stupid war sustainability question

Pi1otguy

Pi1otguy

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Have most modern militaries (all, not just that one in the news) moved to a model that cannot replenish lost hardware? I just can't imagine any major power replacing large amounts of hardware in under a 3 years at best.

Can currently out of production vehicles and aircraft production be restarted in any sensible timeframe? Or are modern counties stuck with whatever they had when things get hot?

My high school level of history recalls WW2 involving the retooling of car factories and such to make replacement tanks, planes, etc within the timeframe of the conflict. But today, vehicles are so sophisticated that I can't imagine a Ford factory quickly retooling from stamping alluminum parts to building a relatively heavy Abrahms. Same for most other countries.
 
Pi1otguy said:
Have most modern militaries (all, not just that one in the news) moved to a model that cannot replenish lost hardware? I just can't imagine any major power replacing large amounts of hardware in under a 3 years at best.

Can currently out of production vehicles and aircraft production be restarted in any sensible timeframe? Or are modern counties stuck with whatever they had when things get hot?

My high school level of history recalls WW2 involving the retooling of car factories and such to make replacement tanks, planes, etc within the timeframe of the conflict. But today, vehicles are so sophisticated that I can't imagine a Ford factory quickly retooling from stamping alluminum parts to building a relatively heavy Abrahms. Same for most other countries.
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Yeah. That’s why people have nukes.
 
Pi1otguy said:
My high school level of history recalls WW2 involving the retooling of car factories and such to make replacement tanks, planes, etc within the timeframe of the conflict.
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The WWII Colt 1911 45 cal pistols made by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and the M1 rifles made by International Harvester, are very collectible, mostly because those companies didn't manage to make all that many of them. So companies could certainly re-tool to make small arms, in fairly limited quantity. There are already a good number of companies making after-market replacement parts for the AR platform and various military handguns, so the critical expertise is already out there. How long it would take them to scale up to higher volume production, I don't know.

But yeah, the big iron or big aluminum hardware would be pretty hard to source elsewhere in its' entirety; component parts, maybe.
 
The original manufacturer of the M2 Bradley was FMC. It's hugely complex,
GaryM said:
The WWII Colt 1911 45 cal pistols made by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and the M1 rifles made by International Harvester, are very collectible, mostly because those companies didn't manage to make all that many of them. So companies could certainly re-tool to make small arms, in fairly limited quantity. There are already a good number of companies making after-market replacement parts for the AR platform and various military handguns, so the critical expertise is already out there. How long it would take them to scale up to higher volume production, I don't know.

But yeah, the big iron or big aluminum hardware would be pretty hard to source elsewhere in its' entirety; component parts, maybe.
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There are even a good number of companies making GI contract AR's, and that has been the case for decades. I do know that the current M2 Bradley IFV is made by BAE Systems. The original production Bradleys were made by FMC. Those are massively complex big iron (well, heavy aluminum) vehicles. Exactly how long it took for BAE to get up to speed I don't know, but they would have had to put a lot of development in to it to bid the contract. My guess is they probably only had to tool up for the hull and turret, and they could probably source the rest of the components from their current manufacturers.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I do know that the current M2 Bradley IFV is made by BAE Systems. The original production Bradleys were made by FMC. Those are massively complex big iron (well, heavy aluminum) vehicles. Exactly how long it took for BAE to get up to speed I don't know, but they would have had to put a lot of development in to it to bid the contract. My guess is they probably only had to tool up for the hull and turret, and they could probably source the rest of the components from their current manufacturers.
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I thought BAE bought FMC.
 
Sac Arrow said:
I don't think so. FMC is still an active corporation.
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I worked at FMC when they were making the Bradley, though I wasn't in the defense division. They had all kinds of unrelated business units; deep water wellhead equipment, Jetway hardware for airports, food industry hardware, seaweed processing to make agar, industrial cranes...formerly things like motorhomes and lawnmowers. They'd buy and sell businesses with abandon. They've since spun off their Lithium division as a separate company. Current FMC is big in agricultural chemicals, where they've been active all along.
 
