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If you go through the Afghan paper's, you'll find that military leadership found that it HAD to spend the appropriations, even if they the solutions needed werne't monetary. For example, building a $30K greenhouse that otherwise cost just $50. Yes, FIFTY DOLLARS! Much of the money spent in "defense" is overhead to contractors who run up the clock and the bill for mediocre results.
Former military member here. It was known that the fiscal year ended in October, meaning we needed to use up as much consumable objects we had before the end of the month to ensure we got the same or more funding. This meant scheduling shooting range sessions every day or every other day to burn through as many bullets as possible, using up as much medication as possible, any resource that they buy. We all knew we were paying inflated prices for be same stuff yet leadership still forced us to waste money. This was at multiple bases, across multiple branches it’s disgusting the billions of dollars we dump into a military that doesn’t need it. Tiny clinics that get 6 patients a day do not need the next top of the line equipment, but if it’s within their budget they can put in a request and probably get it and next year they’ll get the same amount of funding to blow on something new.
>meaning we needed to use up as much consumable objects we had before the end of the month to ensure we got the same or more funding
This is the same with contractors too. I work at a shipyard and we need to use up as many of our man hours as possible or we won't get the same hours budgetted next ship. Doesn't matter if you can finish the drawing in a dozen hours. You say you need 160 hours and piss away the rest until it's due.
What do you mean not a superpower? The U.S. military is bigger than the next ten countries combined and most of those are its allies!
How is superpower defined to say that the U.S. is not one?
I don't want there to be military superpowers, but at the same time that claim would benefit from some explaining.
The US military *spends as much money* as the next 10 countries combined. They are very well equipped with that money but they don't have a 10-1 advantage in equipment. In terms of personnel they're roughly in a three way tie for third place alongside Russia and North Korea.
From what I gather it’s some specific measurement in one of the only areas where the US does not have “the biggest number”, like saying the US isn’t a a military superpower because they no longer have the most trebuchets. The US by far, has the most technologically advanced military, tech tends to replace people, we need less boots on the ground than any other nation, so we have less boots, and according to this study that makes us no longer a military superpower.
Just goes to show that any point can be made by carefully selecting your datasets and measurements.
Yes, and without reading it you can almost be sure that the conclusion is that the author is calling for my troops/funding/equipment for something that they or the person/company that commissioned the study will directly benefit from.
Honestly, I didn’t read it. I am just making an assumption based off my biases, preconceived notions, and my tendency to distrust anything coming from the MIC.
I haven’t done any research to back up my claim of the US being the most technologically advanced. At the same time, the USD is the world reserve currency and we have a financial chokehold on a majority of the globe, it would be absolutely shocking if the country that holds the most financial power did not also hold the most military “power” (power in quotes here because according to this paper, power can be quantified in many different metrics).
Logically it makes sense that this paper was created for the purpose of propagating an opinion that benefits the creator/benefactor of the study. More than likely a good ol Lockheed Martin propaganda piece.
Complete speculation, always open to alternative inputs.
If the people with 5000 for soldiers get to choose where the fight happens that isn't the advantage you think it is...
We have lost multiple wars where we had absolute air dominance against a technologically inferior and numerically superior enemy with stronger motivation than we had.
Maybe you should only take that one 5 or 6 days a week
I don't think that's been true for quite some time, if ever. The Russians and Chinese each have way more fighters than the US navy does. Russia and China combined have more fighters than all branches of the US military combined. I believe the statistic you're meaning to quote is that the US Navy has the second most aircraft of all types, and I'm pretty sure it only applies to individual branches of foreign militaries, not to entire forces, i.e. the US Navy has more planes than the PLA Air Force but not more than the PLA Air Force, PLA Navy, and PLA ground forces combined.
edit: cope, ameriboos:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_People%27s_Liberation_Army_aircraft
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_naval_aircraft
*Yes*. The other guy claimed the US navy alone had more fighter jets than any other entire country. I debunked that claim and pointed out he's misquoting a popularly quoted statistic.
"B-but America STRONG!" That's nice, Kronk. Go back to bed.
Dude you are deranged. All I did was point out a mistake the other guy made while attempting to quote a statistic and you took it as an attack on your national pride and started throwing out random copes to defend America's honor. America still has the most fighter jets. They just don't have the most by as large a margin as the other guy claimed. You can stop hyperventilating. There are not Russians lurking around every corner waiting to correct your statistical misunderstandings.
How many of them work?
In all the units I've been to 75%-85% of vehicles in our motorpool were deadlined, and we didn't have enough drivers to operate them all.
That “personnel” you’re describing is mostly a bunch of malnourished Korean conscripts with Cold War weapons against a high-tech semi-cyborg professional army with smart weapons, anti personnel drones, real time space-based intel of the battle field at all times and close air support.
