[HN Gopher] 300k airplanes in five years
___________________________________________________________________
300k airplanes in five years
Author : juliangamble
Score : 85 points
Date : 2024-05-23 12:58 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| melling wrote:
| Here's a video about how China out produces the United States in
| ship building.
|
| https://youtu.be/tRVVXDyg3RY?si=Yin_cVGx57IHavUr
| encoderer wrote:
| Germany grossly out-produced America -- until America actually
| started trying.
| jononomo wrote:
| What if China actually started trying? They have 3x the
| population that the US has.
| stanleykm wrote:
| I don't think you get it. It's actually impossible for
| other countries to beat the US at anything.
| cpursley wrote:
| Superman Syndrome
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| You must be making a sarcastic comment, right?
|
| Some people do honestly believe that because god is on
| 'our' side, the us and constitution were divinely
| motivated and everything in it was coming from god
| somehow. All the horrible justifications are still being
| made today about that stuff.
| Hayvok wrote:
| Population is a single, low-resolution parameter into a
| theoretical ship-building-capacity equation, which really
| needs a basket of parameters. Raw resource availability,
| fuel capabilities, naval training, coastline details, etc.
|
| Great Britain historically had a fraction of the population
| of France and other European powers, but consistently out-
| produced the rest in ships and projecting naval power.
| HPsquared wrote:
| China produces 12 times as much steel as the US, per
| year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_
| pro...
| nickff wrote:
| China had an even bigger advantage in population in 1930
| (~474:123MM). Population is one factor, but not a
| determinitive one.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| More like 4x, and closing in on 5x. And China has done a
| good job of tying many smaller nations, globally not just
| regionally, to themselves economically. That gives them an
| edge in terms of resource extraction where the US has been
| losing ground. It doesn't help that the US also sends many
| "waste" products to China like steel that could be
| processed and reused domestically.
|
| And then there's just the cluster fuck that is the US
| defense industry. Who could make aircraft for the US in
| mass numbers anymore? Boeing can't even figure out if they
| installed a few bolts, NG can't do basic maintenance
| without wrecking a plane, LM will get you your aircraft for
| 5x the initial estimate and a decade late.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And China has done a good job of tying many smaller
| nations, globally not just regionally, to themselves
| economically. That gives them an edge in terms of
| resource extraction
|
| The US has the capacity, in the event of conflict, to
| nullify most if not all of the out-of-region advantage
| China has in resource extraction, unless China's build up
| pre-conflict is sufficient to nullify the global force
| projection capacities provided by the US Navy and the US
| Air Force to which China currently has no equivalent or
| counter beyond its region.
|
| (The US usually presents these capacities as being
| oriented to _protecting_ free resource flow in peacetime,
| but they can be directed at the opposite purpose equally
| well.)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Presently, yes. If China doesn't push too hard, though,
| they've got the right partnerships in place to start
| building out a global military presence under the same
| pretenses as the US within its partner nations' borders.
| Give it a decade (maybe less) of serious effort on their
| part and they could rival the US globally, not just
| regionally.
|
| If they decide to start a hot war (say by invading
| Taiwan) today, then it'd be catastrophic for them. Most
| of those partnerships would dry up (by being a good
| excuse to end a bad deal for the partner nations or by
| force from the US and other nations).
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Yeah, but if they do it 10 years from now, it could well
| be different. Thus the very interesting book, "2034: A
| Novel of the Next World War", 2022, by Elliot Ackerman
| (Author), Admiral James Stavridis USN (Author).
|
| The interesting thing was about how India had also
| advanced in those 10 years from now.
| kiba wrote:
| A hot war would massively disrupt trade, among that food.
| The US provide a significant proportion of food to China.
| I am not sure if China could survive on a smaller food
| supply but it would mean austerity if that was the case.
| Worst case scenario, they cannot use their manpower
| advantage because they need that for their farm.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Closing in? China's population fell in 2023, whereas the
| US is still growing.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Ok, 4.1somethingx and closing in on 4.1somethingx. Either
| way, substantially more than just 3x the US population.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, if there's a WW3 where winning is predicated on
| "who can make the most planes", then, eh, maybe that might
| be a relevant question. But that doesn't seem particularly
| likely; even if there were to be a WW3, it would probably
| not be a Plane-Building Olympics.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Drones and missiles will be perhaps the most important.
