Quote:
Originally Posted by Olefin
Let me redefine - what I mean by full military production isnt a WWII all guns no butter production rate - what I mean is pushing the assembly lines/production facilities to their full maximum rate and putting a second shift on to increase production to their full maximum rate (meaning the most the lines/factory could make given the tooling/machinery/supplier base that they had)
i.e. as per my example the current M1 line makes 18 tanks a month - but when it kicked off in the 1980's it could make 120 a month - and most likely with a second shift might have been able to hit 180-200 a month
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America now has only one tank factory at Lima Ohio. They haven't build a new tank from scratch at Lima since the mid-1990's as all tanks are reconditioned. But the tanks are reconditioned to such a degree that they are practically new tanks. Although the Trump administration may start building new tanks even if the army doesn't need them.
M1 tank reconditioning at Lima averages half a tank per day (15 tanks a month). General Dynamics has stated that it can ramp that up to two and a half tanks a day (75 tanks a month). In wartime that figure could conceivably rise to over a 100 tanks a month. If we say that reconditioning takes the same amount of time as producing a new tank then that would be up to 1,200 tanks a year. Building another tank factory would not be that hard but it would probably take at least six months to either build from scratch or refit with the right machine tools and equipment. So with the right infrastructure it is possible that America could build up to 2,400 tanks a year.