>The maximum rate of production is estimated to be 2,330 per year: Three contracts from Raytheon each have a capacity of 600 and a BAE has a contract to produce up to 530 missiles per year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which cites Pentagon budget documents.
>However, the actual procurement rate for the U.S. military is about 90 per year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Navy requested only 57 missiles for fiscal year 2026, according to Defense Department budget documents.
So the rate of production has been low because the procurement rate has been low.
The tomahawk entered service in 1983, in 2026 they only produced 57. DO THE MATH!
This means the military can only have (2025-1983) * 57 = 2394 Tomahawks.
But the military says they have approximately 3000-4000 tomahawks in inventory. Is it a conspiracy? How could they POSSIBLY have more than 2394 if they can ONLY MAKE 57 PER YEAR?!
prompt: rite me article about US only can make 57 tomohok missels a year but looks lik they have moar than that
It talked about how big Iran is as if that mattered. What about China or Russia? They're pretty big, aren't they?
The US has no chance of ever successfully engaging China in direct combat. China almost certainly has secret drones spread out in the mainland US that will destroy domestic US bases in a single day. As for China's own missiles, they're so spread out that they can never be neutralized.
Does the author think the US can only make 57 missiles a year?
I'm sure some very smart MBA increased profits by eliminating spare capacity or making cuts that would make it much harder to spin up. That's American business culture: focus on this quarter or this year, nothing else matters.
*Yes, the current administration is very foolish, but as far as I know they have not changed the policy in this area and if anything they would be more likely to lie than previous admins, right?
https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4026238/fa...
LOL
There have been so many disclosures of secret things happening in past decades, decades after the fact. Did they stop doing that? This seems really naive to me.
If US stocks are so depleted after something that is barely a skirmish against 8th tier adversary - a lot of people that have been responsible for procurement in the last 20 years should lose their jobs.
The volume of fire that can be generated inside the 100km line by PLAN/PLAAF/PLAARF forces is nothing less than breathtaking. Even if you parked three Ford class carriers inside optimal mission radius, and their entire complement could take off and land in near-training conditions, and they don't need DCAP or electronic warfare coverage, *AND* if every single bomb and aircraft has a glassy-perfect mission right weapon to right target - EVEN WITH all these impossible conditions satisfied . . you're still not generating enough weapon effect to suppress even half of the PRC fire generation complex vis a vis a Taiwan situation. And they don't need half.
And that is not going to be the operational situation for USN. No, not by a long shot. If we're particularly unlucky, we might not ever know for sure what happened to the USS Whoever - just that it sailed into an electronic fog past Zamami and was gone. Rescued sailors could add little more.
The powers-that-be know this, the elected politicians know this (but don't care because they often have pockets stuffed from Chinese interests), but still we have chest beaters of the unstoppable American juggernaut. Yes, we do have a very big military - it's true! - but it's a military that the largest economy in the world has spent a good deal of its resources working to counter. For twenty years.
My greatest fear is that the chest beaters do assert direct control, court disaster, and have the worst possible reaction. I'm not confident in a sane response to a major surface asset being sunk; these are not people mentally geared to handle humiliation.
We're flirting this line already with Iran - with goddamn Iran of all people - where many People Who Should Know Better have already been flapping their mouths about breaking the taboo on First Use. For Iran.
If anything I would say this means procurement has been closer to "right sized" than not.
