Thread by @WarintheFuture

The reality here is that the West is saying that they don’t wish to step up military production to any great extent because of the cost. Meanwhile, the Russians are beginning to mobilise their industry. 1/9 🧵 (Thanks @shashj for raising this issue).

https://twitter.com/shashj/status/1591830216669732864

2/ In his September mobilisation speech, Putin spoke of industrial production. “The heads of defense industry enterprises will be directly responsible for attaining the goals of increasing the production of weapons and military equipment.” washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/…

3/ He also described how “at the same time, the government must address without any delay all aspects of material, resource and financial support for our defense enterprises.” We have seen limited comments of the same nature from Western leaders despite declining weapons stocks.

4/ Like it or not, this war is now a battle of industrial systems - like previous large wars. The post Cold War ‘small, exquisite, periodic and expensive’ approach to weapons procurement in the West is over. We just haven’t fully realized that yet.

5/ At some point, I hope governments (including my own) come to realize that mobilizing industry is part of our conventional deterrent regime. We want potential adversaries to know we can (and will) step up production if they pick a fight. It is a sign of capability and will.

6/ In Europe, such a step up would send an important message to Putin about European will now, but also of their longer term willingness to deter Russian aggression.

7/ In the Pacific, industrial capacity of nations such as the US, Japan, India, Korea and Australia is a vital capability in deterring the noxious wolf warrior diplomacy and military aggression of the Chinese Communist Party.

8/ In both regions, the West will need to make hard decisions about industrial capacity, especially about duplicating and dispersing capacity (for survivability and expanded capacity), the balance of munitions versus platforms, and expanded war stocks.

9/ There is an old saying - ‘the best time to mobilise was yesterday’. There is a time imperative in this issue. Good, strategic and courageous decisions related to mobilising industry in the West are needed now. End.