In the run-up to WWII the US started the draft in '40 and started building up its military equipment in 1938, shifting to full wartime production in 1942. Stockpiles are not as necessary if we have a flexible and robust procurement plan, which we do not.

I know that the sort of gearing-up and rapid evolution of weapons during WWII is not practical today, given the sophistication of our weapon systems and the sort of training they require, but it still seems to me that a build-up phase and explicit shift towards wartime production would provide an opportunity for things like continued weapon inspections and diplomacy. It would also allow the production facilities to start turning out replacements more quickly rather than relying on slow production schedules.

Not sure why we have to use our current procurement infrastructure. Am I missing something?

I don't know enough about procurement to speak intelligently about it. I think it's pretty likely, however, that we could develop a new system for procurement that would work better, simply because I think that government agencies, no matter how well designed they are, tend to become less effective over time due to ineffective feedback mechanisms.

As to the WWII example, remember that to do that we had to go over to a war economy, something we'd already begun with FDR's arsenal of democracy decision. Warfare happens a lot faster than it used to, and I'm not confident that we could assemble the necessary production lines in a timely manner. Although it would be nice if we could, since that would have helped with issues like armored HMMWVs, body armor, and the less-well known shortage of 5.56mm ammunition.

I see your point regarding using the build-up time as an opportunity to continue looking for other means to resolve the problem, which is great as far as it goes, but what if the enemy isn't willing to wait for us? If they know we can't hit them now, but can in six months, doesn't that policy encourage them to strike now for fear they won't be able to if negotiations fail?

If they know we can't hit them now, but can in six months, doesn't that policy encourage them to strike now for fear they won't be able to if negotiations fail?

I'm not advocating a build-up from zero. We obviously need enough equipment to defend ourselves and to respond to any immediate threat. The question then becomes just how much we need on hand. I know that the military lobby has been advocating having enough force and equipment on-hand to fight two simultaneous HICs. That seems excessive to me. I'd think we should have enough on-hand to defend ourselves for 6 months of a defensive HIC or for a single, short-term expeditionary force. And as soon as we know we will be projecting force, we need to start gearing up to replace both personnel and materiel so that we do not get stretched too thin as we are now.

We need enough to respond effectively, but not so much that we are quick to initiate a conflict, and we need to be able to scale up quickly so that we can sustain any military action beyond the initial response.

It's not clear from your hypothetical above what the enemy has to gain in starting the conflict earlier. Unless they can achieve a decisive victory in six months or delay us long enough to achieve some other objective (nuclear capability?) in the interrim I see no reason why we should initiate earlier or they should choose to strike us. We generally don't mess with big opponents and smaller opponents would be stupid to strike us at home.

One of the problems with trying to plan for future conflicts is that we tend to forget that the enemy gets a vote.

What that means in this case is that we do have a tremendous capacity to produce war material, but it does us no good if we don't know what to build. WWII (to steal Nous' example) demonstrated this very clearly - the M3 tank produced in the late 30's and the M4 Sherman introduced in the early 40's were woefully underarmed and underarmored. The standard for Sherman units in combat with the Germans was that we would lose 5 Shermans (and the crews therein) in order to destroy 1 German tank - and this was before the appearance of the Tiger. We did not have an effective tank (the M26 Pershing) until 1944, by which time the war was almost over.

The point I'm making here is that you can't count on "just in time" especially in combat. I also know from first hand experience how deeply the cutbacks of the 90's hurt the Army. Take body armor for example. The Interceptor Body Armor that we wear today was originally developed and fielded (in a somewhat different form) to the Rangers in the early 90's. But equipping the whole Army would have cost millions - and those dollars were needed to fuel the "peace dividend." So the decision was made to stick with the 80's era PASGT vest, operating on the assumption that we would only be doing peacekeeping operations from that point on. After all, the USSR was gone, so who would we be fighting?

Fast forward to 2003 - suddenly we need thousands of IBAs, and the only company that makes them is not geared up to produce more than a few hundred per year. That takes time to rectify.

The answer is what Andrew talked about - keeping our forces equipped and maintained during peacetime, so we can be ready when the call comes.

As for our enemies not attacking us, I seem to recall an incident back in September 2001 - perhaps not all our enemies have heard that wee are invulnerable yet?

Adjutantman -- I agree with what you say about the tanks in WWII, but it seems to me that the lesson we should take from that is that we have a very hard time anticipating what sort of conflict we will face ahead of time. Having more inadequate equipment on-hand seems like a waste.

WRT the body armor supply problems, the NYT article ( archived at globalsecurity.org) seems to indicate that the problem may lie in awarding contracts to companies that are unable to meet demand rather than going with suppliers already mass-producing similar products. It's not that the US could not get enough equipment on-time on short notice, but rather than the contractors who were won the bid were not able to produce the equipment in a timely manner.

Of course we need to keep equipment on-hand during peacetime, but history shows us that it is more valuable to be able to rapidly mass produce new products as we see what will be needed in the new conflict rather than having a lot of the latest version of whatever we used the most in the last war. That takes big producers and rapid development, not small companies in small, rural areas run by former purchasers.

I think, though, that theres a lot of common ground here for improvement.

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