300k airplanes in five years

https://www.construction-physics.com/p/how-to-build-300000-airplanes-in

by juliangamble • 2 years ago

373 524 2 years ago

construction-physics.com

melling• 2 years ago

Here’s a video about how China out produces the United States in ship building.

https://youtu.be/tRVVXDyg3RY?si=Yin_cVGx57IHavUr

encoderer• 2 years ago

Germany grossly out-produced America — until America actually started trying.

jononomo• 2 years ago

What if China actually started trying? They have 3x the population that the US has.

throwway120385• 2 years ago

For a more modern example, one of my former employers had to ramp by a couple of orders of magnitude to build ventilators during Covid-19. One of my former coworkers told me the story of having to go to Detroit and build a factory there, and how they were able to go from 10-20 a day to hundreds a day by hard work and know-how.

The point I'm trying to make here is that the will to do this still exists in the US today and I have no doubt that if we as a country decided to enter a world war like WWII we would very quickly ramp. We certainly still have the culture and the resources to do it were we to discover the will.

ramesh314• 2 years ago

This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.

NotSammyHagar8• 2 years ago

Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the place of the US in WW2 parlance.

There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though, with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce heterodoxical ideas.

There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our current times in the US and the world, groups of countries pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries want their shot at power and riches too.

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

Some obvous differences are the US has been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty

This has always been much more important than dead capital.

atlasunshrugged4• 2 years ago

One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will have an easier time getting access to some resources as production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may get pushed back from the first island chain, there are several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of material to support a war through their territory even if it is economical to do so.

Teever10• 2 years ago

I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese industrial capacity for killbot type drones.

Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded experience become a part of that?

AnarchismIsCool3• 2 years ago

It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is if they're capable of doing so.

We also don't know what form drones will take as the technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date. As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR, lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability etc).

surfingdino11• 2 years ago

I am not worried. History likes to rhyme and I think China will do a switcheroo on Russia and align itself with the West for the purpose of dismantling Russia's military and industry, just like the Soviet Union switched sides from being an ally of Germany in 1939 to working with the Western Allies on breaking Germany's neck. The West will make some concessions, but they will be seen as worth the price of breaking Russia up.

atlasunshrugged4• 2 years ago

There is the "replicator initiative" within the DOD but I have no idea if it's moving quickly or not. The U.S. defense establishment still seems stuck in a pattern of buying big extravagant and expensive systems (e.g. aircraft carriers, million dollar missiles) which are vulnerable to asymmetric attacks from low cost drones or land to sea based missiles.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12611

_DeadFred_16• 2 years ago

The USA wouldn't fight an 'in the trenches war' where drones will come into play. We would fight a stand off siege type war. Hence why we are developing Rapid Dragon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system), which would convert our entire logistics feel (something we excel at) into stand off bombers that would overwhelm Chinese defenses. We would effectively have an addition 1500 bombers in the form of C-130s, and 200+ C-17s.

I'm guessing the system is named after an old Chinese siege weapon system to give China a message.

MaxPock5• 2 years ago

Without using Chinese parts the US found that making their own small drones would cost $2,100. And those were just the observation drones for use by the Department of Interior.

They were also only 20% as capable as Chinese drones.

Read this and get terrified

https://www.ft.com/content/dd2e936e-5934-49f1-8aa6-29dea9a41...

hackerlight• 2 years ago

Anduril says they have a focus on industrial capacity and cost effectiveness

aidenn02• 2 years ago

Anyone else feel like in today's world, China could do this better than the US?

dzink• 2 years ago

They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or their trade imbalance can turn violent.

hi-v-rocknroll8• 2 years ago

When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.

bojan• 2 years ago

That really depends on your definition of "better".

In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more expensive.

In the US is that way less the case.

NotSammyHagar8• 2 years ago

I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples. Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk you).

In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW and came home after the war.

https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-da....

dragonwriter8• 2 years ago

In the US is that way less the case.

Day-to-day, sure.

In a national mobilization (even without additional action of Congress) when the President’s emergency powers in law are deployed to enable production? Things change radically.

HPsquared3• 2 years ago

China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...

foota3• 2 years ago

While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which are within the US sphere of influence or far from China.

The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).

cpursley3• 2 years ago

And already 3x more vehicles.

duxup• 2 years ago

Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much not get things done very well at all.

maxglute12• 2 years ago

It's already obvious.

230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature" industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift. US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs. The advantages are snowballing.

