turns out min maxxing your economy to optimize for profit comes at the expense of productive capacity
Another propaganda piece to pour more blood and money into the defense industrial complex.
Whatever money was given was transformed into profit, not the actual product, and now they want more?
Both things can be true at the same time. The MIC acts as a tool to divert taxes away from their intended use and back into the pockets of the oligarchs. At the same time, it also lacks the industrial capacity to keep up with Russia in terms of shell production. In fact, these things are directly related. The way to maximize profit is to invest into making a few really expensive items that require a lot of maintenance. This is how you end up with projects like F35 instead of focusing on the basics like being able to make artillery shells in large numbers.
Absolutely. The margins on artillery shell casings, explosive, and propellant must be far below the margins for more advanced weapons like a missile.
Which is exactly why the MIC tried to turn artillery shells into high-tech wunderwaffe packed with proprietary guidance systems, instead of just making plain old shells.
I really don't think the MIC grasped how drones would make the old-fashioned low-tech shells so much more effective. No need to just blanket an area with massed shelling, no need to send in soldiers to do artillery spotting. Just send in some cheap drones to do the spotting for a relative handful of guns.
If I were the MIC I simply wouldn't write a long form article about one of my biggest supply constraints along with the name and location of the facility that produces said constraint
I mean, Russia probably knows where the bottlenecks are already. Moving large volumes of goods hundreds of kilometers isn't something you can do in secret.
years of calculations by US, NATO led to dire shortage of lives in Ukraine
You would think the empire of death and its vassals would churn out weaponry 24/7 and sell excess product to the rest of the world to kill each other, but it turns out most of them don’t start producing anything until they secure a contract or shill the most fantastical weapons during semi-peer warfare
How has Russia been able to transition to a war economy so much more successfully than the US, who has spent so much more time at war over the past few decades?
Russia kept most of the industrial capacity that it inherited from USSR. They mothballed a lot of these factories, and used parts of them for civilian production. When the war started, they just had to restart their operation for military production. Another factor is that Russian education system is much better, and there's a strong focus on trades. So, there wasn't a lack of skilled workers to man the machinery either.
Do you have any reading on the Russian Education system? That sounds interesting and not something I have read much about.
Not off hand, but it hasn't really changed all that much from the Soviet system from what I know.
Thank you for your reply. By mothballed, you mean these factories sat largely unused for decades? In North America, former factories tend to become repurposed into lofts or office space. Do you know what why this didn’t this happen in Russia? Was it foresight or a lack of demand?
It's cause the industry is state owned, and the state realized the value of it.
These factories are not in places were anyone would want to have a loft or their office. I'm sure this happened in more desirable areas, but around the Ural mountains it propably did less so.
