10 ms·

The Return of Industrial Warfare

64 points by paganel 4y ago

pm90 4y ago
Maybe unpopular opinion: Its actually good that we may not have the industrial capacity to supply large scale conflicts for great lengths of time. There’s a simple solution to prevent conflicts like the one in Ukraine: expand NATO membership. It has turned out to be a n effective tool at preventing land wars in Europe.
- WillPostForFood 4y ago
  There’s a simple solution to prevent conflicts like the one in Ukraine: expand NATO membership I agree, but it is too late to do any good for Ukraine now. We need to industrially produce an end to the conflict, or give it over to Russia.
- negus 4y ago
  Did this simple solution prevent a war between two NATO members (Greece and Turkey) in past?
  - gambiting 4y ago
    No, but it has prevented anyone attacking NATO countries from outside. It is not a solution for NATO countries fighting each other, however.
    - deleted 4y ago
      [deleted]
- gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
  But that would undermine Russia’s security to invade neighbouring countries, install kleptocrats and subjugate the population! You can’t just have a unified bloc of prosperous, (mostly) democratic countries right there; how scandalous! /s
- bell-cot 4y ago
  Lowest-cost scenario: No capacity to fight a large-scale war; no need to fight a large-scale war. Lower-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; no need to fight a large-scale war. Upper-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war. Highest-cost scenario: No capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war. (It'd be nice if NATO memberships were magical anti-war talismans. The reality is far more complex.)
- omginternets 4y ago
  It’s only a good thing if nobody develops these capabilities unilaterally.
  - pm90 4y ago
    Right, but only regional powers have a real chance of doing that. Before you have a military industrial complex, you need the industrial complex, or at least the capacity to develop one. Smaller countries with scant resources are vulnerable to sanctions so they generally don’t have this capability. The bigger countries try and get nukes. Who’s left?
    - omginternets 4y ago
      Your reasoning doesn’t hold. Bigger countries don’t “try to get nukes” at the expense of an industrialized military. They can, and do, get both.
- barry-cotter 4y ago
  > Its actually good that we may not have the industrial capacity to supply large scale conflicts for great lengths of time. If WW1 Germany and France had the industrial capacity then any modern developed country does. The dislocation will just be more wrenching. Dislocation can include losing the war.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  > expand NATO membership How could the cause of a conflict be the solution to preventing that conflict? Doing almost anything except attempting to expand NATO membership would have prevented the conflict in Ukraine.
  - wbl 4y ago
    No it would not have. Ukrainian protest in 2014 was driven by wanting EU membership and trade ties. Russia responded with an invasion.
    - ceeplusplus 4y ago
      Russia responded with an invasion because an EU state on their border would be like Mexico being an ally of China on the border of the US. Not saying Russian actions in the war haven't been despicable but if this happened to the US they would invade too. I think the most likely outcome of this war is Ukraine gets split into 2 buffer states, one as a client to Russia and the other as a client to the EU/US. US can't afford to spend the hundreds of billions it would take for Ukraine to win (1000's of tanks, artillery pieces, IFVs, etc) and Putin can't back down now or he'll lose face and be toppled from leadership.
      - spamizbad 4y ago
        I'm not sure if you've been paying attention to the current political situation in Mexico but AMLO has no problem strengthening ties to various countries that "threaten" US interests. And he's free to do so! Mexico is a sovereign country and is allowed to build diplomatic bridges to any nation it chooses. It would be completely inappropriate for the US try an annex Baja California or something in retaliation. Just imagine if the international community took a firmer line on the US during GWOT - half a million lives could've been saved. Edit: Was the US justified in fomenting death squads Latin America because those countries embraced socialism against the wishes of the United States? No? Then why is Russia entitled to a full-scale invasion over Ukraine's western aspirations?
      - jonnybgood 4y ago