US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech, but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year. SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40 resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.

NotSammyHagar8• 2 years ago

I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one would believe it could be done.

I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be done is a huge help.

aidenn02• 2 years ago

Some context for US/Japan WW II:

In 1943, the US built more than half as many Fleet carriers as Japan fielded over the entire war (15 vs 28), while also producing an absurd number of escort carriers. In the last year of the war, the US built about as many F6F (Hellcat) fighters as Japan built A6M (Zeros) in the previous 5 years (the F6F is generally considered far superior to the A6M; the F4F is the older contemporary of the A6M).

hi-v-rocknroll8• 2 years ago

The US must come to terms with ceding its monopoly on superpower status because other countries have caught up, but it also has correctable problems on multiple fronts due to:

- Lack of infrastructure investment

- Civic infighting

- Political divisions, distractions, and corruption

- Social regression

- Gender disparity in undergraduate education

- Declining standards of living

_DeadFred_16• 2 years ago

Yes, a missle gigafactory is impressive pre war. The USA will remove that single factory within the first weeks of any conflict. China better have large stockpiles if their strategy includes gigafactories.

hollerith8• 2 years ago

The Soviets had 40,000 nuclear warheads, which didn't enable them to achieve any kind of dominance over the US or Europe.

chrobic743001• 2 years ago

fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s.

The economics clearly justify mass production of widebody aircraft, yet China is unable to produce their own.

And you expect China to mass produce Falcon 9 rockets? How about they start with a simple airplane first.

more_corn2• 2 years ago

They’re also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.

_DeadFred_16• 2 years ago

China's current production capacity would be eliminated by USA standoff attack aircraft within a few weeks. Pre war production capacity has nothing to do with war time production capacity if you can't defend your factories. How many Chinese factories depend on advanced foreign machining machines (vertical mills, horizontal mills, etc)? Can China constantly replace their capacity of these during sustained foreign bombardment?

China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has a distributed highway system for wartime variability/survivability.

China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil exporter.

maxglute12• 2 years ago

US doesn't remotely have the fires to take out PRC MIC industry, they don't even have enough to scratch PRC coastal military installations, we're talking about potentially 1,000,000s of aim points to try to crack a lot of concrete, with a lot of ability to eat attrition / regenerate. Something US projection is not equipped to deal with especially with crippled delivery rates at standoff range. PRC has entire chain of advanced indigenous tooling inudstry. They also have massive capital stock. PRC capital stock have magnitude more installed robots than US has smart munitions.

For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back. Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is massive.

PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to have capability to move MIC underground, see third front.

PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to run military AND industry with transport rationing.

But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables), and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive the attrition game.

Qwertious• 2 years ago

It's because you know more about the USA's internal politics (and internal embarassments) than about China's. China has plenty of shitshows, but most of them don't reach international news.

class3shock2• 2 years ago

To what end though? I know Taiwan is the hot button issue at the moment but it's hard for me to think China wants to get into war with the US, let alone the whole "west", over it. Doesn't the war with Ukraine show that any large scale military conflict is incredibly costly and difficult to benefit from?

rsynnott2• 2 years ago

Huh. There were _800k_ aircraft built during the war. Hadn't realised it was anything close to that. That's easily over a million pilots - how on earth did they train them all?

dragonwriter8• 2 years ago

Not all the aircraft built were used by the US: a sizable minority (18% according to one contemporary source [0]) were transferred (by sale or lend-lease) to other allies.

[0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist...

wffurr• 2 years ago

Quickly and dangerously. There's an entire cemetery dedicated to RAF pilot cadets in Montgomery, Alabama killed during training at US airfields.

* https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...

skullone• 2 years ago

That's sombering, words can't express the gravity of that war

abadpoli• 2 years ago

Seems like an overstatement to say “an entire cemetery”. Per the Wikipedia page, the cemetery is 120 acres with 200,000 grave sites, but only 78 of the graves are RAF students (which still is a terrible amount of people to lose in training, of all things).

Retric• 2 years ago

There was an analog flight stimulator used by over 500k pilots which helped, but this was war they accepted extremely high casualty rates and not just from enemy action.

https://www.nasflmuseum.com/link-trainer.html

pchristensen• 2 years ago

I recently read Masters of the Air, and it said that over 10,000 Americans from the 8th Air Force died over English soil, most from accidents during takeoff and assembling forces.

