Interesting equipment mix. If I can dig up my prewar battalion breakdown representing a full 20 year Reagan build up I will post it as well.

I'm no expert on heavy industrial and tech production but I think that modern tanks, jets, missiles, etc. will not roll off of production lines anywhere near as fast as the much more low-tech armaments did in WWII. The U.S. armaments industry never geared up to its maximum production capacity during either of the Iraq wars but I seem to recall hearing of a couple of instances where USN ships literally ran out of Tomahawk and had to wait week for the trickle of new production missiles to find their way in to the fleet.

That said, refurbishing existing systems, even mothballed ones, like the Sheridan, would be a faster way to get weapons to the battlefield that producing new, current-gen systems from scratch. So yeah, I can see the Sheridan coming back into service.

I like the LAV-75 precisely because it is based on a well established, pre-existing chasis. I don't know if M113s could be "cut-down" and converted (probably not), but the tools, facilities, and workers presumably still existed in '96 to reopen production. For a military starved for new/replacement tanks, it would be a godsend.

Anyone know what the max production rate for the Abrams was, at its peak? I'm sure a full-fledged wartime arms industry could do better, but not, methinks, by that much. The materials, hi-tech components, and highly trained production workers are just too hard to come by.

yes the production rate for the M-1s was 512 a year from one plant one shift.
in my games I have 5 plants ruining 3 shifts.

There was that same problem in the Bonsia and Kosovo missions -- by the end of Kosovo, there were practically no ALCMs left in the US inventory, and they were converting a bunch of them by removing the nuclear warhead and replacing it with conventional explosives. The JDAM was new to the US at the time and almost all of them got used up.

Towards the end of Desert Storm, there were worries that if the conflict went on a couple of weeks longer, Coalition forces might run out of smart bombs altogether.

Let me ask a question I've asked before, but we have some new members now: How long and how well could target drones like the QF-4 and other QF-series aircraft be refurbished into manned aircraft?

as far as i know not long. a few days to a few weeks depending on the manpower put in to it.

In a standard canon for comparison, I institute what I call 'The Missile Drought' six months into the war. At this point combat usage exceeds peacetime stocks so you see a lot of older systems come out of the cupboard such as the Dragon and older TOWs.

The new production is supposed to bridge this gap quickly, but the ICBM strikes start to erode capability and new production areas can't be dispersed quickly enough.

Would you be willing to post a reference for this level of production? I've read that peace-time production was more like 30 tanks per month, or 360 per annum. I know it seems picky, but 150 Abrams is 150 Abrams.

Of course, once things kick off in the Far East, the factory probably will start running round-the-clock. Whether new plants open depends on a LOT of factors, most of which have to do with one's interpretation of the decisions by a relative handful of players whose attitudes could be all over the map. Are we going to sell as many M1s as we can manufacture to China? Are we going to sell any? Is China going to want any more M1s after the 1995 counteroffensive? (i.e., to what degree will they prioritize having very good and very expensive tanks over budgetary concerns and logistical issues?) How many M1s will China want? If China doesn't want new M1s, will the DoD place more orders anyway, since the tax revenues from China's massive arms orders will help pay for a US arms increase? If the DoD places more orders anyway, how many tanks does the DoD want over what timeframe? Do the Saudis and other M1 customers want more tanks? The speculative questions go on and on.

Webstral

the planed "Production run" was 12000 M-1s. we made it up to 8k or so.

it was "Jane's Defense Weekly" from the 1980's. i'll look around this weekend for it. also "Jane’s Armour & Artillery" in the late 80's had it.
also this: http://www.microarmormayhem.com/NATO...TTLE_mod_7.doc
look at "Appendix 3"

While everyone is certainly able to make their own decisions about "their" T2K world, I can't see 5 plants being possible. Yes, the one plant would almost certainly be running 24/7, but the construction, or conversion of other plants takes time, resources and money.

As an example of what may have occured, take a look at the last few years in Iraq. US troops couldn't get even some of the more basic items such as armour for their Humvees. Admittedly this is a much lower level "conflict" (if the word can be applied), however, I doubt public opinion would be all that much different in a full scale war - they'd be wanting and demanding their soldiers have the best possible protection, etc.

