Which poses a huge national security risk. Yup, they come from the far east, not Texas... Think about that one for a second and how easy will be for oh China...to stop us on tracks if we go to war with one of their allies, let alone a worst case scenario, and it is them.
We still produce steel, why we can still lay the keel for a carrier, but if we needed to build the equivalent of a liberty ship a day all of a sudden ( cheap, easy I bet plans exist in DOD) we could not. It took three years between after Sept 1st, 1939 for us to do. A lot of the arsenal for democracy to support the Brits before we officially entered the war was the building of that capacity. FDR got it, and after the attack on Pearl Harbor the US became a command economy a la USSR with war time production target points. These ranged from planes and cheap carriers, to butter, grains and meat, most of which went to feed an armed force. This force went from in the tens of thousands to eleven million by 1945.
At one time, oh before 1980, US Presidents got it. There are some industries you coddle and protect, not just for the sake of American Jobs, but strategic reasons.
As to the US Military maintaining itself, we have not built a main battle tank in a while. It's cheaper to fix them. But if we get into a war where the other side has oh T-90s and capable crews, we will not be able to fix them fast enough at a single facility in the Midwest.
This is but one example on how the military has been transformed into a light mobile, overextended force.
On the bright side, if we had to grow a navy fast, if we have six months, the moth fleets will be busy, and if I know this, so do our enemies, I call those ports strategic targets.
Why when Republicans crow over how strong we are on defense, aka the daddy party, I laugh in their faces.
Oh we have plenty of fancy, very expensive, slow to produce toys...F-35 comes to mind... I am reminded of another army that fielded very technologically advanced, slow to produce gear...we changed our doctrine, the Russians didn't.
If we are ever in a high intensity conflict, IMO because of these reasons, we will be in trouble. Especially since the tempo these days is that much faster. Iraq and Afghanistan were not high intensity conflicts. In some ways the last one to sort of qualify was Korea. And yes Nam has a lot in common with the pace with Afghanistan.
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