Quote Originally Posted by J Wolfsberger View Post
I agree - our normal operating mode (historically) seems to be going to war undermanned with antiquated equipment.

It might also be well to remember the nursery rhyme that begins "For want of a nail..." It should begin: "For lack of a smithy, the nail wasn't made..." We can no more expect to turn on a company such as Ford or Caterpillar to make combat vehicles overnight than we can expect to turn an 18 year old into a competent infantryman in 8 - 12 weeks of basic training.

Generally, systems that aren't effective get cut, redirected, or terminated. And, yes, there are also some things that get funded simply to maintain industrial base. I, for one, would be seriously concerned by any politician who threatened to end that. To someone completely ignorant of modern weapon systems, it might seem feasible to just pull in the "freeze dried engineers," a sentiment popular in the late 80s - early 90s, and start the weapon design process. In practice, those novice engineers, and especially their management, will require one or two practice programs just to reach the level of competence needed to develop an effective system. When you realize that those "practice" systems will run into years and $Bs, keeping the base ticking over is a prudent investment.

Though I don't disagree with the specifics I do disagree with the thread. American technology followed societal mores into specialization and impoverished flexibility. There absolutely no reason a tank chassis can't be shared with a caterpillar dozer or vice a versa. The tank came second and was hung around a custom one off chassis that extremely expensive. In fact if you look back to the 50's and before you find most military equipment was based on civilian models from the ubiquitous jeep to the DC3.

The specification and procurement process lost that and gave us $300 toilet seats and so on. You currently can't mass produce tanks. There will be no way to produce them quickly. Liberty ships are a thing of the past. There seems to be golden memory of the production capability of America but that is plain gone. Not because we can't build or create, but because the final products are so far away from their civilian counterparts as to be impossible to mass produce.

Get rid of single threaded tipping point technologies and deconstruct the mess of contractor abominations and you might be able to make cases for to large of standing army. One beget the other and y'all can argue about which is which.