Comment by jerlam
2 days ago
Wouldn't a fragmented, decentralized system also help make their supply chains more resilient? If they had a single large drone factory, it would be a sizable target.
2 days ago
Wouldn't a fragmented, decentralized system also help make their supply chains more resilient? If they had a single large drone factory, it would be a sizable target.
During WW2 in the United States, you had all sorts of consumer goods companies reorganized to output a prodigious amount of military supplies. There were multiple companies making the same model of things, with fairly rigorous QA to ensure quality and uniformity.
For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers.
More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.
Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1]
The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs.
[1] https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/vtproximityfuze.htm
It's not a great comparison because Germany could not hit the US mainland. Even if there had been a single giant everything factory it wouldn't have mattered.
IIRC the US did plan in case either Japan or Germany somehow became capable of bombing the states. Some factories had their roofs painted to make them blend in with the surroundings, others were built out of reinforced concrete to make them bomb proof
https://airmail.news/arts-intel/highlights/masters-of-disgui...
Then take the Sten submachine gun, designed so that every little machine shop in Britain could produce one.
One design doesn't mean one factory. And it's not about one design anyway, just the thought of culling the less performing ones.
It’s more brutal than that.
The Sherman tank wasn’t the best tank, but being able to make a lot of them was useful.
As per Stalin, quantity has a quality all of its own.
I've heard exactly this argument about the Soviet T-34.