LAV-75; Stingray; M8 AGS

[Raellus]

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.