re: Russia Unveils New Main Battle Tank, Among Other Things

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One thing that no one has mentioned here so far is:

Since WWII, the US has transitioned to a "service" economy rather than production/manufacturing base. We simply do not have as many factories we could convert to war production.

Would we be able to produce war materiel in enough quantities for a war that would surely outstrip the worst case supply scenarios?

America produced 300,000 aircraft in WWII. Do you think we'd be capable of producing 3,000 if we needed them within the first year?

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An excellent question indeed. I doubt we could ever produce the vast amounts of war matériel that we did in the 1940's, but given the advance in technology, I doubt we would need to in order to cause an equal amount of death and destruction.

And of course, if we ever were ever about to lose a conventional war, we always have the nuclear option to fall back on, just as the Russian do, which is why going to war with them would be foolish on an epic/end of civilization scale.