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.
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.
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....
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.
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...
The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close to China).
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.
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.
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).
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.
- Lack of infrastructure investment
- Civic infighting
- Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
- Social regression
- Gender disparity in undergraduate education
- Declining standards of living
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.
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...
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.
More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend enough to keep our defense industry competitive?
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.)
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.
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.
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Expeditionary_Forces#...
Sources:
[1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artill...
[2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-artillery...
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)
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.
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.
But maybe I'm not a military genius like those in charge of for profit defense contractors.
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
The OP article is about creating the manufacturing capability, which is different from having the capability and not needing it.
Russian has been in a war for the past 2-years.
The US & EU have not.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
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.
This has always been much more important than dead capital.
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?
I'm guessing the system is named after an old Chinese siege weapon system to give China a message.
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...
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).
* https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...
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.
Sounds like a Catch-22.
The T-38 jet trainer, first flight in 1959, still in use: 1,189 built, 210 crashes and ejections.
[0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-hist...
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.
corpos are functionally immortal and it's the cancerous mass, not the germ line that survives.
> 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.
Any of that could be a misunderstanding or an urban legend though.
Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always puts a smile on my face
Imagine measuring computer hardware output by weight.
... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like using it to evaluate people.
When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first metric.
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.
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."
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.
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.
That's a fun way of saying that the USSR started a war of conquest against Poland.
Some people in the US were. FDR was not.
And that has changed since then..?
It's not like those old machines were primitive, and there have been major breakthroughs in mass-manufacturing.
(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)
the capabilities of planes from ww2 and today are almost not worth comparing
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.
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.
What the actual _hell_ happened to this idea?
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.
Wow. Unbelievable
We enjoy one of the highest cancer rates in the world. All those factories used to dump their waste into our aquifers.
Now China is the country with the largest industrial output.
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..