| One day it will be military robots. And guess who can
| makes the mass quantities of drones and missiles.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| For a more modern example, one of my former employers had to
| ramp by a couple of orders of magnitude to build ventilators
| during Covid-19. One of my former coworkers told me the story
| of having to go to Detroit and build a factory there, and how
| they were able to go from 10-20 a day to hundreds a day by
| hard work and know-how.
|
| The point I'm trying to make here is that the will to do this
| still exists in the US today and I have no doubt that if we
| as a country decided to enter a world war like WWII we would
| very quickly ramp. We certainly still have the culture and
| the resources to do it were we to discover the will.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching
| Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing
| now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent
| of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only
| took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping
| thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous
| swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious
| based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with
| China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and
| technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the
| place of the US in WW2 parlance.
|
| There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced
| technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also
| they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can
| figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has
| been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and
| liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though,
| with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the
| library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-
| science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is
| not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce
| heterodoxical ideas.
|
| There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our
| current times in the US and the world, groups of countries
| pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have
| instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious
| than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries
| want their shot at power and riches too.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Some obvous differences are the US has been where people
| from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty
|
| This has always been much more important than dead capital.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I think so too, but it doesn't seem like most people
| remember this.
| Teever wrote:
| I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese
| industrial capacity for killbot type drones.
|
| Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to
| produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone
| with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded
| experience become a part of that?
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of
| shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the
| airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and
| duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US
| leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is
| if they're capable of doing so.
|
| We also don't know what form drones will take as the
| technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because
| they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or
| fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could
| design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date.
| As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR,
| lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed
| fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge
| for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically
| all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability
| etc).
| surfingdino wrote:
| We are already working on unmanned autonomous drones the
| size of a fighter jet
| https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-
| stag...
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I'm well aware, but that's not what the commenter was
| referring to.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I am not worried. History likes to rhyme and I think China
| will do a switcheroo on Russia and align itself with the West
| for the purpose of dismantling Russia's military and
| industry, just like the Soviet Union switched sides from
| being an ally of Germany in 1939 to working with the Western
| Allies on breaking Germany's neck. The West will make some
| concessions, but they will be seen as worth the price of
| breaking Russia up.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Russia changed sides when Hitler invaded Russia. Not sure
| we can count on Putin making that mistake.
| surfingdino wrote:
| All he has to do is fire one nuke and China will gladly
| listen to the US' suggestion that we should take these
| toys away from Russia.
| dieortin wrote:
| Russia is still the country with the highest amount of
| nuclear warheads on the planet. How would anyone "take
| them away"?
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed. If you look back at the Cold War era, you'll lose
| count of the number of times China and Russia embraced each
| other with lofty rhetoric, each proclaiming to be the
| other's BFF, only to end up butting heads again after a few
| years.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Anyone else feel like in today's world, China could do this
| better than the US?
| dzink wrote:
| They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through
| manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the
| peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal
| policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or
| their trade imbalance can turn violent.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a
| jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to
| the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.
| pie420 wrote:
| This is every military in the history of the world.
| vkou wrote:
| The US military does not do a lot of domestic work,
| because it would undermine the private sector.
|
| It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it
| doesn't.
| bojan wrote:
| That really depends on your definition of "better".
|
| In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a
| lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more
| expensive.
|
| In the US is that way less the case.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples.
| Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected
| mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out
| war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk
| you).
|
| In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew
| and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's
| father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW
| and came home after the war.
|
| https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-
| da....
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the US is that way less the case.
|
| Day-to-day, sure.
|
| In a national mobilization (even without additional action of
| Congress) when the President's emergency powers in law are
| deployed to enable production? Things change _radically_.
| HPsquared wrote:
| China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...
| foota wrote:
| While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from
| Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which
| are within the US sphere of influence or far from China.
|
| The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large
| reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close
| to China).