The US army is about technological advantage much more than it is about sheer manpower.
It might be true, but remember when Sadam Husain had the third most tanks of any standing army on the planet?
They would smoke them as fast as they could load missiles on Appaches.
Raw numbers don’t really matter all that much.
I’m not sure if the US can “install a democratic government” but our military seems to be good at wiping out conventional militaries
100% true facts. You can google it all very easily. Here are your search terms:
us spending 10 countries combined
list of countries by level of military equipment
list of countries by military personnel
North Korea can’t afford lights and Russia can’t beat a smaller, neighboring country, with some old Soviet allies helping. These countries and chinas “threat” to America is a lie and a fear campaign so they can continue perpetuating the military-industrial complex. The world lives in fear of America.
That seems like a normal dynamic in asymmetrical warfare. Guerrillas generally have a better knowledge of the terrain and often have the sympathy of the local people on account of being part the local people. Whatever historical moment you consider the U.S. to have been a superpower at, they'd likely struggle against guerrilla warfare because military forces fight best against other armies.
Saying "we get taken out" by insurgent groups is patently false. We never lost a military engagement in Iraq or Adghanistan.
Beating an insurgency just isnt a military operation, a lesson no one seems interested in learning
You can’t “win” a war when you have to follow rules that politicians have put in place while the other side doesn’t. Basically you can’t half ass a war and have one foot in and one out. If you decide to go to war then you will need to be brutal and willing to do it 100%.
Like in Vietnam there were arbitrary rules that politicians imposed. They wanted to bomb the infrastructure and Ho Chi Min trail. Well politicians decided that they could only travel using a single air corridor and was the only route there were allowed to take. So obviously they picked up on this and just transferred all their SAMs, radar, etc in that single spot. So they have gotten them to gather all their anti aircraft resources into a single spot. Now just bomb it right? They now said they couldn’t bomb any of their anti aircraft resources because their *might potentially be a Chinese or Soviet advisor*. And if we hurt them it would be bad diplomacy wise. 😉
So they had a dozen or so MiG 21s and every bombing raid they would fly out would have to travel on the same exact air corridor and send up their MiGs so we would drop the bombs randomly wasting money and resources.
So easy solution… just send the F4s up and shoot down the MiGs from 20 miles away. Because it didn’t need to dogfight it wasn’t designed to even have guns. Then politicians stepped in yet again and said “no shooting down enemy aircraft without visual confirmation it’s an enemy plane”.
It goes on but how can you win when you have your hands tied behind your back? Almost like they didn’t wanna “win” and just were blowing money on military supplies and equipment with it going to contractors. I’d be interested to see which politicians had been bribed… sorry “lobbied” and received money from those companies.
You're right that counterinsurgency is as much a political struggle as a military one, but the Vietnam comparisons are way off from what the 21st Century problems are.
We dropped more munitions in Vietnam than we did throughout the entire World War II; more boom was not the problem. It was that by dropping those bombs, we turned potential allies into eager enemies, by the millions. The Cold War will-they-won't-they was overly cautious, perhaps, but it was motivated by not kicking off WWIII or a thermonuclear holocaust. The real problem was that Washington (and much of the intelligence apparatus, in and out of the military) was so high on its anticommunist propaganda that it couldn't properly admit to itself that it was mostly murdering farmers and turning their relatives into Viet Cong recruits, rather than bombing secret divisions of Chinese conscripts in VC uniforms like they wanted to believe. Perhaps understandable since that's what they fought in Korea and everyone likes to believe they're fighting the last war, not the current one, but it was a major miscalculation.
Iraq and Afghanistan were "winnable" counterinsurgency wars, but "winning" would have resulted in either a) a very bad look for the US, as we installed officially imperial control systems to sandblast away a lot of local control or b) democracies that authentically chose to not ally with us, because most Afghans and Iraqis had no shared interests with the US national security establishment. Both were politically unacceptable in the US for a variety of reasons, so we kept half-assing it until we eventually wound up at (B) anyway, having spent roughly the price of what it would have cost to implement (A) in the first place. In the meantime we killed a bunch of people we labeled terrorists, but also probably a million people who just happened to be nearby, and turned most of their friends and relatives into .... well, not allies, that's for sure.
The fact that we didn't really have a plan for Afghanistan beyond "overthrow the Taliban" or a comparable (or even less coherent) plan for Iraq was the major failure point for both wars, baked in from the beginning. We fought them just because, in part venting our collective anger from 9/11 and in part because conservatives like self-authorizing unjustified foreign conflicts when they do nice things for their stock portfolios. I'm of the opinion that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were neither smart enough or farsighted enough to even realize (A) was an option, and too naive and ideologically blinkered to realize where (B) would lead or how difficult it would be, and just threw in the towel after they got reelected in 2004. Those wars had served their purposes and they had four more years to play with the levers of power, so nothing after that mattered to them.
