The war in Ukraine shows the West can re-arm without re-industrialising

Inside the Joint Systems Manufacturing Centre (jsmc) in Ohio, America’s main factory for armoured vehicles since 1942, the production line for the latest version of the Abrams tank snakes back and forth across the factory floor. America no longer makes completely new ones. Instead the plant refurbishes stripped-back hulls and turrets from old models, which are kept in storage in Alabama. Every few days, a frame shuffles a few metres forwards, and a new worker begins painstaking labour on the world’s most advanced tank. Each refit takes roughly two years. Poland ordered a big batch of Abrams tanks from JSMC in 2022, less than six weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine. It is still waiting for most of them.