1500 tanks per year, or roughly 125 per month, per plant seems rather excessive to me. Five similar plants means 625 per month - how many armoured divisions is that?

Presuming all the plants could be built, workers and engineers found, materials supplied, etc, how do you transport all those tanks through hostile waters to the front lines? At approximately 60 tonnes each, plus spares, that's one hell of a lot of shipping!

And then there's cost. $4.35 million per unit according to wiki is a hell of a lot of cash for the US government to be throwing out there! Now multiply that by the 625 per month, plus the plant construction costs, shipping, etc and you've got a recipe for bankruptcy. Ok, so it's war and money tends to be a bit less of an issue, but it's still an issue....

On the general war production topic, would production really ramp up all that quickly? Until around September 1997, NATO appeared to have the upper hand, having already penetrated into the Soviet Union itself. Meanwhile, the Soviets were fighting on several fronts - China (winding down but still a drain on resources), the middle east, south eastern Europe (Romania, etc) and of course central Europe. Poland was effectively out of the fight as far as production and many of the soviet "allies" were suffering badly.

It is my belief that Nato's main problems at the time was supplying the front lines with ammunition, fuel and food rather than replacement tanks, etc. This situation of course was to change dramatically moments after the first nukes were used...

It took several years for the Allies in WWII to be ready for D-Day. Yes, there was action taking place elsewhere in the world (northern Africa springs to mind), but the tanks, planes, ammunition, etc still needed time to be produced and shipped over to England. With the lower technical complexity of 1940's armaments, I can see production being a lot quicker than in the early stages of WWIII.

I had a Reagan 1980's build up that didn't stop with the end of the cold war. I do stand by the numbers. I have a prewar production of 500 LAV-75, 480 M-8's and 900 Stingray's. 20 armored divisions, like 40 mech divisions.

sorry you don't like it.

As I said, everyone's welcome to approach things the way they want. If you want that many tanks rolling off the production line, go for it.
On the other hand, I like to limit things so that there isn't a tank over every hill and when PCs find new toys to play with, they're a bit more interesting, unique, and valuable.

cool. I play large games with each player controlling divisions at a min battalion sized unit. they and I like lots of tanks :D

So it is T2K at a wargaming level? Interesting.

The tank production numbers seem huge, but I have planned for similar. Not necessarily for T2k, but for a general fantasy WWIII scenario. I think you would have to have Reagan win the presidency in 1976 and some type of incredible economic boom. Perhaps some sort of economical way for the US and Canada to process their massive Oil shale reserves came our of the oil shocks of the ealry 70s.

As a programming and numbers nut it is always fun for me to take numbers to the extreme and see where the points of failure are. I think the tanks could have been made but for each one you would also need almost one and a half M2s variants, half an M113, 30+ trucks and at least 120 personnel (plus another 100 in the Reserves). Personnel in a non conscripted US army always seems to be the limiting factor in my calculations. And if you have a booming economy the problem becomes even more difficult as recruitment becomes harder.

Leg reiterates a couple of really good points.

First of all, producing a current-gen tank like the M1A1 takes a lot of skill, resources, and money. It's not like WWII were a Ford automotive factory could be relatively easily converted to producing M4 Shermans, and its assembly lines staffed with former autoworkers or relatively inexperienced "Rosie the Riveter" types. The engine technology in the M4 was similar to existing tractors and trucks and the most hi-tech components were the simple gun sights.

Now compare that with the Abrams. It's gas turbine engine is a lot more complex than a tractor or truck engine. It's "Chobam" [sic] composite armor is much more difficult to make than molded steel armor. It's gun systems are incredibly complex. All of this also requires highly skilled labor to produce and assemble.

So, best case scenario, it's going to take months just to get the "extra" M1 factories up and running. Are they already up by '96, making M1s for China? I don't think so. I'm not sure the Chinese could afford many full-priced Abrams and I don't think the U.S. gov would be willing to subsidize the sales (think Lend-Lease). Then there's the political implications of providing a nation-at-war with current-gen weapons sytems. There could be the perception in the administration that this could constitute a causus beli in the eyes of the USSR, dragging the U.S. into the war. For these reasons, I think less expensive, less complex tanks like the Stingray, LAV-75/LAV-75A1, and or M8 AGS are all more likely options. So, it's going to be a while before additional M1 factories are set up and running at full capacity. By then, the TDM pretty much makes the whole issue moot.