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war
| peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are
| likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct
| military conflict.
| cpursley wrote:
| And already 3x more vehicles.
| duxup wrote:
| Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get
| things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much
| not get things done very well at all.
| maxglute wrote:
| It's already obvious.
|
| 230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than
| entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage
| over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature"
| industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better
| than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their
| revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile
| components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few
| years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift.
| US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the
| production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're
| addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and
| industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs.
| The advantages are snowballing.
|
| US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech,
| but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year.
| SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think
| people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they
| have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity
| launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40
| resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no
| reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once
| indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of
| scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed
| aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility
| and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got
| the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to
| make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has
| really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one
| would believe it could be done.
|
| I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are
| just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their
| scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be
| done is a huge help.
| maxglute wrote:
| They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with
| successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few
| years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable
| lauch + mega constellations only started last few years
| (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is
| probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to
| work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and
| replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it,
| i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of
| megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they
| work with a lot of developed countries with their own
| launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for
| PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before
| 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch
| curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand.
| Question is if they find something to justify spamming
| magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this
| article, if they did, it's probably going to be
| weaponinizing space.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Some context for US/Japan WW II:
|
| In 1943, the US built more than half as many Fleet carriers
| as Japan fielded over the entire war (15 vs 28), while also
| producing an absurd number of escort carriers. In the last
| year of the war, the US built about as many F6F (Hellcat)
| fighters as Japan built A6M (Zeros) in the previous 5 years
| (the F6F is generally considered far superior to the A6M; the
| F4F is the older contemporary of the A6M).
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| The US must come to terms with ceding its monopoly on
| superpower status because other countries have caught up, but
| it also has correctable problems on multiple fronts due to:
|
| - Lack of infrastructure investment
|
| - Civic infighting
|
| - Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
|
| - Social regression
|
| - Gender disparity in undergraduate education
|
| - Declining standards of living
| surfingdino wrote:
| Power will be projected in the future through alliances
| with Australia, Japan, and Great Britain. The problems you
| listed are real, but they are solvable.
| jopsen wrote:
| Yeah, it's important to remember that the US has friends.
| - and the list of friends is very long!
|
| My favorite example of how good friends the US has is
| that the primary objective for Norway in Afghanistan was
| quote: "The first and most important
| objective throughout was the Alliance dimension:
| to support the US and safeguard NATO's continued
| relevance."
|
| source: https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/09faceca
| 099c4b8bac8...
|
| You have good friends if their primary war objective is
| to support you.
|
| I think that these days, a lot of Europeans are being
| reminded that the US is a friend. So long as US politics
| can avoid undermining NATO the US won't be short on
| friends.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Absolutely. I think the prime problem is large swaths of
| the American populace has lost hope, confidence, and
| resiliency. OTOH, people in China have a much more of a
| "can do" attitude buoyed by achievements and rapid
| progress. America needs younger politicians and leaders
| out there delivering projects and emanating positive
| vibes of hope and possibility.
| more_corn wrote:
| They're also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems
| online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.
| rsynnott wrote:
| Huh. There were _800k_ aircraft built during the war. Hadn't
| realised it was anything close to that. That's easily over a
| million pilots - how on earth did they train them all?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Not all the aircraft built were used by the US: a sizable
| minority (18% according to one contemporary source [0]) were
| transferred (by sale or lend-lease) to other allies.
|
| [0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-
| hist...
| wffurr wrote:
| Quickly and dangerously. There's an entire cemetery dedicated
| to RAF pilot cadets in Montgomery, Alabama killed during
| training at US airfields.
|
| * https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...
| skullone wrote:
| That's sombering, words can't express the gravity of that war
| abadpoli wrote:
| Seems like an overstatement to say "an entire cemetery". Per
| the Wikipedia page, the cemetery is 120 acres with 200,000
| grave sites, but only 78 of the graves are RAF students
| (which still is a terrible amount of people to lose in
| training, of all things).
