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Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
Argument for tanks and other items is that expertise of engineers and technicians must be maintained. Solution: directly pay them comparatively-little to tinker with related stuff on at least a part-time basis, keep them sharp. Not complete contracts or products, just anything related to the necessary skill set for our major platforms.
Doesn't work that well. There are all sorts of "never written down anywhere" micro-behaviors etc. that those people working in the assembly process have to keep current in institutional memory in order to generate the best possible results. And that body of knowledge is often so specialized to the military product that the company cannot use it on "civvy street" effectively. I used to live near Newport News Shipbuilding -- the folks who make CVNs and will be making the CVNX's. They could not build an oil tanker to spec on time and under budget...but could make a supercarrier. Refueling jobs helped, but not enough; building a sub....did not work well as all the good sub builders work at a different place so it was slow and not as high quality, etc.

Quote Originally Posted by Montmorency View Post
At some point remember, it is more straightforward and cost-effective for the government to disembody private military-industrial corporations and absorb their skilled workers as operators of internal (federal) agencies....
Like our old "arsenal" system....which was never efficient enough. Or maybe the PLA's factory system....which is NOT the most effective center for manufacturing.


All in all, the stuff is too specialized; has periods of non-production that are simply too long to maintain staff through; and then gets wrecked/bent/broken/expended in job lots when in actual use mandating rapid full replacement.


Military manufacture is likely never to be fully rationalizable.