Animats• 2 years ago

As late as the 1960s, the career death rate for US fighter pilots was about one in five, without any help from an enemy. There's a book, "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut", from someone who made it through astronaut training but then realized they didn't want to take the risk of pilot training in a T-38.

The T-38 jet trainer, first flight in 1959, still in use: 1,189 built, 210 crashes and ejections.

vkou7• 2 years ago

how on earth did they train them all?

A few days of classroom instruction, 40-100 flight hours of practical training (Less in the Axis, due to oil shortages, less in the USSR at the start of the war, due to the all-hands-on-deck state of emergency), and then it's off to war with you.

Axis pilots would fly until they were killed, seriously injured, or captured. Anglosphere bomber pilots would fly ~30 combat missions, and if they survived, would be rotated out to work as instructors.

The average combat survival rate for bomber pilots was ~10 missions, but due to the infrequency of flights, most Anglo bomber crews survived the war, without ever hitting their rotation limit. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theater, the more missions bomber crews flew, the bigger the rotation limits grew (Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more missions.) The air crews were, understandably, not very pleased about this.

Fighter pilots had much higher quotas, before they could rotate out.

rufus_foreman3• 2 years ago

> Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more missions

Sounds like a Catch-22.

bogtog• 2 years ago

Between 1939 and 1944, the value of aircraft produced annually in the U.S. increased by a factor of 70, and the total weight of aircraft produced (a common measure of aircraft industry output) increased by a factor of 64

Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always puts a smile on my face

marcosdumay2• 2 years ago

Just like lines of code, it's a very useful metric.

... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like using it to evaluate people.

vkou7• 2 years ago

Someone who successfully ran an organization that successfully delivered 70 4,000-tonne ships is probably more qualified to be put in charge of building an aircraft carrier, than someone who delivered 70 4,000-lb boats.

When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first metric.

cowgoesmoo• 2 years ago

It's hard to abuse for aircraft - you can't just strap a bunch of lead to a plane because then it won't fly.

alanbernstein• 2 years ago

It seems reasonable if you're thinking about the amount of material that must be sourced, transported, processed, etc. also serves as a check that the newly produced planes weren't simply 70x smaller than before.

lazide7• 2 years ago

Aircraft are also designed to reduce weight as much as possible.

Imagine measuring computer hardware output by weight.

more_corn2• 2 years ago

The ussr tried to do this. You can still find lamps made of lead manufactured in that era.

tills13• 2 years ago

I mean sure your example makes me laugh but try making a plane out of lead and let me know how far it gets.

dr_dshiv• 2 years ago

As late as 1941, the U.K. was building more planes per year than the U.S. But by 1942, the U.S. was building roughly as many aircraft as Germany, Japan, the U.K. and Italy combined.

Wow. Unbelievable

kgeist• 2 years ago

It’s no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of the U.S.’s enormous industrial output.

The author ignores the USSR completely in their article, except for a brief mention in the graphs (where it's #2). 157k planes is impressive, too, considering that many of the factories had to evacuate to Siberia. 22k planes were also additionally leased by the US and the UK.

NotSammyHagar8• 2 years ago

That's true, the ussr did some impressive things, and the millions of deaths they suffered fighting the germans in ww2 can't be forgotten, along with the impact of their weakening of the german forces over time.

Koshkin2• 2 years ago

A 1000-mile “weakening”

TulliusCicero2• 2 years ago

It definitely is, but the US' industrial output wasn't limited to just planes, and the USSR received a ton of supplies and equipment from the US to bolster its war machine.

pie4202• 2 years ago

The vast majority of the USSR factories were funded by american cash. Without the US, Germany wins WW2 handily. Without the USSR, the united states drops nukes on berlin in 1946 and handily wins ww2 by 1947.

jltsiren3• 2 years ago

Those factories were paid with Soviet money, but many were built by Western companies in the 20s and 30s. Because apparently communism was not such a big deal after all, as long as you could benefit from it.

Germany had already lost the war before Lend-Lease had a significant impact. The offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed before Western aid started arriving in significant quantities. The aid had much more impact on the Soviet offensive, particularly on the logistics side. It can be argued that Lend-Lease won Eastern Europe for the USSR.

As far as I understand, there are two schools of thought on what would have happened without Lend-Lease. In one, the USSR would have won anyway, but the war would have lasted until 1946 or 1947 and it would have been even bloodier and more destructive. In another, the USSR would also have lost, and there would have been an uneasy peace between them and Germany. In both cases, I'd assume the US would not see the Continental Europe worth fighting for.

martythemaniak2• 2 years ago

Nope, the USSR's efforts were also the result of US's industrial and financial output. Here's an essay to get you started: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505247886908424195.html

mizzao• 2 years ago

Why Russia can't win against the West

Is this still true in light of the recent Ukraine events? Russia certainly isn't losing if no one's going to stand up to it.