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Many military personnel die in training.
|
| If you are not losing a few people in training, you are not
| pushing things hard enough.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it's fair enough if it was enough they thought to
| make that a specific section. You probably wouldn't be
| commenting about it if it so happened that the entire site
| was .1 acre and only the student pilots.
| Retric wrote:
| There was an analog flight stimulator used by over 500k pilots
| which helped, but this was war they accepted extremely high
| casualty rates and not just from enemy action.
|
| https://www.nasflmuseum.com/link-trainer.html
| pchristensen wrote:
| I recently read Masters of the Air, and it said that over
| 10,000 Americans from the 8th Air Force died over English
| soil, most from accidents during takeoff and assembling
| forces.
| Animats wrote:
| As late as the 1960s, the career death rate for US fighter
| pilots was about one in five, without any help from an enemy.
| There's a book, "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut", from someone
| who made it through astronaut training but then realized they
| didn't want to take the risk of pilot training in a T-38.
|
| The T-38 jet trainer, first flight in 1959, still in use:
| 1,189 built, 210 crashes and ejections.
| vkou wrote:
| > how on earth did they train them all?
|
| A few days of classroom instruction, 40-100 flight hours of
| practical training (Less in the Axis, due to oil shortages,
| less in the USSR at the start of the war, due to the all-hands-
| on-deck state of emergency), and then it's off to war with you.
|
| Axis pilots would fly until they were killed, seriously
| injured, or captured. Anglosphere bomber pilots would fly ~30
| combat missions, and if they survived, would be rotated out to
| work as instructors.
|
| The average combat survival rate for bomber pilots was ~10
| missions, but due to the infrequency of flights, most Anglo
| bomber crews survived the war, without ever hitting their
| rotation limit. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theater, the more
| missions bomber crews flew, the bigger the rotation limits grew
| (Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge
| figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more
| missions.) The air crews were, understandably, _not very
| pleased about this_.
|
| Fighter pilots had much higher quotas, before they could rotate
| out.
| bogtog wrote:
| > Between 1939 and 1944, the value of aircraft produced annually
| in the U.S. increased by a factor of 70, and the total weight of
| aircraft produced (a common measure of aircraft industry output)
| increased by a factor of 64
|
| Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always
| puts a smile on my face
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just like lines of code, it's a very useful metric.
|
| ... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like
| using it to evaluate people.
| vkou wrote:
| Someone who successfully ran an organization that
| successfully delivered 70 4,000-tonne ships is probably more
| qualified to be put in charge of building an aircraft
| carrier, than someone who delivered 70 4,000-lb boats.
|
| When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in
| size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first
| metric.
| cowgoesmoo wrote:
| It's hard to abuse for aircraft - you can't just strap a
| bunch of lead to a plane because then it won't fly.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Was that a requirement in the contract? Mine says just need
| to produce a certain number of planes. There's nothing in
| there that says the plane must be able to fly. If that's
| what you wanted, you should have stipulated that during
| negotiations. Remember, you picked fast and cheap.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| It seems reasonable if you're thinking about the amount of
| material that must be sourced, transported, processed, etc.
| also serves as a check that the newly produced planes weren't
| simply 70x smaller than before.
| more_corn wrote:
| The ussr tried to do this. You can still find lamps made of
| lead manufactured in that era.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > As late as 1941, the U.K. was building more planes per year
| than the U.S. But by 1942, the U.S. was building roughly as many
| aircraft as Germany, Japan, the U.K. and Italy combined.
|
| Wow. Unbelievable
| kgeist wrote:
| >It's no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of
| the U.S.'s enormous industrial output.
|
| The author ignores the USSR completely in their article, except
| for a brief mention in the graphs (where it's #2). 157k planes is
| impressive, too, considering that many of the factories had to
| evacuate to Siberia. 22k planes were also additionally leased by
| the US and the UK.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| That's true, the ussr did some impressive things, and the
| millions of deaths they suffered fighting the germans in ww2
| can't be forgotten, along with the impact of their weakening of
| the german forces over time.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It definitely is, but the US' industrial output wasn't limited
| to just planes, and the USSR received a ton of supplies and
| equipment from the US to bolster its war machine.
| pie420 wrote:
| The vast majority of the USSR factories were funded by american
| cash. Without the US, Germany wins WW2 handily. Without the
| USSR, the united states drops nukes on berlin in 1946 and
| handily wins ww2 by 1947.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Those factories were paid with Soviet money, but many were
| built by Western companies in the 20s and 30s. Because
| apparently communism was not such a big deal after all, as
| long as you could benefit from it.
