There definitely would have been an increase in war production across the board - but there would have been a limit based on what the tooling and parts suppliers could handle based on what their pre-war capabilities would have been.
For instance look at the Lima Tank Plant - that plant in the 1980's was building 120 tanks per month - currently that plant is building 11 per month. However its suppliers tooled up to make 120 a month - meaning that very soon after the war started they could hit that number without having to build new tooling. Also in a war situation where you work two shifts instead of one you basically double your production - so that plant could have made as many as 240 a month very quickly - most likely within 3-4 months of the war start - i.e. long before the TDM
An example of this would have been the real world ramp-up that occurred when I was at BAE on the M88A2 and the Bradley. We had been producing four per month of the M88A2 and forty per month of the Bradley (keep mind we are talking rebuilds here not new production) when the Army had us ramp up production to eight per month and 120 per month - how did we do that?
Answer - we added a second shift and Saturday work and had suppliers ramp up as well - and hit that level within four months of go - with corresponding increases as we initially brought the lines up to full capacity and then implemented the second shift at both our plants and our suppliers
And it is mentioned in a couple of modules how workers were getting paid very well with overtime at war plants
And I dont see the US thinking they had it won and not ramping up production - for one they would have been using up bombs and tanks and shells at a prodigious rate - you see what it did to the Italians - that would have been the case everywhere else - look at how quickly the bomb stockpile, much of which was from WWII, was depleted from the rather short Gulf War
Now think what it would have been like after six months of conventional warfare
That is why the Soviets launched the nuclear attack - because the US was getting their war stocks replaced and increasing - and that they knew if they didnt stop that in the end they would be losing
And its not like the US wasnt taking enough losses to justify increasing production - between what raiders put at the bottom of the sea, the losses the Navy took, the need to replace what we sent China when it turned out we needed it ourselves and the pace of the war there were more than enough reasons to get more tanks and shells and APC's
a clue would be that the US grabbed the Stingray tanks that were supposed to go to Pakistan before the TDM - i.e. the units that got them in Europe were from one of the last convoys bringing over heavy equipment - that tells me that losses in tanks were bad enough that they grabbed anything they could find to fill the gaps
also keep in mind that they were deploying National Guard units as well - units that desperately needed better tanks if they were going to be able to survive against first line Soviet units (i.e. not the guys with T-55's)
given that the Lima plant had to have been shoved to full all out production long before the TDM - most likely by mid year at the latest
that is probably why the NATO forces were still capable of fighting by 2000 - i.e. that surge from mid-April to the TDM got enough stuff made that they made it thru 1998-2000 still able to field units that were capable of combat
because after the TDM with the power and fuel issues I dont see US production being much more than a shadow of itself - especially by late 1998 when fuel and coal stockpiles were probably getting very low to generate power
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