Comment by pragmatic

6 hours ago

So fast forward five years and 50% of our war materials are produced in foreign countries?

I can't help but believe this is going to weaken our war footing because the dumbest people in the room are behind it. Thirsty Pete does not inspire confidence in the Department of War Thunder.

I mean on the surface it sounds good, but LEAN is why we had no PPE on hand during covid.

In order to have off the shelf supplies we are going have an active international arms market by definition. Is this what we want?

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pragmatic

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monknomo  39 minutes ago

from the reading I have done, something along the lines of 'bump up 155mm production' is more what is needed

not as sexy as drones, but ask the ukranians if they'd rather have drones or artillery

fragmede  5 hours ago

The lack of PPE manufacturing in the US after 2021 is a travesty that does not simplify to LEAN is why we didn't. Dismantling the pandemic response unit didn't help. Not replenishing a stockpile of masks that existed for that specific reason didn't help. A lack of tooling supply base didn't help, Straight up corruption; no bid government contracts going to friends of the administration with no. proven capability to deliver (and they didn't). By the time this was discovered, months that could have been used to build and certify actual factories had been wasted.

Worse though, is 3M and Honeywell built factories to make masks, only to get fucked on it. Factories (must grow but also) take time to build. In the 6-9 months it took for them to build those factories after the initial delay, China started allowing exports again, and those factories folded basically before we got any use out of them. I wouldn't expect 3M to build needed factories a second time we need them to save our asses.