I'm not advocating any approach. I'm telling you, as someone who has years of experience in the field of defense manufacturing, that one cannot force manufacturing processes into existence through sheer will. My posts on the topic are for the edification of whoever reads them, convincing anyone isn't my concern as ultimately it isn't HN comments that are going to change the situation. Maybe SpaceX should start making Javelins by the millions (:
For context btw: I oversaw the production of hundreds (if not into the thousands) of the Javelins we sent to Ukraine. Two of my coworkers were Ukrainian too. Do not mistake my brutal realism for a lack of caring about the situation.
> that one cannot force manufacturing processes into existence through sheer will
That worked for russia but somehow doesn't work in the west?
I mostly lack experience in defense tech beyond being a user but ime it often doesn't work as well as the certificate (which probably cost a lot of effort to obtain) states it does. I'm of the opinion that we need to radically rethink our approach here if we hope to deter or withstand potential conflict with china in the next 10 years.
The Russians certainly did scale up as you say, but there are underlying issues that have remained with them. Captured equipment has shown issues, some of which are potentially fatal to the user. The quality of work is poor and leads to a high failure rate. They do, however, make plenty of them - which has an advantage. Go to the war museum and look at any soviet tank built between 1940 and 1945, the welds look terrible and some are even missing the full complement of armor plating. They made thousands of them though.
The Western powers are not treating the situation as if they themselves were at war, hence no drastic changes in economic output to favor war machines. We have increased production though. Can't say how much, but it would raise eyebrows. I feel we should have been far more generous with the munitions, especially the older aircraft (think F-16, F-18) early on.
The certificates are basically just a paper trail. The aluminium is aircraft grade, the optics in spec, EMI shielding is sufficient, etc. We do extensive testing, but things slip through. Some issues are storage-related, and others are issues that don't show up til years later - such as microscopic ESD damage. Much of what we've been giving Ukraine was in storage for a while.
Out of interest, since you seem really knowledgeable: is there any reason no one ever mentions shipping VT fuzes to Ukraine? They seemed to work really nicely in the Battle of the Bulge, and the US is likely to have a vast stockpile of Cold War era fuzes. If they make the sparse shells even marginally more effective, it'd probably be worth it, yet there is not a whisper of their existence.
And now imagine how that stuff would work if certification requirements were lower.
Regarding China, I thought the same thing. Until Ukraine. Because as it turned out, that being at constant, if low intensity, war for basically all the time since Vietnam and Korea (at least since Gulf War 2 over Kuweit), really has benefits for the warfighting capability of countries. NATO, and especially the US, have that. Russia and China don't. And it shows, Russia didn't walz over Ukraine the way the West did over Iraq. And China has to deal with an amphibious invasion against a country that had decades to prepare for just that. Which leaves the question of supply lines across the pacific for a prolonged conflict. And there my money really is on western navies.
Just as a reminder, Russia is at a war economy by now, and still has to source from North Korea. All the while, NATO countries are just emptying stockpiles and slowly, maybe too slow, replenishing them. And despite that, all Russia got is a stalemate.
"Russia didn't walz over Ukraine the way the West did over Iraq"
Not really the same thing. Iraq was very low on quality military supplies with years of sanctions before that.
And Russia did walz over Georgia in 2008 and Russia would have walzed over Ukraine in 2014 (some russian military was enough to capture lots of ground back then). But much happened between 2014 and 2022.
For context btw: I oversaw the production of hundreds (if not into the thousands) of the Javelins we sent to Ukraine. Two of my coworkers were Ukrainian too. Do not mistake my brutal realism for a lack of caring about the situation.