Back during the Cold War, specifically in the Reagan years, the media used to love reporting on military boondoggles. The format of the story required a few budget items that would strike the normal person as outrageous. Perhaps it was a hand tool that cost tens of thousands of dollars. This tool was part of a weapons system budget that was being criticized for its cost. Perhaps it was a mundane items like a toilet seat or a hammer that would cost thousands of dollars.
The main reason for these stories was to promote the charade that the two parties were locked in serious opposition. The Democrats pretended to be against the military, while the Republicans were pro-military. In reality, both parties were fully owned by the military industrial complex, but the demands of the Cold War required the two parties to maintain the aura of a lively democracy. The free world was open and debated things, while the Soviets were closed to debate.
We no longer see stories like this, despite the fact that for the last thirty years America has spent over a trillion on war per year. Officially the war budget is a trillion a year, but no one seems to know how much is really spent. There never has been an official accounting of the Afghanistan debacle or the war in Iraq. America technically has a budget, but no one knows what is in it. At this point, it is an abstract concept even to the people who vote on it Congress.
Those old stories about military contractors ripping off the taxpayer also served as a distraction from larger issues. America had shifted after Vietnam away from fielding a military to fight a large scale war to a military built for small wars. That meant a change in the tools of war. Instead of inexpensive machines that a recruit could be quickly trained to operate, the machines would be complex and require years of training, but they would be unusually lethal.
A simple example is the tank. In the Second World War the tank was the symbol of the opposing armies. America produced massive numbers of Sherman tanks that overwhelmed the technically superior German tanks. The Tiger was superior than the Sherman, but not better than a swarm of them. The Abrams tank, developed in the 1980’s for the new army, was a technological marvel. It is big and complicated, but unusually lethal in the right hands.
Another way of putting this is the American army was transitioning from the shotgun approach to war to the rifle approach to war. Instead of firebombing cities, the American military will hit the military targets in the city. Instead of indiscriminately attacking the enemy positions, it would hit key points with pinpoint accuracy. This would require new weapons that pushed the edge of military technology. The new smart military would require new smart and expensive weapons.
Over the last thirty years this approach looked smart. In the first Iraq invasion the American military attacked and destroyed a big army in the desert, without suffering any serious losses. Smart missiles knocked out their air defense system and smart bombs destroyed key infrastructure. The smart air force pinned down the Iraqi army while waves of Abrams outflanked them. By any measure, it was an amazing display of the new smart army versus the old dumb army.
The thing no one bothered asking is whether this new smart military would look good against a more serious opponent. Instead, it has been thirty years of applause as the American war machine beats up on hand picked opponents. Launching cruise missiles from destroyers that hit targets in Baghdad is not the same thing as hitting targets in China from the South China Sea. Destroying tanks in the Donbas is a different task than strafing them in the Iraqi desert.
The war in Ukraine is giving as a clue on this front. In theory the West is about to send main battle tanks to Ukraine. Whether this actually happens is questionable as it takes a long time to train a crew on an Abrams or Leopard tank. It will take months to get the infrastructure in place just to operate them in the rear, away from Russian drones, artillery and missiles. The Pentagon thinks they can get Abrams in the field by 2024 but they are not making any promises.
The thing that no one really wants to say, but is painfully obvious, is that the smart tanks are not much use without smart operators and a massive technological infrastructure to sustain and control them. In fact, the Abrams tank may not be suited for the fighting in the Donbas for the simple reason it is too fragile. This is a high intensity ground combat and this tank is simply unfit for these conditions. In other words, it is more of a show pony than a workhorse.
A similar story is unfolding with other weapons. The Russians have been using their missiles to knock out Ukrainian air defenses and utility systems. The West has promised to send new air defense system, but it turns out that they are so expensive and complicated that few of them actually exist. The lead time to make new missiles and their launchers is years. In one case, the lead time for a single missile is close to three years.
It is not just the wonder weapons that are in short supply. Land wars are about the industrial capacity of the combatants. In land war, both sides will use massive amounts of ammunition in an effort to degrade the opponent. Some estimates say that the Ukrainians expend five thousand artillery rounds per day in some areas, while overall the total is twice that number. Reliable reports say the Russians currently outgun the Ukrainians by a factor of ten.
The problem for the West and specifically America is there is nowhere near enough military industrial capacity to meet Ukraine’s demands. The Pentagon is asking for bids to build new capacity, but that will take years. The Ukrainian army will be history long before it happens. Putting that aside, the new capacity is a fraction of what an army would need in a land war. Instead of spending billions on the F-35 program, the Pentagon should have been making artillery shells. Whoops.