- corrral 4y ago
  - Expanding membership of a mutual-defense alliance is risky. If you let someone in who's good at picking fights, you can end up in a situation that you really didn't want to, and that may not have happened in the first place if they hadn't had the treaty to make them feel more secure with e.g. brinksmanship. - Shifts in political alignment of members can, similarly, do strange things and lead to bad situations. Take Hungary—right now they just look maybe just a tad down the path toward authoritarianism, but what if that turned into a civil war? What if the government that you're allied with gets into a bit of the good ol' genocide? Serb/albanian type situation, or maybe just your run of the mill widespread political purges? On the one hand there's some moral obligation to intervene, plus the legitimate interests of neighboring states in countering severe violence and instability in their vicinity; on the other hand now you and anyone else who's considering intervention, in the alliance or not, has a bit of a dilemma on their hands. It complicates an already complicated situation. - As an alliance grows stronger it invites reaction from opponents. This doesn't make those reactions "right" (I'm very aware that this is one argument for why Russia invaded) but it's a fact. The reaction needn't be war, but might be creation or expansion of opposing alliances. Larger alliances, more shared borders in more places... that's a recipe for world war. Every member you add is, in a sense, a long-term liability and threat to the stability of the alliance. These arrangements are not purely beneficial, in practice, including for members.
- LAC-Tech 4y ago
  If you put on your realist hat, there are two options. One is for NATO (or another European military alliance) to be so powerful and cohesive in their relations to Russia, that Russia have no choice but to deal with it. This was presumably the false assumption that lead to the current war. (I really, really hope it was a false assumption). The other option would have been to thaw relations, perhaps acquiescing to a few demands and showing more compromise. Say what you want about Russia - and there's a lot bad to say. But much worse actors have received much nicer treatment by the west. Think about everything that's been done to accommodate China since the end of the cold war, to say nothing of the likes of Saudi Arabia. Instead a middle path was picked, and now we have war.
baybal2 4y ago
An excellent article when it comes to throwing a dry fact into the face. An even greater commentary been provided by this tweet: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936 How did America pump out liberty ships faster than even China can build ships today during the WW2? US military production was a byproduct of its great civilian heavy industry. US tanks, ships, airplanes, bomber, guns were mostly made by factories repurposed from making civilian goods. So when the demand for them waned, so did the raw military potential. This was in contract to USSR, where civilian manufacturing was a byproduct of weapon production. American military planners knew that all well during the late cold war, and its pursuit of "smart weapons" was an attempt to substitute quality for quantity, and capitalise on American leadership in electronics. This paid out extremely well. Even first generation smart munitions were many times more efficient. After the Cold War, US peacetime military planning started to stagnate, and finally disappeared due to obsession with "special operations" during the War on Terror, and military procurement becoming a business like operation. By only allowing expensive toys winning procurement competitions, the military pigeonholed itself into extremely uncompetitive purchasing position. While USA has no rivals in arms exports for things like fighter jets, nearly no brand new weapon systems developed after year 2000 are bought by US allies. As you see even now, most bought US hardware today is still from the Cold War era, which is a proof of the above. Look at the super expensive titanium M777 howitzer: they wanted to restart its production recently, but... surprise! They have to buy its titanium from Russia. F35's titanium bulkheads are now turning into a similar issue. US electronics is no longer an edge for its military industry, and more likely a liability. What however the West can deny China, and Russia are high grade machine tools, and other implements for the heavy industry: modern Chinese steel industry was built by Dutch, car industry by Germans and Italians, materials by Japan, electronics assembly by Taiwanese, and heavy machinery by Koreans.
- Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
  "nearly no brand new weapon systems developed after year 2000 are bought by US allies" Could you enumerate a few more of them than the obviously ludicrous M777? And does that count as "brand new"?? What about the Standard Missile 3 for example?
yborg 4y ago
This points out the fact that ceding your technical manufacturing base to other countries, especially your possible enemies, is good way to lose geopolitical relevance in a hurry. The implicit assumption has always been that nuclear weapons trump everything, but realistically this only is useful if an enemy believes you are willing to invoke Armageddon to resolve a conflict. Is the US going to risk annihilation over Taiwan? If the answer is 'no', then relative conventional combat strength will determine the victor, and when your opponent owns your industrial base, you have already lost.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- mormegil 4y ago
  Yeah, this is basically the stability/instability paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_...
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- oska 4y ago
  My understanding is that the deindustrialisation of the USA is largely a natural consequence of the 'exorbitant privilege' of having the world's global reserve currency (since Bretton Woods). This was identified as early as the 1960s by Robert Triffin, and is known as the Triffin Dilemma [1]. [1] https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
  - xyzzy123 4y ago
    That wouldn't explain why you see the same in Australia, NZ, UK, etc etc. It seems to me that "obvious explanation" of globalization is more parsimonious (although I acknowledge there can be multiple forces at work). Things are set up so that corporations can "shop" for the lowest wages, taxes, environmental laws and so on. In fact they have to or face being outcompeted. Another headwind is heavy state support for "real" industry in a lot of places (that CAN see the value in having an industrial base). The result of globalisation is nominally more efficient (in a comparative advantage sense), but hollows the industrial base in richer countries and since that is an externality not measured in dollars, here we are. Personally I am also partial to the related narrative that this has stifled local innovation in a broad blast radius around the outsourced industries and is a major contributing factor in reduced infrastructure capacity in the west.
aftbit 4y ago
History shows that peacetime nations frequently underestimate the cost of war. If you haven't seen them yet, Perun on YouTube has done a number of good videos on the economics of war & the Russo-Ukranian conflict in particular. Here's one in particular that deals a bit with ammo shortages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ptG1IxZ08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ptG1IxZ08
- Spooky23 4y ago
  Id love to see a full accounting of the War on Terror. Trillions of dollars spent, millions of lives impacted, and for what.
  - gumby 4y ago
    > Trillions of dollars spent, millions of lives impacted, and for what 1 - trillions of dollars funneled to friends in the defense industry 2 - fear induced in gullible sections of the populace to make them easier to gull. Mission accomplished!
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    The trillions did not vanish. Every last dollar found a receptive pocket. Maybe look into how many millionaires and billionaires have been minted since 2001. Yet, they only got leavings from the Old Money table.
- skmurphy 4y ago
  The Perun video series is well researched and well presented.
bell-cot 4y ago
For all the article's talk about military supply businesses closing down when the government isn't regularly buying enough, it fails to mention the long history of government-owned, government-operated armories and arsenals. Most major nations developed, maintained, and operated those, for centuries. Because staying ready to produce arms and ammunition - at scale, when needed - was always a poor fit for private industry. EDIT: Add one simple example - "The Springfield Armory, more formally known as the United States Armory and Arsenal at Springfield located in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, was the primary center for the manufacture of United States military firearms from 1777 until its closing in 1968. It was the first federal armory and one of the first factories in the United States dedicated to the manufacture of weapons." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory )
