Originally Posted by
Sue Vêtements
Well, if it WAS on a war footing, it could accomplish something like this
this
in under two years - starting with bare fields and a workforce uneducated for the task at hand
### Warning: Aviation Content ###
The lead time with technology development is much higher today than it was in 1940. The period from 1940 through to about 1958 had the fastest rate of technical development in aviation history, and was fairly impressive for land warfare technologies, and the navy below waterline definitely developed massively from the 40's to the late 60's. From there on, the tech has continued to develop, but has a much longer lead time to develop evolutionary change, and revolutionary changes while variable in development time, are much longer than prior generations. I suspect that more than ever before the fight gets done with the gear on hand. The B-29 took 4 years to put in the field, the P-51, "100 days", how long did the B-2, F-35 take? C3I and weapons integration takes a heck of a long time, other than 3D printing fins to put on a hand grenade and buying COTS quadcopters.