Stepping backward.. Lower tech.

[ArmySGT.]

What is the likelihood that NATO and Pact governments would dust off the blueprints of lower tech, but proven designs The loss of manufacturing and more importantly the technicians that made it work is affecting everyone drastically.

The fictional M16EZ comes to mind.

The M40A1 106mm RR can hull most WP armor in side shots...... manufacturing TVS-5s or laser range finders for those would be simpler than Tankbreaker missiles.

Not any specific ideas..... just how much effort and resources would be redirected to get lower tech (still survivable and effective though) designs out If not on the front, than to rear security, to get offensive power forward again.

[James Langham2]

I'm guesssing that retooling will take too long. However lots of old weapons will be in storage and reissued, even back to WW2 era small arms in the US - the stockpiles were discussed in another thread.

[copeab]

I'm guesssing that retooling will take too long. However lots of old weapons will be in storage and reissued, even back to WW2 era small arms in the US - the stockpiles were discussed in another thread.

You don't retool destroyed factories, you rebuild them.

[WallShadow]

You don't retool destroyed factories, you rebuild them.

One of the"cheap and dirty" methods of protecting industrial machinery was to bulldoze/front-end-load heaps of metal scraps and cuttings around and over the machines. This actually proved somewhat practicable for non-direct hit/non-ground-zero nuclear tests.

I have asked the following question in another thread long, long ago:
Assuming EMP damage has fried the semiconductors of a computer chip factory, what would be the minimum components requiring a swap-out to get the erstwhile dead machinery back to producing microchips What's the minimum to bootstrap the industry

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I'm assuming for this scenario that what you'd need to do is replace all the fried chips in the computers/electronics controlling the production machinery and maybe some electrical connections and while I know that sounds "obvious", it's really quite involved.
There's many different devices in use to create the chips from the furnaces that melt the sand to produce the silicon ingots to the saws that cut the ingots into wafers to the systems that layer silicon dioxide onto the wafer, coat the sections to be preserved, control the hot gasses used to scour away the undesired sections of silicon dioxide and so on to the final testing of the chip and its separation from all the other chips layered onto the individual wafer (which obviously requires a very fine & precisely controlled cutting implement!).

These would all take different chips in their controlling computers so I reckon the minimum you're going to need is someone with a good Electronics knowledge to be able to identify what chips are needed as replacements... then you gotta find 'em.
However, any fabrication plant is probably going to have spares and probably a decent amount of them. Assuming the plant didn't take physical damage they'll most likely have spares conveniently on hand because the microchip industry is too important for a fabrication plant to have to sit around waiting for a tech to come along and repair an errant computer that's holding up millions of dollars worth of production.

If you don't have the replacement chips on hand, you're going to have to find them or else you'd be stuck having to reinvent them and that would need a computer engineer so you could figure what you wanted the machinery to do and how to do it etc. etc. then you'll have to hand-craft the replacement chips and all of that's probably going to take more time than locating spare chips!

[rcaf_777]

What is the likelihood that NATO and Pact governments would dust off the blueprints of lower tech, but proven designs The loss of manufacturing and more importantly the technicians that made it work is affecting everyone drastically.

Many NATO nations still have or use M2A1 (M101A1) 105mm Howitzer. Canada updated their holdings so it could continue its service with reserve artillery units.

[James Langham2]

You don't retool destroyed factories, you rebuild them.

Quite a few factories seem to be intact - Lima is known to exist for example

I was also possibly thinking earlier in the war - WW2 shows examples where an inferior design was left in service and production as it was immediately available

[ArmySGT.]

You don't retool destroyed factories, you rebuild them.

I have a manual from WW1 intended to be distributed to every college, high school, and trade school with a machine shop to instruct on how to produce artillery shells and timed fuzes. Downloaded off of Scribd. Blueprints for Allied artillery and not just U.S. as a way to fully exploit war production.

Some oldster with a copy and my old high school machine shop could effectively had made the mechanical fuses. The Shell bodies would have required a a far larger forging set up than my schools simple gas forge could have done.

Even mechanical time fuse is better than no fuse when the sophisticated VT shells are all used up.

