Are the production lines for military vehicles (incl. tanks) automated (with industrial robotics) similarly to the mass-produced cars?

Question

My country is participant in one military vehicle production product and the price tag is almost 5-10 times higher than for mass-produced non-military vehicles. We have no industrial robots for such production, the news are scarce, but it seems to me that lot of manual work is involved.

Similarly - I have heard news that the Western military inventory has been repleted greatly and that it can take some to time to restore the levels.

All this leads to me to the question - how much automated are production lines of military vehicles? Are they using industrial robots and are they ready to work in scale of mass produced car industry?

Answer 1

Depends on what you count as automation additionally it depends on what part you mean. There is a big amounts of things that fall within scope of automated between fully manual and a fully roboticized lights out operation.

So most likely its still quite automated. Many or most pars are probably machined in cnc machinery, the moulds for parts are most likely also machined. Sheetmetal parts are done in automatic machines, sheets are laser or waterjet cut, stock materials are made in same automatic factories as rest of the stuff. Parts are injection moulded and forged with machines that most people would regard as automatic. Electronics are made the same way, or possibly even more automated, that most mass produced goods.

Castings, and weldings may have been done by hand as well as final assembly, wiring etc. Although even here there will be automaic to semiautomatic pneumatic rigs, the models of the mould been machined etc.

So if the question is is it a similar mass production like like cars. Then answer is no. But is it automated, absolutely.

Answer 2

Not likely, military spec vehicles have so many special options that they will need to be done by hand.

Even Landrover produce so many variants of their landrover for the military that some of the options are complicated like the radio vehicles with two alternators, 12v and 24v plus extra batteries and framing to hold the radios.

While production of other makes of vehicles may proceed with a production line layout as there is a necessary order to the tasks from start to finish, it will be done by people.