5 ms·

China's weapons acquisition cycle 5-6x faster than the United States

24 points by jseliger 4y ago

credit_guy 4y ago
Weapons procurement is a very difficult problem for the world's dominant power. If it does the job right (and so far the US has done it), then it prevents wars (Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding). And if it does not fight wars, the weapons don't get used, and the population gets the impression the spending was for nothing. In a democracy you get a lot of pressure to reduce this spending. So the US has to procure just few enough Tomahawks to make sure the factories that can make them retain some semblance of manufacturing ability just in case. If you check the DoD budget, you'll see that every year we procure fewer Tomahawks for about the same money (which is a lot). That's because we don't pay for the missiles themselves, but for the ability to ramp up their production if the time comes to do that. But then, how do you get healthy competition to drive down prices? Let's say you want to found a startup to make cruise missiles? Who are you going to sell to? The US is only buying about 100 per year, and thinking hard each year how to cut that number down. You can offer to sell the same 100 for 10 times less money, but they don't care about the missiles themselves. If they switch from their current supplier (Raytheon) to you, then Raytheon will shut down the plant (maybe plants?) that makes them. Can the US trust you that you can ramp up the production when the time comes? Maybe you can prove you can, but that does not happen that often. So we are stuck with whatever manufacturers we have, it's difficult to get new entrants. What can be done? I don't know. What is China doing better? I don't know that either. All I can see is the problem is not that easy.
- bdavis__ 4y ago
  The USG / DOD is a terrible customer. They want to control every thing; from suppliers to acceptance. They really don't care about what something costs, it is far more important to ensure the vendors are not making too much profit. To move fast, you have to be willing to break things. When you go "agile" in software, you write a lot of crap that has to be thrown away. Same with weapons development, if you want to go fast and try ideas then some of them will not work. Will Not Work. That is intolerable to the procurement organization, because spending money on something that does not work is also known as "corruption". Risk / Reward has to be changed by society. A war will do that.
- gloryjulio 4y ago
  China is a dictatorship war machine. They don't have to go through all these process. They just do. That's why we need to properly to recognize them as a threat at all levels or Taiwan is a goner
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Nonsense. China has many of the exact same problems. Being a dictatorship doesnt actually change most of what he said.
    - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
      Don't you know that Communists are actually magic and can just wave their wands and make technologically advanced war planes appear from mud? We gotta make sure to increase our military budget next year to combat these wizards!
    - gloryjulio 4y ago
      Not sure if u r intentionally or unintentionally conflating different things. Throughput and efficiency are different things. I am not saying China is more efficient, I am saying they can achieve great throughput(might be better in US in this regard, but I am talking in general) because they are strictly top down. We have a great example right now. Don't you see they are still in lock down right now? What does it mean? It just means China gov have great power in doing 'things'. I am not saying China is better. I am not saying China is more efficient. I am not saying China is gonna exceed. I'm only stating the process about how China operates. Please stick to the topic if you really want to discuss about China's process. If you are China's shill u can ignore my posts.
      - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
        > Don't you see they are still in lock down right now? China as a whole is not in lockdown, and has never been since early 2020. Particular neighborhoods or cities with particularly large (by Chinese standards, meaning tiny by outside standards) outbreaks are in lockdown. The vast majority of China is not under lockdown. This is something which is very poorly understood outside China, partly because of sensationalist coverage in Western media. It's also partly because most people in the West don't speak Chinese and are generally unfamiliar with the country, and thus have very weak nonsense detection filters when it comes to news about China. That's why complete nonsense like the "social credit score" myth continues to circulate widely in the Western discourse about China.
- lm28469 4y ago
  > If it does the job right (and so far the US has done it), then it prevents wars (Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding) The US has been at war for like 90% of its history
  - naniwaduni 4y ago
    By similar standards, the French Fifth Republic has been at war for ~98% of its history.
pixl97 4y ago
>I would tell you anecdotally that China is still, after gains we’ve made in the last five years or so, about five to six times faster than us in acquisition. In purchasing power parity they spend about one dollar to our twenty dollars to get to the same capability. It’s math, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to lose if we can’t figure out how to drop the cost and increase the speed in our defense supply chains. I mean it sounds scary until you realize that a large part of our military spending is a jobs program and wealth redistribution platform. We're not serious about cost optimization because it's not a significant limitation at this point. Being behind the leader has its advantages, you let them do the hard work and you copy|steal it at a much lower cost. This does not mean you can easily become the leader without massively increasing your spending (and now having everyone steal your technology). Especially when you are both nuclear powers that are not going to directly attach each other without risk of annihilation. Lose what is also a question that should be asked here. I assume ally nations like Taiwan would be the primary risks, though loss of other trading partners is a serious risk over time. As for prevention of these risks we're already funding pulling processing manufacturing back into the US, but again, this is going to be expensive. There is also nothing like a war where the stakes increase to spur innovation and decrease costs.
- T-A 4y ago
  Here's what Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has to say about this [1]: "As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking," he said. "It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem." One area where the U.S. still dominates is with its underseas capabilities — the U.S. submarine fleet, Richard said. "Undersea capabilities is still the one ... maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have against our opponents," Richard said. "But unless we pick up the pace, in terms of getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going ... if we can't figure that out ... we are not going to put ourselves in a good position to maintain strategic deterrence and national defense." [1] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3209416/stratcom-commander-says-us-should-look-to-1950s-to-regain-competitive-edge/ https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32...
animitronix 4y ago
The American people have been at war ever since 9/11. Good luck convincing them to dump more cash into weapons when they can't afford to eat or fill their gas tanks...
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

