What that means for the US is this: if the US had to fight a conventional war with a near-peer military today, the US actually has the ability to replace stealth fighter losses. The program isn't some near-dormant, low-rate production deal that would take a year or more to ramp up: it's a operating line at full rate production that could conceivably build a US Navy squadron every ~15 days, plus a complete training and global logistics system, all on the front burner.
If there is any truth to Gen Bradley's "Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics" line, the F-35 is a major win for the US.
That's amazing. I had no idea the US was still capable of things like that.
I wonder if there's a way to get close to that, for things that aren't new and don't have a lot of active orders. Like have all the equipment setup but idle at some facility, keep an assembly teams ready and trained, then cycle through each weapon an activate a couple of these dormant manufacturing programs (at random!) every year, almost as a drill. So there's the capability to spin up, say F-22 production quickly when needed.
Obviously it'd cost money. But it also costs a lot of money to have fighter jets when you're not actively fighting a way. Seems like manufacturing readiness would something an effective military would be smart to pay for.
It's more than just the US though. It's the demand from foreign customers that makes it possible. It's the careful balance between cost and capability that was achieved by the US and allies when it was designed.
Without those things, the program would peter out after the US filled its own demand, and allies went looking for cheaper solutions. The F-35 isn't exactly cheap, but allies can see the capability justifies the cost. Now, there are so many of them in operation that, even after the bulk of orders are filled in the years to come, attrition and upgrades will keep the line operating and healthy at some level, which fulfills the goal you have in mind.
Meanwhile, the F-35 equipped militaries of the Western world are trained to similar standards, operating similar and compatible equipment, and sharing the logistics burden. In actual conflict, those features are invaluable.
There are few peacetime US developed weapons programs with such a record. It seems the interval between them is 20-30 years.
Until we run out of materials
https://mwi.westpoint.edu/minerals-magnets-and-military-capa...
As you get further and further into the past you have to start trying to measure it using human labor equivalents or similar. For example, what was the cost of a Great Pyramid? How does the cost change if you consider the theory that it was somewhat of a "make work" project to keep a mainly agricultural society employed during the "down months" and prevent starvation via centrally managed granaries?
With £800K today, you may not even be able to afford the annual maintenance for his mansion and grounds. I knew somebody with a biggish yard in a small town and the garden was ~$40K/yr to maintain. Definitely not a Darcy estate either.
Thinking about it, an income of £800K is something like the interest on £10m.
Then from 1971 (when the USD became completely unbacked) to present, it increased by more than 800 points, 1600% more than our baseline. And it's only increasing faster now. So the state of modern economics makes it completely incomparable to the past, because there's no precedent for what we're doing. But if you go back to just a bit before 1970, the economy would have of course grown much larger than it was in the past but still have been vaguely comparable to the past centuries.
And I always find it paradoxical. In basic economic terms we should all have much more, but when you look at the things that people could afford on a basic salary, that does not seem to be the case. Somebody in the 50s going to college, picking up a used car, and then having enough money squirreled away to afford the downpayment on their first home -- all on the back of a part time job was a thing. It sounds like make-believe but it's real, and certainly a big part of the reason boomers were so out of touch with economic realities. Now a days a part time job wouldn't even be able to cover tuition, which makes one wonder how it could be that labor cost practically nothing in the past, as you said. Which I'm not disputing - just pointing out the paradox.
https://www.minneapolisfed.org/about-us/monetary-policy/infl...
It is notable that the median monthly rent was $35/month on a median income of $3000, so ~15% of income spent on rental housing. But it's interesting reading that report because a significant focus was on the overcrowding "problem". Housing was categorized by number of rooms, not number of bedrooms. The median number of rooms was 4, and the median number of occupants >4 per unit (or more than 1 person per room). I don't think it's a stretch to say that the amount of space and facilities you get for your money today is roughly equivalent. Yes, greater percentage of your income goes to housing, and yet we have far more creature comforts today then back in 1950--multiple TVs, cellphones, appliances, and endless amounts of other junk. We can buy many more goods (durable and non-durable) for a much lower percentage of our income.
There's no simple story here.