As a parallel, look at what the domestic oil companies are saying regarding the ability to quickly ramp up oil production in response to the recent Russian energy sanctions. Supposedly a year or so due to supply chain issues. Whether you believe it or not (and politics) is a different matter, but there’s a data point in an industry that is used to up & down cycles and mothballing and restarting equipment. I would think factory manufacturing would be more difficult to “wake up”.
 
455 Bravo Uniform said:
I would think factory manufacturing would be more difficult to “wake up”.
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Also depends on what's being made. In many industries, people with knowledge of the "older" tech and methods have retired. I can't even imagine restarting production to replace the relatively cheaper B-52's, A-10's, etc. Not within the month or 2 before one side breaks the others production abilities.
 
Interesting article on the cost to restart F22 production:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...tudy-the-usaf-has-kept-secret-for-over-a-year

TLDR: roughly 5B and 5 years to restart production, another 5B to redesign 4 subsystems they wanted to redo, and final unit cost around 200M for an additional 200 units totaling 45B
This is for a jet that they kept the production tooling for, it would require some refurbishment but largely intact.
 
Seanaldinho said:
final unit cost around 200M for an additional 200 units totaling 45B
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Oh shoot. I think the major powers have accidentally brought us closer to peace. The ROI of invading anywhere has been negative in the last 2+ decades.
 
Meanwhile, in a dusty corner of Elon Musk's brain, the thought of creating defense tooling for the Austin, TX, gigapress begins to form...
 
I had an interesting conversation with a coworker this afternoon. She's been living in the UK, but is originally from Poland. Grew up during the Communist era. She traveled from London back to Poland some time in the last few days to see what she could do to help. She's got a Ukranian housekeeper in Poland, and has an apartment that she's been renting but her tenant recently moved out. She's been helping to get refugees settled with host families and has turned over her apartment to house some of them for the rest of the year, rent free. The government there is apparently offering tax breaks for that.

She says the hot ticket items they needed were blankets (which she bought) and bandages (she brought a suitcase full from London), since she couldn't source ammunition. I'm not making any of this up... that's what the Ukranians are asking for. It's almost all women with kids and very old people; everyone else is staying behind to fight.

I don't know why this stuff makes me tear up, but it does. There but for the grace of God and a couple of oceans...
 
GaryM said:
The WWII Colt 1911 45 cal pistols made by the Singer Sewing Machine Company, and the M1 rifles made by International Harvester, are very collectible, mostly because those companies didn't manage to make all that many of them. So companies could certainly re-tool to make small arms, in fairly limited quantity. There are already a good number of companies making after-market replacement parts for the AR platform and various military handguns, so the critical expertise is already out there. How long it would take them to scale up to higher volume production, I don't know.

But yeah, the big iron or big aluminum hardware would be pretty hard to source elsewhere in its' entirety; component parts, maybe.
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We had both in a National Guard Unit back in the 60's . Singer 45's and IHC Garands. Both I had my hands on were in excellent shape.
 
Watch Pentagon Wars and you'll have a better understanding of the ridiculousness of the DoD procurement process. Years ago in Command General Staff Officer College, I wrote a paper about the fielding of the V-22 Osprey. From RFP to on the line was 24 years. o_O
 
I think some of you would be surprised at how quickly US manufacturing companies could switchover. The biggest constraint in the timeline is getting the authorization to do so from the typical government channels, then getting a hold of the drawings/molds to make whatever was asked of them. Despite not having a lot of older people with knowledge of how things used to be produced, we have a lot of very bright engineers and manufacturing techs that can make things happen. Not to mention our machinery and tooling is largely much more capable and precise.

Remember that during the initial months of COVID, hospitals were running out of respirators and companies like Ford re-engineered existing automotive pumps to be assembled into respirators for medical use. However, getting raw materials for much of a "war demand" would likely prove much more difficult with so much being sourced around the globe.
 
Seanaldinho said:
Interesting article on the cost to restart F22 production:
https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zo...tudy-the-usaf-has-kept-secret-for-over-a-year

TLDR: roughly 5B and 5 years to restart production, another 5B to redesign 4 subsystems they wanted to redo, and final unit cost around 200M for an additional 200 units totaling 45B
This is for a jet that they kept the production tooling for, it would require some refurbishment but largely intact.
Click to expand...


