(2 of 4)
¶Aluminum mills have been given a goal of 1,500,000 tons a year, roughly twice the capacity before the Korean war.
¶ The oil industry has been asked to drill 43,000 new wells this year and to expand refining capacity by a million barrels a day. It can do so if it gets the tubular steel.
¶Reserve plants, built by the U.S. during World War II, are being swiftly put back into operation. Before Korea, there were 440 of these plants, worth $7.5 billion, in mothballs or on standby status. By May, more than half of them (344) were either back in production or about to be. Included are 15 out of 17 aluminum plants, all of the ferro-alloy plants, all but eight of 54 gun and ammunition plants, and 60 out of 77 shipyards.
What's the Trouble? The biggest defense-production bottleneck is a shortage of electronic equipment. Major items, from planes to heavy artillery, have been set back and are still being set back because of a short supply of such electronic gear as bomb sights, zero landing systems and gun-laying equipment for airplanes, tanks, ships and artillery. Defense officials are constantly being asked: Why are so many television sets being made, and why all the fiddling with color television if electronic supplies and technicians are needed? The answer, which satisfies few hearers, is that a factory making television sets is not necessarily equipped to make highly complex electronic gear. Charles Wilson, an electronics expert himself, has now set up a board to speed electronics production.
There is also a serious shortage in alloy metals used in jet and other high-temperature engines. All the world's resources of such scarce alloys as tungsten and nickel will not fill U.S. needs when production hits its peak. Defense officials are pushing a search for substitutes. So far, little luck.
Labor shortages in general are not a problem, but there is a crying need for specialists: engineers, machinists, tool & die makers, molders and pattern makers, etc. The engineering shortage is the most acute. Last year U.S. colleges and universities turned out 52,000 engineers. This year 38,000 will be graduated. The 1952 forecast: 26,000.
Deeper than the shortages of men and materials are the vexing problems of inadequate planning and inefficient administration. This is not altogether bluff Charlie Wilson's fault. At the outset, the President had decided that, as far as possible, production chores would be carried out by old-line Government departments. For most of the year, Wilson has been riding herd on dozens of bureaus and agencies which were not always going in the same direction. But when he reported to Washington, he was given almost unlimited powers. He has not always used them in the slam-bang way that was expected, particularly in shaking up the poky procurement methods of the Pentagon. A year after the Korean war, there are still no detailed estimates of the amount of war materials needed or a schedule for delivery of these materials.
Charlie Wilson, optimistic by nature, professes not to be disturbed because the defense program is now behind schedule. The lack of a few tanks or planes a month now, he says, out of his faith in the U.S. production machine, can be made up by a single day's production later on. Industrialists agree—if the U.S.S.R. allows the U.S. the "later on."