Do We Owe Them

War these days is "come as you are". It takes months to build a tank or fighter plane, and the technologies are highly specialized.
It would literally be easier to build a tank plant from scratch than convert an existing car plant.

However, outsourcing all of our manufacturing is still a terrible idea for lots of different reasons. Before this recession started, manufacturing only comprised 11% of our economy. It will be substantially less when all this is over with.

England did the same stuff back when they were the world's superpower. Look where its gotten them....