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Private industry's preference for making bullets with a certain powder was directly responsible for the M-16's legendary unreliability in the Vietnam War. I don't know whether the US Army can get ammunition today that does not have its unfortunate effects.
  - sgt101 4y ago
    I'm not sure that's a completely fair representation of what happened. Have a look at this : https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/#toc12 https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/#toc12
    - ncmncm 4y ago
      Credibility somewhat compromised by: > Civilian AR-15s ... are hands down the best rifles you can own for self-defense But it looks like the holder of the sole-source contract for ball powder must have determined the sequence of events.
      - anonfornoreason 4y ago
otikik 4y ago
> Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles I am trying to keep an open mind and see where this person is coming from, but I don't think "Luckily" is the right word to use. If I was feeling particularly charitable I would call it a "Mixed bag". It's a bit ridiculous, but imagine for a second if Javelin and Stinger missiles did have a civilian component. > If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime That is one option, there are others. We could, for example, decide to take preventive economical measures against autocracies, and thus preventing them from capital they could use to build their own arsenal. Everyone having smaller arsenals is good for everyone (except the Military Industrial complex, of course).
- musingsole 4y ago
  > imagine for a second if Javelin and Stinger missiles did have a civilian component. You mean if rocket clubs were free to pursue their interests to a much further extent than the toys they're restricted to now? Rockets don't always have to be weapons.
  - BiteCode_dev 4y ago
    Not to mention fireworks show it can be a perfectly safe endeavor with the proper legal framework. Even kids can use them. No, I'm way more worried about the fact a terrorist could come at my door with a tank at any moment and I have no way to defend myself. And what if it's not a terrorist ? What if I have to defend myself against the state itself ? At least we should be able to equip the schools to protect our children, if not directly our homes.
    - ricardobeat 4y ago
      I have another idea. What if we all pooled together to buy some defense equipment, created some kind of club for training people, elected a bunch to run it; and then enjoyed the protection from this shared service without having to own heavy weapons ourselves?
spywaregorilla 4y ago
I'm not convinced. This is a weird war. Russia has an enormous supply of really shitty vehicles, indifference to losing tens of thousands of soldiers, and indifference to slaughtering civilians at will. Dumb artillery and cheap shells are a good solution for this. Will we ever see such a situation again? Russia is the only country that can do this as far as I can tell. This is a war in large part being fought with tech from 50 years ago. The new stuff is only just reaching the front. I'm not sure how relevant the lessons to be learned are. The javelins are a weird case. Yeah they probably did burn through javelins quickly. That'll happen if your enemy is careless with its troops and tanks. We can still make javelins a lot faster than Russia can make tanks, they just had a lot of tanks to begin with. We're now seeing russia roll out tanks from 60's. I'm inclined to believe that supply is rapidly running out.
- mrelectric 4y ago
  I would guess they're simply clearing the stock
- fock 4y ago
  well, if you look at GDP, russias industry is about the same size as the one of Germany. Germany has a lot less workers (and gas ;)) for that amount of $ and they produce millions of cars. I guess Russia (which I don't know for any consumable industrial output) might be able to produce quite a few tanks (also look at numbers e.g. for BMP-3, which were all produced after 1990).
  - gumby 4y ago
    > well, if you look at GDP, russias industry is about the same size as the one of Germany. On a nominal basis Russia's economy is less than half Germany's and not much larger than Australia's. On PPP basis it's closer to Germany, but the industries of all three countries depend on foreign imports (Russia's especially) so PPP is less useful when considering industrial production.
  - nemo 4y ago
    Germany's GDP: 3.8 trillion USD Russia's GDP: 1.4 trillion USD they're not that close in size...

