I confess to being a little surprised that our MIC is so woefully short of production facilities for weapons and basic ammo components like black powder and TNT.  Spend billions of $$$ building ships and artillery that fire these shells, but don't even make the basic components?  Nobody in the military is held responsible or gets fired for this either?

I also find it hard to believe it will take a couple of years to ramp up production and keep the Ukies locked & loaded.  They ramped up production of a Covid vaccine faster than that.  This is century old chemistry and basic forging and machining of metal that's been around twice as long as that.

Of course what it DOES mean is a huge windfall for folks who want to get into the weapons manufacturing biz.  Of course you'll need the right connections to get a contract though.

For you fans and aficionados of AI, here is an application TAILOR MADE for this technology!  Making an Artillery Shell is such a simple and straightforward engineering task, I don't see why they need any workers at all for a manufacturing plant.   They have new Fast Food restaurants that are entirely robotic.  Just substitute  explosive ingredients for the food and bomb casings for the paper and plastic packaging materials and POOF, it will turn out artillery shells.  No new software necessary. lol.  Adapt robotic arms from the auto industry.  The plant can be run remotely and the units in the field can order their ordnance directly over Amazon.  The order goes straight to the factory and the ordnance is picked up by FedEx which delivers it to the Front Lines when it Absolutely, Positively has to get there Overnight! lol.

Of course, this is all just tip of the iceberg stuff when it comes to the TRUE readiness of the FSoA military to fight any kind of real war that takes more than a few divisions  of Special Forces, all branches of the military have been unable to meet recruitment goals for even reduced "peacetime" jobs in the military, servicing all the high tech equipment they order up.  I'll bet dollars to doughnuts anytime a tank commander has a problem with his M1 Abrams tank, the wait time to get it in the shop is longer than the wait times cripples have for getting their wheelchairs fixed or Tesla owners have to get their battery pack fixed.

If/when a real war comes up, who are they going to draft?  There aren't enough new HS graduates available to take Fast Food jobs, and the military pays worse than flipping burgers at Mickey Ds.  Unless they start conscripting Chinese right as they cross the border from Mexico into SoCal, finding cannon fodder that isn't too fat to get off the couch in mom's basement is going to be pretty tough.

Back to the Ammo Problem though, I bet the problem is mirrored closely with small arms ammo, aka plain old bullets.  I'll bet the actual manufacturing capacity isn't more than say 50% above what they manufacture in a normal peacetime economy, and if a Civil War broke out tomorrow, the National Guard, Right Wing militias, Drug Cartels and Gang Bangers would all start running short of bullets inside a month.  Good luck ramping up production once the fighting gets going too.

This is probably a good time to arm yourself with a Crossbow and a Potato Gun to fire homemade Molotov Cocktails from your bunker.  Head to the feed store and lay in a supply of Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer also.  Buy smokeless powder in bulk and invest in reloading equipment.  Ammo will run out faster than Toilet Paper during Covid.  lol.

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-us-global-war-weapons-race/?utm_source=newsshowcase&utm_medium=gnews&utm_campaign=CDAqEAgAKgcICjDi7PAKMIXduwIwjs-FAw&utm_content=rundown&gaa_at=la&gaa_n=ARTJ-U9mNRJTbnq1b9w5xQqmWoNbPG0Nr_sAWv6zM9pW8zgW3aEARlEvNJ03ADZ7_8pBwDqAFZ9F02ayGO8n&gaa_ts=6663c000&gaa_sig=giX4TyknDRpq6JesG8ba9KvYLLnGyos0SPFPGtW2fgq8gnjuwJOcMZJqScYkx146FrbCECR2RJwUGG8HJpW9TA%3D%3D

America's War Machine Can't Make Basic Artillery Fast Enough

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