US and Western officials insist that although Russia has been able to jump-start its factory lines, in part because it has the advantage of being a managed economy under the control of an autocrat, capitalist western nations will eventually catch up and produce better equipment.

I mean the article seemingly agrees with CircusCritic, they're only outproducing because of lack of funding from NATO countries in combination with the control Russia has over its own economy. If NATO, NATO countries, or the US can actually begin to deliver a lot of funds, production will increase rapidly.

We have industries for creating these armaments, they just don't have the incentive to create a lot due to a lack of funding.

The when is of course an important question. Providing 100 billion to Ukraine in funding in 2 years will have a different impact than 100 billion next month.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 11 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Does the west actually have those industries? Turns out decades of outsourcing as much production as possible overseas was a bad idea. Who would have thunk it.

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca -3 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Munition factories aren't typically outsourced, but a lot were decommissioned after the Cold War ended. That problem is especially acute within European NATO member states.

But, in the context of NATO, as a whole, just supplying Ukraine for their existing conflict, production isn't the limiting factor.

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social -1 points 7 months ago

The munitions themselves are made in the US, but the raw materials, tooling, and various components in more advanced weaponry have complicated supply chains and are sourced from all over.

The US military is going through massive headaches because domestic supply chains arent able to support the construction of new ships, missles, tanks, aircraft, and other equipment like mobile launchers and uniforms because the domestic production of raw materials and skilled labor required for production have been gutted. Just look at the fiasco that AUKUS is currently undergoing trying to produce submarines. Sure the Navy never technically stopped building it's ships domestically, but allowing the rest of the domestic shipbuilding industry to collapse has lead to the US being comically inept at at producing serviceable ships.

Free market capitalism is incompatible with national security as capital is only interested in quarterly profits and will sacrifice long term security to meet that goal. Defense contractors have de facto monopolies today and use the threat of going out of business to pressure the Pentagon into giving them massive paychecks to fuck around.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml 9 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As I explained in my original comment, you can't just create such industries overnight. These require building out supply chains, training workers, and so on. You can just look at how great reshoring chip production is going despite untold billions being poured into that to get an idea of what a monumental task this is.

Building out an industry on this scale is going to take years if not decades. Providing 100 billion to Ukraine in funding isn't going to do jack shit. Ukraine is running out of weapons and ammunition. Replacements for any of these don't exist, and production capacity is insufficient to make any actual difference in the foreseeable future.

Highly recommend reading this article from RUSI explaining these problems https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/attritional-art-war-lessons-russian-war-ukraine

[–] circuscritic@lemmy.ca 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Ship building and shell production are on the polar opposite ends of time requirements for industrial capacity building....the fact that you used ship building as an example here makes me wonder if you're being intentionally disingenuous....

Also, you don't seem to understand how these funding programs actually work if you think this is being allocated to build out Ukrainian domestic production capacity.

[–] yogthos@lemmy.ml -2 points 7 months ago

Chip production might have different requirements from shell production, but it's a good example of how difficult it is to bootstrap an industry. Also, nobody is talking about allocating anything to Ukrainian domestic production capacity here. Maybe actually try and read that RUSI article till you understand what it's saying.