Beijinger4• 2 years ago

The posted article gives quite an impressive Soviet plane production. 50% of that of the US.

It was Russia that won the war. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?t=205

And regarding the Ukraine war. Russia's industrial might is underestimated. And while it can not match that of the West, as a word of caution: China has more industrial capacity than the EU and US combined.

Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...

FredPret• 2 years ago

The West rendered massive aid to the USSR in WW2. Lend-lease was not only a US-Britain thing.

Tousands of planes and tanks were sent as well as raw materials to keep their factories pumping.

This after they were initially on Hitler’s side.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease

cpursley3• 2 years ago

Exactly. And the USSR built more tanks than all the other allies combined, while under bombardment.

kibwen4• 2 years ago

Conveniently forgetting that without the fuel sent by the US, those tanks would have been pretty paperweights.

Y'all, it's true historically that the US has oversold its personnel contributions to the European theater, but overcorrecting with this weird nonsense about the USSR single-handedly winning WWII is just beyond bizarre.

hollerith8• 2 years ago

And the US sent industrial engineers to help the USSR design and improve their factories.

ranger207• 2 years ago

The USSR probably couldn't have won without the US, and the US probably couldn't have won without the USSR

bee_rider• 2 years ago

Any two of the big 3 (US, SU, UK+commonwealth), plus all the partisans and smaller allies could have done it. It was a dumb hopeless war that the Nazis picked because their ideology was incompatible with accurately evaluating their opponents.

But, it is good that all of the allies decided to band together and get it down a little bit faster. Every moment that Europe spent occupied was just another mountain of human suffering. Plus, getting that theater done before nukes really became available probably saved some historical German cities.

photochemsyn• 2 years ago

This is a nice write-up, although it focuses solely on the US industrial output, which is indeed impressive, going from ~2,100 aircraft to ~50,000 in six years. However, that first table raises some questions - the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?

One major influence is that American industrialists were busy expanding global markets and happily supplied their technology and manufacturing processes to the two major buyers, Nazi Germany and Communist Russia, in the 1930s, with Ford being one of the major actors, perhaps more active in Germany:

In Germany:

"Ford and the Führer: A History of Ford Motor Company's Involvement in Nazi Germany" by Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B. White: This work delves into Ford's business activities in Germany, documenting the introduction of assembly-line manufacturing and the company's interactions with the Nazi regime."
"The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise of the Third Reich" by Max Wallace: This book explores the relationship between American industrialists like Henry Ford and the Nazi regime, including detailed accounts of Ford's manufacturing contributions."

In Soviet Union:

"Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ): Built with the technical assistance of Ford, the Gorky Automobile Plant began producing vehicles using American-style assembly lines. Ford provided machinery, blueprints, and training to Soviet engineers and workers. Soviet engineers and technicians received training in Ford’s American factories, learning about assembly line production and modern manufacturing techniques."

I don't know if there's a particular moral to this story, other than that in search of short-term profit major American industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers.

fransje26• 2 years ago

other than that in search of short-term profit major American industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers

And that has changed since then..?

vkou7• 2 years ago

the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?

The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy, and was not investing in armaments.

The USSR had, between 1917, and 1939:

* Spent six years fighting an incredibly brutal and bloody civil war.

* Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.

* Spent another decade putting down various secession movements, mostly in central Asia.

* Had multiple minor conflicts with China and Japan.

* Was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War.

* Also needed a strong, standing army to put down any further internal resistance.

* Could smell which way the wind was blowing, and was ready to capitalize on German's ambitions in Europe, by taking its chunk of Poland (And later invading Finland).

Given all that, it was functioning on a war economy pretty much from ~1917 to 1941. (At which point it transitioned to a total war economy.)

This was all in the context of a strong central push for mass industrialization. Steel production alone increased ~5x between 1930 and 1940. Up until the Nazis took power, the USSR worked very closely on both industrialization, and military armament with Weimar Germany. Krupp was building factories in the Don, and future Luftwaffe pilots were being trained in Lipetsk.

rufus_foreman3• 2 years ago

> The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy

Some people in the US were. FDR was not.

stoltzmann• 2 years ago

* Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.

