alt Hacker NewsThe development and production lifecycle _has_ to be long for a country not fighting a current war.
Ukrainian munitions get used up almost immediately. They don't need to stockpile, they are in a steady state wartime production.
On the contrary, peace time countries have to stockpile. A manufacturing line cannot be ramped up from zero to wartime, we need low volume manufacturing to retain the expertise and the supply lines. But that, in turn, means that we have to either trash the entire manufacturing output every few months (which would be insane), or stockpile. The latter option also requires building more capable systems so that the stockpiles are still relevant in a few years.
Stockpiling doesn’t really do much vs. investing in manufacturing.
Contrast the US in the civil war or wwii to the current situation. In both those wars, civilian factories were rapidly converted for the war and manufacturing capabilities were ramped fast.
In Iran, we’ve burned through years or decades of manufacturing capacity and probably used up most of our top tier stockpile.
That only exhausted/destroyed about 33% of Iran’s cruise missile stockpiles. It’s unclear what it did to their drone manufacturing capabilities. It guaranteed they’ll pursue nuclear capabilities moving forward.
At the same time, US investment in manufacturing is tanking due to warmongering and isolationist economic policies.
Iran stalemated us in a month or two, and all the trends I see (education, manufacturing, high tech innovation) point to US capabilities eroding rapidly in the short to medium term.