this post was submitted on 13 Jun 2024
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https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2024-us-global-war-weapons-race/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us

The deficit of basic materiel and dearth of capacity to make it reflects a wider problem: The US no longer focuses on making everyday things, even things that can be critical in a crisis. When Covid-19 struck, the race was on to produce more cotton swabs and ventilators. Shortages of auto parts, generic drugs, baby formula and other common goods have become more frequent.

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[–] [email protected] 50 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Yeah, people did start to figure this out two years ago, once Russia pulled back and settled in for a long war. NATO governments spent billions more to procure shells and artillery pieces, and on incentives to get the arms industry to build more factory lines and supply lines.

But decades of neoliberalism have gutted the states ability to do anything itself, or to compel a corporation to do anything, even something as simple as build an artillery shell that was designed in the 1870s. The end result is that the incentive money was used to streamline and automate the existing, privately owned, factories, allowing them to fire workers and run more cheaply , but not to actually expand production. And with billions more dollars chasing the same supply of shells, the cost of an artillery shell has now skyrocketed to ~$9,000 a shell.

[–] [email protected] 44 points 2 months ago (1 children)

mom can I have billions upon billions of dollars?

to manufacture munitions for the war?

yeeees

does stock buybacks like a boss 😎😎

[–] [email protected] 31 points 2 months ago

Critical support to anti-war weapons manufacturer CEOs, for gutting the global North's war capacity in exchange for short term gains

[–] [email protected] 47 points 2 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

geordi-no time-on-target

geordi-yes just-in-time

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago

There was a report about European munition factories standing by idly because they require orders to be put before manufacturing, as they only make enough for the order and wait for the next lol

[–] [email protected] 30 points 2 months ago (1 children)

So all that stuff about Le RuZZian Orks running out of ammo "next week" was just projection, huh?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The question is: will the West™ be able to "fix" this problem? (I hope they don't)

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago

They didn't fix it after Libya, so you're hopes have grounds. inshallah

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago

I mean has America put winning a war first since WW2?

If I remember correctly in Korea, American soldiers were trained to fight alongside tanks, but then the MIC couldn’t provide tanks, because the hot commodity was Air Force bombers and nukes. Almost all small arms weapons were just surplus or restocked from WW2. This made the ground forces training essentially worthless and caused the highest casualty rate per day in an American war.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 2 months ago
[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

the US MIC has been jerking itself raw to ODS for 30 years now and they still think that high tech wunderwaffen are how peer wars are won because (?)

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The capitalists will sell us the rope with which to hang them. Or at least sell off the chairs they are teetering on with the nooses around their necks.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 2 months ago (1 children)

They'll sell us the rope, but unfortunately we'll have to build to guillotine ourselves.

Hangings leave a bad taste in my mouth.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago

Guillotines are more complicated, but fine by me.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 2 months ago

What’s the point of a “next generation” fighter jet if all you do with is bomb villagers in a poor country with no Air Force instead of testing it on peers

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago (1 children)

"What do you mean we can't use our hypersonic missles to shoot down all the makeshift rockets the barbaric masses are firing at us?"

[–] [email protected] 23 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Americans don’t even have bypersonics lol

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

Oh, lol. Get fucked.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 months ago

Imperialism eventually eats itself because it's based on grifters and fascists.