It turns out that the logic of the new technological army rested on Francis Fukuyama being right about the end of history. The trillion dollar whiz-bang army would never have to fight a serious opponent. Russia would be parted out and China would be flying the rainbow flag of diversity. The new technological army just needed to look good in shorts, not actually perform on the field. It also had to make the friends of the imperial government obscenely rich.
Like so much that has happened since the end of the Cold War, the American war machine is something of a scam. It was built on the assumption that the narratives the ruling class was spinning were a reflection of reality. Instead, those narratives simply secured their position atop the new world order. They had little connection with the reality of what was happening in the world. As a result, the imperial war machine is unfit for the task of defending the empire.
The irony here is that it proves Pat Buchanan was right. As he heads into retirement, he is seeing his warnings come true. The great de-industrialization of America has turned the country into a paper tiger. A century ago, America was the arsenal of democracy, but now it is unable to make much of anything. Like so much about the last thirty years, the military industrial complex is just another grift. It is a trillion dollar boondoggle, a great con on the American people.
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Maybe 2023 will be the year the debauched American empire truly gets it’s ass handed back to them. Sadly that just makes life that much worse for all of us, and not all of us deserve it.
7
“[A]nd not all of us deserve it.”
If Russia nukes San Francisco, I’ll be breaking out the marshmallows.
9
D.C. first, please.
6
It is a good bet the militaristic tyranny in charge turns on the population when it gets humiliated.
2
I’ll call and raise you one.
That *is* the backup plan.
Win or lose, Ukraine doesn’t really matter; what Cloward-Piven demands is that they get their people in place before the real show starts, with a ready excuse to use them.
This is about the conquest of the West. Russia, China, all that are distant opportunities to scam a few bucks while Latin and North America, and Europe, are being turned into Fortress Oceania.
Who needs cold, distant resources in Siberia when we have two whole continents?
South America is rich in resources. Europe, a bauble to buy off the other powers.
(Sorry. Add:)
Hello, Canada.
We’re selling Australia to the Chinese.
Clausewitz wisely told us that “war is a mere extension of policy by other means”. Yes, the expensive hi-tech armed forces are an issue, as Zman observes so well. But crappy, muddled politics are equally to blame in my view.
Before the first shot is fired, the politicos have to articulate a concept of what victory looks like in political terms. In this regard, we see the massive failure of American policy over the last 30 years. The high-tech “victory” in Iraq slowly dissolved into an uneasy political stalemate between Shiite and Sunni factions in Iraq, with Iran lurking and our diplomats hunkered in the Green Zone. We need not talk about the fiascos in Libya and Syria.
Afghanistan was such an epic clusterfail that it really defies analysis. As Kipling foretold, certainly the “odds are on the cheaper man”. All the technology in the world crumbled before Bronze Age culture.
The number one predicate for a rational military policy is humility. And yet these geniuses never learn from their mistakes. Our politics basically boil down to: “We should rule the world, no questions asked”. No military can enforce this doctrine.
6
Afghanistan was a failure only if you view it in conventional military terms. If seen as a 20-year revenue stream for the MIC, it was a smashing success.
9
“The West has promised to send new air defense system, but it turns out that they are so expensive and complicated that few of them actually exist. The lead time to make new missiles and their launchers is years. In one case, the lead time for a single missile is close to three years.”
That’s very interesting, do you have any details on these systems and the numbers involved?
I forget the name of the system, but Douglas MacGregor has been talking this quite a bit. The Patriot is another good example. The wait time for a new missile is two years. If we collected all of the patriot systems on earth and installed them in Ukraine we are out of missiles in two months and will not be able to make new ones for years.
2
I think they’re talking about the NASAMS system. I don’t know anything about it but I assume it’s expensive complicated and doesn’t work that well in real life.
1
My first thought was “GAE makes an air defense system?”. Since they’re so used to dominating the skies I can imagine this is very much a back-burner project.
4
“The irony here is that it proves Pat Buchanan was right.”
He and Ron Paul restored my faith in America after the termites of the W. Administration pissed on her endlessly.
I’d like to believe that the American military isn’t a bloated paper tiger; I think we’re about to find out soon.
4
“The irony here is that it proves Pat Buchanan was right.”
Pat was right about all of the big issues. In addition to de-industrialization, he was right about immigration, our meddling foreign policy, the war on our culture. We can’t say we weren’t warned.
8
> Perhaps it was a mundane items like a toilet seat or a hammer that would cost thousands of dollars.