Remember, too, that it’s not just one production line. There are 2nd, 3rd, 4th, etc., tier suppliers who make many parts and components who would also have to restart lines. Many components, especially electronics, are obsolete and unavailable, so lots of redesign would be necessary. Design changes require re-qualification. Software would have to be re-hosted and qualified. And on and on it goes...

Five years sounds optimistic to me.
 
We've had 40 years of declining manufacturing employment, with the commensurate drop in people with required skills; welders, machinists, electricians etc. We just don't build stuff like that here anymore, never mind having the raw materials.

We're great at intellectual property and high tech stuff.
Rosie doesn't know what a rivet is anymore, never mind what to do with it.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
We've had 40 years of declining manufacturing employment, with the commensurate drop in people with required skills; welders, machinists, electricians etc. We just don't build stuff like that here anymore, never mind having the raw materials.

We're great at intellectual property and high tech stuff.
Rosie doesn't know what a rivet is anymore, never mind what to do with it.
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Oh, we still build fighters and missiles and bombers here in the USA. You should see the F-35 production line. It’s pretty amazing.
 
kep5niner said:
Watch Pentagon Wars and you'll have a better understanding of the ridiculousness of the DoD procurement process. Years ago in Command General Staff Officer College, I wrote a paper about the fielding of the V-22 Osprey. From RFP to on the line was 24 years. o_O
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Yet the prototype P-51 was first rolled out 102 days after the contract was signed.

SoonerAviator said:
I think some of you would be surprised at how quickly US manufacturing companies could switchover...Remember that during the initial months of COVID, hospitals were running out of respirators and companies like Ford re-engineered existing automotive pumps to be assembled into respirators for medical use. However, getting raw materials for much of a "war demand" would likely prove much more difficult with so much being sourced around the globe.
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I was a part of that effort, the company I work for produces small valves and other components for mostly automotive use, which were adapted to the ventilators the auto companies were making.

I had an IBM manufactured M-1 Carbine; they were also made by Pitney Bowes and Rock-Ola (the jukebox company). The Rock-Olas are the real collector's items.
 
Chip Sylverne said:
We're great at intellectual property and high tech stuff.
Rosie doesn't know what a rivet is anymore, never mind what to do with it.
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Rosie's requires high wages than her overseas counterpart.
Reminds me of a story a contractor told me about an IT project in India. They had a few thousand instances of bad data in the db. He was going to have his US based programmer write a script to fix it. But it turned out cheaper to throw dozens of ppl at it to manually correct the data.
 
It’s surprising how quickly things can happen when a truly existential crisis comes to life. I’m not talking about the OMG I can’t believe she broke up with me ‘existential’ crisis.
 
Dana said:
Yet the prototype P-51 was first rolled out 102 days after the contract was signed.
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Yes. But that wasn't a US contract. That was a spec written by North American for a British request with a lot fewer restrictions. The Brits wanted fighters NOW.

I read a story about tank production in Germany in WWII. If you look at production figures, the Germans produced relatively few tanks. One of the reasons why was they never mass produced them in the sort of way the US and USSR did. Pick a design, freeze it, build 5,000 while you learn and plan for upgrades. Upgrade the design to Spec 2, make 10,000...

The Germans built their tanks like watches and rarely built two dozen that were alike before making engineering changes and tweaks to make 'em better. And the production numbers showed it. You can't mass produce that way.

We've moved to the German model. The B-1 was a decade later than it needed to be and we only built a hundred.. The B-2 got re-engineered late in the process to facilitate low altitude bombing. And we only build about 20. The F-22 took a lifetime to bring to production and we built a hundred and seventy something. The A-12 never made it into production despite a decade long and crazy expensive development program.

Heck, something as simple as retrofitting an airliner with a refueling probe is about a decade behind schedule with the Boeing KC-46, and they are only building a relative handful of those.

It is just pitiful. Now, of course, today's weaponry is infinitely more complicated than yesterday's, but our inability to pin down a design and make a few hundred, THEN upgrade it is killing us from a numbers and cost perspective.
 
kyleb said:
Yes. But that wasn't a US contract. That was a spec written by North American for a British request with a lot fewer restrictions. The Brits wanted fighters NOW.

