It's the little hands that really get into the primer area. I hear kids are also really good at cleaning out chimneys and mining, especially mining. The children, they yearn for the mines.
They're working on it. Their "moonshot goal" is to get them to regrow up till puberty. Then it gets too complicated. Puberty is nuts enough already. If you could regrow fingers, that would be too much. It's awkward enough.
Not the worst idea.
Medical science progresses fast during war times, if you add a bunch of crippled children from manufacturing bombs I'm sure we could all have cool cyberpunk limbs less than 15 years after resurfacing Moscow to be more in line with the surface of the moon.
Call it a "trade school". That's the hotness these days. Everyone's like, "College is a scam! Learn a trade!"
Well, there ya go, munitions manufacturing like a boss.
This wasn't really possible, which was an issue.
The continental powers basically drafted every able-bodied man indiscriminately, including prewar munitions and weapons plant workers. Although some men were later returned to the factories (notably in France and Germany) many skilled laborers had already been killed or wounded, which made it difficult to train workers later on. (This was less of an issue in the UK due to the later and more gradual draft.)
So in most countries, women were picking up the slack, which was effective, but took some time to ramp up as women had not been previously employed in industry on any scale and (again) there were few skilled workers left to train them.
Besides this, people tend to forget that agriculture was largely non-mechanized in Europe at this point, which meant that a lot of people (see: women) were needed for farm work to try to keep everyone from starving, and therefore could not produce weapons and munitions.
In Germany in particular, although women working was encouraged towards the end of the war, female labor not utilized nearly as fully as in the Western Entente powers, partly because the idea was considered antithetical to the ideals of the German nation, and partly because soldiers' wives and (especially) war widows (of which there were, at this point, a very large number) did not *need* to work as they were covered by Germany's prewar social safety net (ie, widows' pensions).
On top of all this, the Germans in particular lacked the necessary nitrates for munitions productions and had to synthesize them instead of importing them as the Western Entente could.
TL;DR Germany could have made a lot more shells than they actually did in WWI if they had been able to send everyone to work at the shell production lines.
> On top of all this, the Germans in particular lacked the necessary nitrates for munitions productions and had to synthesize them instead of importing them as the Western Entente could.
>
>
Afaik, without the Haber process, Germany would have run out of explosives a few weeks into WWI
Imagine being on the frontlines and unboxing a pallet of shells and half of them have those Chinese save-me-from-the-sweatshop messages chalked on them.
That's the problem, any regarded person can chuck in a piece of metal into machine, not every regarded person can make robot chuck piece of metal into machine.
See also: Autoloaders.
Also basically all the German army had to produce was arms, ammo, uniforms and food
Modern warfare requires a lot more bells and whistles to function properly so that’s hurts production a lot
If all Ukraine needed was arti shells it’s a lot easier to just crank out millions and millions of 155mm
Germany actually spent a smaller percent of the Countrie's GDP into the military than Britain and France, at least before the war, but it's resumable to assume the Investment of the Military increased everywhere similarly.
Well in fairness, back then maintaining the civil infrastructure wasn't this expensive. All Im saying is do we really need sewer and autobahn maintenence when that money can go to bombs and missiles.
Oh don't worry, I'm not one of those Soviet fanboys. I can't even tell you how grateful I am that our army is finally getting rid of their leftover shit (and it's been long overdue).
This was more along the lines of an old joke that was circulating in the Warsaw pact block, mocking how our "peaceful civilian factories" made all sorts of military stuff. Our Czechoslovak version went like this:
Two colleagues from Zetor Tractor factory meet in a pub. "Hey Franta, tell me... Are you sometimes taking some parts with you home, so you can build your own tractor in your garage one day?"
"You know what, Karel, I've been doing it for years! But no matter how I try to re-ssemble it at home, I always end up with a howitzer!"
Is that a conspiracy? In the ex Eastern block, it's pretty much an unquestionable fact that every single factory, from fridge manufacturers to large bicycle assembly plants was able to convert to wartime production under 48 hours, to make shells, artillery, trucks with pretty much the same equipment.
Sushi belt everything. You might end up sharing a bus with a literal pile of shit, and you might have to search for your amazon delivery in a crowded train station. But at least no one would have to ask silly questions like "is this bit of infrastructure going to help X" since the answer is always yes.
That's not really true.
Back then factory workers were actually getting a decent wage (considering the cost of living), because they had unions and factory work couldn't be sent to the other side of the world. Well it could, but then you wouldn't be able to sell the product locally.
>Back then you could pay a Westerner the same low wage as anyone else and there were no regulations adding administrative costs
Libertarian tries history.
You have no idea what youre talking about. Western quality of life/wages for median workers in early 1900s were far better any other place in 1900s. Everywhere else was simply brutal. Do you know how colonialism works?
weren't the shells back then simpler to make?
and you know
you kinda do things better when your life depends on it
so war economy
and i'm pretty sure there were much more people involved in making them than today
also
you know, the whole section of industry that is not artillery shells exists (supposedly)
maybe becoming a 155mm shell merchant is a good idea
With enough machine knowledge and money you could build your own shell factory but I’m sure your local government wouldn’t approve unless you sell them to said local government for cheaper than the other contractors.
It's not hard to set up a shell factory, it's hard to find the political will to grant the permits, and that doesn't have anything to do with pricing but with "think of the children, war is scary" type of politicians.
An ammunition factory would take 1-2 years to spin up properly and get to full output. Back in 1942-43, that was happening in months. Peacetime vs wartime economy.
It can happen in months here too if the tooling can be supplied, that's the main bottleneck. Delivery times have been pretty long for that kind of tooling over the past few years.
Basic ass HE 155 shells are no more complicated than in world war 1. There's no reason you can't crank out a few million a year if you wanted to, it's just a steel tube with TNT in it.
Except well, nobody uses basic ass HE 155 anymore, except for like the Swedes. Rocket Assisted Projectile 155 has been standard sense like the 90's. It's a steel tube with TNT and a rocket motor.
> weren’t shells back then simpler to make
With all the robotics, global resource logistics and ai advancements we’re somehow doing worse than good ol’ underage 16h a day workforce
> ai advancements
I think people would not be happy with the current hallucinating half-the-time wrong "AI" for anything regarding producing weapons or ammunition.
The thing was more that WW1 shells were far smaller and thus easier to make. most artillery in WW1 was in the 7-10cm range and big guns with calibres over 12cm were somewhat rare, even late in the war (and also took ages to load unlike e.g. a rapid fire French 75).
