What country is the arsenal of today?

[Fu-man Shoe]

Antarti - It appears you have neither read nor understood my previous post.

Go back and try again. Reading is fundamental.

Edited to add:

BTW...It seems that your position is quite similar to mine...I am just not
convinced you actually read or understood what I said in my initial post,
as it appears you are trying to re-make a point I already made.

 

[Limeyfellow]

The Battle of Britain was won before the US even entered the war. Also remember the fighting such as with Japan had been going on since the mid 20s. I lost a couple of great uncles in that conflict. The Germans were in retreat since el alamein and stalingrad. Luckly the US helped speeded it up a bit.

We also paid back handsomely for the weapons on lend lease and bought before it including every bit of property we owned in the US, large amounts of Canadian property, just about every piece of gold and silver in the British treasury, advanced technology such as radar and many other contributions. It pretty much ended the British empire since it bankcrupted it. Then we got stabbed in the back and banned from the promised Lend Lease did do a good job of finicially funding the US for decades to go and causing it to be a super power, A great move by Roosevelt.

The US really did make a good profit. They armed the British with material, Russians and even the Germans. It was rather embarrassing that even in 1942 various prominent senators and businessmen were being caught dealing money and materials to the Germans, though for the most point apart from the likes of Henry Ford, Prescott Bush and so on most the US tended to be quite loyal to the country.

Alas many of the weapons where mainly destroyed as they were either worn out or simply outdated. Millions more were sold on to other countries and the rest simply cut up for scrap. Alas the communist scares of the 20s really has hampered British rights to own firearms.

As for the arms providers of today its clearly the US and Russia still followed by Britain. China really doesn't get up there with the big three.

 

[psyopspec]

M1 Carbine I don't really know since it was developed for use rear eschelon troops whose duty would require firepower greater than an m1911a1 and less than an m1 garand. Maybe an M4

Actually the M4 isn't the result of a need for a rear echelon weapon, but rather something smaller and lighter than a full-sized battle rifle for use at lesser distances such as urban environments.


Fu Man, you said regarding China:

Sure, they make a lot of cheap junk right now, for the American consumer market, but they could tool up to start cranking our various weapons, such as the ever prolific AK-47 virtually overnight, EN MASSE.

For the record, PRC and France did the most international business in arms trafficking in the last year. In the case of the former, much of the exports was indeed small arms. In Sudan for example, unbeatably low prices on mass produced goods (to include rifles) is a significant factor in the economic relationship China maintains in exchange for a monopoly on harvesting petro in the country. My point: they don't need to "tool up" as they're already there, but this is of little concern since any form of transportation they'd use to move their troops and weapons could be swatted out of the sky or, in the case of a ship, given sudden negative bouyancy by our superior technology.

 

[rangerruck]

america is now, and will be, until the Lord tarries, the arsenal of democracy. there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small arms mfgr, right here in the usa, producing a variety of weapons, you will never hear about all of them, the gov. media complex has a singular vision that you do not know about all of them.

 

[Byron Quick]

Germany was doomed without the US even becoming involved. The British Empire had more industry, more people, and more natural resources. They also had control of the sea through the Royal Navy.

British nuclear scientists, who later joined the Manhattan Project, were also already on the path that led to the atomic bomb.

Once Germany invaded Russia, it didn't have much of a chance unless things went extremely well in Russia.

The projected German invasion of Britain, Operation Sea Lion, never got off the drawing board. I've never seen a realistic way laid out for them to achieve naval superiority in the Channel and I don't think they ever achieved air superiority there either.

The U-Boat threat came closest to choking Britain of all German threats. Even there, it would have taken many more U-Boats than they had. Germany started too soon, they overestimated their strength and underestimated their enemies' strength.

Germany was behind Britain technologically in areas that turned out to be crucial...primarily electronic. Radar, sonar. Another advantage was in the retention of pilots. The majority of British pilots shot down in the Battle of Britain survived to fly again against the Germans. The vast majority of German pilots lost in the Battle of Britain were lost for good.

In 1944, even under the day and night bombing, Germany produced more fighter planes than any other nation. They didn't manage to get them to the airfields, though and often, when they managed to do so, there were either no pilots for them or woefully inexperienced pilots.