64 points by paganel 4y ago

pm90 4y ago

Maybe unpopular opinion: Its actually good that we may not have the industrial capacity to supply large scale conflicts for great lengths of time. There’s a simple solution to prevent conflicts like the one in Ukraine: expand NATO membership. It has turned out to be a n effective tool at preventing land wars in Europe.

WillPostForFood 4y ago
There’s a simple solution to prevent conflicts like the one in Ukraine: expand NATO membership I agree, but it is too late to do any good for Ukraine now. We need to industrially produce an end to the conflict, or give it over to Russia.
negus 4y ago
Did this simple solution prevent a war between two NATO members (Greece and Turkey) in past?
- gambiting 4y ago
  No, but it has prevented anyone attacking NATO countries from outside. It is not a solution for NATO countries fighting each other, however.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
gunfighthacksaw 4y ago
But that would undermine Russia’s security to invade neighbouring countries, install kleptocrats and subjugate the population! You can’t just have a unified bloc of prosperous, (mostly) democratic countries right there; how scandalous! /s
bell-cot 4y ago
Lowest-cost scenario: No capacity to fight a large-scale war; no need to fight a large-scale war. Lower-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; no need to fight a large-scale war. Upper-middle-cost scenario: Capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war. Highest-cost scenario: No capacity to fight a large-scale war; a need to fight a large-scale war. (It'd be nice if NATO memberships were magical anti-war talismans. The reality is far more complex.)
omginternets 4y ago
It’s only a good thing if nobody develops these capabilities unilaterally.
- pm90 4y ago
  Right, but only regional powers have a real chance of doing that. Before you have a military industrial complex, you need the industrial complex, or at least the capacity to develop one. Smaller countries with scant resources are vulnerable to sanctions so they generally don’t have this capability. The bigger countries try and get nukes. Who’s left?
  - omginternets 4y ago
    Your reasoning doesn’t hold. Bigger countries don’t “try to get nukes” at the expense of an industrialized military. They can, and do, get both.
barry-cotter 4y ago
> Its actually good that we may not have the industrial capacity to supply large scale conflicts for great lengths of time. If WW1 Germany and France had the industrial capacity then any modern developed country does. The dislocation will just be more wrenching. Dislocation can include losing the war.
pessimizer 4y ago
> expand NATO membership How could the cause of a conflict be the solution to preventing that conflict? Doing almost anything except attempting to expand NATO membership would have prevented the conflict in Ukraine.
- wbl 4y ago
  No it would not have. Ukrainian protest in 2014 was driven by wanting EU membership and trade ties. Russia responded with an invasion.
  - ceeplusplus 4y ago
    Russia responded with an invasion because an EU state on their border would be like Mexico being an ally of China on the border of the US. Not saying Russian actions in the war haven't been despicable but if this happened to the US they would invade too. I think the most likely outcome of this war is Ukraine gets split into 2 buffer states, one as a client to Russia and the other as a client to the EU/US. US can't afford to spend the hundreds of billions it would take for Ukraine to win (1000's of tanks, artillery pieces, IFVs, etc) and Putin can't back down now or he'll lose face and be toppled from leadership.
    - spamizbad 4y ago
      I'm not sure if you've been paying attention to the current political situation in Mexico but AMLO has no problem strengthening ties to various countries that "threaten" US interests. And he's free to do so! Mexico is a sovereign country and is allowed to build diplomatic bridges to any nation it chooses. It would be completely inappropriate for the US try an annex Baja California or something in retaliation. Just imagine if the international community took a firmer line on the US during GWOT - half a million lives could've been saved. Edit: Was the US justified in fomenting death squads Latin America because those countries embraced socialism against the wishes of the United States? No? Then why is Russia entitled to a full-scale invasion over Ukraine's western aspirations?
    - jonnybgood 4y ago
corrral 4y ago
- Expanding membership of a mutual-defense alliance is risky. If you let someone in who's good at picking fights, you can end up in a situation that you really didn't want to, and that may not have happened in the first place if they hadn't had the treaty to make them feel more secure with e.g. brinksmanship. - Shifts in political alignment of members can, similarly, do strange things and lead to bad situations. Take Hungary—right now they just look maybe just a tad down the path toward authoritarianism, but what if that turned into a civil war? What if the government that you're allied with gets into a bit of the good ol' genocide? Serb/albanian type situation, or maybe just your run of the mill widespread political purges? On the one hand there's some moral obligation to intervene, plus the legitimate interests of neighboring states in countering severe violence and instability in their vicinity; on the other hand now you and anyone else who's considering intervention, in the alliance or not, has a bit of a dilemma on their hands. It complicates an already complicated situation. - As an alliance grows stronger it invites reaction from opponents. This doesn't make those reactions "right" (I'm very aware that this is one argument for why Russia invaded) but it's a fact. The reaction needn't be war, but might be creation or expansion of opposing alliances. Larger alliances, more shared borders in more places... that's a recipe for world war. Every member you add is, in a sense, a long-term liability and threat to the stability of the alliance. These arrangements are not purely beneficial, in practice, including for members.
LAC-Tech 4y ago
If you put on your realist hat, there are two options. One is for NATO (or another European military alliance) to be so powerful and cohesive in their relations to Russia, that Russia have no choice but to deal with it. This was presumably the false assumption that lead to the current war. (I really, really hope it was a false assumption). The other option would have been to thaw relations, perhaps acquiescing to a few demands and showing more compromise. Say what you want about Russia - and there's a lot bad to say. But much worse actors have received much nicer treatment by the west. Think about everything that's been done to accommodate China since the end of the cold war, to say nothing of the likes of Saudi Arabia. Instead a middle path was picked, and now we have war.

