There is another one where they had to recall retirees to restart Stinger Missile production.
The F1 is particularly interesting, because if we'd undergone a program in 1985, we probably could have restarted production, maybe even 1995 - but every decade another n% of the engineering knowhow sluffed off into the permanent dirt nap until there wasnt enough left.
Another recent example was when Jay Leno had a new heat exchanger made for his Chrysler Turbine car, and they were able to call some retirees in to help make a new one.
And that's why the US is constantly at war in one theatre or the other. It's incredibly expensive to keep production lines going - but it's vital because if you don't, you can't scale production up at a moment's notice.
Us Europeans learned that lesson the hard way three years ago and we haven't made much progress ever since the first Russian boot set foot on Ukrainian soil. 100k artillery shells don't sound like much of a thing... but apparently it is.
The F1 is particularly interesting, because if we'd undergone a program in 1985, we probably could have restarted production, maybe even 1995 - but every decade another n% of the engineering knowhow sluffed off into the permanent dirt nap until there wasnt enough left.
Another recent example was when Jay Leno had a new heat exchanger made for his Chrysler Turbine car, and they were able to call some retirees in to help make a new one.