Pre-nuclear wartime production.

[RN7]

How far does the military-industrial complex really reach?

Its ironic but the state controlled arms industry of the Soviet Union and China is actually more transparent than in the West. The Soviet's built a tank factory to build tanks, and they built a refrigerator factory to build refrigerators. In the West private enterprise plays a much bigger role in industry and its harder to discern the true arms manufacturing capacity.

In America for example a corporation builds a factory to make trucks, or steel plate or widgets. But how many were originally designed with the capacity to be able to switch over to military production relatively easy. Given the extent of America's military-industrial complex I would be very surprised if such factories don't exist.

Also building a new tank factory may not be that difficult. The blueprint would already exist to build a factory with the right dimensions, equipment, machine tools, and for what type of materials and parts would be needed from suppliers. In fact the suppliers would also have their own blueprints for what they need. America wouldn't have a new tank factory on the scale of Lima or Detroit up and running in two months, but in a year?

[raketenjagdpanzer]

re: soviet production...there's an old joke that goes like this:

Soviet woman wants to do something really nice for her husband and she notes that her neighbor finally got approved to buy a new mattress. So over tea she complains and says "I have waited for five years for a new mattress, and I work at the mattress factory! My husband has a poor back and I want to get him a nice new spring mattress."

Her friend says "Well, do what everyone else does, take a little part here, and a little part there, nothing that anyone will notice, and then in a month or two when you get all the parts, assemble your mattress at home!"

She sighs and says "I've tried and tried but every time I bring home all the parts and assemble them I just wind up with an AK47."

[unkated]

I think that on average, it would take 6 months to ramp up production to double it's normal production rate for aircraft and ground vehicles. It's not just a question of simply running more shifts - the components (and the components for the components) need to ramp up their production, too.

Ship production you can more or less forget about; while you might get construction started, you won't get a completed, outfitted frigate that starts after 1995 by the end of 1998.

For example, M1s need body sections, engines, track, drive wheels, cannon, etc. These components, constructed elsewhere, need to have their production ramped up - contracts agreed to, materials (steel, castings, chips, boards, seats, etc) supplied. And this is just to improve one production line; setting up another factory will be a year or so.

Recall for WW2, the US spent most of 1940/41/42 building or converting the additional factories & ship yards it would need before the massive production started. Today's more complex factories would take longer to set up. Again, starting in mid-1996, new production lines for large items (armored vehicles) would hardly have started production before TDM, 1998.

(Dumb) ammo production might be better than doubled in that time frame, because there are fewer supporting requirements. Ammo sent to China (I thought we had talked about that as limited) would be ramped up production, and probably not added production lines. Smart bombs and missiles have the same issues with getting production for components to ramp up before their completed item can ramp up.

As for rebuilds in a major war - I could see more effort (turret, engine, drive train replacement) being made to repair in theatre, as sending tanks home for rebuild would be a long trip, as well as taking a chance on surviving the trip home.

[rcaf_777]

If the west if already making items for China as they are first to fight the Russians, would you not see some plants alreay at full production and certians parts of the US industrial base may be already ramping up to meet demands.

[Apache6]

I think your underestimating the ability of the US to ramp up tank and ship production. "In order to maintain the industrial base," Congress has for a long time directed the Services (Army and Navy) to build ships and vehicles in U.S. plants and MUCH slower then necessary. The intent is to make it possible to keep the production lines open.

It results in slower production, and higher costs, but is intended to give the nation the ability to 'ramp up' for a major war.

A lesson learned from Desert Storm is that we (US Military) consumed precision guided munitions at a very high rate. In real world, this led to increased capacity to surge production (executed by the Goverment by writing it into contracts for producers), which was exercised/demonstrated in Bosnia Operations. During T2000K the increased production capability might just be starting to come on line around TDM.

Could led to an interesting adventure, when a PC group is tasked to go to the Lockheed Martin Plant in St Louis (and/or a rail siding just about anywhere) and recover and escort X number of semi trucks carrying Y number of Tomahawk Missiles or TOW missiles which were produced before TDM but unable to be shipped as they were 'lost' in post TDM confusion. They are vitally needed to help drive the Mexicans out of Texas.

I once GM'd a game where the PCs learned about and worked to recover a lot of prewar ordnance which was sitting 'dockside' in ISO containers when Breman was nuked. The area was heavily contaminated and the only one who knew where the munitions was a Army Logistics SgtMaj, blind due to nuclear flash, who was the operations chief at the logistics hub at the Port.

[Olefin]

Our GM when we did Last Submarine made a lot of the adventure about recovering torpedoes and other equipment and electronics to repair the SSN (which was already in government hands but had a non-functional weapons system and thus couldnt be used for war patrols or the mission overseas until it was repaired)

Actually thats one thing that the Challenge Magazine article on getting to the M1 tank plant in Ohio completely glossed over - sure there wasnt a bunch of tanks sitting there waiting to be grabbed by the players - but an intact tank plant would be a gold mine of spare parts,engines, armor plate, etc.. - especially since MilGov is probably sitting on as many as 100-200 M1 tanks that need repairs and they are back in operation if not more - 20 crated engines and transmissions, new barrels and a couple of truckloads of spare parts would be worth far more than one or two operational M1's

[rcaf_777]

The supply of tanks and surplus parts in the US might be a reason why the US agree to give up their tanks and AFV on departing from europe, minus key part of course.

I mean in CIV or MIL Gov has acess to some stockpiles, why not start making newish stuff.

This would also explain why the germans were keen to have them, as their means of production is gone.

[RN7]

Originally Posted by rcaf_777

The supply of tanks and surplus parts in the US might be a reason why the US agree to give up their tanks and AFV on departing from europe, minus key part of course. I mean in CIV or MIL Gov has acess to some stockpiles, why not start making newish stuff.

This would also explain why the germans were keen to have them, as their means of production is gone.

I dunno about Germany completely losing its tank production capability. Before the war the assembly lines for the Leopard 1 and 2 tanks was in Munich, Kiel and Kassel at various stages. Munich was a nuclear target, but I don't think Kassel and Kiel were.