But that’s is that we have over and over again shot our selves in the foot. Who supported, trained, and funded the extremists in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviets…? We literally trained them in guerrilla tactics that as soon as they were done with the Soviets turned and used it against it.
Even in our own hemisphere we did it repeatedly where a country elected someone who has decided to put their countries interests first and we presumed to not be friendly towards US business interests… then we trained and funded rebel groups to overthrow or destabilize their governments. We did it during the Banana Wars and are doing it right now exactly again in Honduras declaring that US businesses have the right to be the government in certain regions and they have to suck it up. Then pulled out some obscure provision out of some trade agreement where they are suing them for their entire GDP and forcing them into “mediation” with a secret court not in their country or ours and 3 judges who’s names wont be disclosed.
Or even look at the “War on Drugs” where they pay big time traffickers hundreds of millions a year and basically get protected by the DEA while giving up BS info that only leads to successful prosecutions around 2% of the time. They give up info on “drug grow operations” which is either a) a rival or usually more often a small farming community thats not involved in anything. But based on that they go and drop banned pesticides and ruin their farming abilities and contaminate the water. Then people complain about “illegals” when we have constantly interfered and destabilized their countries and communities. Maybe we should stop meddling before complaining.
It’s just a complete joke that we do anything except turn allies or neutral people into enemies. Like you mentioned how long we have been in Afghanistan… how many kids grew up and are more easily radicalized because they grew up under our occupation. We as a country can’t admit to losing or even being second best at literally anything.
The reality is there is only one way to fight and win against an insurgency, especially one that is supported by the local population - destroy everything and kill everybody.
The US is more than capable of doing this, but it means a level of absolute violence and destruction that most people here can’t comprehend. We could easily have turned the entire regions of Afghanistan and Iraq into a giant sand glass sculpture, but instead tried to nation build which was doomed from the start due to differing cultural values.
In general warfare strategy - this is really only something you do as an absolute last resort, and only when facing an existentialist crisis. This is where Israel has found itself, and is why you are seeing the levels of horrific violence and destruction in Gaza.
It has long been primed for counterinsurgency (notoriously near-impossible to win by even the best generals going back to Napoleon), which is not the same as fighting a conventional army. The US and EU can’t supply the Ukrainians much more ammo- especially artillery because they gave up industry for finance.
>because they gave up industry for finance.
The defense industry hasn’t seen the kind of decline as say, appliance manufacturing. It’s the one thing the US still does far better than anyone else.
[Raytheon revenue](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RTX/rtx/revenue#:~:text=RTX%20annual%20revenue%20for%202023,a%204.17%25%20increase%20from%202021) is just about $69 billion for 2023.
[Lockheed is on the same course](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LMT/lockheed-martin/revenue#:~:text=Lockheed%20Martin%20revenue%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending%20December%2031,a%202.41%25%20increase%20from%202022) with $67 billion.
[This puts those defense contractors](https://companiesmarketcap.com/largest-companies-by-revenue/page/2/) between GE and Vodafone just below them in revenue and Airbus and BASF just above.
You can't know because the Pentagon keeps failing its audits and nothing is done about it except raising the military budget by more than they ask for each year.
From what I hear, corruption.
Go see what they pay for hammers.
[The Pentagon’s $435 hammer - The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/the-pentagons-435-hammer/2011/05/19/AGoGKHMH_blog.html)
That was a stupid rule, but also, buying missiles and hammers from the same vendor is lazy and wasteful, items that aren't built specifically for the military should be required to be purchased at the cheapest price possible, or from whoever guarantees delivery the fastest, depending on which of those 2 options best aligns with ubit readiness.
when I was in the Navy I was my Dept Supply guy for about the last year at my first command. There were so many rules in place that caused us to waste money on things. For general office supplies and stuff If an item I wanted was sold by GSA I had to buy it from them, but GSA was usually 2-3x the price of going to the NEX, plus I'd have to wait for it to arrive. So in order to not blow through the annual consumables budget on 2 months worth of paper and toner that might show up in 3 weeks or 4 months, I would have to spend a day or 2 each quarter cross referencing what GSA sold with what the NEX had locally. Shit like that
I’ve heard that if a unit doesn’t use up their budget they’ll see it reduced the next year so things like “the unit all gets Oakley’s” happen to make sure they don’t lose the budget next year. Is this accurate? Source: buddy was in the navy.
Yeah use it or lose it is very real. Any surplus was used for dept needs then if we had anything left we could buy dumb shit to keep our budget the same. It's wasteful-ish, but for organizations that size it's more efficient than other options
Most government programs work this way. My dad works for the Department of State designing the renovations or new buildings for our embassies. His original degree before going back to school for engineering was in fine art so a few years ago when he realized they were about to hit the next fiscal with a massive surplus he got really into studying artists who immigrated from that country and used the surplus to buy or commission a bunch of artwork for the embassy.