That's a fun way of saying that the USSR started a war of conquest against Poland.

simplicio• 2 years ago

Sort of interesting to compare the US experience in WWI, where a program to deliver 20k planes by the summer of July 1918 managed to get a whopping 196 planes into service before the war ended that November.

http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/relairprod.htm

ilrwbwrkhv• 2 years ago

The US was a place of hardworking, talented folks with natural geographical safety and a lot of resources. The only thing we need to do is stop anti competitive practices, break up monopolies, basically keep pure capitalism going.

akira2501• 2 years ago

What this article misses is that the US "private planes" were being sold directly to Japan and then being converted into military aircraft. What we didn't sell we licensed the designs directly to them.

This went on well into the late 1930s. It was recognized as a potential problem by some but the profits were large enough that these were ignored.

I encourage everyone to read the book "Human Smoke." It is a collection of headlines and newspaper excerpts from the period surrounding WW2. It's a fascinating read and wonderfully exposes all the propaganda driven half truths and complete fabrications we've sold ourselves about the conflict ever since it ended.

Optimal_Persona• 2 years ago

In "Critical Path", Buckminster Fuller said that US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in 1939 to capitalize on all-time high prices...

dctoedt• 2 years ago

US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in 1939

In Herman Wouk's novel The Winds of War, an admiral, aboard an aircraft carrier near Pearl Harbor in 1940 or -41, groused to his officers that (paraphrasing from memory) "sooner or later the [Japanese] are going to come steaming over the horizon, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of old Buicks at us."

JacobThreeThree3• 2 years ago

Ukraine to this day still gets most of its gas and oil imports from Russia and also continues to transit Russian gas through pipelines to Europe.

Robelius• 2 years ago

Thanks for the rec. I'm going to check out "Human Smoke". Now I want to recommend "Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son"[1] which is a collection of letters that a man, who made his wealth through the Chicago meat industry, to his son who went to college. It gave a warming perspective of a parent who would express his love in one letter, and frustration towards his son for showing up to work late in another. It beautifully illustrates a "modern" parent-child relationship in a time period I often imagine as cold and distant.

[1]https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21959

credit_guy2• 2 years ago

Here's an underappreciated fact of history: in WW1 the US was so ill prepared that it had to borrow rifles from France.

People now take for granted that "the sleeping giant" was going to awake after being attacked. But in WW1 the US was also the largest economy in the world, and it did not transform overnight in a weapons manufacturing behemoth, like it did in WW2.

If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than its WW1 experience.

treme• 2 years ago

https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-ind...

China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the United States. China is also the world’s largest shipbuilder and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times larger than the United States. One of China’s large shipyards, such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S. shipyards combined.

"U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible Conflict with China"

https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...

atleastoptimal• 2 years ago

I don’t understand why the US voluntarily gave up its significant advantage in manufacturing. Is it just because it would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5 the cost? In every universe where the US dollar is significantly stronger than the next greatest probable superpower, will that next greatest probable superpower always be in a perfect position to exploit this disparity and become the de facto world leader in heavy industry?

tyre2• 2 years ago

They’d need to switch to aircraft carriers and fast. The US has 11. China has 2. They are expensive, require specifically trained crews, and air superiority counters all of that shipyard capacity.

gonzo412• 2 years ago

the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting wars.

America loves fighting so much it's had a civil war and fought a few of it's closest allies at various times.

China is a novice at fighting. Whilst they may have lots of ships, having really good people to fight in a complex battlespace is different.

DeathArrow10• 2 years ago

China is now capable of producing more than 1000 missiles per day.

devoutsalsa• 2 years ago

China has a lot of shipbuilding capacity, but I think it'd be pretty vulnerable to attack. The USA couldn't ramp up shipbuilding capacity overnight, but it could certainly degrade China's ability to build ships overnight. I'm assuming that most of China's ship producing capacity is on the coast, which may be an incorrect assumption.

Buttons840• 2 years ago

Maybe if the US spent 230 times more on defense that would help? (/s)

More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend enough to keep our defense industry competitive?

jrexilius• 2 years ago

I think the expectation is that China is the one that would massively outproduce the US. And that our technological "advantage" is roughly that of Germany over the US in WWII (i.e. noticable, but not meaningful). We likely would be barely capable of a WWI performance as far as output..

bruce511• 2 years ago

> If a conflict with China ever comes to pass,

If a conflict with China comes to pass, it won't be on US or China soil. It'll be a proxy conflict somewhere else.

