We’re Going To Fight With What We Have

One of the characteristics of WWII, which made the defeat of Germany and Japan a foregone conclusion, was the vast industrial capacity of the US and the ability to convert that capacity to wartime production needs.  In contrast, today we lack the sheer foundation of industry and, for a host of reasons, the ability to convert what we do have to wartime needs and to scale up the capacity that we do have.
 
Why, you ask, can’t we scale up and convert the industry that we do have to wartime needs?  As an illustrative example, recall that in WWII, auto manufacturers were able to convert from cars to tanks, aircraft, and other equipment.  Ford Motor Company, for example, produced B-24 bombers and M-4 tanks, among other items.  Conversion to wartime production was possible, in large part, due to the fact that civilian automobiles and military vehicles and aircraft used, basically, the same equipment.  An M-4 tank wasn’t that different from an automobile.  Bombers and tanks used radial engines which were, themselves, just automobile engines in a different shape than an in-line car engine.  And so on.
 
Now, consider a modern Abrams tank or a B-2/B-21 bomber as compared to a typical automobile.  There’s no comparison and little similarity!  Turbine engines have little in common with car engines.  Advanced armors have little in common with automobile sheet metal.  Exotic materials like titanium, composites, etc. have little in common with sheet metal and run of the mill steel and aluminum.  Forming, welding, and manipulating exotic materials requires exotic skills.  Stealth coatings have nothing in common with automobile paint.  Micron tolerances have nothing in common with automobile level tolerances.  And so on.
 
Yes, given years of time to retrain workers, revamp factories, master advanced production techniques, and so forth, we could convert but we aren’t going to have years of time in a war.  If we can’t convert quickly, we aren’t going to convert at all.
 
Let’s consider some other factors that impair our ability to convert industry to wartime needs.
 
Exotic Components – Much of military production incorporates and depends on exotic components such as computer chips.  There is almost nothing the military uses that does not use computer chips.  Unfortunately, our chip production capacity is maxed out, right now, as evidenced by the recent, severe chip shortage.  Even now, in peacetime, we desperately need additional computer chip capacity but a new chip factory takes a minimum of $10 billion and five years to build, according to the research firm, International Data Corporation (IDC).[1]  We have no hope of commissioning new chip production facilities in a useful time frame when war comes.
 
Exotic Materials – Many of our most advanced military components require exotic rare earths, metals, alloys, and composites that we have insufficient supplies of or lack entirely.  The bulk of our rare earth supply comes from China!  I think it’s safe to say China won’t be supplying us with rare earths during a war.
 
Factories – Over the last several decades, we’ve allowed (forced, through unwise legislation and tax regulations) much of our manufacturing to move overseas.  Even if we could convert existing factories, we simply don’t have enough factories remaining to meet wartime demands.  We’re currently trying to increase weapons production and failing badly and that’s just while trying to satisfy the needs of a minor, regional war between Ukraine and Russia.  How much worse will the weapon production deficiency be in a war with China?
 
Work Force – We currently have a severe shortage of skilled labor.  Our shortsighted attempt to force every high school student to go to college or be branded a failure has depleted our supply of skilled trades workers.  Once upon a time, we could train new people fairly quickly on basic welding, pipefitting, and electrical skills but the advanced nature of our technology now requires advanced capabilities.  Now, it would take years of training to produce a worker capable of producing our advanced technology.
 
 
Conclusion
 
The conclusion is short, simple, and painfully obvious.  We have little industrial capacity for war, at the moment, and even less potential to convert and scale up our industry for war.  The implication of this is that we’re going to have to fight a war with, essentially, what we have going into it.  We won’t be quickly converting and gearing up production capabilities and capacities.
 
This means that we need to rethink the type of weapons and inventories we’re maintaining and developing.  Complex weapon systems are the enemy of rapid production and, in war, rapid production is one of the most important keys to victory.  We need to ask ourselves whether somewhat simpler systems that can be rapidly produced is a better way to go than bleeding edge technologies that require decades to develop and produce?  Are hundreds of thousands of dumb bombs better than multi-million dollar precision guided missiles the inventory of which will be depleted inside a month of war?  Remember, the enemy will be facing the same problem although China seems to have a better industrial base to start with (courtesy, in large measure, of us!).
 
 
Solutions
 
What can we do to put ourselves in a better industrial position?
 
Simplify.  We need to simplify our overly complex technology.  Every weapon system we develop needs to pass through the filter of rapid production.  It doesn’t matter how good a weapon is if we can’t produce useful quantities in short time frames.  Ask the Germans how the Tiger tank, Me-262, and other wonder weapons worked out for them.
 
Reclaim Production.  We need to bring production back to America by modifying our laws, regulations, tariffs, and trade relations so as to make it more profitable to produce at home than abroad.  If we do that, industry will return of its own accord.
 
Skilled Trades.  We need to vastly increase our reservoir of skilled trades workers.  We need to end the college push and, instead, push skilled trades as an honorable, rewarding, and lucrative career at the high school level and re-establish high school vocational education training.  Not everyone should go to college.
 
Foreign Dependency.  We need to eliminate our foreign dependency on raw materials.  For example, we have abundant rare earths but our regulations discourage the mining and refining of them.  We need to treat defense-critical raw materials as a national imperative and establish a special category of regulations that allow their production without undue concern about environmental issues.  Note that ‘undue’ does not mean ‘no’ concern.  We just can’t regulate critical raw materials out of existence, as we’ve done.
 
 
 
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[1]https://www.marketplace.org/2022/08/23/what-does-it-take-for-chip-manufacturers-to-get-a-new-plant-up-and-running/