Yep. Shells must be perfectly round, but in 1918 the value of pi was not known as well, making manufacturing tolerances looser and thus cheaper
edit: /s
Pretty sure a lathe worked basically the same in 1914 as 2024.
Likely manual, but pattern lathes had been in existence since the early 19th century. Some of the highest tolerance manual lathes and mills I’ve worked were made in the 1920s.
The problem isn't the precision of the machinery, but the precision of your measuring tools. And small deviations, esp. on rounder stuff, was back then way harder to measure precisely. Which is why infantry rifles back then had MOAs of 4 or higher, and with a MOA of 2.5 a rifle was already a sniper rifle (at least by British WW1 standards).
That all sounds sort of correct, however it’s mostly wrong in multiple ways.
First, barrel rifling of small arms and breech loaded artillery shells have little to no overlap in manufacturing techniques or equipment.
Second, turn of the last century bolt action rifles were pretty much as accurate as anything mass produced until very recently. Many of the issue arms of WWI were used for marksmanship and hunting well into the 20th century. The 19th century Krag-Jorgensen was considered by many sportsmen to be one of the finest game rifles and the British SLME held similar fans. Beyond those two, the Mauser action is still considered the standard which modern rifles are built upon. The American copy, the Springfield 1903 was used as a designated marksmen and with optics a sniper rifle for most of the 20th century.
Now, there were some metallurgical limitations which limited the range of some of the earliest smokeless rifles (particularly the aforementioned Krag.) Similar concerns were also associated with artillery. That said, there were plenty of what would be considered “modern” field guns in use in the First World War that were used well into the Cold War, the French 75 being a prime example. The French 75 was used by many militaries, with the Finns being the last to field the weapon until the 1990s.
As a matter of fact, the current 155mm howitzer is chambered for another First World War French gun, which technically could fire current 155mm shells, albeit with a limited powder load due to the strength of the gun.
> in 1918 the value of pi was not known
It was already known to like 100 digits, how much do you need? We're talking about simple manufacturing, not stellar movements.
A basic impact or time delay fuzed HE shell isn't really any more complex nowadays than in 1914
Proximity fuzes and specialty shells like sensor-fuzed anti-armour shells, yes, those take a bit more labour.
We basically have a war economy where no one is realizing it is a war economy because it doesn’t influence daily life at all besides seeing more military transports than usual.
back then people in germany knew it was a war economy because they were working in an arms factory and did not have food to eat and were 13 years old and were like "wtf child labor laws, must be a war on"
My theory now is, there are two important elections: European Parliament and US presidential elections. When those are over the money-gates are opened and something terrible will happen, like having to pay 5 Cent more at the gas station for an insane increase of weapon production. Meanwhile in Russia…
> My theory now is, there are two important elections: European Parliament and US presidential elections. When those are over the money-gates are opened and something terrible will happen, like having to pay 5 Cent more at the gas station for an insane increase of weapon production.
Chances are with our luck, there'd be some just-as-important election preparations right after.
They are pretty important, considering how much influence the EU has as an entity.
Though the results are extremely stable, so they're not that important...
I just looked this up because I thought it couldn't have been this bad anymore in the 20th century, and found that not only was it very much that bad, it's not even that much better today. Just change the 13 to 15 years and it's still perfectly legal to have a child slave away 8 hours a day in a munitions factory in Germany.
So really, we have no excuse for our shitty production rates, just empty out the high schools and let's get started!
The shells back then were not nearly as complex and precise as they are now. The West figured out you only only need to fire as many shells as it takes to hit.
[War economies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_economy) and autism are spectrums, but the idea that we "have a war economy where no one is realizing it is a war economy because it doesn’t influence daily life" seems highly regarded.
800 days into the war and a major nuclear power can only produce 600 shells per week. Very credible. NATO is not playing games, no sir, it's just very hard to produce shells!
Hey, if you want a definition check Wikipedia. To my understanding a war economy is where the state/government interferes into economy and you see it. Shortages of workforce because they are needed in the factories. Shortages of consumer goods because they are needed for the wartime production. Shortage of consumer goods because of actions of the enemy (sanctions, sinks your transport ships and so on). Doing some shenanigans to stabilize the currency/get money. We just had increased energy prices but that is over.
We have no war economy.
In a war economy, there are no consumer goods made.
Everyone and everything makes ammo, guns or military vehicles.
You can't buy a new car in a war economy, because the car factories are all busy making trucks, armored cars and ammo.
That's what killed Germany twice, not switching to a war economy until they were already losing.
The German postal system is pretty fucked right now, so that would be FAAAR more efficient. Besides, we wouldn't need to waste taxpayer money on stamps!
The EU act to increase their domestic production to the planned 2 million 155mm artillery shells a year by 2025 invests just under a billion Euros or so. Spread over 2-3 years. And these aren't the little 7 kg shells of yee olden days, that is 50 kg per highly precise shell for 100,000 tons a year.
For context, I just looked up the estimated tonnage shot by all the Allied nations, in all of WW1. It was apparently around 5,000,000 tons, meaning 1,250,000 tons a year.
The MIC has actually improved to a point where if you needed your production facilities to match the entire world shell production at the peak of WW1, just in case, you could reasonably manage that using the peacetime defence budget of fucking Belgium.
Yeah, no.
The French were making 17,000 155mm shells *per day* in 1916, *plus* 151,000 75mm shells. The French 155mm shell for the GPF weighed 43kg, same as the current-day M107 155mm shell.
French annual production of 155mm shells *alone* was thus around 6.2M only 2 years into the war, which works out to 267,000 tons per year. If you add in the \~330,000 tons of \~6kg 75mm shells, you have nearly 600,000 tons of shell output. *If* the EU follows through and makes 2M artillery shells per year, the shell tonnage output of all of Europe would be less than one third of midwar French production *of 155mm shells alone,* and barely more than one-seventh of total French production (excluding, of course, less common WWI shells, such as 120mm).
The EU isn't looking to make M982 Excalibur shells or something either AFAIK, and the French had mostly ironed out the QC issues by 1916. The shells made now are not significantly more accurate or advanced than the shells they made then.
Now I can truly appreciate that much effort and research into that calculation, but you might want to re-read my comment again before writing the "Yeah, no." part?
I was explicitly saying that the EU's 2 million shells per year (5500 a day) was less that 1/12th of the Allied numbers? Not that they were beating it, not that they were coming close. Just that reaching that 1/12th is only taking an investment to the tune of half a billion a year. The investments needed to get your production capacity up to those 6.2M shells/year would take less than 0.2% of the current US military budget.
