I can give you some insight into this - when I was at BAE we took Bradley production from 40 per month to 160 per month in the course of a six month period - but remember these were all either reworks or upgrades to existing vehicles
same with M88A2- line went from 1 per month to 16 per month in a six month period
we built 8 brand new M88A2's for the Iraqi Army where we ordered castings and other material - and the lead times were over 6 months for the material
and MRAP's were built on a crash basis during the war - but many of them had a lot of quality issues because we didnt have time to properly get the kinks out during the build process
so the real questions for war production would be:
1) Are you talking modifications and upgrades to existing hulls (turn an M1 into an M1A1, a Persian Gulf Bradley into a more modern Bradley, an M88A1 into an M88A2) or are you talking about new production?
New production means armor plate and castings - and there are only so many producers of armored plate and heavy castings in this country. Even on a war footing around the clock you could only ramp up production so far.
2) If its mods how much extra equipment is there to be able to send to the factories for the upgrades? At one point we had nearly 800 Bradleys and 90 M88A1 hulls sitting in our storage areas at York waiting for the upgrade or refit process - but in an all out war can you afford to have that much equipment sitting to be upgraded at a factory?
3) How much repair work will be done at the factories? Is there shipping to bring the stuff back? We were repairing Bradley's with battle damage at York when I was there - would any equipment be sent back or would it stay overseas
And even if you can make the vehicles - can you keep them armed? One thing that they ran into during both Gulf Wars was the shortage of artillery shells - it doesnt help if you have 500 new M1A1 tanks but dont have enough shells to arm more than 200 of them at a time. Lots of replacement tanks available but your real strength multiplier is just the 200 tanks you can arm at any one time.
|