Several news reports (example) have come out in the past few days saying that stockpiles of weapons such as anti-tank missiles, MANPADS, artillery shells, etc. are running low in NATO countries. We have apparently sent a *lot* to Ukraine, which has spent the last nine months using those weapons to grind down the Russian military. The result is that NATO may soon run out… meaning no more for Ukraine, and little enough left for us. This is, perhaps naturally, portrayed as a Bad Thing.
But, utilized correctly, it’s not. It is in fact a Good Thing. Why? Because the war in Ukraine is, comparatively, a small one. Compared to Russia invading NATO, or China invading Taiwan or Japan, this war is dinky. And if we’re running low on ammo now… that is one hell of a bright shiny message that we need to stock the frak up. Doing so will take time of course… and we’d better start that clock *now* rather than waiting for when the Big One actually comes. Some of these weapons will take two or more years just to ramp up production… often, the last time these weapons were made was before the soldiers likely to use them were even born.
This will of course cost a lot. But the war in Ukraine has shown that western weapons are pretty damn effective, certainly compared to the Russian systems; it’s not just NATO and Ukraine that will want them, but *everybody.* It’s conceivable that the costs involved in restarting production could be paid for by export sales. Hell, just avoiding the insane student loan forgiveness idea would save the funds needed; perhaps those student loans could be paid off by said students working in the arms factories. Put those gender studies degrees to good use running lathes.
3 responses to “They say this like it’s a bad thing”
I’ve been reading most of the guided missiles we have been sending were older stock, due to be destroyed in the next year or so.
the fact that it has all pretty much worked means the shelf life of these things might be longer than we thought. so building an inventory might be an easier sell.
They are going to ask daddy america to pay the bill though. Screw that.
Admittedly, the bill should be paid by Russia. But in the mean time, the war started by Putin is turning out to be a “western weapons are AWESOME” commercial on a grand scale, so we can afford to pay a little now and collect later. Perhaps when it’s all over and St. Petersburg is auctioned off – I’m sure the bidding between Finland and Lithuania will be intense – and the Kremlin is purchased by a Disney-McDonalds conglomerate, the funds can be returned to the American taxpayer.
When it’s all over, there will be a *lot* of construction work needing doing in Russia. Thousands of miles of power and telephone lines will need to be stripped out and transferred to Ukraine; generators, transformers and all manner of electrical and gas system will need to be ripped out of the local infrastructure and transplanted into the Ukrainian grid. Who better to do that work than the millions of currently illegal aliens occupying the United States? The reconstruction era can be a golden age for many countries… Ukraine gets rebuilt, the US gets repaid, and illegals get a new homeland in Mother Russia. This will be a popular destination as western Europe starts shipping out *their* millions of “economic migrants” to Russia.