Back thirty years ago, we had some lessons on protest music at school. This Tom Paxton song “Sold a Hammer to the Pentagon”, I still remember to this day.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8GsP-8dKOE
This was back when libs had some talent. It’s fun and catchy without the angry moralizing.
1
I’m the future, does someone in congress just flip a coin ($1T) to the secretary of defense each year? Maybe two coins?
1
At least War Bonds were more honest, voluntary, and allowed the little guy to “be patriotic” while making a small return eventually (if your country won)
2
Re the trillion dollar coin flip, I’ve long advocated for just this thing. Send a trillion or whatever each year on the first day of January to the Pentagon and have them dole it out to the military industrial complex as they deem fit, no accounting or proof of production required, just a pledge not to drag the nation into a war for the next 365 days. It would make for a safer world and a more stable country. They are going to steal whatever comes their way anyhow so just make sure there is a string to maintain peace. Win/win.
I realize, of course, that the chicken hawks/neoliberals/neoconservatives require scenes of death and destruction to achieve full sexual release, but maybe virtual reality is advanced enough now to provide fungible wank material. If not, dedicate some VR research funding to that along with the MIC bribery.
2
And as Ed Dutton says, IQ keeps dropping 1 point a decade. So since the end of WWII, that’s 8 points. For the troops and the leaders. Compare Cordell Hull to Blinken.
7
Compare James G. Blaine to Cordell Hull.
2
The maintenance requirements for these wonder weapons always gets conveniently left out of the discussion as Zman points out. The average person would be shocked to see the actual calculation of mission hours vs maintenance hours. Sending tanks to Ukraine involves a lot more than just delivering them.
For example, say a fighter jet goes out on a 3 hour mission. Keep in mind this mission isn’t a Top Gun thrill ride with yank and bank maneuvers, just a regular flight. After this flight, it can be expected to be in a maintenance cycle of 6-8 man-hours before getting released safe for flight operations again. That is also dependent on no discrepancies found during post-flight. So many systems need to be checked after a flight: hydraulics, avionics, flight surfaces, etc. If a component needs replacing, then the jets availability for missions is at the mercy of the supply system getting those parts.
While the flashy videos show these machines doing incredible stunts it is amazing how much work and support takes place in the background to keep them operational. So, who’s gonna keep the tanks running?
11
The Abrams tank is more fragile than a race car. In order to operate it, it requires a repair crew, which requires vehicles. You also have to have equipment to transport the broken tank back to your repair facility. Then you have to stock things like engines, because it is easy to blow an engine in one of these things.
9
I would further add the simple need for fueling/ transportation. Considering the tanks will most likely have to be transported across Ukraine before they are even in the combat zone, they will make quite the target for an air power. The US has had the luxury of destroying opposing air defenses or offenses first. This is not the case in Ukraine; in fact, the opposite is true: Russia can attack through air nearly at will. The complex network needed to transport and maintain is simply not there in Ukraine, and any attempts to ad hoc one will probably make quite the tasty target. What a mess.
6
From what I read, the tanks also have an insane heat signature, so any of these guys rolling without overwhelming air support is just going to be a heavy coffin.
6
No worries— they’ll soon run on electric unicorn farts, and Gaia will shower the faithful with blessings. Onward to New Zion/Utopia/pipe dream!
6
You might also wish to consider a more fundamental logistical problem: getting leopards/abrams to the battle zone.
You don’t just jump in, start up and drive to the front (even assuming that the roads/bridges in Ukraine will withstand the weight of tanks a third again heavier than the heaviest Russian equivalent.
And repair facilities? Anywhere in Ukraine can and will be targetted by Russian stand-off weapons. Poland is the nearest space that’s “safe”. For the moment, at least.
3
Posted before I saw Eloi’s post. With apologies for any redundancy.
2
Yep. The Russians have been knocking down the rail system for months now. The Ukrainians have brought old diesel locomotives out of museums because of electricity problems. By now, the Russians should know they cross into Ukraine and be able to take them out long before they cross the Dnieper River.
My guess is the Pentagon has come up with a plan to send Abrams that would be scrapped due to serious structural problems. These will be used to show the pols, but they will never reach the battlefield. This buys the MIC time.
4
Additional time to secure another multi-billion dollar “Ukraine aid package,” to be precise. The MIC probably realizes this grift cannot last twenty years like Afghanistan (it is dubious the United States itself has that much shelf life), so they are stealing heavily in the early innings.
4
Yeah, the words “smash and grab” come to mind.
5
The same people taking care of the US donated howitzers: the Poles. By which, of course, I mean NATO in Poland, by which I mean regular US army. They’ll be cycled back regularly as long as the railroads work.
