Another Lesson From the Great War

Eight years ago, I wondered whether or not the lesson of the difference between fighting wars in the Third World vs. the First World had been forgotten.

One lesson that has been relearned and reforgotten time and time again is the incredible wastage/expenditure of munitions during a war. In this regard, the Russians have a short-term advantage in that they never throw anything away. If it's obsolete, it goes into a warehouse deep in the interior.[1],[2] But once they burn through their stocks, they may not have the capacity to make more.[3] But as for America, we've been down this road before. During the Christmas bombing offensive of 1972, we were so short of bombs that new bomb casings went from having their TNT filler poured to being loaded on transports.[4]

But it's a lesson we don't learn and refuse to learn. Keeping the capacity up to rapidly make munitions from howitzer shells to the howitzers and AGTMS and MANPADs is expensive. So now we need to make a lot more war materiel and get it to the battlefield and do it fast. Going from zero to wartime production is not cheap and easy.

And it's going to scuttle a bunch of other things.[5] But that's the nature of war.

And we are in one, whether we want to admit it or not.
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[1] It wasn't until two decades ago that the Russians stopped keeping everything in place to run steam engines.
[2] I am not certain, but I wonder if the flood of Mosin rifles imported in the Aughts and Teens came from Ukraine and other FSU nations. The Russians may have hung onto theirs.
[3] If the munitions plants weren't sold off to the Russian kelptocracy.
[4] The story was that they were still warm to the touch when they were offloaded in Guam and U-Tapao. [5] Such as expanded social programs and tax cuts for billionaires.