All the major conflicts since ww2 have been in proxy locations. Korea (US/China), Vietnam (US/Soviet Union), and so on.

"Occupying" a country is fruitless (see pretty much everyone in Afghanistan) and unpopular.

So I don't see Chinese bombers over Seattle or US bombers over Shanghai. In that sort if conflict both sides lose.

Taiwan is the obvious proxy in play. The South China Sea is the other. Both would give China significant geographical advantage. Taiwan is just important enough (making PCs) that the US may intervene. But will the US land troops in Taiwan to fight street battles? Probably not (imo).

Will Chinese troops parachute into LA or US troops parachute into Tibet? Not a chance.

With all this in mind, statistics and behaviors from ww1 and ww2 are somewhat irrelevant.

If there is a US China conflict though, it's more likely to be economic. Supply chains disrupted. Chips in short supply. In that sense domestic production of non-military items becomes paramount (to keep the population appeased.)

acd10j• 2 years ago

If you want to have strategic deterrence capability, all scenarios are kept in mind, even if they are little low probability, in warfare sometimes enemy tries to find low probability scenarios and exploits that. (Remember german blitzkrieg in ww2)

Teever10• 2 years ago

I would imagine that the Chinese goal is destroy the island chain that keeps them contained and push them out of Hawaii.

That would be more than enough to allow Chinese full control over that region of the world and give America a shamefully large black eye.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy

anovikov• 2 years ago

U.S. simply participated in WWI for too short a time, only 1.5 years. It didn't produce much stuff in WWII by spring 1943 either - everything was in desperately short supply then. If it wasn't, why didn't Normandy invasion happen a year earlier?

And lack of preparedness in the previous years before WWI was deliberate, because public was too much against the idea of interfering into European affairs and politicians made every efforts to make it as physically difficult as possible. Zimmermann Telegram changed that.

crorella• 2 years ago

If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than its WW1 experience.

Exactly, I see it pretty hard to pull the same feat again unless there is a very big alignment with the companies that have installed capacity in the country.

sbmthakur• 2 years ago

Absolutely had no idea about US preparedness before WW1. Any books that shed more light on it?

credit_guy2• 2 years ago

I don't remember where I read that. But I just checked on wikipedia and it looks like the US had rifles to provide to its white soldiers, but not to its African-American soldiers, which formed 13% of the force. There was a whole combat division (the 93rd) that was equipped with the French Berthier rifle [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Forces#...

trynumber9• 2 years ago

That's weird that they would have a rifle shortage as the US manufactured millions of rifles for the UK (P14) and Russia (Winchester 1895 and Mosin-Nagant) and France (Berthier) during WWI.

dclowd99012• 2 years ago

The Vinson-Trammell Act limited profits on government contracts to just 12% (later reduced to 8%)

What the actual _hell_ happened to this idea?

Manuel_D• 2 years ago

It's still in force, unfortunately. Cost plus incentives unnecessarily expensive projects. If the government orders 100 planes and your profit is fixed at 8% of cost, do you want to build a $10 million dollar plane or a $20 million dollar plane?

dclowd99012• 2 years ago

Poignant. I hadn’t thought of it that way.

matt3210• 2 years ago

Don't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new soldiers to grow up. Everybody knew WW2 was coming and was preparing for over 20 years.

dragonwriter8• 2 years ago

Don't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new soldiers to grow up.

The armistice was a pause for the peace treaty to be negotiated and signed.

Now, if you think the Treaty of Versailles was intended as just a pause for new soldiers to grow up...I don't think that's particularly accurate for most signatories. Had it been, appeasement wouldn't have been tried.

DeathArrow10• 2 years ago

It’s no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of the U.S.’s enormous industrial output.

Now China is the country with the largest industrial output.

torginus4• 2 years ago

It's very weird to me that we could build airplanes at this scale almost a century ago, yet nowadays even the biggest airforces can barely field more than a tousand planes.

It's not like those old machines were primitive, and there have been major breakthroughs in mass-manufacturing.

bjord• 2 years ago

I don't think they're limited to "a thousand planes," I think that's just all they need

the capabilities of planes from ww2 and today are almost not worth comparing

torginus4• 2 years ago

Imo the Ukraine war has shown just how inadequate the (relatively large by modern standards) Russian airforce is at serving a front of WW2 proportions.

The F-35 is on back-order to the mid 2030s. Even superpowers can't make more than tens of planes every year.

