The Department of War just shot the accountants and opted for speed

Weapons need to be replaced, even ones never used. To be capable of scaling production you need at least some degree of production constantly simmering in the background. Yet even then, there is a limit to how much you can scale up on demand.

The best and cheapest weapons are the ones never used, but making no weapons at all is the most expensive choice in the end.

The problem is you have these hugely expensive facilities like the tank plant in Lima that's pretty much only good for making tanks. Transitioning manufacturing to production lines that can be economically kept online because they make non-tank products when we're not fighting anyone is the way to go.

There's a ton of work going on in this area, and has been for a while (check out DARPA's AVM project for some of it).

Or, simply open up the sales of tanks to the civilian market.

That's a joke, of course, but even if they were demilitarised variants there'd probably still be a market for it.

There definitely is a market for such vehicles:

http://www.exarmyvehicles.com/offer/tracked-vehicles/tanks

https://mortarinvestments.eu/ArmouredVehicles

https://miltrade.com/pages/military-vehicles-for-sale-in-eur...

https://tanksales.co.uk/sales/

Ten or fifteen years back, I had an ambition to buy such a vehicle and drive it around at Burning Man. I eventually settled for a deuce-and-a-half, which caused enough struggle and frustration that I'm glad I never actually bought a tank.

A related article https://archive.is/2024.12.17-161126/https://www.theatlantic...

Our scaling is human oriented - add more shifts. Maybe we can adapt new manufacturing methods like screw extrusion mentioned in the article

What was frustrating about it? From time to time your exact plan sounded appealing to me.

If we're talking actual functional tanks, then they're expensive as shit to buy, and expensive as shit to drive.

What is more critical as Ukraine has shown is ammunition, ie artillery shells, and of course any anti-drone ammunition (missiles are extremely expensive solution that should be reserved for ballistic missiles and not cheap drones).

More tanks on Ukraine's side wouldn't change current battlefield massively, drones limit how much use from tanks you can get. If you can scale your production to 10-50x within weeks then all is fine but thats almost impossible practically.

If anybody thinks we are heading for a peaceful stable decade without need of such items in massive numbers must have had head buried in the sand pretty deep.

I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

I'm not sure there is any law against owning an unarmed tank. But for "dangerous and unusual" weapons themselves, an important case is from 1939 - Miller vs USA. [1] And it's absurdly weird. Basically the defendant was a thug with a penchant for snitching on everybody.

In his final case, which he also snitched during, he argued that a law he had been charged under (a firearms regulation law) was unconstitutional. The judge who heard his case was very much in favor of the gun control law and had made numerous public statements as such, but he also likely knew that the law was on very shaky constitutional ground, and had been fishing for a test case to advance it. And he found that in Miller.

So he concurred with Miller about the law's unconstitutionality! That resulted in the case being appealed up to the Supreme Court. Conveniently for the state, neither Miller or his defense representation appeared. So it was argued with no defense whatsoever. And Miller was found shot to death shortly thereafter, which wasn't seen as particularly suspicious given his snitching habits. And that case set the ultimate standard that's still appealed to, to this very day.

This is made even more ironic by the fact that the weapon he was being charged for possession of as being 'dangerous and unusual' was just a short barrel shotgun, which was regularly used in the military.

[1] - https://www.law.nyu.edu/sites/default/files/ECM_PRO_060964.p...

> The best and cheapest weapons are the ones never used, but making no weapons at all is the most expensive choice in the end.

As a big part of Europe is learning at great cost.

There is a market to buy a tank that originally cost $10m for $10k. You can drive it round fields and crush stuff for YouTube content.

I think there is a much smaller market for people wanting to pay the new price

> I’ve never really understood how the logic of the second amendment doesn’t extend to tanks and nukes.

Probably because if people could buy tanks to protect themselves, then the police would also need tanks to deconflict a situation where someone with a tank is upset and the damages are a bit higher when tank rounds start flying around. Imagine two neighbors getting into it in a a town, not to mention a city.

Even portable nukes are a stretch in the logic of "I need to protect my home" from intruders, not to mention the hundred kiloton yield ones.

This movie is for you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tank_(film)

People can and do own tanks. Since they are giant (hard to park), slow moving, consume a lot of fuel, tend to need expensive maintenance, and can't be operated on many roads due to weight / vehicle restrictions, few people want to do this.

As far as nuclear bombs go... there are restrictions on owning fissile material in general that would preclude owning enough to have a working bomb.

The conventional wisdom is that you need to buy several military vehicles in order to get and keep one up and running. Some things are going to come broken, some things will inevitably break, and the replacement parts aren't exactly at your local auto parts shop.