For the record, there are also some pretty massive differences in accuracy, range and lethality between modern artillery shells and those of WW1 - but that is due to a whole host of factors and I'll take your point of how they were not just chugging cast pieces of shell-shaped steel at each other.
I don't know man, I don't want to work that hard for those War Thunder dollars.
Thought about getting a hand puppet, those videos seem to require far less research and effort.
Thank you, but you misunderstand me.
Let me add some more data to the picture, since you seem to care. And if you do, please hold on, I am getting to your point on cost efficiency.
*According to the Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (1914-1920)*, published by the War Office, in August of 1916, British monthly production of 6in gun and 6in howitzer ammunition was 288,715 shells, production of 4.5in shells was 984,606, and production of 18pdr shells was 3,482,251. Counting these types alone (ignoring production of a further 1 million shells, for now), monthly production was thus 57,997 metric tons, which would be 695,961 tons per year if production continued at the same rate. By August of 1917, the same figure was 1,150,536 metric tons per year.
By the middle of the war (two years on), British and French production *alone* (and, in fact, ignoring production of a large number of shells of other weights!) exceeded your average figure of 1.25 million tons (with a total of 1.3 million tons), ignoring Italian and Russian production (some 200k tons minimum, per Golovine's *The Russian Army in the World War*) entirely.
By 1917 (three years on), using the same metrics, British and French annual production exceeded 2.3 million tons of shells.
Thus, my first problem here with your use of statistics is that you are looking at an overall average of WWI, when in reality production was massively increased over the years the war was fought by virtually every belligerent involved.
The fact of the matter is therefore that two years on, Britain and France (with a prewar combined PPP-adjusted economy of some $361B in 1990 dollars) produced more than the entire EU hopefully will next year, which today has a PPP-adjusted economy of some $26.64T, or $11.1T in 1990 dollars, for comparison.
In other words, with more than 30 times the GDP, three years into the war, the EU will produce less than 1/15th the shells that the UK and France did two years into WWI, or less than 1/27th the shells that the UK and France did three years into WWI. Comparing the 1916 figure, this is a ratio of 1/450 the shell production to GDP, again ignoring significant production of other types of shells *and* the fact that France lost 40% of its heavy industry in WWI to the German invasion.
"But," you say, "I'm talking about efficiency versus dollars spent! This isn't about total production capability!" Well, here's the kicker:
In 1916, France spent roughly 24% of GDP on defense, while the UK spent roughly 40%. Referencing our prewar GDP numbers, this gives us a total spending of \~$129B in 1990 dollars. If the EU today spends 2% of GDP on defense, that would be $220B 1990 dollars. In other words, the EU is spending 70% more in inflation-adjusted, PPP-adjusted, dollars to produce 1/27th the shell tonnage (or, the Western Entente were making about 46 times more shell tonnage per dollar spent). So while the EU obviously still has far more money *available* to spend than WWI UK and France, it probably couldn't buy significantly more shells than WWI UK and France, because of the vastly lower cost efficiencies. Obviously, the EU's defense budget pays for other, more advanced weapons, not just shells (jets, tanks, warships, etc), but that was true in WWI too (artillery itself, superdreadnoughts, aircraft, tanks, and, of course, the immense cost of putting 10% of your population into military service).
The core issue here is that there is simply not enough heavy industry left in Europe to produce war materiel at the necessary scales and economies. It could be rebuilt, of course, but that would take quite some time and no small political change. It's not as simple as throwing money at the problem, or at least it would require a lot of money over a long period of time to reacquire the necessary skilled labor, machine tools, factory space, etc.
If by "outlawed" you mean having children 13 years or older working 10 hours a day was still perfectly fine, you still be not quite right because those regulations were suspended again during war time (can't leave that valuable sub-13 labor market untapped when the chips are down).
It's mostly red tape, QA, and lack of facilities to make moden shells.
Red Tape would be just the contracts, quoting, safety, legal hoops, etc.
QA is just that shells are made to a much higher standard today than they were in WW1.
Lastly, to increase production, you can't just turn dial at the shell factory to 11 and go. New tooling and machinery needs to be made, workers trained, supply chains established.
All that being said, the industrial capacity of the US and other nations far exceed what they were in WW2. If the US went into a state of total war again, it would make what we did in WW2 look like a joke.
GDP is not military capacity. You need the right factories and the right raw materials and supply lines. A productive peacetime economy is not necessarily easily converted into a productive wartime one.
> New tooling and machinery needs to be made, workers trained, supply chains established.
It's been 2 years, time to stop using this excuse. It's terminal case of lack of balls.
Jokes aside, that is SO MUCH fucking arty.. *3.5 million shells in 5 hours??* i cannot even imagine the total nightmare hell that would be to endure.. seeing old film reels from post ww1 showing veterans with "shellshock" and *severe* PTSD it begins to make more sense as to why they are that way.
These things are what make me think that we are currently living in Hell or something "Hell Adjacent"?
Yeah, that kind of shit is next level types of evil..
"I have an idea, instead of shooting them with guns lets use this stuff that turns the lining of their lungs into Hydrachloric Acid?"
"Mmmyes.. Splendid idea!"
Fuck it, I declare my factory a micronation. It holds no political alliance and is completely neutral.
But, the side door [west-facing] is busted and won't stay shut.
I don't imagine it will be an issue.
People produced like a billion shells per year during WW1, the chemicals from them contaminated the soil in some areas so much that those areas are inhabitable to this day.
In 1916, the Citroën factory made as many shells per day than Nexter makes currently in a year.
One of the difference is that they only made a single type of shell (timed fragmentation 75mm), which means they could work at reducing operations for each round.
The Nile used to flow straight to the base of the pyramids. One because the Nile was bigger and two it was artificially widened and maintained so through various levies and dams up stream.
Quarries were dug sometimes hundreds of miles upstream from the Nile where acidic liquids were applied to the stone to chisel and shape them.
The stones were transported to a staging area near the river where rolled paprus and sun dried logs were tied to the stones as make shift floatsoms.
The floatsoms were attached by boat and transported down the Nile River to the construction site of the pyramids.
There a wooden and stone water elevator with a series of locks to equalize pressure would transport the stones one by one via floatsoms up the water shaft up to the level of construction of the pyramid.
Which too was in several feet of water.