It's just that the modern world is relatively peaceful, that's why they don't need more.

pjc504• 2 years ago

There's some sort of r/k selection effect happening here; modern aircraft have been getting more and more sophisticated to improve survivability, which raises their cost, so there are fewer of them. Things like the stealth bombers are at the far end of that curve.

(the logical end point of that thought process is some kind of Space Battleship Yamato scenario where the designers produce an "invincible" design, but only one of it. Hopefully real planners can be dissuaded from that nonsense, although the Axis were prone to this way of thinking)

_xnmw7• 2 years ago

Meanwhile America is now struggling to produce something as simple as artillery shells, while Russia is producing 2-5 times the number produced by the entire US + EU combined.

Sources:

[1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...

[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...

immibis4• 2 years ago

Capitalism at work.

_xnmw7• 2 years ago

Slavoj Žižek talks about "wartime communism", the tendency towards centralized control during extreme situations like a war or pandemic, because it is absolutely necessary for effective results at scale, when the problem is narrow and well-defined. Capitalism tends to do better at peace when there is no single fixed objective.

Negitivefrags• 2 years ago

I guess the market isn’t demanding a lot of mortar shells.

amarcheschi• 2 years ago

Russia also spends something like 7% of its gdp in the military, while for most European countries defence budget is around 2% of their gdp.

I'm not a war analyst also, but nato doctrine is kinda different from Russia'S. During both Bosnia and Serbia bombing campaigns nato inflicted most damage through bombs, not shells. In Ukraine both Ukrainians and Russians had to resort to artillery shells because none of them could fly uncontested

JoBrad• 2 years ago

Your linked articles don’t back up the first part of your claim: the US doubled production, and exceeded production targets, but that progress is being hindered due to Congressional funding. So we have the ability to make shells, but don’t need them in mass numbers (because we’re not in an active war).

The OP article is about creating the manufacturing capability, which is different from having the capability and not needing it.

_xnmw7• 2 years ago

Actually, an American engineer notes, the US is actually "struggling" with manufacturing artillery shells for some strange reason. https://roblh.substack.com/p/as-much-as-you-ever-wanted-to-k...

hollerith8• 2 years ago

Sure, if you have the mistaken belief that making modern artillery shells at scale is simple, the US looks bad compared to a country whose government has always prioritized having lots of supplies for its army because unlike the US, it is not separated by vast oceans from any army that could possibly pose a threat to it.

bluGill7• 2 years ago

There is good reason for that: the US/NATO war plans are not to get into an artillery war in the first place. If there is artillery in the way the US/NATO plan is send an airplane with a few bombs to take it out. There is still some room for artillery in the army and so we produce some, but that isn't the major way to fight wars.

The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)

John238324• 2 years ago

Right, I think the idea that America plans to go into an artillery slugsfest misunderstands American military doctrine. One could argue that the reason we weren't prepared to do "artillery war" in Ukraine is because, politically, we're restrained from conducting an air superiority campaign (which would be used to eliminate enemy artillery).

The Soviet/Russian land doctrine is totally based on artillery. It makes sense that that is their priority.

Now, that doesn't mean that American doctrine would work well in a hypothetical war with China. I personally don't think the current doctrine would work well. But those that watch the military sphere know that brass have taken note of that and are implementing changes. That all you can really ask for.

anikan_vader2• 2 years ago

It’s disingenuous to claim without citation that the US does not anticipate using artillery as one (of many) primary weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer adversary. The fact that thr US hasn’t had such a conflict since at least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.

Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict, but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or China.

In short, artillery remains important, which is why US artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.

_xnmw7• 2 years ago

As a Ukrainian, this sounds like betrayal. We went to war expecting sufficient military support from our superpower partner/ally.

_xnmw7• 2 years ago

The point is not whether US/NATO would fight an artillery war. The point is about proving your industrial base's manufacturing capacity. Artillery shells should be relatively cheap and easy to produce. It's a really bad sign if America is such a bureaucratic mess right now that production can't be ramped quickly. Doesn't bode well for future war, doesn't demonstrate capability.

tacocataco• 2 years ago

With what we spend on the military, it's shameful to not have an entire factory mothballed ready to crank out ammunition.

But maybe I'm not a military genius like those in charge of for profit defense contractors.

alberth2• 2 years ago

That’s expected.

Russian has been in a war for the past 2-years.

The US & EU have not.

pphysch2• 2 years ago

On the topic of supplying materiel, which is the topic of this thread, NATO countries have been 100% involved.