Personally, I think the German generals and admirals were limited strategists. Given Germany's reliance on seaborne trade for much of its needed resources and inability to vie for naval superiority with the British, I'd have told the Nazis that we could not go to war with Britain until we could do so from a stance of naval superiority. In 1939, that would have been quite some time. Apparently, they misjudged the relative strengths of the air arm as well as the relative strengths of the nations.

 

[Cosmoline]

there are hundreds, if not thousands, of small arms mfgr, right here in the usa, producing a variety of weapons, you will never hear about all of them,

What outfits are you talking about?

 

[Dionysusigma]

Probably someone like Valkyrie Arms, JLD, Vector, Masterpiece Arms, and so forth.

Wait, is this thread about production or about the Battle for Britain?

 

[Cromlech]

Wait, is this thread about production or about the Battle for Britain?

Hahaha, both now.

Thanks to Byron Quick and others, for sticking up for us limeys. It is true that we would not have been able to advance into Europe and defeat Germany on our own, definitely, but stop telling us that Hitler would have marched onto our little island, if it weren't for you! He got as far as the channel islands, but that was it.

Back on topic, I think that most of the worlds small arms are in the U.S.A, unless China has been ramping up production in recent years.

 

[antarti]

Go back and try again. Reading is fundamental.

Edited to add:

BTW...It seems that your position is quite similar to mine...I am just not
convinced you actually read or understood what I said in my initial post,
as it appears you are trying to re-make a point I already made.

Our positions are very similar (and pessimistic). I was adding a bit more to yours:

Even if we could get those latte/frappe/granita-machines and Starbucks "Barista's" re-tooled and re-educated to crank out weaponry (a task in itself), we would soon find that we don't have the natural resource base to get to WWII levels of production, at least not without starting another war... catch 22.

 

[230RN]

.22s and 7.62s are one thing... circuit boards and 16" naval rifles are another

Small arms are one thing, but something that's bothered me for the last couple of decades has been the apparent shift of large manufacturing facilities to overseas.

Where are we going to get the raw materials to manufacture the big stuff by the hundreds of thousands--ships, tanks, and the like?

I think we've closed down most of our mines and mills, no?

During the 9-11 cleanup, I was disappointed to see so much large equipment (cranes, 'dozers, loaders) there from foreign countries, notably France and Japan.

It seem to me you can talk about "the arsenal of Democracy," all you want, but most of the "arsenal" actually lies in the capability to rapidly switch over from producing cars and bridge girders to tanks and jeeps and naval cannon barrels... which, to my mind, we can no longer do on a large scale since so much heavy manufacture lies overseas nowadays.

And haven't environmental restrictions, etc, shut down too much of our heavy industry and raw-material mining capabilities?

And we speak of high-tech stuff, yet most of our circuit boards, "chips," etc, are manufactured out of the country. Sure, we can design high-tech electronics... but who's going to etch the circuit boards? We can't even use the usual solvents for cleaning them anymore... yet I am told that overseas, they just dump their used solvents down the drain and who cares?

Let's face it... even circuit boards are part of the "arsenal."

Am I off base here? Does anyone else see it that way? At present, can we possibly be the "arsenal" in the sense that we were during WWII?

Isn't that what the original poster meant to examine --not the relative production rates/merits of AKs and ARs and the like?

 

[rmmoore]

The AK-47? Hmmmmm, kind of ironic, don't you think? Ironic in that many posters think this "tool" is the new freedom arm, yet liberation and freedom are HARDLY what it's original intentions were for. But, I suppose I'll have to jump on the bandwagon here and agree. Agreement however, based solely upon the fact that it and it's variants, are the most prolific firearm on the planet. I don't own one, nor frankly, in all likelyhood ever will. I suppose if I feel I ever "need" one, I can take it from a corpse who had an overdose of some other brand of lead poisoning . If I fail to achieve this status, then I'm probably a side of rapidly cooling meat, and apparently won't be needing it anyway . Seriously though, all joking aside, I find it difficult to swallow the fact that I would defend my life and freedom with a tool that so boldly has taken away those freedoms (and lives) from millions, and pointed it's purpose toward me as well. One could also make the same point about the "beloved" AR-15/M-16, but, it's MADE IN THE USA !!!!!!!!!!!! I think I'd prefer an AMERICAN 7.62 anyway.