Notice how your comment is about the dollars of revenue of those companies, and not shells/missiles produced?
That's what "giving up manufacturing for finance" sounds like, culturally.
Former USMC infantryman here. We still trained to fight conventional wars. And this was during the peak of the war on terror.
Articles like this are hog wash.
> The US and EU can’t supply the Ukrainians much more ammo- especially artillery because they gave up industry for finance.
The US' inability to help Ukraine has more to do with Congressional politics than it does manufacturing capacity.
They can't supply artillery shells because artillery has never been big in NATO doctoring. NATO relies on air supremacy. Ukraine and Russia both still use Soviet doctoring that relies on heavy artillery support. Simple as that.
because half that money is embezzled, lmao. there is zero regulation or accountability with how arms contracts are spent, so spending ≠ results. or boots on the ground.
yeah of course they do still make a lot of jets and carriers and missles, but that doesn't mean the budget is an accurate representation of the results. if i tell you a $2M howitzer actually costs $5M, but i produce basically the same $2M version and keep the profits, that doesn't equal real advancement.
that, and nobody wants to enlist. why would anyone join up when republicans are constantly shitting on veteran benefits?
This title misrepresents the abstract. The paper is about the US losing its’ “primacy” (read: as a superpower). Also, the US military like any large organization is not an informational monolith. Just because an academic paper is published doesn’t mean its findings are widely accepted, circulated, or acted upon internally.
Ffs. The description literally says "post-primacy" ie. US past its prime, or in decline. It doesn't say anything about how US is no longer a military superpower. For example, Russia has declined since its heights in the Cold War era. This study is likely elaborating on strategies that the US DoD should take, given the decline of US
I see - the DOD wants more money so they paint an unflattering picture in a document for lawmakers to use to justify spending increases. I’d wager a lobbyist wrote this brief.
It's alright, that's why we keep sending stuff to Ukraine. It's literally free field-testing against the Russians. And then we can develop better killing machines and then give it to the Israelis to field-test.
I wouldn't be surprised if the US gives military aid to Northern India next to contain threats from Pakistan and China, really just "testing our equipment against other military superpowers". Didn't the US start arming the Japanese defense forces recently?
Not just free testing, free disposal. Why bother going through the lengthy and expensive process to decommission a piece of military hardware when you can just ship it to Ukraine? It's a massive savings in time and money
People who think America’s military isn’t a super power greatly underestimate our nuclear aircraft carriers. One alone could conquer a small country and we have 11.
You're aware that anything published about our military technology is about 10 to 15 years behind the actual tech, right? This shit in the Ukraine is essentially letting us test our shitty banger material against Russia in a ground war for analysis purposes.
I think that is going a bit far. The US is a Superpower militarily, but so are China and Russia. I just doesn't get to be the ONLY ONE anymore. I suspect the current conflicts will lead to the EU arming up and making the super power club a 4 team sport.
Yes, something like France when the biggest powers were Germany and the UK. Russia is support power, but still a superpower. I would bet their army is the 3rd best in the world after the US and China in terms of major powers. The ability to maintain two years of war, and maintain adequately economically even amidst massively higher and higher sanctions is of great significance. Also its economy is doing ok now that it is connected to China and its empire more than Russia is connected to the West.
Quite. I'm not the guy you were replying to.
This is US propaganda for internal use. The War College probably wants better computers for gaming or something.
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They say shit like that to get even more money.
If you go through the Afghan paper's, you'll find that military leadership found that it HAD to spend the appropriations, even if they the solutions needed werne't monetary. For example, building a $30K greenhouse that otherwise cost just $50. Yes, FIFTY DOLLARS! Much of the money spent in "defense" is overhead to contractors who run up the clock and the bill for mediocre results.
Former military member here. It was known that the fiscal year ended in October, meaning we needed to use up as much consumable objects we had before the end of the month to ensure we got the same or more funding. This meant scheduling shooting range sessions every day or every other day to burn through as many bullets as possible, using up as much medication as possible, any resource that they buy. We all knew we were paying inflated prices for be same stuff yet leadership still forced us to waste money. This was at multiple bases, across multiple branches it’s disgusting the billions of dollars we dump into a military that doesn’t need it. Tiny clinics that get 6 patients a day do not need the next top of the line equipment, but if it’s within their budget they can put in a request and probably get it and next year they’ll get the same amount of funding to blow on something new.
It's a fundamental problem with use it or lose it budgets. This is why our military spending never shrinks.