Also I was thinking that the M3 grease gun and the Sten gun would see a effort to produce. If only to get all the M16s and AR-15s back from Police forces to equip Army units standing up.

I don't know if older Radar and Sonar would be worth the effort, but maybe if it set modern units free from harbor defense. The psychological positive boost could make it worth it and only the higher echelons would no it was only a placebo to boost morale in the short term.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

I don't think you'd need to produce older tech sonar for harbour defence and so on because I think there would still be many commercial fathometers and civilian fishfinders/fishsounders (which work on the same principle and technology as the fathometer) available to use for that purpose.

By the early 1990s both devices were using LCD screens for their displays and they become much more widely available to the recreational fishing & boating community and commercial marine industry. They are both a type of sonar and probably more recognizable by the name "echo sounder". The commercial marine industries (fishing, cargo, passenger etc. etc.) have been using echo sounding for decades for navigation and Western maritime safety regulations typically require every large vessel (100+ tons) operating in restricted waters to have a fathometer (of the constant recording type).
Older fathometers (e.g. the strip chart recording types) used transistors so would be more resistant to EMP as well.

I reckon there would be plenty of opportunities to plunder fathometers and fishfinders from commercial vessels simply because many of those vessels would no longer be operating. I also think for the 1990s period, the number of recreational fishing boats carrying fishfinders/fishsounders would be large enough to make it worthwhile to recover and use those units for harbour defence purposes and so on.

[James Langham2]

I have a manual from WW1 intended to be distributed to every college, high school, and trade school with a machine shop to instruct on how to produce artillery shells and timed fuzes. Downloaded off of Scribd. Blueprints for Allied artillery and not just U.S. as a way to fully exploit war production.

Some oldster with a copy and my old high school machine shop could effectively had made the mechanical fuses. The Shell bodies would have required a a far larger forging set up than my schools simple gas forge could have done.

Even mechanical time fuse is better than no fuse when the sophisticated VT shells are all used up.

Also I was thinking that the M3 grease gun and the Sten gun would see a effort to produce. If only to get all the M16s and AR-15s back from Police forces to equip Army units standing up.

I don't know if older Radar and Sonar would be worth the effort, but maybe if it set modern units free from harbor defense. The psychological positive boost could make it worth it and only the higher echelons would no it was only a placebo to boost morale in the short term.

I did an article about home built weapons and had the Sten and variants being produced. One variant was the Ten gun when it was produced by a certainUS state... I might revisit that article.

[Olefin]

We already know that machine shops are making mortars and mortar shells by 1999-2000 time period - obviously they either had to reverse engineer existing designs or use existing blue prints of older designs.

And you have people scattered around the US who restore older equipment who would have various design drawings (either copies or originals) - those could be used to restart production of older equipment (at very low levels of production - i.e. basically hand built)

and you could go back to things like using rivets to make armored vehicles like they were made in WWI and early WWII instead of modern techniques - again at very low rates

I would think the place you would see old designs coming back the quickest would be either cannons as they were around the 1860's and older weapons that a gunsmith could easily make - muskets and the like - and while that means stepping back into the 19th century those weapons would still be very effective in many cases

[ArmySGT.]

I did an article about home built weapons and had the Sten and variants being produced. One variant was the Ten gun when it was produced by a certainUS state... I might revisit that article.

You might consider rolling block and dropping block breechloaders. The Remington No. 6, the High Wall, and the Martini Henry....... from .22 to 416 Rigby.

My thought was resources used to make these simpler weapons would equip security forces and allow the government to take back loaned weapons (M16s or SLRs).

[swaghauler]

We already know that machine shops are making mortars and mortar shells by 1999-2000 time period - obviously they either had to reverse engineer existing designs or use existing blue prints of older designs.