 

[telomerase]

We could return the favor and start dropping MOABs on the infested neighborhoods

! It's the bombs that "we" already dropped on the civilians that created the insurgency. The only people who would agree with your strategy would be the insurgent recruiting office.

 

[Fu-man Shoe]

While the United States has many small companies building weapons
of various descriptions, the majority are not all that large, and in all
probability consist of nothing more than the nescessary legal papers,
a small well equipped shop, and a couple of family members.

For example of what I am talking about, just open up a recent copy
of the Shotgun News, and see the 101 ads for bare receivers and custom
guns placed by new companies you have never even heard of.

Sure, we have lots of manufacturers, but they are all very small and
widely seperated. I don't believe they could be united to produce arms
on a meaningful scale, if it became necessary.

Of course, they'd give it the old college try. As Americans, that's what
we're famous for. However, we have fallen a long, long way from our
industrial superiority of yesteryear.

Surely you've heard of a thing called "the rust belt"? That's where our
heavy industry was. Now, it's just a run down, desolate, toxic
shell of it's former self. A memorial to better times, if you will.

Meanwhile, across the other side of the world, the machinery of the
thousands of nameless Chinese state-run factories grinds on endlessly.

...

Let me share a personal, nightmarish little vision with you. I can imagine,
in my minds eye, the factory where my ink-jet printer was built. Plastic
injection molding machines, precision circuitboard assembly, hundreds of
workers running around like busy little bees, just cranking out these rock
bottom priced ink-jet printers for sale in America.

Now imagine the Glorious People's Republic of China decides that they are
going to make the new QSZ92 pistol and thier Type 95 rifles in serious
quantity to arm their troops for the looming conflict with America.

That same factory where they used to build ink-jet printer housings has
now been converted over to make the polymer frame for the QSZ92, and
they mass produce them, day and night.

Now multiply that same scenario by several orders of magnitude. Cheap pots
and pans? Those same factories can stamp out plenty of AK receivers.
Factories turning out cheap weedwhackers for sale at Wal-mart? They can
easily retool to make barrels and other forgings. Almost every single factory
that makes anything for Harbor Freight Tool Stores can turn out as much
military hardware as they need. They have the capability we used to have.

...

In the meantime, I guarantee you that them Chinese folks over there aren't
taking a long four day weekend for Christmas. They're over there crankin 'em
out just as fast as they can.

Merry Christmas.

 

[Fosbery]

On the subject of Britain in WW2:

Most of our small arms were of British design. The notable exceptions being the Thompson SMG and the Browning machineguns used on various vehicles. Also, the Browning HP was used in limited numbers, produced by FN. In its later period, the SAS used German MP40s and some American M1 carbines but this was only a handful of guns, nothing notable.

However, a large number of our British designed weapons were manufactured in the US - primary the Lee Enfield rifles.

Also, a large number of our tanks were American Shermans and we used Willis jeeps. We also recieved a few obsolete destroyers.

There were shipments of civillian guns collected by the NRA etc which were to arm our Home Guard but the significance of this I think has been wildly over stated. In the end, the Home Guard were armed almost universally with purpose built Sten guns and P14s etc. Though the guns sent were greatly appreciated, they were not widely issued.

I think there is a tendency amongst Americans to believe that Britain was on the brink of collapse when the US army turned up and saved her. This is not the case. After the war, German commanders said in no uncertain terms that defeating Britain would have been impossible. Britain could not be forced to surrender through bombing and the German U boats were no longer capable of cutting off her supply lines. British bombing was doing more damage to Germany than vice versa. An invasion of Britain was completely out of the question. Indeed, a war game was played between the British and German commanders after the war. The game had to be based on the idea that the Royal Navy and Royal Air Force simply ceased to exist - otherwise the Germans would never have landed! With these conditions set, the Germans did land, but lasted just a few days before surrendering. They never even reached the first major line of British defence, so impossible was their position.

