Clibanarius
Banned
POD: 1980
Your challenge is to have the US Industry and Production back up to WWII levels or capable of it.
Your challenge is to have the US Industry and Production back up to WWII levels or capable of it.
Challenge: US Industry back to WWII levels
- Thread starter Clibanarius
- Start date
I'd redefine your challenge. In terms of both quantity and quality, the US was far more industrially productive in 1980 than it was in 1945. The problem is, Industry became a lot less labor intensive in the intervening decades, while the rest of the world became better able to compete.
A better question would be what's the US production rate of projectable tons equivalents of air delivered ordinance per day. How many carriers is less relevant than the function of said carriers---to project firepower by air to a given target. So how long, would it take, to manufacture new carriers once the pipeline got started and how many sorties/day with how many ton-equivalents of TNT could they sustain? WWII carriers are pretty small fry in that comparison vs modern carriers, even if you leave out the accuracy of their munitions.
The US was also at total economic mobilization during World War 2. Given a year or two, the US today could have an even greater military output, if there was pressure for a fullscale mobilization.
According to the CIA world factbook, the US industrial sector amounts to $3.2 trillion dollars in 2010, after two years of recession. That's twenty times the entire US GDP, all sectors, in 1945.
The US military budget is something like 6% of GDP. In World War II, it peaked at something like 36% (I'm eyeballing this from a graph, so I may be off). At present, the US has 11 aircraft carriers in service. If the US had to refight World War II, and increased US military budgets to the same percentage of GDP they were at, and distributed it equally to all military projects, that would ultimately increase to 66 aircraft carriers.
How long that would take depends on how long would be needed to expand the shipyards, which I have no clue on. But I bet we could do it pretty fast if we had a really compelling reason to.
To the OP there are actually slightly more people working in Manufacturing in 2011 than in the 1945. Its just the population has more than doubled since then so the proportion of the population working in the sector has dramatically declined. And of course a modern industrial worker is much more productive so total output is way, way up.
Now as to the question of building aircraft carriers 1945 US had more slipyards and so could churn out more ships. That's because we have seen manufacturing shift from metal bashing to silicon chips so a much larger share of modern industry is in the "light" industrial sector as opposed to "heavy" industry, but's that mostly a good thing as a ton of bomb guidance units is much more useful than a ton of steel all other things being equal.
So while 2011 US can build less ships at any one time and because modern ships are much more complicated it can build them slower they are much, much, much better ships. Compare the strike power of USS Ronald Reagan and USS Essex. 1945 US would have a 1000 ship Navy that would be sunk in an afternoon by 2011's 250 ship Navy.
Now as to the question of building aircraft carriers 1945 US had more slipyards and so could churn out more ships. That's because we have seen manufacturing shift from metal bashing to silicon chips so a much larger share of modern industry is in the "light" industrial sector as opposed to "heavy" industry, but's that mostly a good thing as a ton of bomb guidance units is much more useful than a ton of steel all other things being equal.
So while 2011 US can build less ships at any one time and because modern ships are much more complicated it can build them slower they are much, much, much better ships. Compare the strike power of USS Ronald Reagan and USS Essex. 1945 US would have a 1000 ship Navy that would be sunk in an afternoon by 2011's 250 ship Navy.
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No. There are only 9 remaining large ships yards in the US. Of those 1 is owned by the Navy and 3 others don't build military vessels. Some are just really repair and refit yards but they could more than likely be changed over if needed. Could we built more? Sure I guess.
But the larger issue is not just ships, the are whole sectors of manufacturing that are gone or almost gone from the US. We couldn't make the huge numbers of uniforms and boots. We can't make the knives and bayonets. We can't even make most of the microchips that control our high tech weapons or communication systems.
Then you have to think could we even get the draftees need to use those items? This isn't the 1940s anymore. We have had 2 or 3 generations now that have been raise to hate the idea of a draft. Would they show up? I doubt it.
Our military is a quick war force now. We need to get in defeat the enemies forces quickly and then get out. We would be hard pressed to fight a long war of large battles. Even Iraq has been a strain and it sure wasn't at the level of Korea or WW2.
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Does the USN even have enough antiship weapons in it's inventory to sink a 1000 warships? Without using nukes.
The most plausible scenario to me is a conventional WWIII which the US wins while everybody else once again takes the brunt of the damage, especially Europe, the Middle East and China.
After this American manufacturing will return to 1945 proportions of world output.