So the solution is to re-industrialize with war industries, no?
That isn’t possible. This is what “free trade” fools don’t understand.
The reason why they can’t increase artillery ammunition is because they need more forging presses. And there is only ONE remaining company (with less than 50 employees) in the whole country that can build such a press.
When the factories were offshored, the companies that built production equipment for those factories shut down.
“The “West” vastly outproduces Russia in aircraft and guided munitions.”
No they don’t. This story is about Raytheon only being able to produce 300 ship missiles since 2019, when the contract called for 600.
Raytheon blames, subcontractors, suppliers, cover, supply chain.. blah, blah, blah. The problem remains, they can’t produce the missiles, while Russia churns them out.
How many 155 shells do you think the West is currently producing and what do you anticipate that production being by the end of this year? We’ll leave countries like Australia and South Korea out of it.
You can certainly buy high-volume forging equipment.
https://www.shi.co.jp/english/products/machinery/forging_press/index.html
You can certainly buy them from China :) They WILL sell them to you.
https://www.yadonpress.com/home
Or, rather, from one of their US dealers
https://www.trueforge.com/About