|
| Germany had already lost the war before Lend-Lease had a
| significant impact. The offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed
| before Western aid started arriving in significant
| quantities. The aid had much more impact on the Soviet
| offensive, particularly on the logistics side. It can be
| argued that Lend-Lease won Eastern Europe for the USSR.
|
| As far as I understand, there are two schools of thought on
| what would have happened without Lend-Lease. In one, the USSR
| would have won anyway, but the war would have lasted until
| 1946 or 1947 and it would have been even bloodier and more
| destructive. In another, the USSR would also have lost, and
| there would have been an uneasy peace between them and
| Germany. In both cases, I'd assume the US would not see the
| Continental Europe worth fighting for.
| guurfhihh46775 wrote:
| US propaganda at its best.
|
| If you'd asked the continentals as to who was responsible for
| ending the war in Europe, the overwhelming majority in the
| 40/50s would've answered "the Soviets".
| yreg wrote:
| True, but that's also partially thanks to the Russian
| propaganda at its best.
|
| (I live in a post-communist country.)
| Someone wrote:
| The Soviets weren't very popular at the time in most of
| Europe, especially in the parts the Soviets drove the Germans
| away from, so I doubt people would have admitted to that,
| even if they thought it to be true.
|
| I also think it isn't quite true. Leaving out a lot of nuance
| I would say "American industry and Russian blood"
| morkalork wrote:
| There's an old tank factory in my north American city that's
| been repurposed as a trendy office space. Inside you can see
| photos of the production line and the celebration for tank
| number 1,000 being completed. Every single one was shipped to
| the USSR.
| cpursley wrote:
| And even still, the USSR produced more tanks than all the
| other allies combined (many of those in Ukraine).
| surfingdino wrote:
| Once they were given a lot of equipment and food by the US
| https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-
| hist...
|
| Nobody is going to forget the human sacrifice, but credit
| where credit's due.
| FredPret wrote:
| Ah, Russian propaganda at work (though not at its best)
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > If you'd asked the continentals
|
| Eastern Europeans, yes. Anything west of the GDR was done by
| US/UK/FR.
|
| > as to who was responsible for ending the war in Europe, the
| overwhelming majority in the 40/50s would've answered "the
| Soviets".
|
| ... and then they'd follow up and say "and the Soviets
| weren't much better than the Nazis". The "Red Army" was truly
| infamous for massive amounts of alcohol abuse, looting, rape
| and torture (both among themselves and towards the civilian
| population), a tradition that was kept alive throughout the
| ages up until now in Ukraine.
| cabirum wrote:
| > alcohol abuse, looting, rape and torture
|
| Ah, western propaganda at its best
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| (Shrug) If people are willing to risk their lives trying
| to break _out_ of your country, you 're doing it wrong.
| It's as simple as that.
| dylan604 wrote:
| As well as the opposite if people are standing outside
| your border begging to come in...
| dieortin wrote:
| > Anything west of the GDR was done by US/UK/FR
|
| It was done mostly from 1944 onwards, when the Germans had
| already been defeated in the east front. A huge majority of
| the German war effort was spent on the east. The US and UK
| landing in Europe surely sped up things, but the Soviet
| Union had already won.
|
| I have no sympathy for the current Russian regime, but
| claiming they weren't responsible for winning WW2 screams
| American propaganda.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Nope, the USSR's efforts were also the result of US's
| industrial and financial output. Here's an essay to get you
| started:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505247886908424195.html
| mizzao wrote:
| > Why Russia can't win against the West
|
| Is this still true in light of the recent Ukraine events?
| Russia certainly isn't losing if no one's going to stand up
| to it.
| afavour wrote:
| Sort of an interesting argument, I suppose. Militarily
| Russia is heavily outclassed by the West. But perhaps
| that's why they're engaging in information warfare: western
| populations are weary of war and with sufficient prodding
| Russia can keep the major western powers away from their
| conflict.
|
| I feel like I'm playing Civilization again.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > western populations are weary of war
|
| are they? for the most part, Americans haven't really
| noticed apart from family and friends of service members.
