[ggm]

You can't rely on Chinese companies to make the tanks and rockets you intend aiming at China.

Car manufacturers serve many purposes. Aside from keeping the UAW membership onside, they are a strategic buttress for an emerging future war risk.

Australia maintained subsidies to Ford and GM for onshore production precisely because of this. And they stopped when a strategic realignment made successive governments decide the risk didn't justify the expense. A decision they may now be regretting.

[contrarian1234]

War with China.. ya'll are nuts. The American zeitgeist is completely poisoned and insane. Listening to this stuff from the outside is kind of horrifying. War with a nuclear armed country ends with a nuclear winter for the whole planet. There is no preparing for war with China unless you want everyone dead (which I'm starting to suspect a lot of people are okay with)

This seems so anachronistic.... When was the last war where tanks were important..?

Car are made using components from all around the world... How would you even make a tank in a Tesla factory?

[number6]

In The 2022 Invasion of Russia into the Ukraine Tanks played an important role in the offensive and the counter-offensive especially around Kyiv, Mariupol, Severodonetsk, and Avdiivka

[contrarian1234]

Are they still a factor? I thought they quickly were put out of the picture once drone warfare was ironed out. Haven't heard of tanks in Ukraine for the past couple of years

[Someone]

This is from last month: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2025/09/08/world/europe/...

It describes how tanks were modified to protect, first, against attacks from the top, and then, from drone attacks from all sides.

They claim “But they remain important, especially for trying to take and hold territory. With their heavy firepower, they will continue to have a role in attacking, defending and supporting the foot soldiers of the infantry.”

[contrarian1234]

super interesting! thanks

[zevon]

Well, the last war where tanks and other old weapons were important is going on in Ukraine, for example. And I'm pretty sure you could build quite a few death machine components with what's available in Tesla factories as well (certainly not a full tank though, but you could probably not do that in an ICE car factory either).

FWIW, I agree with your general sentiment, though.

Also, I'm pretty sure that the car industry as it is now would fight retooling their factories tooth and nail, move production to other countries and do anything else they can to be able to continue making as much profit as they can.

[fragmede]

> certainly not a full tank though

I wonder how much you couldn't though. Obviously you'd need to retool the whole thing, and the cannon is a bit more complicated than simply a metal cylinder, but just how much more complicated? The reloading system is probably the most complex after of the jet turbine that powers those things.

My other question is, with gigacasting, how much better could a Tesla factory build an M1 Abrams compared to a traditional automakers?

[zevon]

I'm not as current as I used to be with my military trivia (I blame getting older and getting to know more refugees, veterans and families who lost people in wars) but I'll have a go:

A tank weighs like 60 tons or so. The engine and transmission alone are heavier and bulkier than whole cars, so basically none of the infrastructure you have available in many car factories is dimensioned correctly. Modern armor is composite and includes stuff like ceramic components which you would not have the machines, processes and knowledge for. "Gigacasting" sounds impressive but it's "just" aluminium injection molding that can do relatively big and integrated parts and you can't just fill in some steel-composite armor material mix in the hopper and have a fully formed Abrams fall out the other end of the machine. Things like barrels are forged (I think), which you again would not have the right infrastructure for. And so on and so forth.

My guess would be: It would be more sensible to apply division of labor and - for example - have many of the car factories spit out CNC and cast parts that fit into their usual production envelope and are then integrated into other/bigger systems at your friendly neighborhood US armory (Krauss-Maffei or wherever, more likely), specalized stuff like aircraft parts from their Gigapresses, have them do electrical work for other systems, produce lighter (support-)vehicles, use their skills and infrastructure in quick mass production for things you really need a lot of (shells, basic supplies for your war-torn population's needs, and so on), have their prototyping labs work on more cutting-edge/improvised stuff like the Drones we see in Ukraine and Russia. I'm sure there are plenty more good (terrible) ideas to be had.

[fragmede]

oh man, that's great. Thank you! I'm not in manufacturing so I love learning new things.

[attentive]

Best way to find yourself in war is not prepare for one. As shown time and again. Also, persuading your enemies not to prepare for war is a part of the war effort.

> so anachronistic

tell that to ruzzia

[contrarian1234]

> As shown time and again

what a load of warmongering bs.. I literally can't think of a single example. Korea, Vietnam, France, Britain, Japan, Germany every country involved in a war in the past ~100 years had prepared for it. Maybe maybe Iraq under Saddam Hussein didn't properly prepare? Though they were highly militarized. On the contrary, the more you prepare and get people frothing at the mouth the more likely it's gunna happen.

Thank god none had been between two nuclear powers so far

> tell that to ruzzia

They had a bunch of tanks and seemingly lost huge amounts of them. They seem to be a prime example of tanks not working in the modern context

[ponector]

>> They seem to be a prime example of tanks not working in the modern context

Without proper strategy nothing works. Size of the russian army was too small for the task to fight and occupy such a huge county as Ukraine.

Also russians had bunch of old tanks, almost all of them made in USSR.

[nickpp]

So what do you propose we do when China attacks? Capitulate?!

[triceratops]

Why "when"?

[nickpp]

Military build-up. Xi's own bellicose declarations towards Taiwan. Closeness to and participation into other dictator's military endeavors.

[chermi]

Maybe not tanks, but certainly drones, no? We need some sort of manufacturing. If not for war itself, as a deterrent? Plus there will still be troops no matter what, so certainly we'll still need to make APCs.

"Car are made using components from all around the world..." That's part of the problem. Building more here may bring some of the components closer, at least to friendlier countries.

[UltraSane]

"The American zeitgeist is completely poisoned and insane. "

The average Chinese person is very gung ho about invading Taiwan

[pjc50]

They're not even winning the war on Portland.

[tehjoker]

Since there’s no good reason to do any of that, we should absolutely lose that capability since to use it is to abuse it

[JumpCrisscross]

> Since there’s no good reason to do any of that

It's 2025. We're still asking what happens when one group has lots of guns, tanks, fighter jets and missiles, and the other doesn't? Also, there is a difference between stockpiling arms and maintaining the ability to produce them if necessary.

[moi2388]

Deterrence is a very good reason, and the reason we’ve had peace in the western world for as long as we have.

[StopDisinfo910]

Integrated markets and commerce is why we have had peace in the western world. The very things the current American head honcho is tearing apart.

We have had very little peace in the rest of the world in the meantime between the colonial wars, the various proxy wars of the Cold War, then the numerous stupid adventures of the modern America and now Russia wanting to be an empire again.

[moi2388]

I don’t think integrated markets were the cause. There was plenty of integration between Ukraine and Russia in the oil and gas infrastructure for example.

(Nuclear) deterrence is why we’ve only had proxy wars instead of direct wars