America's military might did not save Britain, but her industrial power surely did. If the US had not kept producing all the food that Britain needed, she would have starved. And for that I am truely grateful.

Europe on the other hand, well yeh, you saved them

 

[Cosmoline]

yet liberation and freedom are HARDLY what it's original intentions were for

First of all, firearms don't have intentions. Secondly, it was designed as a weapon for crushing the Nazis.

a tool that so boldly has taken away those freedoms (and lives) from millions, and pointed it's purpose toward me as well.

Nor do firearms take away freedoms. You're making the grave mistake of confusing the motives of individuals with the motives of firearms. Firearms have no motives.

 

[Byron Quick]

They have the capability we used to have.

OK, so they're in a position to win WWII. Y'all are overlooking something, no one will ever fight WWII again.

They can make all the polymer whatever rifles you want to dream up and AK47's....exactly how much force projection will that allow them?

Look at the reality of their technology. All but a bare handful of their weapons systems are copies of Soviet stuff...and copies that aren't even up to Soviet standards. Look at what happened during the first Gulf War. The Iraqi military was not armed with Chinese stuff...they were armed with the latest Soviet military state of the art. How'd that work? Not too good. We're close to being two generations ahead of a benchmark the Chinese haven't even reached yet.

They've got one nuclear submarine. It's so stealthy that our attack submarines can almost track it while docked at Pearl Harbor.

I wouldn't want to get in a land war in Asia with China but when you factor force projection, the ability to maintain a logistics tail anywhere in the world, and combined arms into the mix...China doesn't look so hot. They don't have a navy that could even come close to challenging a first class navy, their military aircraft are what? Three generations behind ours? How about precision munitions?

Their nuclear capability is just enough to commit national suicide against a first rank nuclear power.

They've got a huge army. They don't have the navy to protect the sea transport to take it anywhere. They don't have the air transport to take it anywhere. Even having the air transport, they don't have the air force to keep the nonexistent transports from being shot down.

There's a reason China hasn't engaged in the type of world wide trouble making the Soviet Union was so fond of. It's not because they've got better things to do. It's because they don't have the ability to cause that type of trouble.

The Chinese space program is based on technology purchased from the Russians. Smart move seeing as how the Russians outclassed everyone in space technology

 

[rangerruck]

if you are not sure of all the weapons mfgrs out there, just pick up a copy of , say , small arms review, or soldier of fortune, or swat or shotgun news, you will see a bunch of stuff , made by mfgrs, that you woulda swore did not exist.

 

[44AMP]

Battle of Britain

Two weeks. That is what top RAF officials have said. They were two weeks away from losing more than they could replace. Aircraft (fighter) production was keeping pace with losses (barely), but the RAF Fighter Command was running short of pilots. Even with the "home field advantage" (most shot down pilots recovered to fly again) they were running short. Transferring pilots from Bomber Command to fighters, and using foreign pilots (French, Poles, Czechs, and US volunteers) they were still running out.

Two more weeks of Luftwaffe attacks on RAF fighter bases would have pushed the RAF past the "tipping point". There is very little argument about this. This is what is claimed in books written after the war, by British officers who were involved.

Also, according to post war material from the Germans, Hitler never originally intended to invade England. It only became remotely possible because France folded up faster than anyone in the German High Command believed possible.

According to multiple sources, Hitler intended to make peace with England after the fall of France. He never seriously considered invasion until the British refused to enter in to peace talks.

Control of the air was needed for any invasion attempt to have a chance, and the Luftwaffe set out to achieve it. According to the British themselves, they nearly did. Two weeks. Think about it.

RAF Fighter Command got the time they needed to rebuild their strength due to Churchill's decision to sacrifice the British civil populace to Hitler's arrogance.

At this time general bombing of civilian targets (including factories) was not done by either side. Govt. arsenals located in cities were valid targets (like the London docks), but bombing civilian housing wasn't done. There were specific orders forbidding it.

During a night bombing raid August 24th, a German bomber gets lost, and believing they were over the countryside, dumps their bombs and heads home. They were actually over urban London. After returning to their base in France, the aircrew was summoned to Berlin and faced charges for violating their orders.