Lastly, there's the question of cost. I've mentioned this already in the Defense of the Red Army thread a few weeks back, but even a relatively robust economy like the U.S.'s (at least in the mid-'90s) is going to have a helluva time sustaining maximum production rates for hi-tech systems like the M1A2, F22, JTF, Seawolf, etc. They are just too expensive and difficult to produce. WWII levels of production are simply unsustainable with modern weapon systems. Production-wise, the Soviets would be in a much better position with their comparitively more simple tanks.

But hey, that's just my take on the matter. It's totally up to others whether they want to pump it up the numbers for their T2KU. More power to ya.

I agree that given the standard T2k timeline those numbers would be impossible to achieve. Even if you throw all the resources possible at it. One of my favorite quotes related to that concept is "Nine women can't make a baby in a month". But the alternate history buff in me likes to see how far back you need to go and how you could get there. Are they tremendously optimistic, absolutely, but I tried to apply the same optimism to the USSR (by discovering massive gold, diamond and oil reserves) in the scenarios where I just wanted to see what two titans at their maximum possible capabilities would do against each other. In my case this really does apply more to wargaming (TWW and Harpoon series) than to T2k but since there is quite a bit of crossover in the underlying data, it seems appropriate to discuss here.

"Nine women can't make a baby in a month". love that. :D

1080 a year from both plants combined.

That and other weapons production rates are at
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/62xx/doc6...21b-Entire.pdf

The "maximum economic production rate" represents making full use of the production machinery. Higher rates are possible with an expansion of industrial plant. Whether that is possible in a T2k context is debatable - there are a host of issues with trying to start up new production capacity. There's a lot on this issue if you dig a little on google - when the US shut down new tank production in the 90s there was a lot of concern on what would be needed to reactivate a cold production line.

One of the bottlenecks (can't find the reference offhand) is that the DU armor production facility turned out no more than 25 sets of armor a month, so only 300 of the 1080 tanks produced per year have the HA armor set.

WOW thanks!

looks like I'll have to build more plants.

Be interesting to see how you intend to deal with all the issues that would require - cost, materials, skilled labour, transportation, and above all, time.

LOL me 2. :D

cost is the only issue I see.

I think a bigger factor to new construction is TIME. The time it takes to BUILD the new facility. From the time the decision is made, the location selected, construction of the buildings and related infastructure to support the facility. Two years would be fast I think, and if the decision was made too late, the bombs will make it moot.

Of course if you use v1 timeline, the cold war never ended. SO there would be a possability of continued production and perhaps increased number of plants. Still not sure why in the general context however as there was not the rush to do it until the spontanious war started by the Germans.

Agreed. And don't discount the time it would take to train new factory employees. Once again, I don't see a production increase to support the Chinese so more than maybe one new plant likely wouldn't become a priority until the Germans make their move. And then, as you mentioned, it would take a while before any additional plants were up and running at full capacity.

I can agree with that -- IIRC, in World War 2 they took the P-51 from the drawing board to a production-level prototype in 68 days. Try that with even a HMMWV-type vehicle today -- you'll be sorely disappointed. Equipment is just more complicated these days.

guess I'll have to start building them in the 80's some how. probably have to fudge the money for them too.

oh and btw pmulcahy11b why no SA-11 on your website?

Paul acknowledged your first mention of this. With 1000s of items something is bound to fall through the cracks. Just a note this is a perfect thing for a PM as it is really not related to this thread (and was mentioned elsewhere).

he did? Hmmm must have missed it . my bad.

Ah, but remember when it comes to the Government "Who cares how much it's going to cost, think of all the jobs it will create."

I mean if you really want to look at it the government would just pass an Appropriation Bill, and worry about the 'cost' later. In their eyes the increased weapon production means jobs in their community "Bringing home the Pork".

very good point.