Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
Here at home we have some very big jobs to do. We are building much
stronger military forces--and we are building them fast. We are preparing
for full wartime mobilization, if that should be necessary. And we are
continuing to build a strong and growing economy, able to maintain whatever
effort may be required for as long as necessary.
We are building our own Army, Navy, and Air Force to an active strength of
nearly 3 1/2 million men and women. We are stepping up the training of the
reserve forces, and establishing more training facilities, so that we can
rapidly increase our active forces far more on short notice.
We are going to produce all the weapons and equipment that such an armed
force will need. Furthermore, we will make weapons for our allies, and
weapons for our own reserve supplies. On top of this, we will build the
capacity to turn out on short notice arms and supplies that may be needed
for a full-scale war.
Fortunately, we have a good start on this because of our enormous plant
capacity and because of the equipment on hand from the last war. For
example, many combat ships are being returned to active duty from the
"mothball fleet" and many others can be put into service on very short
notice. We have large reserves of arms and ammunition and thousands of
workers skilled in arms production.
In many cases, however, our stocks of weapons are low. In other cases,
those on hand are not the most modern. We have made remarkable technical
advances. We have developed new types of jet planes and powerful new tanks.
We are concentrating on producing the newest types of weapons and producing
them as fast as we can.
This production drive is more selective than the one we had during World
War II, but it is just as urgent and intense. It is a big program and it is
a costly one.
Let me give you two concrete examples. Our present program calls for
expanding the aircraft industry so that it will have the capacity to
produce 50,000 modern military planes a year. We are preparing the capacity
to produce 35,000 tanks a year. We are not now ordering that many planes or
that many tanks, and we hope that we never have to, but we mean to be able
to turn them out if we need them.
The planes we are producing now are much bigger, much better, and much more
expensive than the planes we had during the last war.
We used to think that the B-17 was a huge plane, and the blockbuster it
carried a huge load. But the B-36 can carry five of these blockbusters in
its belly, and it can carry them five times as far. Of course, the B-36 is
much more complicated to build than the B-17, and far more expensive. One
B-17 costs $275,000, while now one B-36 costs $3 1/2 million.
I ask you to remember that what we are doing is to provide the best and
most modern military equipment in the world for our fighting forces.
This kind of defense production program has two parts.
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