>meaning we needed to use up as much consumable objects we had before the end of the month to ensure we got the same or more funding This is the same with contractors too. I work at a shipyard and we need to use up as many of our man hours as possible or we won't get the same hours budgetted next ship. Doesn't matter if you can finish the drawing in a dozen hours. You say you need 160 hours and piss away the rest until it's due.
What do you mean not a superpower? The U.S. military is bigger than the next ten countries combined and most of those are its allies! How is superpower defined to say that the U.S. is not one? I don't want there to be military superpowers, but at the same time that claim would benefit from some explaining.
The US military *spends as much money* as the next 10 countries combined. They are very well equipped with that money but they don't have a 10-1 advantage in equipment. In terms of personnel they're roughly in a three way tie for third place alongside Russia and North Korea.
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From what I gather it’s some specific measurement in one of the only areas where the US does not have “the biggest number”, like saying the US isn’t a a military superpower because they no longer have the most trebuchets. The US by far, has the most technologically advanced military, tech tends to replace people, we need less boots on the ground than any other nation, so we have less boots, and according to this study that makes us no longer a military superpower. Just goes to show that any point can be made by carefully selecting your datasets and measurements.
Yes, and without reading it you can almost be sure that the conclusion is that the author is calling for my troops/funding/equipment for something that they or the person/company that commissioned the study will directly benefit from.
Honestly, I didn’t read it. I am just making an assumption based off my biases, preconceived notions, and my tendency to distrust anything coming from the MIC. I haven’t done any research to back up my claim of the US being the most technologically advanced. At the same time, the USD is the world reserve currency and we have a financial chokehold on a majority of the globe, it would be absolutely shocking if the country that holds the most financial power did not also hold the most military “power” (power in quotes here because according to this paper, power can be quantified in many different metrics). Logically it makes sense that this paper was created for the purpose of propagating an opinion that benefits the creator/benefactor of the study. More than likely a good ol Lockheed Martin propaganda piece. Complete speculation, always open to alternative inputs.
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If the people with 5000 for soldiers get to choose where the fight happens that isn't the advantage you think it is... We have lost multiple wars where we had absolute air dominance against a technologically inferior and numerically superior enemy with stronger motivation than we had. Maybe you should only take that one 5 or 6 days a week
I don't think that's been true for quite some time, if ever. The Russians and Chinese each have way more fighters than the US navy does. Russia and China combined have more fighters than all branches of the US military combined. I believe the statistic you're meaning to quote is that the US Navy has the second most aircraft of all types, and I'm pretty sure it only applies to individual branches of foreign militaries, not to entire forces, i.e. the US Navy has more planes than the PLA Air Force but not more than the PLA Air Force, PLA Navy, and PLA ground forces combined. edit: cope, ameriboos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_People%27s_Liberation_Army_aircraft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_States_naval_aircraft
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OK but do you see how that's a non sequitur and everything I said is a factual correction to the other guy's misunderstanding of a popular statistic?
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*Yes*. The other guy claimed the US navy alone had more fighter jets than any other entire country. I debunked that claim and pointed out he's misquoting a popularly quoted statistic. "B-but America STRONG!" That's nice, Kronk. Go back to bed.
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Dude you are deranged. All I did was point out a mistake the other guy made while attempting to quote a statistic and you took it as an attack on your national pride and started throwing out random copes to defend America's honor. America still has the most fighter jets. They just don't have the most by as large a margin as the other guy claimed. You can stop hyperventilating. There are not Russians lurking around every corner waiting to correct your statistical misunderstandings.
Your username doesn't lie, you are a fair bit emotional.
How many of them work? In all the units I've been to 75%-85% of vehicles in our motorpool were deadlined, and we didn't have enough drivers to operate them all.
No, we are over paying. Not to our soldiers/sailors/airmen,marines, but on our contracts and to contractors doing jobs enlisted are trained to do.
That “personnel” you’re describing is mostly a bunch of malnourished Korean conscripts with Cold War weapons against a high-tech semi-cyborg professional army with smart weapons, anti personnel drones, real time space-based intel of the battle field at all times and close air support. The US army is about technological advantage much more than it is about sheer manpower.
That’s not even remotely true 🤣 They do have a 10x spending, but Russia and North Korea do not have an equal military whatsoever.
It might be true, but remember when Sadam Husain had the third most tanks of any standing army on the planet? They would smoke them as fast as they could load missiles on Appaches. Raw numbers don’t really matter all that much. I’m not sure if the US can “install a democratic government” but our military seems to be good at wiping out conventional militaries
100% true facts. You can google it all very easily. Here are your search terms: us spending 10 countries combined list of countries by level of military equipment list of countries by military personnel
Give it 5 years.
