Manufacturing in the USA - The cost to national defense

[OU Adonis]

So at what point should the loss of the manufacturing base should be a cause for concern in regards to national defense?

We all assume wars will be short nowadays, but what happens if there was a long protracted war where a strong manufacturing base wins the war? Should we be concerned?

[sooneron]

I tend to think that we will always lead the way in the production of efficient weapons and gas guzzlers.

[OUHOMER]

Umm good point, with most of our electronics, and parts coming from over seas, i could see where we would be at a disadvantage depending on who we are at war with.

[StoopTroup]

The end is near. :D

[Vaevictis]

Umm good point, with most of our electronics, and parts coming from over seas, i could see where we would be at a disadvantage depending on who we are at war with.

I'm pretty sure we have more than enough electronics manufacturing capacity to handle the military's needs, if it comes to that. We might have consumer shortages, though. We've got several top of the line electronics fabs in the states owned by Intel, AMD, IBM and others, and lower end electronics fabs don't take that much time to build. I'd be less worried about our electronics manufacturing capacity in the states than having our company's fabs overseas captured and used against us.

But frankly, I wouldn't worry too much about the manufacturing capacity with respect to a war. We didn't have enough in WWII either, and we managed to ramp it up and win. And back then, we didn't stockpile military equipment and munitions like we do now.