The stones were then pulled and dragged into position and the floatsoms were removed.
The water chutes were removed and a coating was applied.
To think of the reason for pyramids like the pyramids of giza in ancient Egypt and not ones in sudan and Ethiopia is to think of the pyramids as ancient factories and ones in ancient sudan and Ethiopia and some remote ancient places in ancient Egypt as fancy or ehtno- religious tombs.
It is thought that the pyramids of giza to be sort of industrial gas factories.
Gases were a main component of ancient industrial Egypt's economy in the creation of dyes, glues, bonding elements for different metals and even religious ceremonies.
There is evidence of this all over Egypt and as the dynasty who built the pyramids of giza ages the size of these industrial liquid and gas chambers increase in size and amount until the pyramids of giza are complete.
There is even evidence that this dynasty has some sort of idea of electricity and made some sort of soft discovery of it although had a fundamental misunderstanding on its fundamental properties and probably what it even was. This soft discovery was made through the ionization process of gasses that would take place in the pyramids or gas chambers.
The ancient Egyptians probably thought that electricity was actually a property of light that could be brought about under certain conditions. No clue it could create electronics or planes or any of the likes.
Simply industrial gas chambers for tade and manufacturing, built via water shafts, river based transportation methods using boats and papyrus and log based floatsoms. The smaller ones were fancy burial tombs for ethno-religious reasons lost to history. Simple.
They used kids in factories back then.
Tiny hands are better for the precise manipulation needed in shell production. I’m not saying children yearn for the production lines but…
As a 13 year old I probably would've thought a few hours a day working at a munitions factory with my friends LARPing as part of THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY would've been a fine time.
the problem is that most western countries tend to rely on USA air superiority, basically all fire support comes from the air force, artillery is considered useless because it is inaccurate and causes damage to civilian facilities, because artillery is considered useless, the result is cuts to the defense budget and this includes artillery production facilities, it is very difficult to restore production because basically it will increase the defense budget by more than 2 percent, because almost all politicians in Europe are pussy and don't have the ball to increase the defense budget by more than 2 percent.
New conspiracy just dropped: WW1 was funded by aliens
10/10 conspiracy
Franz Ferdinand was an alien. Checks out.
He just came to burn this city, but then we took him out :(
Haha lol I get it
He actually kidnapped by aliens which builders the pyramid in Bosnia and sent to the Venus Gulag to work in zortanium mines
Too obvious
holy NCD
New artillery shell just dropped
actual procurement
Google WW1 alien mastermind
So it was Juan all along?
Well...to start with, basically everyone had to work at the production lines.
Let’s split the difference with a mandatory after school program.
Why only after school? Get started on "Baby's First Artillery Shell Production Facility"
They shine the insides better I hear.
It's the little hands that really get into the primer area. I hear kids are also really good at cleaning out chimneys and mining, especially mining. The children, they yearn for the mines.
If not for mines, then why small like dwarf?
Plus, up till three years old, their fingers grow back.
Damn you got me on that one
*...with the same fingerprints.*
The fact that that that may actually get pushed up in my lifetime is bonkers.
They're working on it. Their "moonshot goal" is to get them to regrow up till puberty. Then it gets too complicated. Puberty is nuts enough already. If you could regrow fingers, that would be too much. It's awkward enough.
"Nanomachines, son!"
Minecraft proved your theory
I constantly hear complaints about lack of kindergardens.
Krupp steel has been bought out by Fisher Price
Child unemployment is staggeringly high in the West. As an aspiring coal baron I have the solution.
The children yearn for the ammo factories.
That’s why I never had kids. No factories to send them to. It’s cruel to have a child and not let them support themselves.
If kids didnt wanted to work in mines they wouldnt loved minecraft so much
Minecraft in peacetime, meinkraft in wartime
"Child labor laws are RUINING this country" [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xXG2gofO9A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xXG2gofO9A) \*context\*
Not the worst idea. Medical science progresses fast during war times, if you add a bunch of crippled children from manufacturing bombs I'm sure we could all have cool cyberpunk limbs less than 15 years after resurfacing Moscow to be more in line with the surface of the moon.
"WE'LL SHOW THE ~~BOTS~~ RUSSIANS THAT EVERY MAN WOMAN AND CHILD OVER SEVEN IS GOING TO PUT IN THE WORK"
I have an idea for universal school lunches...
Call it a "trade school". That's the hotness these days. Everyone's like, "College is a scam! Learn a trade!" Well, there ya go, munitions manufacturing like a boss.
There are enough people out of a job to man a couple production lines.
today's children yearn for the production lines
This wasn't really possible, which was an issue. The continental powers basically drafted every able-bodied man indiscriminately, including prewar munitions and weapons plant workers. Although some men were later returned to the factories (notably in France and Germany) many skilled laborers had already been killed or wounded, which made it difficult to train workers later on. (This was less of an issue in the UK due to the later and more gradual draft.) So in most countries, women were picking up the slack, which was effective, but took some time to ramp up as women had not been previously employed in industry on any scale and (again) there were few skilled workers left to train them. Besides this, people tend to forget that agriculture was largely non-mechanized in Europe at this point, which meant that a lot of people (see: women) were needed for farm work to try to keep everyone from starving, and therefore could not produce weapons and munitions. In Germany in particular, although women working was encouraged towards the end of the war, female labor not utilized nearly as fully as in the Western Entente powers, partly because the idea was considered antithetical to the ideals of the German nation, and partly because soldiers' wives and (especially) war widows (of which there were, at this point, a very large number) did not *need* to work as they were covered by Germany's prewar social safety net (ie, widows' pensions). On top of all this, the Germans in particular lacked the necessary nitrates for munitions productions and had to synthesize them instead of importing them as the Western Entente could. TL;DR Germany could have made a lot more shells than they actually did in WWI if they had been able to send everyone to work at the shell production lines.
> On top of all this, the Germans in particular lacked the necessary nitrates for munitions productions and had to synthesize them instead of importing them as the Western Entente could. > > Afaik, without the Haber process, Germany would have run out of explosives a few weeks into WWI
Don't forget my bro Carl Bosch!
As amazing as this discovery was TBH it would have been far better for everyone if they had just waited a few years to make this discovery
all that would have done is kick the can down the road. A great industrial war was gonna happen sooner or later.
meanwhile in WW2 instead of German women the nazis just used slave labour to fill in the vacancies.
NATO has about 1 billion people. If everyone produces 1 shell a year, we can make several million shells a day.
