The Return of Industrial Warfare
www.rusi.org
Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?

Jokes and SLS aside, interesting and insightful article on modern industrial war and capabilities in Russia and the West.

TLDR: To wage large scale industrial war you need a massive industrial and manufacturing base to supply your population and army. The West outsourced those capabilities. Oops.

In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.

In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.

Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 [Javelin] missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.

The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually

How fucking crazy is it the Russians can do this with like 1/10 the military budget?

Turns out a multibillion $ streaming service bloats your GDP, but doesn’t produce anything materially needed in case of war. Also turns out capitalism creates the conditions for its own undoing.

And we’ve been saying this shit from day fucking one.

  • ☆ Yσɠƚԋσʂ ☆
    15•2 years ago

    It’s a great analysis of what’s involved in large scale warfare, and shows how deindustrialization has not completely screwed the west in terms of military preparedness.

    While they’re focusing on Ukraine there, the real context here is if there was a conflict with China. If the west can’t keep up with Russia industrially, they have no chance with China given that it absolutely dwarfs Russian industrial base.

  • @CamaradaD
    12•2 years ago

    The question is: will the US and their main allies try to bridge the gap by industrializing again… or tighten their grip on neutral or somewhat friendly Third-World countries and force them to do the work?

    If the latter, it would mean they’d be creating yet another crisis for themselves in the long run.

      • @CamaradaD
        6•2 years ago

        True. Who knows, that might be the trigger for Socialism to begin growing in the West, once the libs run out of excuses.