Why civilian industry sustains the arms race

A sustainable peacetime buildup differs from an economy already operating at wartime intensity. Clothing, consumer production, machine tools, and factories that build equipment for other factories remain part of military capacity even when they do not manufacture weapons directly. A country that preserves those civilian layers can finance naval expansion while renewing the industrial plant behind it. Economies that retain those civilian industries can keep funding rearmament while countries already operating at wartime intensity have less room to expand. Fleet modernisation depends on economic depth and the ability to reproduce industrial capacity, not merely the number of hulls planned.