As long as we don't forget how to do everything, we can ramp manufacturing back up quickly. Currently there are manufacturing plants pumping out aircraft, tanks

As long as we don't forget how to do everything, we can ramp manufacturing back up quickly. Currently there are manufacturing plants pumping out aircraft, tanks, ships, and munitions at a slow rate. They are limited by money and lack of demand, not by the ability of the manufacturing plants to pump out more. If suddenly we needed to double or triple capacity you bring in more people and machines to do the work, but the process is in place. But if we stop building - even for a few years - we will lose all that and be back at square 1. This is why the Navy has a huge number of aircraft carriers. We don't need that many really, but if we stopped producing them we would lose all the institutional knowledge and experience. So they dribble one out every 5 or 6 years so that lots of people are constantly working on it.