Lots of mercenaries over there now as well. No one wants to talk about actual numbers, but with 150,000 dead Ukrainian regular army, what can be left?
Europe seems to have forgotten the hard lessons of the 30 Years War and the Treaty of Westphalia that took a very dim view of non-state armies…for very good reason.
2
“…so, who’s gonna keep the tanks running?”
Well, the brave and intelligent white guys who operate the machine have been told they are racist and know that brown/ blacks/ females/ gays will get all promotions.
Support staff is all brown/ black/ female/ gay. When things break, the browns will bring Mexican efficiency, the blacks African impulse control, the females will get pregnant and the gays will do gay things.
The Chinese and the Russians are blessed with an enemy like the GAE.
3
The first World War where the enemy dies from laughing
1
“Quick, Mika, hand me the binoculars!”
Wouldn’t that be something if some of the key personnel are descendants of Confederate veterans or just stalwart sons of the South who feel intense motivation now that all memory of their ancestors are being erased as a top priority.
In the meantime, FBI diversicrats will pick up the slack now that memorandum in Times New Roman will no longer be bogging them down with mental anguish. Garfinkle just keeps racking up accomplishments along with the rest of the indispensible ones of incredible intelligence that this world just can’t do without. Operation Nosedive!!!!
Had to do a double take there at the end – Zman stated ‘arsenal of democracy’ – first glance read it as ‘debauchery’ (though I suppose one might rightly assume is actually the case)
6
In addition to being quite funny, “Arsenal of Debauchery” would make for a great band name.
6
It probably exists as the name for the support and coordination network for drag queen story hour brigades.
1
Per Compsci’s comment yesterday, in 2018, Forbes reported that Abrams production in Lima, OH was one per month, mainly to keep the plant open and retain the specialized workforce.
As for the Abrams (and Leopards) on the battlefield, the Russians will use drone corrected artillery fire to wipe them out.
This is why artillery has long been known as, “The Queen of the Battlefield.”
7
I read Edward Luttwak’s book on the Roman Empire not that long ago, and I know that book has its detractors and criticisms, but one thing I took away from it was the the empire got a lot of mileage out of simply existing. The Roman Empire itself put enough fear into enough potential adversaries and vassal kings that it could operate its military much more efficiently and send it to places where it needed to be, instead of all over. This is great because sending a military to go fight a war is expensive and difficult, and carries a lot of downside risk. Over time, this advantage got chipped away, both by a little and a lot at times. Eventually the empire had to actually go fight those wars with all those downsides, and the deficiencies became more clear to the enemies.
The US, since the end of Vietnam, has been doing what tough guy Jonah Goldberg articulated in 2002 when he said that “Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business.” It worked great in Grenada and Iraq, of course, but not so great in Syria and Afghanistan. The GAE’s opponents do not seem to be as afraid of taking it on as it used to. Soon it is going to actually go and fight real opponents.
9
” Soon it is going to actually go and fight real opponents…” and lose catastrophically in an empire-ending debacle he Romans never suffered.
4
Rome instilled fear because its military exploits were astounding in their effectiveness, brutality and scale. I love our people and I love our country (defined as 1970 and before). I do not denigrate us.
However, the US never did anything close to what Rome did in terms of military exploit and accomplishment. Even just a month of routine operations in Caesar’s conquest of Gaul is far more impressive in efficiency and outcome than anything our military ever did. They defended their own too. The Syrians killed Krakus. They finished another civil war, then marched out and crushed Syria just to tell them, “Never ever ever ever and we do mean NEVER, touch one of our own.”
We’ve done great things as a nation, and we have some great people in select spots in our military. Overall, there is just no comparison to Rome. It is the leadership of this former nation that has to go. After they go, we’ll heal and strengthen ourselves and then get serious about dealing with the many others that must and will go to.
2
The US military is designed to be a decapitation force. It’s talent is to kill specific individuals with the intent of eliciting surrender via loss of leadership. Consequently, it has a weapons profile which can achieve these goals. But it cannot fight (or win) a conventional engagement against a peer enemy in major ground operations. Should that scenario arise, it must resort to nukes to avoid defeat. This is exactly how the mafia operated; it relied upon intimidation/threats and the occasional targeted murder to keep everyone in line. Failing that, it’s scorched Earth time and everybody dies.
And all of this is immoral in addition to being stupid and suicidal. But there is one silverlining. The tools of selective kill are universal and can be applied in many venues, not just foreign countries that you want to exploit. For example, chemotherapy started out as blunderbuss type medications that overwhelmed cancers, but now are highly specific and can target individual cell types and masses. Ditto for triangulated 3 laser therapies. You just have to identify the cancer cells and implement a focused remedy.