If NATO could supply the materiel for Ukraine to "singlehandedly" defeat Russia, they would do it in a heartbeat. But they don't have it!

class3shock2• 2 years ago

Did you read these? The first article clearly states the US is actually ramping up production better than expected and it can do even better with more support/funding. It's Europe/NATO being behind where they want to be and limitations on funding/support in the US that is causing the difference in supply, not US production struggles.

sumosudo• 2 years ago

Except The Red Army actually won WWII.

aaa_aaa• 2 years ago

What a waste.

AlOwain• 2 years ago

I don't know how; but I find that you said that ingenious. This comment section is full of touting it as a positive (somehow?) and being pessimistic about U.S. capabilities today in comparison to China. No one seems to mention that all this is unnecessary wastefulness. World hunger would have been solved decades earlier had they not hindered the productive output of those folk expended on such wastefulness.

ChrisMarshallNY5• 2 years ago

I will say, that I live on Long Island, which was a major industrial area, during WWII.

We enjoy one of the highest cancer rates in the world. All those factories used to dump their waste into our aquifers.

pulkitsh1234• 2 years ago

Factorio IRL

The post has one interesting resource that can become a bottleneck: people, what if there is a mod where you need to find and employ aliens to run your production line? Maybe some of the aliens will choose to work in factories instead of attacking you..

openasocket• 2 years ago

I haven’t finished the article yet, so I’m not sure if this is brought up. But I’m always amazed by how much government control there was in mobilizing the US economy for WW2. Factories were converted to producing war goods overnight. From Pearl Harbor to Japans surrender, the US produced less than 200 commercial cars! The amount of centralized government control during this period was astounding. It makes you wonder if that would be possible in the US today. Not just would the American people tolerate this kind of drastic change, but whether the modern economy and supply chains could support these kinds of sudden, drastic re-directs

hn8305823• 2 years ago

Yes, they would tolerate it. Both because of the Government's monopoly on violence, and because citizens always rally to support a war when under direct attack. The latter effect was popularized by Randolph Bourne in an essay https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Bourne

the phrase "war is the health of the state" that laments the success of governments in arrogating authority and resources during conflicts.

The problem the US might have in full war mobilization today would be due to cronyism. Remember all of the exceptions to Covid lockdowns for "essential" employees? Some of that is of course necessary but I suspect it would be very widespread if it happened today. This would stoke resentment from people/companies not so privileged.

dmix• 2 years ago

One thing about these sorts of gov run industry things is that when it works it almost always coincides with great national urgency where you get total civilian/private industry buy in.

Everyone points to NASA in the 60s as a perfect example of gov production but like all newly formed bureaucracies they are largely the sum of the people they recently absorbed into it. NASA mined all the universities and nerds from private industry who brought their work patterns, leadership, and attitudes to the organization.

But as these orgs age it’s the classic Iron Rule story of managers taking over and accountants ruining things etc etc.

Maybe we need to move away from monolithic mega gov orgs and create new ones to solve new problems each generation instead of being catch alls that do nothing well and never face any risk of being replaced. There needs to be ways to breed new life and kill off the natural development of bad management and crippling rulemaking.

csours2• 2 years ago

I wonder anyone has a suggestion for a book on the NACA -> NASA change era

andbberger• 2 years ago

There needs to be ways to breed new life and kill off the natural development of bad management and crippling rulemaking.

corpos are functionally immortal and it's the cancerous mass, not the germ line that survives.

csours2• 2 years ago

I worked in an automotive plant opened in 1954. (I worked there from 200x to 201x). I was specifically told that the support columns were set a certain distance apart from each other in case it needed to be re-tooled for wing production, and that was a condition of the financing or deal or something with the govt.

Any of that could be a misunderstanding or an urban legend though.

jordanb• 2 years ago

If you are interested in how this all worked there is a book called 'Destructive Creation'. Here is an interview with the author:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gdbjVMxdnpQ

bms2297• 2 years ago

This is actually the best 1-volume book on U.S. WW2 mobilization.

codexb• 2 years ago

It wasn't so much centralized control as just spending gobs and gobs of money. If the federal government just started handing out money to produce consumable goods and machinery today, you can bet every company in the world would be all over that.

consp• 2 years ago

I could not find it in the article and here but i wonder how much not getting the factories bombed helped with this.

freshpretzels4• 2 years ago

Time to produce 300k F-35s and a much larger Navy.

300k airplanes in five years

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