Shit, what do I know. Maybe take a few lessons from this gentleman.
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The conditions described in that book don’t exist today. Not just the “in WW2” stuff, but the stuff they did to prep so much of industry to convert from commercial business to military production. America was a uniquely capable industrial and manufacturing powerhouse then that it is not today. We do remain good at coming up with exquisite high end stuff, and at automating the shit out of some things…but only if the demand and volume is there.
Which is where the problem comes from so often. We the government arent willing to pay for excess capacity, which would be a labor force and capital investment just sitting around under their full capacity (and profit making potential)…and we pay industry to make shit we’re not willing to let them sell commercially (taking non defense/ITAR stuff), so they can’t expand the market on their own.*
The other problem is how often we fall into just going for the “easiest” solution. It’s way easier in people’s minds to look at an improvement or modification to an existing product than to go clean sheet design.
Point is…if we didn’t actually need something else big and slow flying around armed, and wanted something transformational and “different”, make sure you get those requirements right from the start, or you get the shit show that is LCS or Zumwalt. Those were clean sheet, “innovative” concepts. The trap of doing the easy evolutionary thing springs from the fact it’s really easy to screw jt away when you try a revolutionary thing that is also actually achievable with near term technology.
*Relating it back to this thread…our foreign policy could potentially tank our FMS market…which will only make things a lot harder for maintaining our own domestic MIC.