We now live in a society that encourages men to compete in women’s sports, use women’s bathrooms, and stage drag queen story hours in libraries for predatory purposes. I think we are at late Stage 3 or early Stage 4 cancer. The remedy can’t come soon enough.
16
1
I know zero about military hardware, but I do have a fair amount of experience with family and neighbors who were career military. And I can say with confidence that the military is mostly – this is important, mostly – a giant welfare program that contributes about as much to society as digging a hole and filling it again, over and over and over.
That said, there is a slice of the military that contains extremely capable men who are extremely motivated. We’re not just talking about the Navy Seals. Pilots, their crews, submarine crews, tank crews, technicians, etc. These guys are no joke.
But they’re a very small part of the military. The rest is filled with lifers punching the clock doing make-work jobs. Blacks, in particular, love the military since it gives them a middle to upper-middle class life without having to produce anything.
Go a military base and you’ll see. They’re like a small town with stores, gyms, places to eat, urgent care, etc. It’s why military people are so loyal. They live separate lives. Everything is handled for them.
If you’re willing to put up with a lot bureaucracy and moving every couple of years, the military offers you a very easy life.
22
A good comment, Citizen.
So we can reason that the mass of the Army is effectively Not Really Prepared to go toe-to-toe with any (roughly) equal opponent anytime soon.
I hear the same things when I speak to many military personnel over here. Like you say, everything taken care of.
It’s timely, because I have been reading a lot about the Waffen SS of late, and in particular the intense selection, training and propaganda these fellows were subjected to. It certainly seemed that that particular war machine knew that effective training and brainwashing were keys to a decent fighting unit – amongst other things. Although, by no means am I disregarding the abilities of the Wehrmacht.
Now, no doubt modern militaries have the Leftist brainwashing, but it doesn’t seem to me that many of the run-of-the-mill Army types really are going to die for that.
Guess what I’m saying is how FNG it all is: our media drums into us “We’re at war!”, “Nasty Putler!”, but in reality nobody really much cares. Certainly, it doesn’t seem like our militaries take this seriously. Just more marketing to smooth over the politicians until the next gubmint gibs.
7
When you have a professional, permanent military, you have to create a permanent world for them to live in. They have to sleep somewhere. Okay, build barracks.
But, wait, they can’t live in barracks for the next 20 years, so build them apartments. But, wait, the officers don’t want to live in apartments, so build them houses. Well, we should build them a store on base so they don’t have to drive so far. What about a movie theater. What about a gym. Etc.
You have a whole army to take care of the army because the actual army isn’t off somewhere fighting. It’s here, so it needs to be taken care of.
Over time, the bulk of the military isn’t meant to fight but to take care of the small portion of the military that would do the actual fighting. Permanent militaries that don’t go anywhere are just hard to maintain.
3
“And I can say with confidence that the military is mostly – this is important, mostly – a giant welfare program”
Absolutely true. I personally know a white man who was a full-time helicopter mechanic in the National Guard, now on “disability” for “bad knees” from standing on concrete floors in the hangar.
I personally overheard an enlisted NCO last year (nonwhite, Pacific Islander I think) speaking to another person last year, saying he was eligible to get out in a couple of years and and planned to apply for disability. Verbatim quote: “Hey, I’ll play the game, why not? it’s $4000 a month, tax free.”
3
Maybe a year or two ago, it came out that the Pentagon was telling the White House that it was not ready to fight these wars that Brandon’s team was pushing for. My first thought was, WTF, we have a standing military that costs us between $800+ billion, and it can’t do the one thing it is meant to do? This is patently absurd, but also completely normal. It’s one of those things that nobody really is supposed to question.
I know that “woke” military ads got a lot of press in conservative circles recently, but to me, much more instructive are the ads for companies like USAA. USAA is essentially GEICO for the military. These ads are on constantly, especially during sporting events. They tout their exclusivity as they are designed first and foremost for “the military community.” The ads do not portray soldiers who are out there fighting and winning wars, or who just got done with their service and need help. They are showing people living comfortable middle-class lives in a suburb somewhere, who need insurance like any middle class griller. This is the military these days.
2
There won’t be any Abrams MBT’s in Ukraine. As for the Leopards, it won’t be the first time German tanks were left burning and/or abandoned on the Steppes.
7
The U.S. war machine of the past thirty years is a joke. We spent billions and billions for the ability of some drone operator at an Air Force base in Nevada to push a button and blow up some hapless goatfucker driving through the desert in a Hi-lux eight thousand miles away, but ended up losing the war anyway to guys equipped with little more than AK-47s and RPGs.
