Reserved factory space and usable surge capacity

Would buying a standing production rate, with a higher wartime rate exercised each year, preserve better surge capacity than ordering fixed quantities?

Governments already contract for surge capacity in the examples discussed, but reserved space differs from installed machines, trained workers, and factories free to accept extra production.

A proposed standing production rate leads to examples of how surge-capacity contracts can be interpreted. Clarke recalls an unnamed company counting space for an extra production line, in one case an expanded car park, toward the requirement. He explicitly excludes BAE from that example. Machinery procurement could still take two-and-a-half to three years, followed by workforce training, leaving roughly five years before the additional output in the example. A separate recollection from an academic seminar describes BAE and MBDA using existing factories in allied countries as possible alternative production sites. That approach has machinery available, but production may already be committed to other customers. The account is qualified as a remembered practice that may since have changed.