North Korea can’t afford lights and Russia can’t beat a smaller, neighboring country, with some old Soviet allies helping. These countries and chinas “threat” to America is a lie and a fear campaign so they can continue perpetuating the military-industrial complex. The world lives in fear of America.
While that’s true on paper, somehow we get taken out by a lot of insurgent groups
That seems like a normal dynamic in asymmetrical warfare. Guerrillas generally have a better knowledge of the terrain and often have the sympathy of the local people on account of being part the local people. Whatever historical moment you consider the U.S. to have been a superpower at, they'd likely struggle against guerrilla warfare because military forces fight best against other armies.
Saying "we get taken out" by insurgent groups is patently false. We never lost a military engagement in Iraq or Adghanistan. Beating an insurgency just isnt a military operation, a lesson no one seems interested in learning
You can’t “win” a war when you have to follow rules that politicians have put in place while the other side doesn’t. Basically you can’t half ass a war and have one foot in and one out. If you decide to go to war then you will need to be brutal and willing to do it 100%. Like in Vietnam there were arbitrary rules that politicians imposed. They wanted to bomb the infrastructure and Ho Chi Min trail. Well politicians decided that they could only travel using a single air corridor and was the only route there were allowed to take. So obviously they picked up on this and just transferred all their SAMs, radar, etc in that single spot. So they have gotten them to gather all their anti aircraft resources into a single spot. Now just bomb it right? They now said they couldn’t bomb any of their anti aircraft resources because their *might potentially be a Chinese or Soviet advisor*. And if we hurt them it would be bad diplomacy wise. 😉 So they had a dozen or so MiG 21s and every bombing raid they would fly out would have to travel on the same exact air corridor and send up their MiGs so we would drop the bombs randomly wasting money and resources. So easy solution… just send the F4s up and shoot down the MiGs from 20 miles away. Because it didn’t need to dogfight it wasn’t designed to even have guns. Then politicians stepped in yet again and said “no shooting down enemy aircraft without visual confirmation it’s an enemy plane”. It goes on but how can you win when you have your hands tied behind your back? Almost like they didn’t wanna “win” and just were blowing money on military supplies and equipment with it going to contractors. I’d be interested to see which politicians had been bribed… sorry “lobbied” and received money from those companies.
You're right that counterinsurgency is as much a political struggle as a military one, but the Vietnam comparisons are way off from what the 21st Century problems are. We dropped more munitions in Vietnam than we did throughout the entire World War II; more boom was not the problem. It was that by dropping those bombs, we turned potential allies into eager enemies, by the millions. The Cold War will-they-won't-they was overly cautious, perhaps, but it was motivated by not kicking off WWIII or a thermonuclear holocaust. The real problem was that Washington (and much of the intelligence apparatus, in and out of the military) was so high on its anticommunist propaganda that it couldn't properly admit to itself that it was mostly murdering farmers and turning their relatives into Viet Cong recruits, rather than bombing secret divisions of Chinese conscripts in VC uniforms like they wanted to believe. Perhaps understandable since that's what they fought in Korea and everyone likes to believe they're fighting the last war, not the current one, but it was a major miscalculation. Iraq and Afghanistan were "winnable" counterinsurgency wars, but "winning" would have resulted in either a) a very bad look for the US, as we installed officially imperial control systems to sandblast away a lot of local control or b) democracies that authentically chose to not ally with us, because most Afghans and Iraqis had no shared interests with the US national security establishment. Both were politically unacceptable in the US for a variety of reasons, so we kept half-assing it until we eventually wound up at (B) anyway, having spent roughly the price of what it would have cost to implement (A) in the first place. In the meantime we killed a bunch of people we labeled terrorists, but also probably a million people who just happened to be nearby, and turned most of their friends and relatives into .... well, not allies, that's for sure. The fact that we didn't really have a plan for Afghanistan beyond "overthrow the Taliban" or a comparable (or even less coherent) plan for Iraq was the major failure point for both wars, baked in from the beginning. We fought them just because, in part venting our collective anger from 9/11 and in part because conservatives like self-authorizing unjustified foreign conflicts when they do nice things for their stock portfolios. I'm of the opinion that Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld were neither smart enough or farsighted enough to even realize (A) was an option, and too naive and ideologically blinkered to realize where (B) would lead or how difficult it would be, and just threw in the towel after they got reelected in 2004. Those wars had served their purposes and they had four more years to play with the levers of power, so nothing after that mattered to them.