The U.S. military is suffering from the same inflated sense of competence that the British suffered from in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was one thing for them to shoot down spear-chucking Zulus and Sudanese, but they found it was not quite so easy when they confronted other white people like the Boers and the Germans.
If the U.S. ever gets into another peer-to-peer war, we’re going to get our asses handed to us.
Unfortunately, as the Empire implodes, all that technology we used to kill brown people in the Middle East will increasingly be used against white people at home. It may not be good for winning wars outright, but it is still pretty deadly when you are on the receiving end of it.
15
“The U.S. military is suffering from the same inflated sense of competence that the British suffered from in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. It was one thing for them to shoot down spear-chucking Zulus and Sudanese, but they found it was not quite so easy when they confronted other white people like the Boers and the Germans.”
Reminds me of a scene in the finale of Blackadder Goes Forth:
George: You know, that’s the thing I don’t really understand about you, Cap. You’re a professional soldier, and yet, sometimes you sound as though you bally well haven’t enjoyed soldiering at all.
Edmund: Well, you see, George, I did like it, back in the old days when the prerequisite of a British campaign was that the enemy should under no circumstances carry guns — even spears made us think twice. The kind of people we liked to fight were two feet tall and armed with dry grass.
George: Now, come off it, sir — what about Mboto Gorge, for heaven’s sake?
Edmund: Yes, that was a bit of a nasty one — ten thousand Watusi warriors armed to the teeth with kiwi fruit and guava halves. After the battle, instead of taking prisoners, we simply made a huge fruit salad. No, when I joined up, I never imagined anything as awful as this war. I’d had fifteen years of military experience, perfecting the art of ordering a pink gin and saying “Do you do it doggy-doggy?” in Swahili, and then suddenly four-and-a-half million heavily armed Germans hoved into view. That was a shock, I can tell you.
6
To add insult to injury, they are rolling over and forfeiting the homelands of those they are charged as a first duty to serve, to the endless hordes of spear chucking losers they once rolled over.
The sooner some inside group that sees the threat to their children and the desecration of all their ancestors sacrificed so we can live, makes an appropriately vicious move against them the better.
This makes me sick!
4
“America produced massive numbers of Sherman tanks that overwhelmed the technically superior German tanks. The Tiger was superior than the Sherman, but not better than a swarm of them.”
Because I like you Z man, I won’t go all tank nerd 🤓 on this thread. I’d just add the Tiger, Tiger II (aka King Tiger), and Panther were technologically superior when they ran. The German love of technological superiority via complexity should’ve been a warning (as anyone who ever seriously turned wrenches on a German made car could tell you).
(And the Panzer divisions would’ve LOVED an engine i their tanks as reliable as the Ford GAA V8 in the A3 version of the Sherman or the V-2 V12 in the T-34).
To your point, equipment eventually gets too expensive to risk using. It’s like the guy who lays down $1 Million on a rare Ferrari. It gets placed in a heated garage because I can’t DRIVE the thing. I mean, if it gets in an accident……….
What happens when a $50-100 Million M1A2 (spitballing, I don’t know what a Main Battle Tank costs) gets knocked out by Ivan or Haji or Han with a $50K (again, spitballing) anti-tank missile? How much of that are you going to risk? Besides the fact that weapons systems are often pulled from the line and upgraded (for a tank you’d add a new main gun, additional armor over the turret and hull, new computer systems, etc.), blow ’em up and you’ll have to buy new. A quick bing shows we have ONE, count ’em ONE tank factory in the US (The Joint Systems Manufacturing Center in Lima, Ohio) that as of 2019 (the latest stats I can find) was producing 11 tanks a month. Sounds like we’d be lucky to get one a day, much less one an hour (or even less time) like we did in WW2.
And airplanes? Oh man, imagine losing a half-billion to billion dollar airplane to a $500K SAM. And it’s not like we have Willow Run in Ypsilanti, MI rolling a B-24 off the line every hour.
Perhaps we’ll have peace because it just costs too much to go to war. I mean, I don’t want my Ferrari scratched man. 😏
13
Totally agree. In fact, the parallel between the Abrams and Tiger II is a good one, but I did not want to veer into tank-talk, but it would be a good topic for another day.
7
“but it would be a good topic for another day.”
Understand and it would be interesting. There’s this blogger you link to that keeps promising an open tank thread, but the best we got was an airplane thread. 😏
Hehe.
If a gentleman ever wants to understand the complete difference between a manager’s vision and an engineers understanding of a problem, he ought to familiarize himself with Guderian’s comments on Moustache Guy’s, ahem, tank designs.