baybal2 4y ago

An excellent article when it comes to throwing a dry fact into the face. An even greater commentary been provided by this tweet: https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936 https://twitter.com/kamilkazani/status/1539623100144295936 How did America pump out liberty ships faster than even China can build ships today during the WW2? US military production was a byproduct of its great civilian heavy industry. US tanks, ships, airplanes, bomber, guns were mostly made by factories repurposed from making civilian goods. So when the demand for them waned, so did the raw military potential. This was in contract to USSR, where civilian manufacturing was a byproduct of weapon production. American military planners knew that all well during the late cold war, and its pursuit of "smart weapons" was an attempt to substitute quality for quantity, and capitalise on American leadership in electronics. This paid out extremely well. Even first generation smart munitions were many times more efficient. After the Cold War, US peacetime military planning started to stagnate, and finally disappeared due to obsession with "special operations" during the War on Terror, and military procurement becoming a business like operation. By only allowing expensive toys winning procurement competitions, the military pigeonholed itself into extremely uncompetitive purchasing position. While USA has no rivals in arms exports for things like fighter jets, nearly no brand new weapon systems developed after year 2000 are bought by US allies. As you see even now, most bought US hardware today is still from the Cold War era, which is a proof of the above. Look at the super expensive titanium M777 howitzer: they wanted to restart its production recently, but... surprise! They have to buy its titanium from Russia. F35's titanium bulkheads are now turning into a similar issue. US electronics is no longer an edge for its military industry, and more likely a liability. What however the West can deny China, and Russia are high grade machine tools, and other implements for the heavy industry: modern Chinese steel industry was built by Dutch, car industry by Germans and Italians, materials by Japan, electronics assembly by Taiwanese, and heavy machinery by Koreans.

Throwawayaerlei 4y ago
"nearly no brand new weapon systems developed after year 2000 are bought by US allies" Could you enumerate a few more of them than the obviously ludicrous M777? And does that count as "brand new"?? What about the Standard Missile 3 for example?

yborg 4y ago

This points out the fact that ceding your technical manufacturing base to other countries, especially your possible enemies, is good way to lose geopolitical relevance in a hurry. The implicit assumption has always been that nuclear weapons trump everything, but realistically this only is useful if an enemy believes you are willing to invoke Armageddon to resolve a conflict. Is the US going to risk annihilation over Taiwan? If the answer is 'no', then relative conventional combat strength will determine the victor, and when your opponent owns your industrial base, you have already lost.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
mormegil 4y ago
Yeah, this is basically the stability/instability paradox. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stability%E2%80%93instability_...
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
oska 4y ago
My understanding is that the deindustrialisation of the USA is largely a natural consequence of the 'exorbitant privilege' of having the world's global reserve currency (since Bretton Woods). This was identified as early as the 1960s by Robert Triffin, and is known as the Triffin Dilemma [1]. [1] https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Triffin_dilemma https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com/wiki/Triffin_dilemma
- xyzzy123 4y ago
  That wouldn't explain why you see the same in Australia, NZ, UK, etc etc. It seems to me that "obvious explanation" of globalization is more parsimonious (although I acknowledge there can be multiple forces at work). Things are set up so that corporations can "shop" for the lowest wages, taxes, environmental laws and so on. In fact they have to or face being outcompeted. Another headwind is heavy state support for "real" industry in a lot of places (that CAN see the value in having an industrial base). The result of globalisation is nominally more efficient (in a comparative advantage sense), but hollows the industrial base in richer countries and since that is an externality not measured in dollars, here we are. Personally I am also partial to the related narrative that this has stifled local innovation in a broad blast radius around the outsourced industries and is a major contributing factor in reduced infrastructure capacity in the west.

aftbit 4y ago

History shows that peacetime nations frequently underestimate the cost of war. If you haven't seen them yet, Perun on YouTube has done a number of good videos on the economics of war & the Russo-Ukranian conflict in particular. Here's one in particular that deals a bit with ammo shortages: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ptG1IxZ08 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2ptG1IxZ08

Spooky23 4y ago
Id love to see a full accounting of the War on Terror. Trillions of dollars spent, millions of lives impacted, and for what.
- gumby 4y ago
  > Trillions of dollars spent, millions of lives impacted, and for what 1 - trillions of dollars funneled to friends in the defense industry 2 - fear induced in gullible sections of the populace to make them easier to gull. Mission accomplished!
- ncmncm 4y ago
  The trillions did not vanish. Every last dollar found a receptive pocket. Maybe look into how many millionaires and billionaires have been minted since 2001. Yet, they only got leavings from the Old Money table.
skmurphy 4y ago
The Perun video series is well researched and well presented.

