re: Latest Updates: Russia-Ukraine Conflict

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What has changed is two fold:
1) The US has allowed its manufacturing base to atrophy to the point where it is not capable of supporting sustained combat operations. During WW2, there were countless examples of factories retooling to pump out war materials. Those factories are all sitting overseas today.

All you have to do is get off the interstate and drive through the towns to see the remains of shut down manufacturing facilities.

2) The complexity of modern weapon systems makes replacing combat losses much more expensive and time-consuming. Even if we had the manufacturing base to convert to war time production, it would take years to bring it online...just what we're seeing with the attempts to ramp up artillery shell production.

In my opinion, the lack of suitable manufacturing capabilities is our biggest strategic risk today.

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The Newtron/Clinton tax reforms paid companies to call manufacturing sites to be mothballed and receive money for 5 years. That is way demolition of sites began around 2004 in earnest. Many of these companies shutdown to get paid while moving manufacturing overseas. The ones I know about moved to Turkey and India. The Turkish moves were for their Austrian subsidiaries and these were heavy steel fabrication plants, not tin knockers which most metal fab companies are.

When I was in St. Louis liquidating a steel foundry in the 1980's and supervising environmental remediation at a form GM plant (it made Corvette Stingrays back in the day), there was an adjacent artillery shell manufacturer which per everyone around, never produced a single usable shell. It operated in WWII through Vietnam. I have zero doubts that a lot of expenditures back in WWII were wasted like this