Modern military platforms take forever and a day to produce. What happens when you need replacements during a hot war?
Field Marshal Erwin Rommel was given the task of protecting Hitler's Western Front from an expected Allied landing. His "Western Wall" was meant to impede landing forces long enough so as to allow the Desert Fox to send his Panzers and reinforcements to push the Allies back into the sea. He knew that he could not let them establish a beachhead and move inland. When the events of June 6, 1944, showed that the Allies were on their way off the beaches and into France, it was reported that Rommel said to an underling that the war was lost. His reasoning was simple: whatever the Allies lost, they could replace with two. A lost tank? Two more on the way. They had air superiority with a divided Luftwaffe barely able to put up planes against the massive aerial onslaught. The numbers supported Rommel's thinking.
Type of Weapon Number Produced Between 1939-1945 by the U.S.
Jeeps: 650,000
Tanks and armored vehicles: 86,000
Fighters: 100,000
Bombers: 96,000
Submarines: Approx. 300
Liberty Ships: 2,710
Naval Vessels: 1,400
These numbers are truly mind-boggling. Both Rommel and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto understood—better than Hitler or Emperor Hirohito—the incredible economic power that the U.S. had. It could fight on two fronts and supply millions of soldiers and allies anywhere in the world. The U.S. not only made a lot of stuff, it made a lot of good stuff. The P-51 fighter and B-29 bomber changed the direction of fighting in their respective theaters, just as U.S. submarines devastated Japanese shipping. Napalm invented at Harvard allowed General Curtis LeMay to burn Japan to the ground prior to its capitulation.
Now, let's fast-forward to today. Below are the times required to build modern U.S. weapon platforms.
Platform: How Long It Takes to Manufacture
Aircraft Carrier: 5-7 years
Virginia Class Fast Attack Submarine: 7 years. Hoping for two boats per year
B-21 Bomber: Not yet known, thought B-2 was 21 planes over 12 years
F-16: 6-18 months to assemble after long-lead items procured. 5 years from order
Abrams Tank: 18-24 months
None of the numbers above is any great surprise. Modern planes, ships, and tanks are marvels of electronics, engineering, advanced materials, and ingenuity. This is all well and good. No doubt a single F-16 would knock out all of the thousands of World War II fighters if it had enough bullets and missiles to do so. The question becomes one of practicality: what happens if, God forbid, there is a long war, and you don't have the massive resupply that so frightened Axis leaders? Sure, there are things that can be repaired, but what if one loses 100 planes? There is absolutely no way to replace them. Okay, there are lots of planes in various states of readiness in boneyards in the southwest U.S. Additionally, allies could be leaned upon to provide F-15s, F-16s, and the like in a real pinch. But the days of losing 20 bombers and having 20 new ones waiting on a British tarmac are over. The U.S. has no capacity to replace a single B-52, B-1, or B-2 bomber. The B-21s are coming online, but it will be years before they are certified for use and in numbers to be relevant for warfare. The U.S. Navy just took proud possession of the USS Massachusetts, the 25th Virginia-class submarine. Its keel was laid in 2020, and its commission will be in 2026.
I am not privy to data from the Israel Air Force as to the number of sorties or the thousands of flight hours incurred during the past two years. Endless bombing runs over Gaza and Lebanon, joined by long-distance flights to Yemen and Iran, put lots of wear on Israel's fighters. Thank God, no planes were lost, and only a few drones went down over enemy territory. Israel, as a client, could ostensibly ask the U.S. for more planes if needed. The U.S., as a producer, can do little to goad its manufacturers to make fighters "like sausages" (Khruschev's term for the rate of missile production in the USSR). Can the U.S. fight Russia or China and not lose too many units? Can air forces go up against each other and not expect for some level of losses of both airframes and pilots? One of the biggest challenges for Israel and the U.S. is that they have not been flying against peer enemies for decades. While this may be an advantage in fighting, it leaves open the question of how well current U.S. weaponry stands up against the latest generations of Russian or Chinese weapons.
One of the solutions to the "we can't make them fast enough problem" is the Anduril approach. Palmer Luckey is an interesting fellow. After selling Oculus to Facebook for $2 billion in 2014, he worked for a while at the online company. In 2017, he set up a defense company, Anduril. It's a dynamic company, and has a bunch of very creative platforms it's developing for future wars. It realizes that for drones, there will be a need for large copy numbers at low production prices. Its approach is the opposite of Boeing and Lockheed: cheaper solutions in larger copy numbers. Its approach fits in with Pete Hegseth's new "Warfighting Acquisition Systems" that specifically wants "faster delivery" of weapons needed by our warfighters. Anduril's Barracuda missile is described as being made for "hyper-scale production and mass deployment." The cruise missile's unit price is described as around $200,000. A Tomahawk missile costs around ten times the price. The company's YFQ-44A drone made its first flight recently and is being looked upon as a potential pilotless "wingman" for F-35s.
The war between Russia and Ukraine revealed that stockpiles of expensive "smart" munitions can be gobbled up at a very fast pace. Whereas Marshal Zhukov could fire a million shells from 9,000 artillery pieces to start his advance into Germany, modern commanders can see their supplies of specialized missiles get used up very quickly. When we watched Iranian and Israeli missiles duel in the skies above us, we were watching tens or possibly hundreds of millions of dollars going up in smoke in just a few minutes. Each Arrow or THAAD interceptor costs around $1 million, and oftentimes, multiple missiles have to be sent up against a single Iranian projectile. The heavy intercontinental ballistic missiles sent by the Iranians cost no less. Either wars will have to be short due to the lack of deep stockpiles, or new approaches are required that blend legacy platforms with cheaper munitions and simpler alternatives. The YFQ-44A, as a wingman, might take an air-to-air missile directed at an F-35 so as to save the $100 million plane and its pilot. Drones have been the big winners in both Ukraine/Russia and Israel/Gaza. Most attacks in Gaza and Lebanon today are being made by UAVs. General Dynamics just showed a new drone with a minigun as an optional weapons attachment.
Warfare has always been a dynamic business. Machine guns ended the standard infantry charge; tanks put machine guns on notice until anti-tank weapons began to take out armor. The beginning of the Ukraine War showed many U.S. Javelin missiles being used against Russian tanks; the last 18 months have shown much cheaper drones blasting the Russian armor from greater distances and guaranteed accuracy. The U.S. would be well-served by a healthy balance of low copy number platforms like the B-2 bomber with cheaper and less sophisticated weapons like those being developed by Anduril. The balance will give commanders the right tools for any scenario they may face on the modern battlefield.