How Quickly Can the DoD Rebuild and Recast the Munitions Industrial Base?

Perun (Australian military procurement geek) presented the maths for missile defence vs. attack and it's heavily weighted in favour of the attacker.[1] He also previously analysed the Ukrainian truck-full-of-drones attack against a Russian airbase and it was in this video (sorry no link I can't find it quickly) I think he investigated whether the cost-benefit exists to bury military and critical infrastructure underground (or use heavily hardened buildings).

Both topics are very relevant to the current conflicts of eastern Europe and the middle east. Perhaps I took away the wrong message but I don't think Perun would propose to stockpile interceptor missiles any time soon.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpFhNXecrb4&t=2382s

Ukraine technological flexibility reflects their organizational incentives. Front line users are in communication with the manufacturers; those same front line users choose the weapon (and vendor) they want, so feedback is rapid and since word gets around, good equipment is quickly adopted and becomes popular until something better replaces it.

The US military procurement is the opposite of this.

One reason procurement is slow is to avoid fraud.* Ukrainse hasn’t managed to eliminate that. Perhaps there is a balance, when you’re under fire at least.

* in the US, procurement fraud looks quite different (e.g. having anpart for your weapon made in every congressional district, a tactic developed for the B-1)

Reading up on some of these systems is wild. For example THAAD munitions are wildly expensive, but also a ballistic projectile that physically knocks hypersonic missiles out of the air in flight 200km away. Ultimately $13 million seems reasonable to save a few city blocks in a major city. It just doesn't make sense to use against small arms like disposable drones.

Given what the Department of War does with the munitions, hopefully not quickly at all.

Ukraine, for whatever reason, was denied access to the DARPA innovation pipeline early on. Thus, they had to make their own to survive. Now, not only is there something moving much faster, than that flow of innovation but also there’s a hunch of adversaries, who have picked up on it. That’s what you get for the lack of strategic thinking. Your decisions are not terminal, your moves are not the finishing ones. Others get to make theirs as well. And you might not at all like where these moves will take you.

Isn't the strategy to nearshore production, and recent moves in South America were potentially done to reduce Chinese/Iranian/Russian influence in those regions?

Never heard about RTX, turns out it's Raytheon.

Surely, knowing what the requirements are, we can build a cheaper Tomahawk missile these days, right?

SpaceX does the whole rocket launch thing for a fraction of the cost of the space shuttle. GPS is not that complicated any more and all the processing power required fits in a chip the size of a cellphone.

But those things cost 2.5M a piece?

probably a lot more quickly with a future administration that isn't skimming off the top everywhere

bullshit.

this has nothing to do with manufacturing capacity, and everything to do with the wildest,most out of control, corrupt, total conversion to a rabid , industrial cleptocracy.

a case to study is the comisoning of the latest british aircraft carrier, they did get it built, launched, and as stated commisoned, but as no one greased the huge ,wildly expensive, propellor shaft, it siezed , the d o t s dont connect, and every single last person in the whole fucking mess,instictivly knows that to actualy touch or be associated with grease, is a career ending move, and now a year later they still cant figure out what happened, but whewwee, it turned out good, as they can all pass the shilling,' nope cant show up, sorry, but realy we cant make it to your war,we have contracts to fill, ta!'

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Oh so western parasites can continue killing the planet? Have already killed 4 continents. Western greed knows no end. It’s core western value. Greed racism and Genocide are baked into European minds

i don't know. the DoD is planning for the wrong wars. the bloodiest war in the US was the civil war.