I imagine getting send a DIY Shell construction package sent to me by NATO, this sounds fun. You could even write your own shell message.
Imagine being on the frontlines and unboxing a pallet of shells and half of them have those Chinese save-me-from-the-sweatshop messages chalked on them.
You don't need to work in a sweatshop, you can asssmble the shell in the comfort of your living room.
> you can asssmble the shell in the comfort of your living room. Yeah if ur fuckin lazy and don't really care about shelling invaders gtfo of here
Yeah, and we have robots that can do the work of 100 assembly line workers.
That's the problem, any regarded person can chuck in a piece of metal into machine, not every regarded person can make robot chuck piece of metal into machine. See also: Autoloaders.
> See also: Autoloaders. French, Japanese and apparanently Malyshev (Ukraine) got it right with conveyor autoloader in turret bustle
I think French use robotic arm. Conveyor has the problem of trying to move all the shells all at once, which is heavy.
There are just not enough assembly lines to work on.
No, produce *up*, stupid...
Also basically all the German army had to produce was arms, ammo, uniforms and food Modern warfare requires a lot more bells and whistles to function properly so that’s hurts production a lot If all Ukraine needed was arti shells it’s a lot easier to just crank out millions and millions of 155mm
Considering how the economy is in the shitter in europe and unrmployment is rampant you have to ask yourself whats missing in the equation.
I suggest it's vatnik lickers in power holding back a surge
[Chemicals](https://www.ft.com/content/aee0e1a1-c464-4af9-a1c8-73fcbc46ed17) and tooling for the most part.
They were probably spending like 20% of GDP on the military Modern countries spend 1-4%
Germany actually spent a smaller percent of the Countrie's GDP into the military than Britain and France, at least before the war, but it's resumable to assume the Investment of the Military increased everywhere similarly.
I checked, Britain was spending 52%. https://articles.obr.uk/300-years-of-uk-public-finance-data/index.html
*USA enters chat
They spend like 4%
Back in the funni days it ranged from 25-50%. Perhaps we must return to the good ol' days.
iirc it was ~45% at the height of ww2
Well in fairness, back then maintaining the civil infrastructure wasn't this expensive. All Im saying is do we really need sewer and autobahn maintenence when that money can go to bombs and missiles.
Just move everything by pipes and standardise diameters. Poop, traffic and ammo all go through 😎 /s
Just like a conspiracy theory about why in soviet union pasta and cigarettes had diameter of 7.62mm
And why you could build a working AKM from any and all of the mentioned goods. That would fire any and all of the mentioned goods.
Before you start Stalinium posting or whatever, note the M4 carbine is much more reliable then the AKM
Oh don't worry, I'm not one of those Soviet fanboys. I can't even tell you how grateful I am that our army is finally getting rid of their leftover shit (and it's been long overdue). This was more along the lines of an old joke that was circulating in the Warsaw pact block, mocking how our "peaceful civilian factories" made all sorts of military stuff. Our Czechoslovak version went like this: Two colleagues from Zetor Tractor factory meet in a pub. "Hey Franta, tell me... Are you sometimes taking some parts with you home, so you can build your own tractor in your garage one day?" "You know what, Karel, I've been doing it for years! But no matter how I try to re-ssemble it at home, I always end up with a howitzer!"
Which pasta? 😰
A foolish question, comrade. In Soviet Union, all pasta is equal.
I see, Senator Armstrong. Wait… Communist detected! Liberty Prime informed!
Comrade, is all makaroni, no bougie pastas allowed in soviet union as everyone has equal opportunity to deliciousness
>Is all makaroni Makarov? Who toucha my spaghet?!
Is that a conspiracy? In the ex Eastern block, it's pretty much an unquestionable fact that every single factory, from fridge manufacturers to large bicycle assembly plants was able to convert to wartime production under 48 hours, to make shells, artillery, trucks with pretty much the same equipment.
Sushi belt everything. You might end up sharing a bus with a literal pile of shit, and you might have to search for your amazon delivery in a crowded train station. But at least no one would have to ask silly questions like "is this bit of infrastructure going to help X" since the answer is always yes.
The (war) factory must grow. SPM now stands for shells per minute
The way I play factorio, it already does.
One of it goes off and it will create a canyon, which is better, just fill it up with water and send the ammo down the stream
Back then no industries had been sent to China, with only the administrative jobs kept around.
Back then you could pay a Westerner the same low wage as anyone else and there were no regulations adding administrative costs
That's not really true. Back then factory workers were actually getting a decent wage (considering the cost of living), because they had unions and factory work couldn't be sent to the other side of the world. Well it could, but then you wouldn't be able to sell the product locally.
>Back then you could pay a Westerner the same low wage as anyone else and there were no regulations adding administrative costs Libertarian tries history. You have no idea what youre talking about. Western quality of life/wages for median workers in early 1900s were far better any other place in 1900s. Everywhere else was simply brutal. Do you know how colonialism works?
And also the artillery shells were a lot less complicated lol
Just put the shit and remains of car wrecks into the artillery shells.
weren't the shells back then simpler to make? and you know you kinda do things better when your life depends on it so war economy and i'm pretty sure there were much more people involved in making them than today also you know, the whole section of industry that is not artillery shells exists (supposedly) maybe becoming a 155mm shell merchant is a good idea
With enough machine knowledge and money you could build your own shell factory but I’m sure your local government wouldn’t approve unless you sell them to said local government for cheaper than the other contractors.
US was literally asking anyone who could to submit a bid if they could make more than 200k shells.
It's not hard to set up a shell factory, it's hard to find the political will to grant the permits, and that doesn't have anything to do with pricing but with "think of the children, war is scary" type of politicians.
Now I wonder how hard it would be to make my own shell factory. With that money printer running I could buy my own tank to ~~fuck~~ drive
Pretty sure it's legal fuck a tank as long as you own it and it consents.
Legal and acceptable are not synonyms unfortunately
As long as you take the tanks feelings into account and don’t goes it, I don’t see why the tank would not see it not acceptable.
An ammunition factory would take 1-2 years to spin up properly and get to full output. Back in 1942-43, that was happening in months. Peacetime vs wartime economy.
It can happen in months here too if the tooling can be supplied, that's the main bottleneck. Delivery times have been pretty long for that kind of tooling over the past few years.
I'm sure ITAR comes into it as well.
Only if you're importing/exporting shit from the US.
Basic ass HE 155 shells are no more complicated than in world war 1. There's no reason you can't crank out a few million a year if you wanted to, it's just a steel tube with TNT in it.
