American heavy industry such as automobiles, steel making and shipbuilding has declined since the 1970's as foreign competition has eroded its competiveness and American industry has also refocused on newer technologies. American aerospace production is probably an exception to the rule if it is considered a heavy industry. It has consistently remained large and America's manufacturing capacity remains greater than any other countries. However building a B-2 or an F-22 is a bit more complicated than building a P-51 Mustang or a B-17, but America could still build them quicker than anyone else.
American commercial shipbuilding has practically disappeared, but America's naval shipbuilding infrastructure is probably the most extensive in the world. America can still build a nuclear powered aircraft carrier or a submarine quicker than any other country. However unless it builds new shipyards it won't be churning out many new destroyers, amphibs and freighters at a much higher rate than it does at the moment.
American auto and steel making and many other heavier industries have remained under capacity despite some investment in the auto industry from Asia. It can produce more and with huge government contracts and orders being dangled in front of it and exports to allies as WW3 breaks out, American manufacturing could massively expand and there would be no foreign competition for these orders or transplanting factories to China either. What factory capacity doesn't exist could be very easily added to by building new factories. Building new factories to produce jeeps, trucks, guns, bullets, uniforms and artillery shells would not be challenging for America and it could produce them in huge numbers over an 18 month period.
Building tanks and armoured vehicles might be more of a problem. At the moment (and in the 1990's) there are only a limited number of factories that produce them. Regarding tanks there have only been three American tank factories since the late 1950's.
Chrysler Delaware Defence Plant in Newark produced the first M60's. Newark stopped making M60 tanks in 1960 as production switched to Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant. Chrysler retained operational control of the Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant until it sold its defence division to General Dynamics in 1982 who stopped production of the M60 in 1987. General Dynamics built the M1 at Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant until 1996 when General Dynamics consolidated all of its tank production to Lima, Ohio. The United States hasn't made an all new tank from scratch since 1996.
Olefin would probably know if it would take a lot more time to build a new tank than recondition a tank, but General Dynamics reconditioning of the M1 is very intensive so maybe not so much.
M1 tank reconditioning at Lima averages half a tank per day (15 tanks a month). General Dynamics can easily 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 the addition of the still existent Detroit Arsenal Tank Plant production to Lima's figure could probably produce about 200 Abrams class tanks a month (2,400 a year) with 1996 infrastructure. Would building a couple more tank factories be all that difficult?
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