bell-cot 4y ago

For all the article's talk about military supply businesses closing down when the government isn't regularly buying enough, it fails to mention the long history of government-owned, government-operated armories and arsenals. Most major nations developed, maintained, and operated those, for centuries. Because staying ready to produce arms and ammunition - at scale, when needed - was always a poor fit for private industry. EDIT: Add one simple example - "The Springfield Armory, more formally known as the United States Armory and Arsenal at Springfield located in the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, was the primary center for the manufacture of United States military firearms from 1777 until its closing in 1968. It was the first federal armory and one of the first factories in the United States dedicated to the manufacture of weapons." ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_Armory )

ncmncm 4y ago
Private industry's preference for making bullets with a certain powder was directly responsible for the M-16's legendary unreliability in the Vietnam War. I don't know whether the US Army can get ammunition today that does not have its unfortunate effects.
- sgt101 4y ago
  I'm not sure that's a completely fair representation of what happened. Have a look at this : https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/#toc12 https://www.pewpewtactical.com/m16-vietnam-failure/#toc12
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Credibility somewhat compromised by: > Civilian AR-15s ... are hands down the best rifles you can own for self-defense But it looks like the holder of the sole-source contract for ball powder must have determined the sequence of events.
    - anonfornoreason 4y ago

otikik 4y ago

> Luckily for the US, its gun culture ensured that small arms ammunition industry has a civilian component in the US. This is not the case with other types of ammunition, as shown earlier with Javelin and Stinger missiles I am trying to keep an open mind and see where this person is coming from, but I don't think "Luckily" is the right word to use. If I was feeling particularly charitable I would call it a "Mixed bag". It's a bit ridiculous, but imagine for a second if Javelin and Stinger missiles did have a civilian component. > If competition between autocracies and democracies has really entered a military phase, then the arsenal of democracy must radically improve its approach to the production of materiel in wartime That is one option, there are others. We could, for example, decide to take preventive economical measures against autocracies, and thus preventing them from capital they could use to build their own arsenal. Everyone having smaller arsenals is good for everyone (except the Military Industrial complex, of course).

musingsole 4y ago
> imagine for a second if Javelin and Stinger missiles did have a civilian component. You mean if rocket clubs were free to pursue their interests to a much further extent than the toys they're restricted to now? Rockets don't always have to be weapons.
- BiteCode_dev 4y ago
  Not to mention fireworks show it can be a perfectly safe endeavor with the proper legal framework. Even kids can use them. No, I'm way more worried about the fact a terrorist could come at my door with a tank at any moment and I have no way to defend myself. And what if it's not a terrorist ? What if I have to defend myself against the state itself ? At least we should be able to equip the schools to protect our children, if not directly our homes.
  - ricardobeat 4y ago
    I have another idea. What if we all pooled together to buy some defense equipment, created some kind of club for training people, elected a bunch to run it; and then enjoyed the protection from this shared service without having to own heavy weapons ourselves?

spywaregorilla 4y ago

I'm not convinced. This is a weird war. Russia has an enormous supply of really shitty vehicles, indifference to losing tens of thousands of soldiers, and indifference to slaughtering civilians at will. Dumb artillery and cheap shells are a good solution for this. Will we ever see such a situation again? Russia is the only country that can do this as far as I can tell. This is a war in large part being fought with tech from 50 years ago. The new stuff is only just reaching the front. I'm not sure how relevant the lessons to be learned are. The javelins are a weird case. Yeah they probably did burn through javelins quickly. That'll happen if your enemy is careless with its troops and tanks. We can still make javelins a lot faster than Russia can make tanks, they just had a lot of tanks to begin with. We're now seeing russia roll out tanks from 60's. I'm inclined to believe that supply is rapidly running out.

mrelectric 4y ago
I would guess they're simply clearing the stock
fock 4y ago
well, if you look at GDP, russias industry is about the same size as the one of Germany. Germany has a lot less workers (and gas ;)) for that amount of $ and they produce millions of cars. I guess Russia (which I don't know for any consumable industrial output) might be able to produce quite a few tanks (also look at numbers e.g. for BMP-3, which were all produced after 1990).
- gumby 4y ago
  > well, if you look at GDP, russias industry is about the same size as the one of Germany. On a nominal basis Russia's economy is less than half Germany's and not much larger than Australia's. On PPP basis it's closer to Germany, but the industries of all three countries depend on foreign imports (Russia's especially) so PPP is less useful when considering industrial production.
- nemo 4y ago
  Germany's GDP: 3.8 trillion USD Russia's GDP: 1.4 trillion USD they're not that close in size...