Arable land requires water to grow food. China lacks the required fresh water reserves. You know who has them? Russia, in nearby-Siberia. Going to war over Taiwan is silly for us & stupid for China. Siberia, however, has timber, water, gold, iron, lithium... and no manpower to exploit it.
According to the Merchant Marine, during WW II American shipyards' troopship production was 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945 (an average of three ships every two days).
Aug 2, 2023·edited Aug 2, 2023Liked by CDR Salamander
I got tired of being patted on the head and told to be a "good boy and shut up" on this topic back in 2003.
My gosh, when will they learn to listen to the "Iron Majors?" We do Powerpoint, and know stuff. Then they hire us as ORSA-pods and ignore us again. But the money spends.
When China launches a preemptive strike on our POL storage, refining, and production nodes, how do we intend to fill our Navy's remaining conventional ships with go juice? When China launches EMP strikes, how long do you suppose our lovely "mostly peaceful" cities will continue before their denizens start killing each other en masse (especially in winter)?
USN combatant vessels with reactors will be fine, but how do you conduct a war west of Wake (or even escort a CVN) when your Aegis cruisers and destroyers are all blinking on "E," and so are all your gators and landing craft and tanks and APCs and helos and strike aircraft?
How do you mobilize an economy to fight a war when the freight trains have no diesel and neither do the eighteen wheelers on the highway?
We need beans, bullets, bandages. We need fuel, power, comms, medicine.
WE ARE FRAGILE. Take out our fuel system and deliver a few EMP strikes at high altitude, and America will implode.
The analogue to 155mm is ships and anti-ship missiles.
I still think war can be avoided, at the decision point the PRC has to decide whether it's worth giving up its hard-won prosperity. For that reason, harsh rhetoric, pinprick economic measures, sanctions affecting the Chinese middle class which travels, and attempting to exclude China from international institutions are counterproductive. Speak softly and build a big stick.
If it kicks off and our luck isn't good in the initial days, I hope there is a plan to know when to fold 'em and live to fight another day.
I expect that China would use a nuke. Probably a torpedo against a US SSN to make a discreet statement. Then what do you do?
On the other hand China is also limited by budgetary constraints and is appearing to reshuffle her aviation assets in both doctrine and tactics. Frickin PDF. Cut and paste if you wanna see.
Nothing we haven't talked about before. The Peace Dividend writ large and stupid: We decided we can 'manage' the amount of stores we have on hand using the assumptions of the finest minds in DC - that have never fired a round.
Instead of deciding on how much is just right (just enough), we should be filling every square foot of every storage facility - and when those are filled, start replacing the old ones, FIFO.
The push to shape the modern military into a “corporation” over the last (realistically) 30+ years has come to fruition and shown the weaknesses to this approach. Process Improvement techniques like AirSpeed, Lean Six Sigma, Toyota Kata, and bringing in an evolving door of consultant groups in the quest to improve efficiency were futile in this effort.
Oh sure, the Excel sheets and 3M summary reports in the areas of ship, aircraft and mission readiness looked good-in theory. But the actual results are abysmal and anyone looking at the situation of our military with a clear-eyed objective view can see that we are nowhere close to being ready for a conflict with a near-peer adversary.
How much of this is because of the shutdown of the GOEX black powder plant. Although black powder isn't used as a propellant anymore it is used in primers and detonators. It is supposed to be running at full capacity sometime this year.
Arable land requires water to grow food. China lacks the required fresh water reserves. You know who has them? Russia, in nearby-Siberia. Going to war over Taiwan is silly for us & stupid for China. Siberia, however, has timber, water, gold, iron, lithium... and no manpower to exploit it.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/nsiad-95-89.pdf page 7
"The five plants to remain active (Iowa, Lone Star, Milan, Crane, and Pine
Bluff) have a combined capacity to load, assemble, and pack 867,000
artillery projectiles a month during three 8-hour shifts each day for 5 days
a week. According to Army officials, this capacity is sufficient to meet
projected replenishment requirements for all artillery projectiles."
According to the Merchant Marine, during WW II American shipyards' troopship production was 2,710 Liberty ships between 1941 and 1945 (an average of three ships every two days).
