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The U.S. Navy is Firing Missiles in the Middle East Faster Than They Can be Replaced
(nationalinterest.org)
this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2024
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Eh. While Capital expenditures can't be created overnight, these aren't novel machines they are creating that require exotic materials. The way government bidding works the majority of the components are created across hundreds of sub-contractors and sub-sub-contractors, and they are given a target quota of "100widgets" a year. I doubt that the majority of these sub-contractors only have the capability to create 100widgets year. The limitation is the number of hours they run the factory. Without knowing anything else about the missiles, I bet that production could be doubled by simply using excess factory capacity (i.e. hiring workers for more shifts,) that is simply not done by the capitalists that own the factories, simply because it isn't profitable to do so.
Obviously at some level of production you run out of machine tool capacity, and at some level beyond that you run out of raw materials, but I doubt we are anywhere near the later and there is a good amount of head room for the former.
The US, despite it's decline, still has a very large amount of manufacturing capacity and these missiles aren't using a significant amount of it.
https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/g17/current/default.htm
An estimated 77% of total US industrial capacity is being utilized.
I see you have never heard of Just-in-time manufacturing. The current standard for almost all western firms is to maintain the absolute minimum required production capacity.
Just in time manufacturing addresses warehousing issues, it does not have any affect on maximum capacity. If a machine can produce 1000/widgets an hour, but I can run it for 10minutes a day to produce 167 widgets to meet my line on the demand curve while saving on warehouse costs, then that is what I'm going to do. Additionally I'll restructure my workers so that instead of needing 100 workers for 8hrs to produce 8000 widgets a day, I'll simply hire 16 workers ( or more likely 2 workers plus 10 part-time workers) to produce 167 widgets in a day. I don't spend any time or effort creating a machine that can only run for 10minutes a day and produce only 167 widgets.
The capacity of my widget machine is still 8000/day.
e: Or more likely, I'll be creating 167 widgets for raytheon at 3x profit, I'll be creating 20 widgets for north korea at 4x profit, and 4000 widgets for the NCCCP as that is part of their 20 year plan.
Here's the thing though, these skills aren't present in the current workforce. Here's a perfect example for you https://www.popsci.com/technology/stinger-missiles-raytheon-ukraine/
For the Stinger, and I'm sure a huge number of other cold-war era military equipment it's not, and of course that is a systemic problem for the US Military. But the missiles they are launching from destroyers are in active production, so the lack of knowledge problem doesn't exist there.
The question is about scaling production up significantly which would require an existing pool of qualified people. Given the miserly amounts the US is capable of producing currently, it's not a given that this can be scaled up easily.
I agree. But it's also not a given that the US despite it's huge amount of resources, people, historical investment, and fiat currency can only produce 12 missiles a year and that is the hard limit without impossible investment.