24 points by jseliger 4y ago

Weapons procurement is a very difficult problem for the world's dominant power. If it does the job right (and so far the US has done it), then it prevents wars (Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding). And if it does not fight wars, the weapons don't get used, and the population gets the impression the spending was for nothing. In a democracy you get a lot of pressure to reduce this spending. So the US has to procure just few enough Tomahawks to make sure the factories that can make them retain some semblance of manufacturing ability just in case. If you check the DoD budget, you'll see that every year we procure fewer Tomahawks for about the same money (which is a lot). That's because we don't pay for the missiles themselves, but for the ability to ramp up their production if the time comes to do that. But then, how do you get healthy competition to drive down prices? Let's say you want to found a startup to make cruise missiles? Who are you going to sell to? The US is only buying about 100 per year, and thinking hard each year how to cut that number down. You can offer to sell the same 100 for 10 times less money, but they don't care about the missiles themselves. If they switch from their current supplier (Raytheon) to you, then Raytheon will shut down the plant (maybe plants?) that makes them. Can the US trust you that you can ramp up the production when the time comes? Maybe you can prove you can, but that does not happen that often. So we are stuck with whatever manufacturers we have, it's difficult to get new entrants. What can be done? I don't know. What is China doing better? I don't know that either. All I can see is the problem is not that easy.

bdavis__ 4y ago
The USG / DOD is a terrible customer. They want to control every thing; from suppliers to acceptance. They really don't care about what something costs, it is far more important to ensure the vendors are not making too much profit. To move fast, you have to be willing to break things. When you go "agile" in software, you write a lot of crap that has to be thrown away. Same with weapons development, if you want to go fast and try ideas then some of them will not work. Will Not Work. That is intolerable to the procurement organization, because spending money on something that does not work is also known as "corruption". Risk / Reward has to be changed by society. A war will do that.
gloryjulio 4y ago
China is a dictatorship war machine. They don't have to go through all these process. They just do. That's why we need to properly to recognize them as a threat at all levels or Taiwan is a goner
- panick21_ 4y ago
  Nonsense. China has many of the exact same problems. Being a dictatorship doesnt actually change most of what he said.
  - SQueeeeeL 4y ago
    Don't you know that Communists are actually magic and can just wave their wands and make technologically advanced war planes appear from mud? We gotta make sure to increase our military budget next year to combat these wizards!
  - gloryjulio 4y ago
    Not sure if u r intentionally or unintentionally conflating different things. Throughput and efficiency are different things. I am not saying China is more efficient, I am saying they can achieve great throughput(might be better in US in this regard, but I am talking in general) because they are strictly top down. We have a great example right now. Don't you see they are still in lock down right now? What does it mean? It just means China gov have great power in doing 'things'. I am not saying China is better. I am not saying China is more efficient. I am not saying China is gonna exceed. I'm only stating the process about how China operates. Please stick to the topic if you really want to discuss about China's process. If you are China's shill u can ignore my posts.
    - DiogenesKynikos 4y ago
      > Don't you see they are still in lock down right now? China as a whole is not in lockdown, and has never been since early 2020. Particular neighborhoods or cities with particularly large (by Chinese standards, meaning tiny by outside standards) outbreaks are in lockdown. The vast majority of China is not under lockdown. This is something which is very poorly understood outside China, partly because of sensationalist coverage in Western media. It's also partly because most people in the West don't speak Chinese and are generally unfamiliar with the country, and thus have very weak nonsense detection filters when it comes to news about China. That's why complete nonsense like the "social credit score" myth continues to circulate widely in the Western discourse about China.
lm28469 4y ago
> If it does the job right (and so far the US has done it), then it prevents wars (Iraq and Afghanistan notwithstanding) The US has been at war for like 90% of its history
- naniwaduni 4y ago
  By similar standards, the French Fifth Republic has been at war for ~98% of its history.

pixl97 4y ago

>I would tell you anecdotally that China is still, after gains we’ve made in the last five years or so, about five to six times faster than us in acquisition. In purchasing power parity they spend about one dollar to our twenty dollars to get to the same capability. It’s math, ladies and gentlemen. We are going to lose if we can’t figure out how to drop the cost and increase the speed in our defense supply chains. I mean it sounds scary until you realize that a large part of our military spending is a jobs program and wealth redistribution platform. We're not serious about cost optimization because it's not a significant limitation at this point. Being behind the leader has its advantages, you let them do the hard work and you copy|steal it at a much lower cost. This does not mean you can easily become the leader without massively increasing your spending (and now having everyone steal your technology). Especially when you are both nuclear powers that are not going to directly attach each other without risk of annihilation. Lose what is also a question that should be asked here. I assume ally nations like Taiwan would be the primary risks, though loss of other trading partners is a serious risk over time. As for prevention of these risks we're already funding pulling processing manufacturing back into the US, but again, this is going to be expensive. There is also nothing like a war where the stakes increase to spur innovation and decrease costs.

T-A 4y ago
Here's what Navy Adm. Charles A. Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has to say about this [1]: "As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking," he said. "It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are. As those curves keep going, it isn't going to matter how good our [operating plan] is or how good our commanders are, or how good our forces are — we're not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem." One area where the U.S. still dominates is with its underseas capabilities — the U.S. submarine fleet, Richard said. "Undersea capabilities is still the one ... maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have against our opponents," Richard said. "But unless we pick up the pace, in terms of getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going ... if we can't figure that out ... we are not going to put ourselves in a good position to maintain strategic deterrence and national defense." [1] https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3209416/stratcom-commander-says-us-should-look-to-1950s-to-regain-competitive-edge/ https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/32...

animitronix 4y ago

The American people have been at war ever since 9/11. Good luck convincing them to dump more cash into weapons when they can't afford to eat or fill their gas tanks...

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]