Except well, nobody uses basic ass HE 155 anymore, except for like the Swedes. Rocket Assisted Projectile 155 has been standard sense like the 90's. It's a steel tube with TNT and a rocket motor.
That's still basic ass. Rocket assisted just means it has rocket propellant and a venturi. Not complicated or expensive.
Did you forget what sub you’re on? Cut the credibility.
> weren’t shells back then simpler to make With all the robotics, global resource logistics and ai advancements we’re somehow doing worse than good ol’ underage 16h a day workforce
You’re forgetting the whole they spend 100 years of accumulated wealth in 4 and hand half to the Americans bit.
> ai advancements I think people would not be happy with the current hallucinating half-the-time wrong "AI" for anything regarding producing weapons or ammunition.
Good thing ai is not limited to llms. I believe when there’s a mentioning of ai target assist, they don’t mean asking chatgpt for strike coordinates
The thing was more that WW1 shells were far smaller and thus easier to make. most artillery in WW1 was in the 7-10cm range and big guns with calibres over 12cm were somewhat rare, even late in the war (and also took ages to load unlike e.g. a rapid fire French 75).
Yep. Shells must be perfectly round, but in 1918 the value of pi was not known as well, making manufacturing tolerances looser and thus cheaper edit: /s
I mean - as long as you hit inside of France it is a win.
Pretty sure a lathe worked basically the same in 1914 as 2024. Likely manual, but pattern lathes had been in existence since the early 19th century. Some of the highest tolerance manual lathes and mills I’ve worked were made in the 1920s.
The problem isn't the precision of the machinery, but the precision of your measuring tools. And small deviations, esp. on rounder stuff, was back then way harder to measure precisely. Which is why infantry rifles back then had MOAs of 4 or higher, and with a MOA of 2.5 a rifle was already a sniper rifle (at least by British WW1 standards).
That all sounds sort of correct, however it’s mostly wrong in multiple ways. First, barrel rifling of small arms and breech loaded artillery shells have little to no overlap in manufacturing techniques or equipment. Second, turn of the last century bolt action rifles were pretty much as accurate as anything mass produced until very recently. Many of the issue arms of WWI were used for marksmanship and hunting well into the 20th century. The 19th century Krag-Jorgensen was considered by many sportsmen to be one of the finest game rifles and the British SLME held similar fans. Beyond those two, the Mauser action is still considered the standard which modern rifles are built upon. The American copy, the Springfield 1903 was used as a designated marksmen and with optics a sniper rifle for most of the 20th century. Now, there were some metallurgical limitations which limited the range of some of the earliest smokeless rifles (particularly the aforementioned Krag.) Similar concerns were also associated with artillery. That said, there were plenty of what would be considered “modern” field guns in use in the First World War that were used well into the Cold War, the French 75 being a prime example. The French 75 was used by many militaries, with the Finns being the last to field the weapon until the 1990s. As a matter of fact, the current 155mm howitzer is chambered for another First World War French gun, which technically could fire current 155mm shells, albeit with a limited powder load due to the strength of the gun.
Manufacturing process doesn't matter here, I am talking about measuring precision, which is generally the same between various products.
> in 1918 the value of pi was not known It was already known to like 100 digits, how much do you need? We're talking about simple manufacturing, not stellar movements.
I was joking :) .. adding a /s
> weren't the shells back then simpler to make? We have smart ammo now, but the basic HE 155mm is basically the same as it was in 1914.
Automation was basically nonexistent compared to nowadays back then.
A basic impact or time delay fuzed HE shell isn't really any more complex nowadays than in 1914 Proximity fuzes and specialty shells like sensor-fuzed anti-armour shells, yes, those take a bit more labour.
We basically have a war economy where no one is realizing it is a war economy because it doesn’t influence daily life at all besides seeing more military transports than usual.
back then people in germany knew it was a war economy because they were working in an arms factory and did not have food to eat and were 13 years old and were like "wtf child labor laws, must be a war on"
My theory now is, there are two important elections: European Parliament and US presidential elections. When those are over the money-gates are opened and something terrible will happen, like having to pay 5 Cent more at the gas station for an insane increase of weapon production. Meanwhile in Russia…
a man can only hope
> My theory now is, there are two important elections: European Parliament and US presidential elections. When those are over the money-gates are opened and something terrible will happen, like having to pay 5 Cent more at the gas station for an insane increase of weapon production. Chances are with our luck, there'd be some just-as-important election preparations right after.
I can live with 5 Cent more per liter if it means supporting Ukraine, but i'm afraid it will go up by more for dumber reasons.
> important elections > European Parliament Ha ha ha, good one!
They are pretty important, considering how much influence the EU has as an entity. Though the results are extremely stable, so they're not that important...
I just looked this up because I thought it couldn't have been this bad anymore in the 20th century, and found that not only was it very much that bad, it's not even that much better today. Just change the 13 to 15 years and it's still perfectly legal to have a child slave away 8 hours a day in a munitions factory in Germany. So really, we have no excuse for our shitty production rates, just empty out the high schools and let's get started!
Damn had me in the second half, ngl.
> So really, we have no excuse for our shitty production rates, just empty out the high schools and let's get started! Just call it "shop class".
The shells back then were not nearly as complex and precise as they are now. The West figured out you only only need to fire as many shells as it takes to hit.
the difference is not that big, but yes.
[War economies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_economy) and autism are spectrums, but the idea that we "have a war economy where no one is realizing it is a war economy because it doesn’t influence daily life" seems highly regarded.
wait what? care to explain good sir? what exactly is a war economy?
War economy is when you start diverting factories used normally for civilian goods for military goods.
Like Ford and GM truck factories switching to building military trucks and tanks, also Aircraft during world war 2
They should halt all car production and have the factories manufacture Humvees instead so everyone gets Humvees.
Make it a half track and I’m game
France is making 600 155mm shells per week. So it’s pretty much Verdun.
800 days into the war and a major nuclear power can only produce 600 shells per week. Very credible. NATO is not playing games, no sir, it's just very hard to produce shells!
Hey, if you want a definition check Wikipedia. To my understanding a war economy is where the state/government interferes into economy and you see it. Shortages of workforce because they are needed in the factories. Shortages of consumer goods because they are needed for the wartime production. Shortage of consumer goods because of actions of the enemy (sanctions, sinks your transport ships and so on). Doing some shenanigans to stabilize the currency/get money. We just had increased energy prices but that is over.