Pretty sure one was like a ship on caterpillar tracks. I also believe there was a Proof-of-Concept of something called The Maus – which was also rather large, but not ship-like!
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Ukraine began the war with about 3200 tanks, per Big Serge on Twitter who is usually reliable.) What happened to them? If a high percentage of them are out of commission, will 100 or so NATO tanks really help?
I am increasingly skeptical of Ukraine’s numbers. The Russians have been weirdly meticulous in counting how many men and machines they think they have knocked out. Either they have knocked out far more men and machines than they have claimed or the Ukrainians had much less than they claimed in this war.
Something like 80% of all new BMWs are leased. Audi and Mercedes are right behind them in the 70-75% range. Apparently, they have decided this is their optimal business model.
So, all three of the big German marques now build their cars to be somewhat reliable for the first two leases, or about 30 to 50k miles.
After that mileage, they don’t care.
They are able to do this because the modeling and simulation tools are so good they can analyze every part in the vehicle and determine how cheaply they can make them from plastic so that say, 80% last for two lease periods.
In the past, manufacturers could not do this, so they would design parts from metal with significant margins of safety built in.
This is why we see certain late 80s to mid-00s vehicles holding, or even rising in value on the used market.
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they also over-engineer their cars. was watching a YT video and a mechanic was saying that the engines have such tight tolerances, that after a couple of years the various parts get worn enough that you can never get them back in spec; i.e. they will not run correctly or reliably.
You think they made a mess of the military. There are parts of the country you go through and see the mess they have made. This is only just the beginning.
I remember a recent trip into Heathrow. The shell is some post-modern architecture. The promotional displays say Shakespeare and show some fancy monuments, but the people in them say Mogadishu, Yemen, Chad. The entire staff, particularly the security staff, is Pakistani.
How is that going to work out? You bring in foreigners in the name of getting new tax cows to shore up a retirement and welfare system ponzi scheme. You give them government jobs – more net liabilities. You pay to house and feed them. You tell them the country you brought them to is evil and responsible for you homeland’s plight. You tell them, take this as your homeland and btw, we hate the indigenous/native people here, and you should too. Many of the jobs you give them are in security/law enforcement.
How could that go wrong?
Major American metro airports are rapidly descending into the same hellscape. Outside of the shopping mall portion of the Fascist Cathedral that this new religion has as its triumphant house of worship, go to the underbelly of it – baggage claims; taxi pickups; car rentals; lost luggage counter. It isn’t America and it isn’t European. I had a bad feeling when TSA was instituted. I had an even worse feeling when they introduced the line where you could pay to avoid the Unconstitutional taxpayer funded shakedown line – seeing how the sheep just accepted the institution of a second class citizenry and a special tax to opt out of, “The War on Terror.” Once that was accepted, they knew they could
The same people who provide the equipment and training for this security state scam, train our FBI. America was sold to the highest bidder. In Britain it looks like the airport section was sold to Pakistan as part of some new Alien Patronage System.
What these people have done is a crime of epic proportions and will cause a monumental series of catastrophes.
One last note. Yesterday I overheard an American Boobusina saying how there is no way her family could make it after the lockdowns and the inflation at the grocery store. She was an Bidenette. She said something to the effect of, “Trump was an asshole but at least I had money left over and could live.” She went on to say that so many have become Republicans that she fears there will be no reform. Talk about a deluded person. I did a presentation for my posterity about TGR that shocked them into action – and I chalk that up as a success. In putting that together there was an endless, bottomless amount of genocidal, virtiolic anti-white invective. After putting together an hours worth I left a few more days worth on the cutting room floor. It made the point.
Back to this Boobusina, it is amazing how Trump is an asshole trumps everything and yet she willingly casts her vote and support for people who openly propose and implement genocide against her and the children she struggles to feed. It is an interesting manner of distinguishing between a friend and an asshole.
God help us. We are going to need it.
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The Zman:
“The new technological army just needed to look good in shorts”
Gab:
“I’ve seen your tits your opinion is invalid.”
“You have a cold
You tested positive for AIDS, faggot”
_________________________________
Somehow, in the long run, I think we’re gonns win
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I don’t know if it was mentioned yet, but a trillion dollar boondoggle sounds like it needs a trillion dollar coin.
I see what Z did there…..
You sneaky Pete!
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That is only HALF of it too. But.. the current military is infested with bronies, furries, queers (but I repeat myself), affirmative action she-boons… and smart white guys no longer sign up. The best, most experienced ones are bailing out in droves and taking early retirement.