And you have people scattered around the US who restore older equipment who would have various design drawings (either copies or originals) - those could be used to restart production of older equipment (at very low levels of production - i.e. basically hand built)

and you could go back to things like using rivets to make armored vehicles like they were made in WWI and early WWII instead of modern techniques - again at very low rates

I would think the place you would see old designs coming back the quickest would be either cannons as they were around the 1860's and older weapons that a gunsmith could easily make - muskets and the like - and while that means stepping back into the 19th century those weapons would still be very effective in many cases

Actually, most of these issues have been addressed in Continuity of Government planning. Designs (and appropriate CNC programming) have been "pre-positioned" with various manufacturers. Channellock Tools in Meadville had the plans to mass produce M60 Machineguns during time of war and there were several other tool & die shops in PA with plans to make M16s, M2HBs, and other pieces of "critical equipment" as well. This was to be a defense against loss of production due to warfare or for the expansion of production (of critical equipment) in the event of a major war.

Armored vehicles would still be welded although the quality may be lower. You can stick weld using Oxy-Acetylene (or even propane) if necessary. More importantly, ONE MAN can weld up an armored vehicle given the proper materials handling equipment (jacks, come-alongs, chain pulleys, etc...). Riveting is a VERY specific skill that was only taught on a limited basis after GTAW (stick), MIG (semi-auto wire feed), and TIG (precision application stick) welding became the prevalent method of manufacture in the 1960s. There simply are not enough people left with the knowledge of HOW to properly rivet. This very complex skill requires a 3 man team (creating a manpower issue). First, you have the Riveter who drives the hot rivet's shafts flat with an air hammer. On the back side of the work, you have a Bucker who holds the rivet's head against the plates being secured with a large plate or bar. Finally, you have the Rivet Heater who heats the rivets to red-hot and throws them to the Bucker. Each of these skills is far more involved than learning to weld (and requires more resources to use). welding would still dominate manufacturing.

Things that were machined (using CNC) could still be made if it were possible to replace those machinings with an Investment Cast part. Investment Casting essentially makes a mold of said part and then the part is cast and polished (no machining needed) after removal from the mold. Ruger makes guns this way, so complex parts can be cast.

There would also be a great deal of "surplus" stuff laying in government warehouses. Older M114 Howitzers and literally hundreds of WW2 vintage M4 tank chassis are sold at auction even to this day.

A funny note about this. I had a gunsmith friend who bid on what he thought were "demilled" M4 lower receivers and won the bid for $200 each for 20 M4s. When he was asked how he wanted to handle shipping, he said, "just mail them." To which his contacting agent replied, "Sir, we cannot ship twenty M4 Sherman Tank Chassis through the mail." Only then did he realize what he had bid on. Some of them ran, others didn't and ALL of them were without turrets. Bob lost his shirt on that auction.

[copeab]

I was also possibly thinking earlier in the war - WW2 shows examples where an inferior design was left in service and production as it was immediately available

Of course, sometimes the "inferior" design was better than it's replacement, such as with the Douglas SBD Dauntless or Fairey Swordfish.

[ArmySGT.]

I don't think you'd need to produce older tech sonar for harbour defence and so on because I think there would still be many commercial fathometers and civilian fishfinders/fishsounders (which work on the same principle and technology as the fathometer) available to use for that purpose.

By the early 1990s both devices were using LCD screens for their displays and they become much more widely available to the recreational fishing & boating community and commercial marine industry. They are both a type of sonar and probably more recognizable by the name "echo sounder". The commercial marine industries (fishing, cargo, passenger etc. etc.) have been using echo sounding for decades for navigation and Western maritime safety regulations typically require every large vessel (100+ tons) operating in restricted waters to have a fathometer (of the constant recording type).
Older fathometers (e.g. the strip chart recording types) used transistors so would be more resistant to EMP as well.

I reckon there would be plenty of opportunities to plunder fathometers and fishfinders from commercial vessels simply because many of those vessels would no longer be operating. I also think for the 1990s period, the number of recreational fishing boats carrying fishfinders/fishsounders would be large enough to make it worthwhile to recover and use those units for harbour defence purposes and so on.

I agree in that it would work in only the most basic way....... Something is down there... Something large is down there. I just question the utility of something like this due to the limited range and narrow projection.

It might be my understanding is wrong, but any sonar from the 70's should give depth, speed, and an indication of mass (displacement). A system from the 90s can distinguish a whale from a school or fish, from a attack submarine.... comparing recorded acoustic profiles.