| There's been no rationing of goods, there's been no
| campaigns to buy war bonds, there's essentially been no
| burden on the citizens. In fact, we've had multiple tax
| cuts and gains in the financial markets. The sheep have
| been well fed.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Is it? The Russian jam GPS that it is useless, but their
| own (much newer) system can't be jammed easily. I just
| read an article about it. Europe has nearly no military
| equipment left. Russia is loosing more tanks and
| artillery in a month than some big countries in the EU
| have.
|
| The S400 is considered superior to the Patriot system.
| They have hypersonic missiles. And now a battle hardened
| army. Don't forget, western systems are heavily
| overpriced. I think we pay 10 times the amount for a
| shell than Russia does. It will take years, possibly
| decades, to build up military industrial capacity.
| Germany has ammunition for 1 day of war. Trick question:
| With what will they fight on the second day?
|
| Also, dont forget:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
|
| Germany had the best tanks in WW2. But Russia hat many
| T34. In insane numbers.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The posted article gives quite an impressive Soviet plane
| production. 50% of that of the US.
|
| It was Russia that won the war. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-
| RioU?t=205
|
| And regarding the Ukraine war. Russia's industrial might is
| underestimated. And while it can not match that of the West,
| as a word of caution: China has more industrial capacity than
| the EU and US combined.
|
| Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...
| phatfish wrote:
| > Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...
|
| Indeed, after the slaughter of WW2 you would expect
| Russians to be wary of starting wars by invading their
| neighbours.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I suspect that due to the scale of destruction, WW2 left
| a deep psychological scar on the psyche of soviet
| countries, much deeper than anywhere else. And maybe
| that's why Russia has had such a militaristic and
| aggressively paranoid posture ever since.
| vkou wrote:
| The experience of WW2 left a deep psychological scar in
| Soviet, and later Russian statesmen, in that the lesson
| they took away from it was "We need to be surrounded by
| buffer and satellite states, so that in a war, they will
| bleed, instead of us." It's why they had absolutely zero
| patience for Georgia and Ukraine turning West-wards.
|
| The scar it left on the population at large was "They
| attacked us, and we suffered a _lot_ , but then we
| _really_ showed them. "
| Beijinger wrote:
| Russia is a country with fluid borders and could not
| allow NATO troops and Rockets in Ukraine in the same way,
| as we could not accept rockets in Cuba.
|
| The war has gone bad for the West now. The EU has very
| little equipment left. Russia loses more tanks in a month
| than many big EU countries have. Germany had ammunition
| for two days of war. After giving a lot to Ukraine, they
| have ammunition for one day of war left.
|
| https://www.thearticle.com/defeat-of-the-west-emmanuel-
| todd-...
|
| Graham's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr
| Zelenskiy in Kyiv on May 26 "and the Russians are dying
| ...the best money we've ever spent."
|
| Before you downvote you may look up who Emmanuel Todd is.
| When he was a 25y old PhD student in 1976 he predicted
| the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is not a person to
| be taken lightly.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| Soviet Union*
|
| Which is more than just Russia
|
| Ukraine, Belarus, etc are significant contributors and bore
| some of the heavy causalities
|
| Another part of the reason why invading Ukraine was dumb,
| Russia forgot what Ukraine was capable of. Attributing all
| of its success to itself but discounting its partners.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "Another part of the reason why invading Ukraine was
| dumb,"?
|
| Russia has won this war.
|
| https://www.thearticle.com/defeat-of-the-west-emmanuel-
| todd-...
| dylan604 wrote:
| After the wall came down, it turned out that a lot of the
| output of the Soviet military industry wasn't actually
| usable. Lots of shells of tanks, but no motors. Similar to
| China's empty buildings. They put so much emphasis on
| appearances to try to cover up their weaknesses.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Except you can see China's output on your local
| supermarket's shelves. Soviet Union had practically 0
| exports of any manufactured goods to non Warsaw Pact
| countries.
|
| China may be cooking the books to make their
| GDP/industrial output look a little bit better to hit
| party goals every year, but the ubiquitiy of Chinese
| goods in low to mid value added manufacturing is
| indisputable.
| FredPret wrote:
| The West rendered massive aid to the USSR in WW2. Lend-lease
| was not only a US-Britain thing.
|
| Tousands of planes and tanks were sent as well as raw materials
| to keep their factories pumping.