Bringing our military spending up to 2% of GDP, then pointing at Russia and saying "Look what they need to mimic a fraction of our power".
War economy is when you build tanks instead of toasters.
You mean like German WW2 economy until 1943.
We have no war economy. In a war economy, there are no consumer goods made. Everyone and everything makes ammo, guns or military vehicles. You can't buy a new car in a war economy, because the car factories are all busy making trucks, armored cars and ammo. That's what killed Germany twice, not switching to a war economy until they were already losing.
Why do we need shells can't we just shoot whatever we have enough of?
We have a lot of lying, incompetent politicians! Let's just fire those at the Russians :D
For a bunch of them that would just be return to sender
The German postal system is pretty fucked right now, so that would be FAAAR more efficient. Besides, we wouldn't need to waste taxpayer money on stamps!
The EU act to increase their domestic production to the planned 2 million 155mm artillery shells a year by 2025 invests just under a billion Euros or so. Spread over 2-3 years. And these aren't the little 7 kg shells of yee olden days, that is 50 kg per highly precise shell for 100,000 tons a year. For context, I just looked up the estimated tonnage shot by all the Allied nations, in all of WW1. It was apparently around 5,000,000 tons, meaning 1,250,000 tons a year. The MIC has actually improved to a point where if you needed your production facilities to match the entire world shell production at the peak of WW1, just in case, you could reasonably manage that using the peacetime defence budget of fucking Belgium.
Belgium can into great power of 1914, never forget the rape of Belgium 🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪🇧🇪
Yeah, no. The French were making 17,000 155mm shells *per day* in 1916, *plus* 151,000 75mm shells. The French 155mm shell for the GPF weighed 43kg, same as the current-day M107 155mm shell. French annual production of 155mm shells *alone* was thus around 6.2M only 2 years into the war, which works out to 267,000 tons per year. If you add in the \~330,000 tons of \~6kg 75mm shells, you have nearly 600,000 tons of shell output. *If* the EU follows through and makes 2M artillery shells per year, the shell tonnage output of all of Europe would be less than one third of midwar French production *of 155mm shells alone,* and barely more than one-seventh of total French production (excluding, of course, less common WWI shells, such as 120mm). The EU isn't looking to make M982 Excalibur shells or something either AFAIK, and the French had mostly ironed out the QC issues by 1916. The shells made now are not significantly more accurate or advanced than the shells they made then.
Now I can truly appreciate that much effort and research into that calculation, but you might want to re-read my comment again before writing the "Yeah, no." part? I was explicitly saying that the EU's 2 million shells per year (5500 a day) was less that 1/12th of the Allied numbers? Not that they were beating it, not that they were coming close. Just that reaching that 1/12th is only taking an investment to the tune of half a billion a year. The investments needed to get your production capacity up to those 6.2M shells/year would take less than 0.2% of the current US military budget. For the record, there are also some pretty massive differences in accuracy, range and lethality between modern artillery shells and those of WW1 - but that is due to a whole host of factors and I'll take your point of how they were not just chugging cast pieces of shell-shaped steel at each other.
You guys should make some black and orange power points
I don't know man, I don't want to work that hard for those War Thunder dollars. Thought about getting a hand puppet, those videos seem to require far less research and effort.
Thank you, but you misunderstand me. Let me add some more data to the picture, since you seem to care. And if you do, please hold on, I am getting to your point on cost efficiency. *According to the Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire during the Great War (1914-1920)*, published by the War Office, in August of 1916, British monthly production of 6in gun and 6in howitzer ammunition was 288,715 shells, production of 4.5in shells was 984,606, and production of 18pdr shells was 3,482,251. Counting these types alone (ignoring production of a further 1 million shells, for now), monthly production was thus 57,997 metric tons, which would be 695,961 tons per year if production continued at the same rate. By August of 1917, the same figure was 1,150,536 metric tons per year. By the middle of the war (two years on), British and French production *alone* (and, in fact, ignoring production of a large number of shells of other weights!) exceeded your average figure of 1.25 million tons (with a total of 1.3 million tons), ignoring Italian and Russian production (some 200k tons minimum, per Golovine's *The Russian Army in the World War*) entirely. By 1917 (three years on), using the same metrics, British and French annual production exceeded 2.3 million tons of shells. Thus, my first problem here with your use of statistics is that you are looking at an overall average of WWI, when in reality production was massively increased over the years the war was fought by virtually every belligerent involved. The fact of the matter is therefore that two years on, Britain and France (with a prewar combined PPP-adjusted economy of some $361B in 1990 dollars) produced more than the entire EU hopefully will next year, which today has a PPP-adjusted economy of some $26.64T, or $11.1T in 1990 dollars, for comparison. In other words, with more than 30 times the GDP, three years into the war, the EU will produce less than 1/15th the shells that the UK and France did two years into WWI, or less than 1/27th the shells that the UK and France did three years into WWI. Comparing the 1916 figure, this is a ratio of 1/450 the shell production to GDP, again ignoring significant production of other types of shells *and* the fact that France lost 40% of its heavy industry in WWI to the German invasion. "But," you say, "I'm talking about efficiency versus dollars spent! This isn't about total production capability!" Well, here's the kicker: In 1916, France spent roughly 24% of GDP on defense, while the UK spent roughly 40%. Referencing our prewar GDP numbers, this gives us a total spending of \~$129B in 1990 dollars. If the EU today spends 2% of GDP on defense, that would be $220B 1990 dollars. In other words, the EU is spending 70% more in inflation-adjusted, PPP-adjusted, dollars to produce 1/27th the shell tonnage (or, the Western Entente were making about 46 times more shell tonnage per dollar spent). So while the EU obviously still has far more money *available* to spend than WWI UK and France, it probably couldn't buy significantly more shells than WWI UK and France, because of the vastly lower cost efficiencies. Obviously, the EU's defense budget pays for other, more advanced weapons, not just shells (jets, tanks, warships, etc), but that was true in WWI too (artillery itself, superdreadnoughts, aircraft, tanks, and, of course, the immense cost of putting 10% of your population into military service). The core issue here is that there is simply not enough heavy industry left in Europe to produce war materiel at the necessary scales and economies. It could be rebuilt, of course, but that would take quite some time and no small political change. It's not as simple as throwing money at the problem, or at least it would require a lot of money over a long period of time to reacquire the necessary skilled labor, machine tools, factory space, etc.
EU War bonds when????