Well, I'm sure the 31 LRASMs the navy bought last year will be enough. That's what, one per F-18 and P-8 squadron?
I got tired of being patted on the head and told to be a "good boy and shut up" on this topic back in 2003.
My gosh, when will they learn to listen to the "Iron Majors?" We do Powerpoint, and know stuff. Then they hire us as ORSA-pods and ignore us again. But the money spends.
Why has the President not invoked the Defense Production Act, and pushed for emergency production of ammunition?
"I’m having a pessimistic moment today"
Ukraine will probably collapse by the end of the year, the French are getting run out of Africa & rating agencies down-rated US debt.
It's always darkest before it goes totally black.
Wanna get dark? Let's get dark.
When China launches a preemptive strike on our POL storage, refining, and production nodes, how do we intend to fill our Navy's remaining conventional ships with go juice? When China launches EMP strikes, how long do you suppose our lovely "mostly peaceful" cities will continue before their denizens start killing each other en masse (especially in winter)?
USN combatant vessels with reactors will be fine, but how do you conduct a war west of Wake (or even escort a CVN) when your Aegis cruisers and destroyers are all blinking on "E," and so are all your gators and landing craft and tanks and APCs and helos and strike aircraft?
How do you mobilize an economy to fight a war when the freight trains have no diesel and neither do the eighteen wheelers on the highway?
We need beans, bullets, bandages. We need fuel, power, comms, medicine.
WE ARE FRAGILE. Take out our fuel system and deliver a few EMP strikes at high altitude, and America will implode.
Looking like it's time to maximize Patriot, Standard, ESSM, Tomahawk, NSM, 5-inch, and 57mm production.
And keep at least 5 years at max production rate of imported components stored away.
The analogue to 155mm is ships and anti-ship missiles.
I still think war can be avoided, at the decision point the PRC has to decide whether it's worth giving up its hard-won prosperity. For that reason, harsh rhetoric, pinprick economic measures, sanctions affecting the Chinese middle class which travels, and attempting to exclude China from international institutions are counterproductive. Speak softly and build a big stick.
If it kicks off and our luck isn't good in the initial days, I hope there is a plan to know when to fold 'em and live to fight another day.
I expect that China would use a nuke. Probably a torpedo against a US SSN to make a discreet statement. Then what do you do?
We are not a serious nation. Hubris.
On the other hand China is also limited by budgetary constraints and is appearing to reshuffle her aviation assets in both doctrine and tactics. Frickin PDF. Cut and paste if you wanna see.
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Research/PLAN_Aviation/2023-07-31%20PLAN%20Aviation%20Reorg%202023%20Clean.pdf
Nothing we haven't talked about before. The Peace Dividend writ large and stupid: We decided we can 'manage' the amount of stores we have on hand using the assumptions of the finest minds in DC - that have never fired a round.
Instead of deciding on how much is just right (just enough), we should be filling every square foot of every storage facility - and when those are filled, start replacing the old ones, FIFO.
The push to shape the modern military into a “corporation” over the last (realistically) 30+ years has come to fruition and shown the weaknesses to this approach. Process Improvement techniques like AirSpeed, Lean Six Sigma, Toyota Kata, and bringing in an evolving door of consultant groups in the quest to improve efficiency were futile in this effort.
Oh sure, the Excel sheets and 3M summary reports in the areas of ship, aircraft and mission readiness looked good-in theory. But the actual results are abysmal and anyone looking at the situation of our military with a clear-eyed objective view can see that we are nowhere close to being ready for a conflict with a near-peer adversary.
How much of this is because of the shutdown of the GOEX black powder plant. Although black powder isn't used as a propellant anymore it is used in primers and detonators. It is supposed to be running at full capacity sometime this year.
The South Koreans are ‘lending’ the US 500,000 rounds of 155.
Nixon's greatest achievement was to separate China from Russia. Biden's biggest blunder was to drive Russia into the arms of China.
Now. Imagine an all out simultaneous assault in Eastern Europe, the Persian Gulf, Korea and Taiwan.
Our policies are so irrational that I almost wonder if there is not some hidden agenda because no one in DC and London could be so stupid.