|
| This after they were initially on Hitler's side.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
| Beijinger wrote:
| It was Russia that won that war.
|
| https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?t=205
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| Soviet Union*
|
| Which is more than just Russia
|
| Ukraine, Belarus, etc are significant contributors and bore
| some of the heavy causalities
| cladopa wrote:
| That is Russia's propaganda at best. It was Russia the one
| who started the war in the first place, as friend of Hitler.
| Something convenient to forget.
| cpursley wrote:
| Exactly. And the USSR built more tanks than all the other
| allies combined, while under bombardment.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is a nice write-up, although it focuses solely on the US
| industrial output, which is indeed impressive, going from ~2,100
| aircraft to ~50,000 in six years. However, that first table
| raises some questions - the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in
| 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?
|
| One major influence is that American industrialists were busy
| expanding global markets and happily supplied their technology
| and manufacturing processes to the two major buyers, Nazi Germany
| and Communist Russia, in the 1930s, with Ford being one of the
| major actors, perhaps more active in Germany:
|
| In Germany:
|
| > "Ford and the Fuhrer: A History of Ford Motor Company's
| Involvement in Nazi Germany" by Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B.
| White: This work delves into Ford's business activities in
| Germany, documenting the introduction of assembly-line
| manufacturing and the company's interactions with the Nazi
| regime."
|
| > "The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise
| of the Third Reich" by Max Wallace: This book explores the
| relationship between American industrialists like Henry Ford and
| the Nazi regime, including detailed accounts of Ford's
| manufacturing contributions."
|
| In Soviet Union:
|
| > "Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ): Built with the technical
| assistance of Ford, the Gorky Automobile Plant began producing
| vehicles using American-style assembly lines. Ford provided
| machinery, blueprints, and training to Soviet engineers and
| workers. Soviet engineers and technicians received training in
| Ford's American factories, learning about assembly line
| production and modern manufacturing techniques."
|
| I don't know if there's a particular moral to this story, other
| than that in search of short-term profit major American
| industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > other than that in search of short-term profit major American
| industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers
|
| And that has changed since then..?
| vkou wrote:
| > the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans
| at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?
|
| The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy, and
| was not investing in armaments.
|
| The USSR had, between 1917, and 1939:
|
| * Spent six years fighting an incredibly brutal and bloody
| civil war.
|
| * Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.
|
| * Spent another decade putting down various secession
| movements, mostly in central Asia.
|
| * Had multiple minor conflicts with China and Japan.
|
| * Was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War.
|
| * Also needed a strong, standing army to put down any further
| internal resistance.
|
| * Could smell which way the wind was blowing, and was ready to
| capitalize on German's ambitions in Europe, by taking its chunk
| of Poland (And later invading Finland).
|
| Given all that, it was functioning on a war economy pretty much
| from ~1917 to 1941. (At which point it transitioned to a _total
| war economy_.)
|
| This was all in the context of a strong central push for mass
| industrialization. Steel production alone increased ~5x between
| 1930 and 1940. Up until the Nazis took power, the USSR worked
| very closely on both industrialization, and military armament
| with Weimar Germany. Krupp was building factories in the Don,
| and future Luftwaffe pilots were being trained in Lipetsk.
| simplicio wrote:
| Sort of interesting to compare the US experience in WWI, where a
| program to deliver 20k planes by the summer of July 1918 managed
| to get a whopping 196 planes into service before the war ended
| that November.
|
| http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/relairprod.htm
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The US was a place of hardworking, talented folks with natural
| geographical safety and a lot of resources. The only thing we
| need to do is stop anti competitive practices, break up
| monopolies, basically keep pure capitalism going.
| akira2501 wrote:
| What this article misses is that the US "private planes" were
| being sold directly to Japan and then being converted into
| military aircraft. What we didn't sell we licensed the designs
| directly to them.
|
| This went on well into the late 1930s. It was recognized as a
| potential problem by some but the profits were large enough that
| these were ignored.
|
| I encourage everyone to read the book "Human Smoke." It is a
| collection of headlines and newspaper excerpts from the period
| surrounding WW2. It's a fascinating read and wonderfully exposes
| all the propaganda driven half truths and complete fabrications
| we've sold ourselves about the conflict ever since it ended.
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