Tuesday, February 14, 2023

A Hint to the Beancounters and Politicians

U.S. lawmakers are sounding the alarm about challenges facing the U.S. defense industrial base as the war in Ukraine strains weapon supplies.

It could take years to replenish certain types of weapons the U.S. has sent to Kyiv, with no easy way to ramp up production quickly. That has policymakers deeply concerned about whether the U.S. would be able to field enough weapons if conflict broke out in the Taiwan Strait.

The House Armed Services Committee is set to examine the defense industrial base during its second hearing of the year on Wednesday.

“This ought to be a flashing red light for us, and it’s shocking to me,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said during an event at the American Enterprise Institute in late January. “This is a huge, glaring problem. And right now I don’t see the sort of all-hands-on-deck commitment to try to address that.

While it's nice that the lightbulb has gone off for Cornyn, none of this shit is rocket science. The burn-through rate of munitions in modern warfare has always been a lot higher than politicians and budgeteers have wanted to acknowledge. Building up the production capability for sustaining a war is expensive. Not only is it expensive, but then you have to keep the production lines in condidition to ramp up, which means making some of the stuff. A lot of weapon systems have defined shelf lives, requiring them to be reworked or scrapped, which adds to the cost.

That is a hard sell in peacetime. But it's fatal to not do it when war comes.

Which it always does.

15 comments:

  1. The West had better economic might than the East. That's how the last Cold War was one.

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  2. The Dems are liking the consumption of the munitions , because it stimulates the MIC economy.
    Whereas the R's don't like the draw down , because they know that the right will cause future wars...

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  3. Then again the chip act as its been called to get more on shore semiconductor
    and integrated circuit production was all about that. Can't make smart planes
    or bombs without them.

    To me its a manufacturing problem, I believe the Rethugs may have aggravated
    that by making off shore more economical so long as China plays.

    Follow the money.


    Eck!

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  4. Whereas the R's don't like the draw down , because they know that the right will cause future wars...

    Really Spud?

    WW1 President Wilson, Democrat

    WW2 President Roosevelt, Democrat

    Police action Korea President Eisenhower Republican

    Vietnam President Kennedy Democrat

    Need I go on?

    Eck!, you might want to Google about who sent most of our business overseas, you might find President Clinton Democrat and a few others in there.

    It's a Big Club and you and I are NOT in it.

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  5. As the defense budget nears ever closer to a trillion dollars a year, it is gobsmacking that it's still not enough to buy sufficient ammunition.

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  6. So, that makes you the third Mooney driver, to my recollection, to show up here.

    The previous two are both no longer with us. (But not from crashes)

    Welcome.

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  7. Golly Mic, I'm surprised you didn't cite Republican President Eisenhower as the winner of the war Roosevelt started, as were the first boots on the ground in Nam.

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  8. Arguing who started what war is pointless.

    Knock that shit off.

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  12. I should have looked at the timestamps. anyway, your post and my reponse are gone.

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  13. Though it wasn't all that long ago, not quite a year or so, in Internet time it was forever, but I did make snark right here about Sun Tzu and supply lines, and how Putin lost this from the start. Snarked again later at how obvious that was when N Korea is your only supply.

    The General who would put troops in the field to gratify his own spleen loses ...

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  14. The thing was, the intel was out there that the Ukrainians had reformed their army, had lots of AGTMs and stood a good chance of turning back the Russians. I would bet that a report to that effect exists in the files of the FSB.

    But no senior official was going to show it to Putin. He was convinced that the "tufties" wouldn't put up a fight. And so, the Russians didn't load up on rations or ammo, but they made sure to bring their fancy uniforms for their victory parade in Kyiv.

    Putin's three-day war is about to go into its second year.

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