This accidental bombing was the excuse Churchill needed. At his urging, the next night, RAF bombers raided Berlin. Although the raid did no military damage, it upset Hitler. Four more small raids during the following few days uspset him even more. By the end of the week Hitler ordered the Luftwaffe to flatten English cities. In order to do this, they had to stop hitting RAF airfields. Churchill deliberately invited attack on his cities, in order to save his air force. The British people paid a terrible price, but in the end, it worked.

 

[Skibane]

What country is the arsenal of today?

56% of world's guns privately owned, report says

Source: Associated Pres via Arizona Republic
Published: July 11, 2001 (internet link no longer valid)

UNITED NATIONS - More than half the world's 551 million firearms are legally owned by private civilians rather than governments, with fewer than a million in the hands of insurgents, a new study on the global arms trade said Tuesday.

But those 910,000 weapons illegally in the hands of rebels, a minuscule 0.2 percent of the total, are responsible for much of the carnage inflicted by gunfire, some 1,500 deaths a day worldwide, the study said.

"The weapons problem is complex, multifaceted and long term; it is not going to disappear tomorrow," said Peter Batchelor, project director for the three-year survey by the Geneva-based Graduate Institute of International Studies.

Batchelor, a South African, and Canadian co-author Keith Krause presented the findings on the second day of a two-week U.N. conference aimed at finding ways to curtail illicit small-arms and light-weapons trafficking.

While calling the survey the most comprehensive ever on the subject, the authors conceded gaps in its findings, such as the lack of an estimate of illegally owned guns or figures on legal ownership in China, India, Pakistan and France.

Batchelor said there were also problems defining whether small arms have been traded legally and illegally, particularly when countries don't have laws governing weapons, as is the case in some African countries.

Some governments did not cooperate in the survey and others, such as China, were not asked, Krause said.

The study said its global figure of 550.91 million firearms was a "conservative estimate."

"A comprehensive total, including those missing categories, would be greater by tens to hundreds of millions more," it said.

The authors said the major surprises of their research were that about 56 percent of the known guns in the world were in private hands, owned legally by about 305 million people, and so few were held by rebel and paramilitary groups.

The legal ownership total is skewed by the fact that about 250 million legally owned guns are in the United States, 84 for every 100 people and about half the world's known firearms.

Among the key findings was that the United States has more than half the world's gunmakers and leads all nations in the manufacture and export of small arms and ammunition. Yet the industry, with 16,700 workers, contributes only $2 billion a year to the U.S. economy, compared with $28 billion from tobacco, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

 

[230RN]

MY favorite gun is the XYZ. Therefore we can win WW III.

rangerruck said,

if you are not sure of all the weapons mfgrs out there, just pick up a copy of , say , small arms review, or soldier of fortune, or swat or shotgun news, you will see a bunch of stuff , made by mfgrs, that you woulda swore did not exist.

We're still stuck on small arms. And how are you going to get the riflemen who are going to use this diverse and logistically nightmarish assortment of small arms across the sea? In recreational boats? If I recall correctly, we were producing one Liberty Ship a day at the Brooklyn Navy Yard. But building these ships --and the tanks and the trucks and the jeeps --requires iron and the mills to convert this to steel and roll it and forge it and cut it to shape.

Where is this raw material going to come from nowadays? Our own "rust belt?" Sure, we can make small arms from old refrigerators and rolled SUVs, but do we have the production capabilty to really put together a real war machine?

I don't think so. Not any more.

And frankly, this business of whether we won the war for the British is moot to this thread. We go back and forth on "we did this," and "they did that" merely because of personal loyalties. But the question is, "who is the World's arsenal today, now, in the 21st Century?"

Not back then during World War II.

And not with respect to small arms either. We seem to have got hung up on this as well. They do no good unless you have the industrial production capabilities to crank out ships and planes and rail cars in very large quantities to get them and the troops to where they're needed.

America cannot be the arsenal of the world any more. I wisecracked once that all we make nowadays are bytes.

Look elsewhere to find the industrial might to be a genuine arsenal and win a global war.

 

[44AMP]

Who is it today?

