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Reminds me how the US continually produces tanks despite the armies recommendations, to the point where we have enough tanks to essentially fight WW3 with purel
by tomatotomato37 7y ago
Reminds me how the US continually produces tanks despite the armies recommendations, to the point where we have enough tanks to essentially fight WW3 with purely tanks and still have some left over, just so some congressmen can keep jobs in their constituency.
At least that was the situation in the 2000s, no idea if that wackiness is still continuing
- SEJeff 7y agoTo be fair, they've just massively upgraded the M1s to where they're nothing like the original tanks at all: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/armys-new-tank-here-check-out-m1a3-abrams-tank-no-lasers-needed-72566 https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/armys-new-tank-here-c... It isn't as though they've been building the same old thing since the 2000s, they've been incrementally and steadily improving them as technology and materials science improves.
- jdc 7y agoI think the point is tanks in general have little use in the vast majority of modern American battles.
- pengaru 7y agoIs that really true when modern American battles seem to always evolve into endless occupations?
- buckminster 7y agoThey should be building something that more closely resembles an armoured RV with a gun. Perfect for achieving and maintaining occupation.
- SEJeff 7y agoYou're describing the Stryker Combat Vehicle, and it has a remotely operated weapons turret. However, it can only carry 9 infantryman (in addition to its crew). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stryker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stryker
- SEJeff 7y agoI’d say this is false, even as I myself am a US Army veteran who spent a year in Iraq 2003-2004. Tanks are still useful, but aren’t as useful against non-conventional forces. The pentagon has spent the past 4-5 years retooling for what they call “near peer” threats which is to say China in the Pacific and Russia in Europe. Tanks, and really good ones in specific, would be required to push back a Russian incursion into our allies.
- rurp 7y agoI just can't imagine a plausible scenario where a war between nuclear powers comes down to which side has more tanks. Does the US military actually think that it could invade China or Russia with a conventional army without the other side quickly threatening to use nukes? At that point it would become a two true outcome scenario: either the conventional fighting stops or we are all in big trouble.
- whatshisface 7y agoRussia would threaten nukes to protect its homeland, but would it start a nuclear war over, say, Poland?
- allendoerfer 7y agoThe EU is integrating it's military further. So Poland would essentially be a nuclear power. Even right know, Poland has allies, who have made the mistake of ignoring them being invaded for too long, and would probably not do so again.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoI do have some blindspots when it comes to Poland. Would you be willing to elaborate further? From what I could tell, everything was done to prevent Poland from going on nuclear path. Why would that approach change now?
- 7y ago
- briandear 7y agoHowever, tanks are strategic weapons as well as tactical ones. Similar to why we have ICBMs but never hope to launch one.
- SEJeff 7y agoGenerally speaking, ICBMs are strategic weapons exclusively. The tactical version of ICMBs are just tomahawk cruise missiles, and they're in nuclear submarines all around the world just waiting for the signal.
- virtue3 7y agoI donno, the "fingers of god" are also loaded in submarines ready to go whenever: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(missile)#/media/File:Trident_I_C-4_missiles.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trident_(missile)#/media/File:...
- SEJeff 7y agoOh of course. Missile submarines carry both however. They're more likely to use the tomahawks however. The Navy loooooves to use them. During the very first 48 hours (sustained) in the war in Afghanistan, a tomahawk missile was launched, on average, every 12 seconds night or day. The amount of boom those things made is unbelievable.
- qubex 7y agoThe production of armaments is a bit of an economic anomaly, to be honest. All businesses, including arms manufacturers, require a constant flow of business in order to cover their fixed costs and remunerate their investors (debt holders and shareholders). If governments only order weapons when they need them to fight a war, then the arms manufacturers would shut form at the end of a conflict and would take ages to “gear up” again when a new conflict arises, stymying response and lessening the deterrence implicit in having a standing army. Consequentially, it actually makes sense (from a strategic point of view) to keep weapons manufacturers “ticking over” with a constant flow of orders even if that just results in growing stockpiles. One of the reasons that profits are di high for weapons manufacturers is that according to the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) the rush of a government suddenly cutting off orders during peacetime and rendering the company unprofitable and probably bankrupt needs to be offset by high dividends in the here-and-now and with low historic volatility. Now, I’m not saying I support this, far from it, but that’s (one of) the rationale(s).
- tomatotomato37 7y agoIt seems like it would be a better use of resources to just build up enough of a stockpile that the industry would be able to safely retool into a similar civilian industry, such as railroad locomotives, and then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability. You'd just have to keep a small industry around for upgrades and maintenance.
- tguedes 7y agoBasically what happened in WW2
- AdamJacobMuller 7y ago> then have time to switch back without a loss of combat capability It's not that easy. You loose knowledge and vendors and people. Going from 0 unit production per year to 10 per year is more difficult than going going from 10 per year to 10000 per year.
- nradov 7y ago
- hellisothers 7y agoToo bad we can’t field them all at once without depleting the entire national reserve of gasoline in 30 minutes :)
- LyndsySimon 7y agoThat’s OK - they can burn kerosene, diesel, jet fuel... I’m not 100% sure of it, but I bet they would run just fine off used McDonald’s fry oil if push came to shove.
- dwnvoted2hell 7y agoIf I understand the difficulty with production systems in general, things of high complexity have difficulty being stopped and restarted, because the technology and know how to do them are lost. I believe that's why we can't make another Saturn V rocket at the moment.
- walrus01 7y agoOne of the problems with entirely ceasing production of a category of incredibly complex military system is that the engineering knowledge to build it retires, goes elsewhere or becomes unavailable. The UK faced a number of problems with their domestic construction of the Astute class nuclear attack submarines, as they had not built a nuclear sub in more than 15 years. The institutional knowledge of how to build such a thing had become scarce or retired.
- heavenlyblue 7y agoWhy not instead build them slowly enough so that the last submarine of class n-1 would be finished just before/after beginning of the build of the first submarine of class n?
- Robotbeat 7y agoBecause that makes the costs much higher. At some point, the unit costs are dominated by fixed costs, so producing 1 a year costs 10 times as much per unit as producing, say, 15 per year.
- manquer 7y agoyou are not wrong.. However we have lost a lot of such knowledge from the vagaries of the Space programs, civilian nuclear reactors, Tech in many ways far more important. It seems wrong tanks and nuclear subs should get better treatment than space.
- samstave 7y agoWhere are all these tabks located?