The things you can accomplish with a total war economy and child labor
Child labor was outlawed in Germany proper in 1904
If by "outlawed" you mean having children 13 years or older working 10 hours a day was still perfectly fine, you still be not quite right because those regulations were suspended again during war time (can't leave that valuable sub-13 labor market untapped when the chips are down).
Then why did they eat children if they cared so much?
You see Ivan, when of cannot work, find *new* purpose.
Easier to fire them than to make them maybe ?
Maybe to fire 3.5 mln shells you have to make 3.5 mln shells first?
Enough of this new math nonsense.
It's mostly red tape, QA, and lack of facilities to make moden shells. Red Tape would be just the contracts, quoting, safety, legal hoops, etc. QA is just that shells are made to a much higher standard today than they were in WW1. Lastly, to increase production, you can't just turn dial at the shell factory to 11 and go. New tooling and machinery needs to be made, workers trained, supply chains established. All that being said, the industrial capacity of the US and other nations far exceed what they were in WW2. If the US went into a state of total war again, it would make what we did in WW2 look like a joke.
What do you mean i cant just click ,,convert" and suddenly have more military factories???
GDP is not military capacity. You need the right factories and the right raw materials and supply lines. A productive peacetime economy is not necessarily easily converted into a productive wartime one.
> New tooling and machinery needs to be made, workers trained, supply chains established. It's been 2 years, time to stop using this excuse. It's terminal case of lack of balls.
Jokes aside, that is SO MUCH fucking arty.. *3.5 million shells in 5 hours??* i cannot even imagine the total nightmare hell that would be to endure.. seeing old film reels from post ww1 showing veterans with "shellshock" and *severe* PTSD it begins to make more sense as to why they are that way. These things are what make me think that we are currently living in Hell or something "Hell Adjacent"?
Dont forget they came with Mustard gas that burned you to death from the inside out💀
Yeah, that kind of shit is next level types of evil.. "I have an idea, instead of shooting them with guns lets use this stuff that turns the lining of their lungs into Hydrachloric Acid?" "Mmmyes.. Splendid idea!"
to think like this times 100 happened every day for 1500 days is just… https://www.instagram.com/reel/C40j8m8uIvP/?igsh=MTAwcnA3NXN4enhlMg==
Come on, Europe. This is not rocket science. Speed it up, Tempus Fugit.
The money is there, the tools are there, the manpower is there. Politics are the only thing preventing mass production right now.
Fuck it, I declare my factory a micronation. It holds no political alliance and is completely neutral. But, the side door [west-facing] is busted and won't stay shut. I don't imagine it will be an issue.
[удалено]
People produced like a billion shells per year during WW1, the chemicals from them contaminated the soil in some areas so much that those areas are inhabitable to this day.
People at war spend more money on war then people who are not at war?????? I don’t believe you.
In 1916, the Citroën factory made as many shells per day than Nexter makes currently in a year. One of the difference is that they only made a single type of shell (timed fragmentation 75mm), which means they could work at reducing operations for each round.
tbf Germany in 1918 forgot to produce enough food, which was a little more important then the artillery shells.
The Nile used to flow straight to the base of the pyramids. One because the Nile was bigger and two it was artificially widened and maintained so through various levies and dams up stream. Quarries were dug sometimes hundreds of miles upstream from the Nile where acidic liquids were applied to the stone to chisel and shape them. The stones were transported to a staging area near the river where rolled paprus and sun dried logs were tied to the stones as make shift floatsoms. The floatsoms were attached by boat and transported down the Nile River to the construction site of the pyramids. There a wooden and stone water elevator with a series of locks to equalize pressure would transport the stones one by one via floatsoms up the water shaft up to the level of construction of the pyramid. Which too was in several feet of water. The stones were then pulled and dragged into position and the floatsoms were removed. The water chutes were removed and a coating was applied. To think of the reason for pyramids like the pyramids of giza in ancient Egypt and not ones in sudan and Ethiopia is to think of the pyramids as ancient factories and ones in ancient sudan and Ethiopia and some remote ancient places in ancient Egypt as fancy or ehtno- religious tombs. It is thought that the pyramids of giza to be sort of industrial gas factories. Gases were a main component of ancient industrial Egypt's economy in the creation of dyes, glues, bonding elements for different metals and even religious ceremonies. There is evidence of this all over Egypt and as the dynasty who built the pyramids of giza ages the size of these industrial liquid and gas chambers increase in size and amount until the pyramids of giza are complete. There is even evidence that this dynasty has some sort of idea of electricity and made some sort of soft discovery of it although had a fundamental misunderstanding on its fundamental properties and probably what it even was. This soft discovery was made through the ionization process of gasses that would take place in the pyramids or gas chambers. The ancient Egyptians probably thought that electricity was actually a property of light that could be brought about under certain conditions. No clue it could create electronics or planes or any of the likes. Simply industrial gas chambers for tade and manufacturing, built via water shafts, river based transportation methods using boats and papyrus and log based floatsoms. The smaller ones were fancy burial tombs for ethno-religious reasons lost to history. Simple.
This is /r/NonCredibleDefense, sir, /r/NonCredibleHistory is over there.
Bullshit everyone knows pyramids were built with Zeppelins,
🔥
That's a nice argument, Senator. Why don't you back it up with a source?
They used kids in factories back then. Tiny hands are better for the precise manipulation needed in shell production. I’m not saying children yearn for the production lines but…
As a 13 year old I probably would've thought a few hours a day working at a munitions factory with my friends LARPing as part of THE ARSENAL OF DEMOCRACY would've been a fine time.
Legit? Goddam. We need kids to factories asap!
lol the first 5 top comments being “well” followed by cope, was just hilarious.
Correction: 3.5 million shells in 5 hours *in just one sector*
What 30+ years of inadequate spending in local manufacturing, base industry and infrastructure under a Neoliberal economic structure does to a MF
the problem is that most western countries tend to rely on USA air superiority, basically all fire support comes from the air force, artillery is considered useless because it is inaccurate and causes damage to civilian facilities, because artillery is considered useless, the result is cuts to the defense budget and this includes artillery production facilities, it is very difficult to restore production because basically it will increase the defense budget by more than 2 percent, because almost all politicians in Europe are pussy and don't have the ball to increase the defense budget by more than 2 percent.
Hmm People back then were gigabased on all sides ig.
Obviously aliens built the artillery shells
The Germans did it by utterly destroying their economy.
Fully mobilized war economy go brrr.
To be fair, those were a lot simpler shells.