Production.

This is coolbert:

"The timeline for acquiring new machine tools 'are often the long poles in the tent on getting capacity increased,' . . . 'These machines are the size of buildings. You don’t just go buy it from a parking lot somewhere.'” - Douglas Bush.

"A Lack of Machine Tools Is Holding Back Ammo Production, Army Says"

"The U.S. has enough raw materials, but the heavy equipment used to make artillery shells aren’t easy to buy."

From www.defenseone.com | SAM SKOVE | MARCH 3, 2023.

"A lack of machine tools is constraining the United State's ability to ramp up ammunition transfers to Ukraine, the Army's top weapons buyer said March 3."

"U.S. and allied production of artillery ammunition has emerged as a key problem in supplying Ukraine, which burns through thousands of shells a day fighting Russia’s invasion"

Comments:

* That American big-smoke-stack heavy-industry base of manufacturing gone a long time ago now. USA munitions makers not able to churn out war-making bang stuff as done in the days of yore, World War One and World War Two both.

* Think "machine tools" as described not of the mere ratchet wrench variety. Tools as rather of an automated and computer controlled system, often highly robotic in operation.

* As has been mentioned in some previous blog entries, think the British Shell Crisis of 1915. Nothing new under the sun as they say.

HEY, did anyone ever say this was going to be easy?

coolbert.