This is a serious problem. Back in WWII we were able to produce massive quantities of weapons and supplies that helped us win. Think we can pull off that kind of production again?
“there is only one company left in the U.S. that produces a roller cutter for armored plate or heavy steel which was an indirect consequence of supplying armor kits for U.S. Humvees in the War in Iraq. When the Pentagon learned there was an immediate need at the end of 2004, it called for expediency in their manufacture. Sadly, it took almost a year due to the limited facilities producing such.”
Yeah yeah I know this. But all that money alone is not good enough if you don’t have factories to spend it on. Unless of course you’re going to pay other countries to make weapons for you. That hasn’t happened yet but I definitely read somewhere that 10 % of the parts for the Abrams battle tank are imported from China.
[quote]40yarddash wrote:
Yeah yeah I know this. But all that money alone is not good enough if you don’t have factories to spend it on. Unless of course you’re going to pay other countries to make weapons for you. That hasn’t happened yet but I definitely read somewhere that 10 % of the parts for the Abrams battle tank are imported from China. [/quote]
Ok. How about the 702 bases in 132 countries? How’s that for military supremacy?
(Feel safer with our troops in Iraq, looking for non-existent WMD?)
“U.S. military ill-prepared for other conflicts”
Officials cite ‘stark’ shortage of equipment, growing gaps in training.
[i]Four years after the invasion of Iraq, the high and growing demand for U.S. troops there and in Afghanistan has left ground forces in the United States short of the training, personnel and equipment that would be vital to fight a major ground conflict elsewhere, senior U.S. military and government officials acknowledge.
More troubling, the officials say, is that it will take years for the Army and Marine Corps to recover from what some officials privately have called a “death spiral,” in which the ever more rapid pace of war-zone rotations has consumed 40 percent of their total gear, wearied troops and left no time to train to fight anything other than the insurgencies now at hand.
The risk to the nation is serious and deepening, senior officers warn, because the U.S. military now lacks a large strategic reserve of ground troops ready to respond quickly and decisively to potential foreign crises, whether the internal collapse of Pakistan, a conflict with Iran or an outbreak of war on the Korean Peninsula. Air and naval power can only go so far in compensating for infantry, artillery and other land forces, they said. An immediate concern is that critical Army overseas equipment stocks for use in another conflict have been depleted by the recent troop increases in Iraq, they said.[/i]
Boeing still builds planes in the U.S. right? I bet they can still produce a lot of military aircraft should the need arise. And I guess GM and Ford and the foreign automakers can build Humvees and APCs. People underestimate the contributions these civillian companies can make during wartime.