>The maximum rate of production is estimated to be 2,330 per year: Three contracts from Raytheon each have a capacity of 600 and a BAE has a contract to produce up to 530 missiles per year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which cites Pentagon budget documents.
>However, the actual procurement rate for the U.S. military is about 90 per year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Navy requested only 57 missiles for fiscal year 2026, according to Defense Department budget documents.
So the rate of production has been low because the procurement rate has been low.
The tomahawk entered service in 1983, in 2026 they only produced 57. DO THE MATH!
This means the military can only have (2025-1983) * 57 = 2394 Tomahawks.
But the military says they have approximately 3000-4000 tomahawks in inventory. Is it a conspiracy? How could they POSSIBLY have more than 2394 if they can ONLY MAKE 57 PER YEAR?!
prompt: rite me article about US only can make 57 tomohok missels a year but looks lik they have moar than that
"The burn rate is unsustainable: The US fired 850+ Tomahawk cruise missiles in 30 days but purchased only 57 in the FY2026 budget. That is 14.9 years of production consumed in a single month."
Does the author think the US can only make 57 missiles a year?
> Do you think the US has idle capacity that can be activated at a moment's notice?
I'm sure some very smart MBA increased profits by eliminating spare capacity or making cuts that would make it much harder to spin up. That's American business culture: focus on this quarter or this year, nothing else matters.
Does the US actually publish real numbers about weapons production? Color me skeptical, as strategically that would be very foolish*.
*Yes, the current administration is very foolish, but as far as I know they have not changed the policy in this area and if anything they would be more likely to lie than previous admins, right?
Yeah they do. At the end of the day the budgets are public, and when the US government wants more of something they don't make it in house. They put out a call for proposals for more of something, and private companies (e.g. general dynamics or raytheon) bid for the contract with very specifically defined requirements. I'm sure it is ripe information for foreign intelligence but it has been playing out like this for decades at this point.
There have been so many disclosures of secret things happening in past decades, decades after the fact. Did they stop doing that? This seems really naive to me.
That is stuff like cia shenanigans not 155mm shell production contracts though. Like they have to put those numbers out because its an order to fill and vendors have to be able to fulfill it...
Which should be a good waking up call to investigate the MIC about their abysmally low productivity. Iran is a good stress test for the airforce and logistics - and the lesson is that Taiwan is indefensible with current production rates.
If US stocks are so depleted after something that is barely a skirmish against 8th tier adversary - a lot of people that have been responsible for procurement in the last 20 years should lose their jobs.
Taiwan might be indefensible at any rate of production the United States could conceivably spin up within a practical time horizon.
The volume of fire that can be generated inside the 100km line by PLAN/PLAAF/PLAARF forces is nothing less than breathtaking. Even if you parked three Ford class carriers inside optimal mission radius, and their entire complement could take off and land in near-training conditions, and they don't need DCAP or electronic warfare coverage, *AND* if every single bomb and aircraft has a glassy-perfect mission right weapon to right target - EVEN WITH all these impossible conditions satisfied . . you're still not generating enough weapon effect to suppress even half of the PRC fire generation complex vis a vis a Taiwan situation. And they don't need half.
And that is not going to be the operational situation for USN. No, not by a long shot. If we're particularly unlucky, we might not ever know for sure what happened to the USS Whoever - just that it sailed into an electronic fog past Zamami and was gone. Rescued sailors could add little more.
The powers-that-be know this, the elected politicians know this (but don't care because they often have pockets stuffed from Chinese interests), but still we have chest beaters of the unstoppable American juggernaut. Yes, we do have a very big military - it's true! - but it's a military that the largest economy in the world has spent a good deal of its resources working to counter. For twenty years.
My greatest fear is that the chest beaters do assert direct control, court disaster, and have the worst possible reaction. I'm not confident in a sane response to a major surface asset being sunk; these are not people mentally geared to handle humiliation.
We're flirting this line already with Iran - with goddamn Iran of all people - where many People Who Should Know Better have already been flapping their mouths about breaking the taboo on First Use. For Iran.
>The maximum rate of production is estimated to be 2,330 per year: Three contracts from Raytheon each have a capacity of 600 and a BAE has a contract to produce up to 530 missiles per year, according to a report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which cites Pentagon budget documents.
>However, the actual procurement rate for the U.S. military is about 90 per year, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. The Navy requested only 57 missiles for fiscal year 2026, according to Defense Department budget documents.
So the rate of production has been low because the procurement rate has been low.
The tomahawk entered service in 1983, in 2026 they only produced 57. DO THE MATH!
This means the military can only have (2025-1983) * 57 = 2394 Tomahawks.
But the military says they have approximately 3000-4000 tomahawks in inventory. Is it a conspiracy? How could they POSSIBLY have more than 2394 if they can ONLY MAKE 57 PER YEAR?!
prompt: rite me article about US only can make 57 tomohok missels a year but looks lik they have moar than that
Does the author think the US can only make 57 missiles a year?
I'm sure some very smart MBA increased profits by eliminating spare capacity or making cuts that would make it much harder to spin up. That's American business culture: focus on this quarter or this year, nothing else matters.
*Yes, the current administration is very foolish, but as far as I know they have not changed the policy in this area and if anything they would be more likely to lie than previous admins, right?
https://www.war.gov/News/Releases/Release/Article/4026238/fa...
LOL
There have been so many disclosures of secret things happening in past decades, decades after the fact. Did they stop doing that? This seems really naive to me.
If US stocks are so depleted after something that is barely a skirmish against 8th tier adversary - a lot of people that have been responsible for procurement in the last 20 years should lose their jobs.
The volume of fire that can be generated inside the 100km line by PLAN/PLAAF/PLAARF forces is nothing less than breathtaking. Even if you parked three Ford class carriers inside optimal mission radius, and their entire complement could take off and land in near-training conditions, and they don't need DCAP or electronic warfare coverage, *AND* if every single bomb and aircraft has a glassy-perfect mission right weapon to right target - EVEN WITH all these impossible conditions satisfied . . you're still not generating enough weapon effect to suppress even half of the PRC fire generation complex vis a vis a Taiwan situation. And they don't need half.
And that is not going to be the operational situation for USN. No, not by a long shot. If we're particularly unlucky, we might not ever know for sure what happened to the USS Whoever - just that it sailed into an electronic fog past Zamami and was gone. Rescued sailors could add little more.
The powers-that-be know this, the elected politicians know this (but don't care because they often have pockets stuffed from Chinese interests), but still we have chest beaters of the unstoppable American juggernaut. Yes, we do have a very big military - it's true! - but it's a military that the largest economy in the world has spent a good deal of its resources working to counter. For twenty years.
My greatest fear is that the chest beaters do assert direct control, court disaster, and have the worst possible reaction. I'm not confident in a sane response to a major surface asset being sunk; these are not people mentally geared to handle humiliation.
We're flirting this line already with Iran - with goddamn Iran of all people - where many People Who Should Know Better have already been flapping their mouths about breaking the taboo on First Use. For Iran.
If anything I would say this means procurement has been closer to "right sized" than not.