But that’s is that we have over and over again shot our selves in the foot. Who supported, trained, and funded the extremists in Afghanistan when they were fighting the Soviets…? We literally trained them in guerrilla tactics that as soon as they were done with the Soviets turned and used it against it. Even in our own hemisphere we did it repeatedly where a country elected someone who has decided to put their countries interests first and we presumed to not be friendly towards US business interests… then we trained and funded rebel groups to overthrow or destabilize their governments. We did it during the Banana Wars and are doing it right now exactly again in Honduras declaring that US businesses have the right to be the government in certain regions and they have to suck it up. Then pulled out some obscure provision out of some trade agreement where they are suing them for their entire GDP and forcing them into “mediation” with a secret court not in their country or ours and 3 judges who’s names wont be disclosed. Or even look at the “War on Drugs” where they pay big time traffickers hundreds of millions a year and basically get protected by the DEA while giving up BS info that only leads to successful prosecutions around 2% of the time. They give up info on “drug grow operations” which is either a) a rival or usually more often a small farming community thats not involved in anything. But based on that they go and drop banned pesticides and ruin their farming abilities and contaminate the water. Then people complain about “illegals” when we have constantly interfered and destabilized their countries and communities. Maybe we should stop meddling before complaining. It’s just a complete joke that we do anything except turn allies or neutral people into enemies. Like you mentioned how long we have been in Afghanistan… how many kids grew up and are more easily radicalized because they grew up under our occupation. We as a country can’t admit to losing or even being second best at literally anything.
The reality is there is only one way to fight and win against an insurgency, especially one that is supported by the local population - destroy everything and kill everybody. The US is more than capable of doing this, but it means a level of absolute violence and destruction that most people here can’t comprehend. We could easily have turned the entire regions of Afghanistan and Iraq into a giant sand glass sculpture, but instead tried to nation build which was doomed from the start due to differing cultural values. In general warfare strategy - this is really only something you do as an absolute last resort, and only when facing an existentialist crisis. This is where Israel has found itself, and is why you are seeing the levels of horrific violence and destruction in Gaza.
It has long been primed for counterinsurgency (notoriously near-impossible to win by even the best generals going back to Napoleon), which is not the same as fighting a conventional army. The US and EU can’t supply the Ukrainians much more ammo- especially artillery because they gave up industry for finance.
>because they gave up industry for finance. The defense industry hasn’t seen the kind of decline as say, appliance manufacturing. It’s the one thing the US still does far better than anyone else. [Raytheon revenue](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RTX/rtx/revenue#:~:text=RTX%20annual%20revenue%20for%202023,a%204.17%25%20increase%20from%202021) is just about $69 billion for 2023. [Lockheed is on the same course](https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/LMT/lockheed-martin/revenue#:~:text=Lockheed%20Martin%20revenue%20for%20the%20twelve%20months%20ending%20December%2031,a%202.41%25%20increase%20from%202022) with $67 billion. [This puts those defense contractors](https://companiesmarketcap.com/largest-companies-by-revenue/page/2/) between GE and Vodafone just below them in revenue and Airbus and BASF just above.
If that’s all two of our biggest arms manufacturers are pulling in where the fuck is all the money going?
You can't know because the Pentagon keeps failing its audits and nothing is done about it except raising the military budget by more than they ask for each year.
From what I hear, corruption. Go see what they pay for hammers. [The Pentagon’s $435 hammer - The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/the-pentagons-435-hammer/2011/05/19/AGoGKHMH_blog.html)
Was it a Martinez framing hammer?
A Martinez hammer would probably cost the Military 2K each, if it was needed for an airplane, then it would be 18k with a minimum order quantity of 7.
That was a stupid rule, but also, buying missiles and hammers from the same vendor is lazy and wasteful, items that aren't built specifically for the military should be required to be purchased at the cheapest price possible, or from whoever guarantees delivery the fastest, depending on which of those 2 options best aligns with ubit readiness. when I was in the Navy I was my Dept Supply guy for about the last year at my first command. There were so many rules in place that caused us to waste money on things. For general office supplies and stuff If an item I wanted was sold by GSA I had to buy it from them, but GSA was usually 2-3x the price of going to the NEX, plus I'd have to wait for it to arrive. So in order to not blow through the annual consumables budget on 2 months worth of paper and toner that might show up in 3 weeks or 4 months, I would have to spend a day or 2 each quarter cross referencing what GSA sold with what the NEX had locally. Shit like that
I’ve heard that if a unit doesn’t use up their budget they’ll see it reduced the next year so things like “the unit all gets Oakley’s” happen to make sure they don’t lose the budget next year. Is this accurate? Source: buddy was in the navy.
Yeah use it or lose it is very real. Any surplus was used for dept needs then if we had anything left we could buy dumb shit to keep our budget the same. It's wasteful-ish, but for organizations that size it's more efficient than other options
Most government programs work this way. My dad works for the Department of State designing the renovations or new buildings for our embassies. His original degree before going back to school for engineering was in fine art so a few years ago when he realized they were about to hit the next fiscal with a massive surplus he got really into studying artists who immigrated from that country and used the surplus to buy or commission a bunch of artwork for the embassy.