If this continues… you will be leaving your defence to perverts and morons. The US Navy is already starting to rust.
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The Pentagon failed a fifth consecutive audit in November, when it could only account for 39 percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets.
It cannot track its spending either. $220B in spending was unaccounted for last year, and according to the GAO, this could be extremely understated.
Russia has an annual defense spend of something like $65B.
I don’t think we’re getting much value here.
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Since the Maidan coup and the Minsk accords happened in 2014, it’s indisputable that the GAE was planning this adventure as far back as 2013. But one can safely assume it was planning it much farther back. I know (personally) retired US military contractors who were in Ukraine training their troops as far back as 2007. The Great Russia Hoax of 2016, in hindsight, fits into prepping the propaganda battlefield, but I digress.
So we should be able to agree that this was at the very least a decade in the planning, but probably closer to two decades. At a minimum.
Yet evidently, during all that time, no one in the GAE gave very much of a thought to the military logistics which would be necessary to wage a war in Ukraine. It beggars belief. Because clearly the grand strategy was there, has been there for a long time.
But one sees this same mentality among the eggheads who occupy the power centers these days, that they can snap their fingers and make something so. Just to cite one example of many (for brevity), remember early last year when the Biden administration decreed that gasoline would be 15% ethanol instead of 10? There were those of us who said that just because one issues such a decree from on high, it doesn’t mean the the refineries can make it so in any short time frame. And guess what, it still hasn’t happened. This is but one of many such examples of current regime thinking. They seem to have little to no understanding of complex systems. As we often say, not serious people.
It becomes very believable that they simply assumed that the US military machine would be dominant, merely because it has been seen as such for so long. It defies common sense, yet the facts are what they are. They’ve been planning this show a long time, and here we are.
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The US government is a joke. Outside a nuclear exchange, they have virtually no ability to seriously take on the Russians. I live in a city with an air force base, so we always have expensive, shiny wiz bangs flying overhead daily – whoopdedoo. The fact is, the Air Force hasn’t even had an opponent to speak of since Korea – and a lot of those pilots had WW2 experience to boot. I have no doubt the Russian AF is as large and well trained as ours. So how is the going to work out? This government and military “leadership” just need to go – they’re as useless as tits on a boar…
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As late as the 1980’s this country had certain protections for button manufacturers because buttons were necessary for military uniforms. Regulations like this were put into place by a generation that, during WW2 was washing and re-using their aluminum foil (disgusting but necessary). They knew the massive resource levels that would have to be dumped into a war machine at a moment’t notice. By the 80’s they were displaced by all the types we see today who couldn’t be more different.
Even old boomers seem to have been genuinely shocked by the supply chain issues over the last few years. And this is nothing! If you think about it, outside of weather events, and going-out-of-business sales, when was the last time any born and raised “‘Muricahn” had ever seen the back of a shelf at a large chain store? We’ve had a 70+ years of stuffed shelves. A people like this, not understanding or caring “where” it came from will naturally be ambivalent to the great tearing out of every last part of our industrial base.
Now we look around and see F35 chips made overseas etc, and like any other dying empire, do what we do best, which is throw a trillion dollars at chip manufacturers to build chips domestically. Employing expensive corporate welfare at an issue and getting mediocre results, years later. Because absolutely no one in power wants to upset the interlocking treaties that are the real cause of this issue, which is a broken tariff system, and telling “free traders” in the “Heritage” Foundation that they’re full of it, and their grand design is failing. Too much money is at stake. Foreign donor money. Charlie Trie and the Lippo Group should have been a wake-up call in the 90’s. It wasn’t. The Loral Corp. scandal was by far Clnton’s biggest scandal, no one cared, because all they cared about was the penis and vagina scandal. The wholesale treason involving technology transfer for cash? Nah! Give me more penis and vagina, which is really all we’ve cared about as a people since the ’60’s.
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Excellent comment. Bravo.
Scintillating post, as always. One book I found useful was Andrei Martyanov’s “Losing Military Supremacy”, which I believe was written about five years back.
The USA violated the first law of “Scarface”: “Don’t get high on your own supply.” In this case, the Fukuyama thesis. Both in terms of military-industrial capability and psychology, the USA is not prepared for confrontation with a peer or near-peer. Maybe it never has been, but we can quibble about that.
As for the military budget, to paraphrase Everett Dirksen (and being mindful of the corrosive influence of inflation), “a trillion here and a trillion there and pretty soon we’re talking about real money.” My sneaking suspicion is that most members of Congress who vote on these matters are innumerate and don’t even know the multiplication table. But this, alas, is the idiocratic present.
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