Originally Posted by
ORAC
The reality here is that the West is saying that they don’t wish to step up military production to any great extent because of the cost. Meanwhile, the Russians are beginning to mobilise their industry……
Like it or not, this war is now a battle of industrial systems - like previous large wars. The post Cold War ‘small, exquisite, periodic and expensive’ approach to weapons procurement in the West is over. We just haven’t fully realized that yet.…
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I'm not sure how informed and in context Ryan's quote is, and how much just generalisation. I recall reading that Himars production was going to be increased considerably- although taking over 12 months (?) to implement. There is not only the question of replacing US stocks, but considerable new orders from all over have been received. The same applied to NLAW's and probably Javelin as well. You can then add to this the intentions (?) of many states to increase their defence expenditure as a regular budgetary item, plus the existing pre-conflict agreements that numerous states not fulfilling the 2% NATO contribution would implement plans to do so.
Having never been involved in military procurement, I don't know how you overcome the problem that after the initial orders - unlike supermarket-biscuits - you cannot rely on any new orders for perhaps years, which gives big problems about ordering parts with long lead-times, keeping skills up-to-date and having expensive factory space taken up by assembly-lines for non-moving product.