[throwaway202303]

America had very little in the way of military industry at the start of WW2 yet ramped up at an incredible rate. Industrial efforts can be repurposed in a matter of months. (One problem here is that the US depends on other countries for much of its manufacturing)

[nradov]

Nonsense. Military equipment is orders of magnitude more complex now. It was possible to take a car factory and repurpose it to make P-51 Mustangs. It is not possible to do that for F-35 Lightning IIs. The materials and technology are just too different.

And even the domestic components have lead times measured in years. In an emergency, production could only be marginally accelerated no matter how much funding and manpower we put into it. That is the reality.

[webnrrd2k]

I think that your claim of nonsense is mistaken. For example, one of your points isn't, in general, true. You wrote "It was possible to take a car factory and repurpose it to make P-51 Mustangs. It is not possible to do that for F-35 Lightning IIs."

But any car factory isn't expected to produce fully formed F-35s. But they can produce many components for a F-35. And many factorys together can produce, for eg, a F-35.

You also wrote: "And even the domestic components have lead times measured in years. In an emergency, production could only be marginally accelerated no matter how much funding and manpower we put into it. That is the reality." That's exactly the problem that the report and blog post address. It is the reality now, because of the defense industry being more about financial engineering than actual engineering. And that is a big problem for the US. It doesn't have to be that way.

[lotsofpulp]

Is it possible that ramp up times have increased or become more complicated in the last 100 years due to changes in technology and capabilities of adversaries?

[bee_rider]

The world is smaller nowadays. And our allies are not so warlike anymore, if there were a big war we’d probably be in more of a rush to get to them.

[0zemp1c]

yeah no, you aren't churning nuclear subs out of a rowboat factory in 2023

even if you were to start a new company to build nuclear subs (for example) today, you are probably looking at a decade or more until you can produce something