current standards) and made from sheet metal. Here is a photo of B-24s being manufactured at GM’s Willow Run plant: http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/michigan/files/201012/willowrunfactory.jpg
Today there’s a huge gulf between automobiles and aircraft. Cars are still generally made from sheet metal but late-generation military aircraft from carbon fiber or other composites. It would not be possible to manufacture B-2s like that today, no matter how much money was spent.
Interestingly, for some weapon classes there is less difference. The Battleship Iowa began construction in June 1940 and commissioned February 1943. By contrast the spiritual successor to this class, the Zumwalt-class destroyer, begin construction in 2011 and was just commissioned – in 2016. Not that different, but these were both large, complex systems. Even in WWII battleships were not cranked out like automobiles.
See, now that’s interesting. Assuming that we’d have to turn out SOMETHING at sufficient rates to replace lost stocks, I’m sure it would be something a lot better than a P-38 but perhaps not as awesome as an F-22. Perhaps something more akin to F-16s?
The real questions are being avoided. Who do we fight in this conventional war? What are they using to fight with? What is *their *manufacturing rate?
WWII was a problem because Germany began rearming long before any of the other powers. Nobody else believed - or wanted to believe - there would be a long conventional war. That’s the major reason why they kept trying to negotiate with Germany.
Untouched America could switch over consumer production to war materiel and supplied enough to bulwark Britain and Russia as well.
Try to imagine that scenario today. Who has large conventional armies? Well, the U.S. does. Russia does. China does. North Korea does. So does South Korea. Who are we fighting? Where are we fighting? What is our rate of loss compared to their rate of loss? Why aren’t we using advanced equipment? Why aren’t they? For that matter, why are we fighting with tanks rather than taking out their cyberinfrastructure?
You have to give me a realistic case for a long conventional war to respond to your question. I don’t think a realistic case can be made. Small, endless, annoying proxy wars, sure. But not the major power against major power war that could use up our full complement of weapons.
The ones who run out of conventional weapons first will go nuclear. That is the long and short of it.
Wars these days arecrarely about territorial expansion. Russia into Ukraine, Pakistan into Kashmir, tTurkey into Kurdistan are the main ones. None of these wars will be long term ones because of the one sidedness of the parties involved. Running out of weapons wont be a problem for the big guns of Russia, Turkey and India.
The scary wars are the idealogical ones driven by religion (mainly Islam against west or sunni vs Shia) and cold war sabre rattling of which we are seeing a scary new phase ( no one knows why this round has begun). Here the war will be long and drawn out especially if it is Nato vs Russia. One of them will go nuclear .
According to Emmanual Goldstein, writing in Orwell’s “1984”, that’s the whale purpose of having continuous war. To squander the resources that could otherwise be used by the general population to raise their living standard to rival that of Big Brother’s protected oligarchy. So, whatever the associated cost of producing obsolescent weaponry, there is a malleable work force with no other useful purpose.
As fast as the US could run out of tanks, planes and guided munitions, it might run out of targets deserving of them first.
Taking tanks as an example: Could the US sustain WWII-levels of Abrams losses? No. It wouldn’t have to either. Either the opponent is using WWII-level technology in which case they will lose tens of times more tanks per destroyed Abrams. Or they’re using more modern tech in which case their ability to renew it will be lesser than the US.
Same thing for cruise missiles. Will the US run out of cruise missiles within days or weeks if launching them at a high tempo? Yes. It will also largely have run out of important enemy C4ISR and air defense assets to attack, leaving the enemy with comparatively bigger problems than a cruise missile shortage.
In a conventional war, the enemy would run out of blood before the US ran out of blade.
Battleships and Abrams tanks are yesterday’s weapons. They are both too big and too slow to be much use out of the Pacific or the desert. Look at all the hooha about the Russian fleet moving into the Med. If it was a shooting war they would have all been war graves by now.
Guided weapons, aka drones etc, and nuclear submarines, are the future and to a large extent, the present. Then, at the end, you need boots on the ground.
But those MacBooks, iPhones, Priuses and so forth are all manufactured overseas. The US has very few shipyards left. I’ve actually wondered, given that the US economy is less dependent on manufacturing now, if the US could ramp up to the extent it did in World War II.