I read a story about tank production in Germany in WWII. If you look at production figures, the Germans produced relatively few tanks. One of the reasons why was they never mass produced them in the sort of way the US and USSR did. Pick a design, freeze it, build 5,000 while you learn and plan for upgrades. Upgrade the design to Spec 2, make 10,000...

The Germans built their tanks like watches and rarely built two dozen that were alike before making engineering changes and tweaks to make 'em better. And the production numbers showed it. You can't mass produce that way.

We've moved to the German model. The B-1 was a decade later than it needed to be and we only built a hundred.. The B-2 got re-engineered late in the process to facilitate low altitude bombing. And we only build about 20. The F-22 took a lifetime to bring to production and we built a hundred and seventy something. The A-12 never made it into production despite a decade long and crazy expensive development program.

Heck, something as simple as retrofitting an airliner with a refueling probe is about a decade behind schedule with the Boeing KC-46, and they are only building a relative handful of those.

It is just pitiful. Now, of course, today's weaponry is infinitely more complicated than yesterday's, but our inability to pin down a design and make a few hundred, THEN upgrade it is killing us from a numbers and cost perspective.
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We have the luxury of doing so. We don't need to stamp out 10,000 F-35s of the base model. Different tool for a different era. We aren't slapping together hundreds of frigates and battleships, either. The amount of technology and design packed into each one largly makes up for not having sheer numbers.
 
SoonerAviator said:
We have the luxury of doing so. We don't need to stamp out 10,000 F-35s of the base model. Different tool for a different era. We aren't slapping together hundreds of frigates and battleships, either. The amount of technology and design packed into each one largly makes up for not having sheer numbers.
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Except we don't have enough F-22's, B-2's, B-1's, or anything else from the modern era, and all of the programs developed since the F-16 (arguably) have taken years, if not decades longer than necessary, creating crushing development costs and resulting in inadequate numbers.

It ain't just numbers, it is getting today's technology into service today, rather than waiting 5-10 more years for a 2% better and 50% more expensive version of today's technology.
 
SoonerAviator said:
We have the luxury of doing so. We don't need to stamp out 10,000 F-35s of the base model. Different tool for a different era. We aren't slapping together hundreds of frigates and battleships, either. The amount of technology and design packed into each one largly makes up for not having sheer numbers.
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You end up with tools too expensive to lose. Too expensive to lose is to expensive to use.
 
upload_2022-3-11_7-24-45.png
upload_2022-3-11_7-25-52.png
At least one modern power has considered that problem.
 
kyleb said:
Yes. But that wasn't a US contract. That was a spec written by North American for a British request with a lot fewer restrictions. The Brits wanted fighters NOW.

I read a story about tank production in Germany in WWII. If you look at production figures, the Germans produced relatively few tanks. One of the reasons why was they never mass produced them in the sort of way the US and USSR did. Pick a design, freeze it, build 5,000 while you learn and plan for upgrades. Upgrade the design to Spec 2, make 10,000...

The Germans built their tanks like watches and rarely built two dozen that were alike before making engineering changes and tweaks to make 'em better. And the production numbers showed it. You can't mass produce that way.

We've moved to the German model. The B-1 was a decade later than it needed to be and we only built a hundred.. The B-2 got re-engineered late in the process to facilitate low altitude bombing. And we only build about 20. The F-22 took a lifetime to bring to production and we built a hundred and seventy something. The A-12 never made it into production despite a decade long and crazy expensive development program.

Heck, something as simple as retrofitting an airliner with a refueling probe is about a decade behind schedule with the Boeing KC-46, and they are only building a relative handful of those.

It is just pitiful. Now, of course, today's weaponry is infinitely more complicated than yesterday's, but our inability to pin down a design and make a few hundred, THEN upgrade it is killing us from a numbers and cost perspective.
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We need to adopt the SpaceX model.
 
Don't overlook the problems/complexity caused by the budgetting process. At the risk of getting too close to spinzone material, one main root cause (if not *the* cause) is Congress.
 
