The West Forgot How to Build: Defense Supply Chain Collapse and Lessons for Software Engineering

In 2023, Raytheon's president described restarting Stinger missile production: engineers in their 70s taught younger workers from paper schematics dating to the Carter administration. Test equipment had sat in warehouses for years; the nose cone still had to be attached by hand, exactly as it was forty years ago. An order placed in May 2022 wouldn't deliver until 2026 — four years, not because of money, but because everyone who knew how to build them had retired.

The Pattern: Consolidate, Optimize, Collapse

In 1993, the Pentagon told defense CEOs to consolidate or die. Fifty-one major contractors collapsed into five. Tactical missile suppliers went from thirteen to three. The workforce fell from 3.2 million to 1.1 million — a 65% cut. Single points of failure appeared everywhere: one manufacturer for 155mm shell casings on the San Andreas Fault, one Canadian facility for propellant charges. Optimized for minimum cost, zero margin for surge.

The EU's 2023 pledge of one million artillery shells to Ukraine within twelve months hit reality: European production capacity was 230,000 shells per year; Ukraine burned 5,000–7,000 per day. Delivery took until December 2024 — nine months late. France had halted domestic propellant production in 2007. Germany had two days of ammunition stored. A Nammo plant in Denmark shut down in 2020 needed complete restart.

When Knowledge Dies, It Stays Dead

The Fogbank case is the extreme example. A classified nuclear warhead material produced from 1975 to 1989, then the facility closed. When needed again in 2000, almost all production staff had retired or died. Few records existed. Reverse engineering cost $69 million and years of effort — but the new batch was too pure. The original had an unintentional impurity critical to function, and that fact lived only in the minds of retired workers.

Author Denis Stetskov, who runs engineering teams in Ukraine, recognizes the same pattern in software: Build capability over decades. Find a cheaper substitute. Let the human pipeline atrophy. Enjoy the savings. Then watch it collapse when crisis demands what you optimized away. In defense, the substitute was the peace dividend. In software, it's AI.

The article ties to Stetskov's earlier writing on the talent pipeline collapse, the junior-to-senior problem, and the comprehension crisis. But the historical parallel of Fogbank and Stinger production makes the point concrete: rebuilding capability takes years, not sprints.