Right now, at this instant? One needs to set up some definition of scope in order to accurately answer that question. Some people are talking small arms, others heavy industry, or transportation, or resources, or ...

Just what needs to be included for consideration? You say we are not talking about WWII, but refer to the WWII situation and say we can't do it today.

Well, we didn't do it then either. Not instantly, not overnight. It took some time. And time is the one thing that is being left out of the discussion.

It takes time to gear an economy for wartime production. Those Liberty ships didn't come out of the shipyards at a rate of one a day starting Dec 8th, 1941.

We don't have the resources? I think we do. Just not in a form that is instantly utilised. Look around the country, and you will see that nearly all the "junk" (cars, etc) is from the 50s and later. Alot of the metal used during WWII came from "scrap". Scrap metal drives for the war effort collected significant amounts of useable material. And they would again today. Mines can be reopened, factories and foundries, shipyards and refineries can all be built or rebuilt. Workers trained or retrained. What it takes is a belief in the "need" for it to happen (willpower), and the time to do it.

Govt makes this happen, either by direct action (as in totalitarian systems), or by indirect action (our system generally) by allowing people to make a profit from getting it done. If the need was deemed great enough, laws and regulations that stand in the way of doing it would be waived and set aside "for the duration of the emergency".

It took this country about two years to get fully geared up for WWII, and the need was clear to all. For many things, peacetime rules didn't apply. If we felt ourselves in as dire a situation again, I have no doubt that we would be able to do it again. If we had the time.

Now, if you are not talking about a wartime (emergency) situation, we could still do it, if there was enough money in it. Today, at this moment, the public will isn't there. No need for us to be the world's arsenal, too many other things to make money at to bother with that. We don't have a need, we don't have the focus. But if we did, I believe not only that we could, but that we would.

To drag things back to WWII again (briefly), when informed that the USA was entering the war, Hermann Goering (head of the Luftwaffe) said "Don't worry about the Americans, all they can make is razor blades and refridgerators". A couple of years later, the Reich was being pounded by 1,000 bomber raids.

Don't think for an instant that we couldn't do it again if we wanted it bad enough.

 

[CornCod]

Er. right MOAB's on neighborhoods "infested" with women, children and non-combatant men. Darn those naughty Iraqis who dare to resist the American Empire! How dare they fight against people who would impose a foreign culture and customs on them from ten-thousand miles away!

 

[telomerase]

How dare they fight against people who would impose a foreign culture and customs on them from ten-thousand miles away!

Actually, US foreign aid imposes rule by bizarre kleptocracies on most nations. The Iraqis are probably less likely to change their culture simply because the imposition is so direct and obvious. As long as they were being oppressed by Saddam, they could imagine that it was being done by "their" tribe.

Now they know who to blame.

 

[rmmoore]

Okay Cosmoline,

You got me . Inanimate objects have no conscious, therefore no will or intent. They do however, have PURPOSE; that which their creator envisioned when he imagined, designed, and built them. A firearm is a tool when used as intended, a weapon when misused. So, were the millions of Government imposed executions performed with a tool (used as intended), or a misused weapon? I'm not trying to pick a philosophical fight, I've already admitted you "got me" on my original post . My point was simple, my explanation, perhaps not quite worded correctly. Hell I'm only human, almost .

 

[Cosmoline]

You need to take a step back and think about why you feel the way you do about the AK-47. Clearly, it's not sensible to blame the firearm for some misdeed done with it. But the media and many politicians have worked long and hard to make us think of certain firearms as inherently evil. The AK-47 is portrayed as a weapon of mass destruction. But of course in reality it's just a system of wood and steel. You should pick up a SAR-1 and cap off a few. It's a lot of fun!

Er. right MOAB's on neighborhoods "infested" with women, children and non-combatant men. Darn those naughty Iraqis who dare to resist the American Empire! How dare they fight against people who would impose a foreign culture and customs on them from ten-thousand miles away!

Don't confuse could with should. We could resolve the current IED problems in the triangle by either slaughtering the people there ourselves or letting the Sheit militias do it for us. Eventually it will probably happen without us. I never said we *should* do this, so calm down.