To address the OP question, I do not think we can come close to the industrial model that was put in place during WWII. Too many resources have been outsourced.

Chip Sylverne said:
We've had 40 years of declining manufacturing employment, with the commensurate drop in people with required skills; welders, machinists, electricians etc. We just don't build stuff like that here anymore, never mind having the raw materials.

We're great at intellectual property and high tech stuff.
Rosie doesn't know what a rivet is anymore, never mind what to do with it.
Click to expand...

Also, don't forget that we also have outsourced a lot of our food, drugs, clothing, etc. it takes more than tanks, ships and planes.
 
Half Fast said:
If you want to understand the difficulty with acquiring defense articles in the US, you need to study this flowchart:


View attachment 105338
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I particularly like "logistics life cycle" in the title. That pretty much says it all. My dad worked as an engineer for United Airlines. At one point in his career, he intersected with DoD (I don't remember why). He came back just shaking his head about the inefficiency (read: wasted money) in defense contracting. I doubt it's gotten better.
 
judypilot said:
I particularly like "logistics life cycle" in the title. That pretty much says it all. My dad worked as an engineer for United Airlines. At one point in his career, he intersected with DoD (I don't remember why). He came back just shaking his head about the inefficiency (read: wasted money) in defense contracting. I doubt it's gotten better.
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And when it’s a “joint” program, as in Joint Strike Fighter, you essentially get to do that chart three times, as each service has its own priorities and set of experts, and they never all agree.
 
Bob Noel said:
Don't overlook the problems/complexity caused by the budgetting process. At the risk of getting too close to spinzone material, one main root cause (if not *the* cause) is Congress.
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I don't think it'd be spin zone material, in that the quest for pork is universal across the political spectrum. Senator Jones or Congressman Smith are more likely to get re-elected if they can bring some good federal programs to their districts. So programs become bloated enough to spread the largess over as much of the country as they can.

It's said that the fundamental tenet of Puritanism was the fear that someone, somewhere was enjoying themselves, and it was necessary to squash that. Similarly, the acquisition process in the US has the fundamental goal of preventing any person or company from gaining too much profit or advantage from their work with the government. Congress went after Howard Hughes after the war, accusing him of (among other things) buying meals for and procuring hookers for Army procurement officers. He admitted it...and pointed out there were no laws against it, and that such practices were universal among federal contractors.

And so acquisition puritanism was born, with rules generated to both stop such practices as well as make things more "fair." It makes everyone more cautious; it inserts a crap-ton of ambiguity into the lives of those who are trying to abide by the rules. I visited the satellite manufacturer back when I was a young lieutenant, and agonized over whether I could accept discount certificates to Disneyland from the manufacturer (certificates which were basically on a rack for any employee to pick up). As a Government contractor, I went through a lot of meetings where we provided coffee and doughnuts to Government attendees. There was a "fair share" notice we gave them, it told them the value of the viands and included an envelope for them to tuck cash or a check into. I've seen some *awfully* lavish lunches where the "Fair Share" was listed as five bucks.

Yet this wasn't an issue if Company A visits Company B...as long as the Government isn't involved.

This didn't happen all at once, of course... it's a progression over the past eighty years or more.

SpaceX certainly found a solution to the problem: NOT involving the Government as much as possible during the development phase.

Ron Wanttaja
 
Half Fast said:
And when it’s a “joint” program, as in Joint Strike Fighter, you essentially get to do that chart three times, as each service has its own priorities and set of experts, and they never all agree.
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And its own process for updating and making their acquisition process more complex.

After years of working programs that were acquired through the Air Force process, I was loaned out to a program doing something for the Navy. The Navy had just updated their main acquisition regulations, and it was going to cost my program more money to comply with additional testing and documentation. I pointed out that our CONTRACT with the Navy specified that we used the previous version of the NAVAIR specification, and, at a meeting with our contracts people, used the dread term "Out of scope" when referring to the new one.

I was soon sent back to my home organization as they caved to the new version of the NAVAIR spec. And, of course, there was a cost overrun, and people tsked-tsked and asked why Boeing just couldn't manage their contracts....

Ron Wanttaja
 
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