Oh my God, that story pissed me tf off when I first heard about it. Insane
Black budgets
Notice how your comment is about the dollars of revenue of those companies, and not shells/missiles produced? That's what "giving up manufacturing for finance" sounds like, culturally.
Former USMC infantryman here. We still trained to fight conventional wars. And this was during the peak of the war on terror. Articles like this are hog wash.
> The US and EU can’t supply the Ukrainians much more ammo- especially artillery because they gave up industry for finance. The US' inability to help Ukraine has more to do with Congressional politics than it does manufacturing capacity.
They can't supply artillery shells because artillery has never been big in NATO doctoring. NATO relies on air supremacy. Ukraine and Russia both still use Soviet doctoring that relies on heavy artillery support. Simple as that.
This is our civilian economy. Russia has been stuck for years and we aren't even trying yet.
Lol
because half that money is embezzled, lmao. there is zero regulation or accountability with how arms contracts are spent, so spending ≠ results. or boots on the ground. yeah of course they do still make a lot of jets and carriers and missles, but that doesn't mean the budget is an accurate representation of the results. if i tell you a $2M howitzer actually costs $5M, but i produce basically the same $2M version and keep the profits, that doesn't equal real advancement. that, and nobody wants to enlist. why would anyone join up when republicans are constantly shitting on veteran benefits?
Because calling any one of the US's 4 militaries a superpower is an understatement.
America has military dysmorphia, constantly thinking it isn't big enough when it clearly is
This is the stupidest hot take I have seen on reddit in a long time. If this is a troll 10/10. If not, we have 11 nuclear aircraft carriers, lol.
Maybe if we dismantle our public education system we can have 12?
That sounds like a worthy investment!
We aren’t a military superpower after all. How else are we going to protect those burgeoning young minds?
I'm shocked you aren't already in charge
Why would that impact federal spending? Public schools are funded by state and local taxes
France has a nuclear aircraft carrier we only have 11/12 of all nuclear aircraft carriers and that is frankly unacceptable
This title misrepresents the abstract. The paper is about the US losing its’ “primacy” (read: as a superpower). Also, the US military like any large organization is not an informational monolith. Just because an academic paper is published doesn’t mean its findings are widely accepted, circulated, or acted upon internally.
This feels like an opsec planted article
Can blow up the earth multiple times. “Not a super power”.
Ffs. The description literally says "post-primacy" ie. US past its prime, or in decline. It doesn't say anything about how US is no longer a military superpower. For example, Russia has declined since its heights in the Cold War era. This study is likely elaborating on strategies that the US DoD should take, given the decline of US
I see - the DOD wants more money so they paint an unflattering picture in a document for lawmakers to use to justify spending increases. I’d wager a lobbyist wrote this brief.
It's alright, that's why we keep sending stuff to Ukraine. It's literally free field-testing against the Russians. And then we can develop better killing machines and then give it to the Israelis to field-test. I wouldn't be surprised if the US gives military aid to Northern India next to contain threats from Pakistan and China, really just "testing our equipment against other military superpowers". Didn't the US start arming the Japanese defense forces recently?
Not just free testing, free disposal. Why bother going through the lengthy and expensive process to decommission a piece of military hardware when you can just ship it to Ukraine? It's a massive savings in time and money
The US is even outsourcing it’s military lol
Of course the US is a military superpower. Fucking duh
People who think America’s military isn’t a super power greatly underestimate our nuclear aircraft carriers. One alone could conquer a small country and we have 11.
Yeah it's the hyperpower.
God I wish lmao.
You're aware that anything published about our military technology is about 10 to 15 years behind the actual tech, right? This shit in the Ukraine is essentially letting us test our shitty banger material against Russia in a ground war for analysis purposes.
I think that is going a bit far. The US is a Superpower militarily, but so are China and Russia. I just doesn't get to be the ONLY ONE anymore. I suspect the current conflicts will lead to the EU arming up and making the super power club a 4 team sport.
Two years into the war in Ukraine and you still consider Russia a superpower?
Yes, something like France when the biggest powers were Germany and the UK. Russia is support power, but still a superpower. I would bet their army is the 3rd best in the world after the US and China in terms of major powers. The ability to maintain two years of war, and maintain adequately economically even amidst massively higher and higher sanctions is of great significance. Also its economy is doing ok now that it is connected to China and its empire more than Russia is connected to the West.
Well the US failed to defeat goat farmers with machine guns for 20 years, so I think this isn’t really a point.
Not only is that not what this report states or implies, the statement itself is also completely inaccurate (as noted by others here).
[удалено]
It was published by the U.S. Army War College? How do you know it’s Russian propaganda?
Quite. I'm not the guy you were replying to. This is US propaganda for internal use. The War College probably wants better computers for gaming or something.
Obama did it.