Given the likelihood of CHICOM development of effective AShMs, the concentration of any resource, be it be it Ammo, MREs, or Marines Ready to Employ would seem to place some urgency on effective anti-missile defenses. Stockpiles (of anything) are obvious targets, mobile stockpiles are obvious, but not necessarily easy, targets. The only "easy" answer is redundant, mobile stockpiles of all critical resources, somewhat akin to railroad mounted ICBMs
Did I say easy? My bad! I failed to consider the pennywatchers who are sure to observe that redundancy is expensive.
Some good points here. from Cmdr. Sal and Mr. Brown both. If you'll permit me to interpret and extend:
Fewer, larger weapons platforms can deliver more firepower individually, and may be more able to survive damage that would be fatal to a smaller platform...but mission killed is mission killed, and even though the platform (using warship as an example in this case) survives to fight another day (eventually), it's a loss of a considerable percentage of capability. Small dispersed platforms able to coordinate to deliver a large volume of fire on a target (it's been a minute since I read Hughes' third edition of Fleet Tactics, but I think maybe he talked about it there) are harder to coordinate and less "efficient" depending on the yardstick used to measure efficiency, but the loss of any one node doesn't degrade overall capability much.
To apply similar logic to logistics seems to be financially and intellectually daunting, but the outfit what figures it out (assuming it _can_ be figured out) just might win the gold-plated Kewpie doll one fine day.
This will be a replay of WWII, if we're lucky. They'll slaughter everything in the Western Pacific, and we'll be lucky if we can hold at the West Coast. Not optimistic.
Highly recommend reading Unrivaled and looking at the current economic news out of China. This isn't to dismiss the threat but to say that their industrial prowess is overblown. The levels of malinvestments in infrastructure (high speed rails to nowhere) and a real estate bubble by various measures 2-3x Japans at it's peak... There's a bearish case for the Chinese economy we're seeing, nevermind it's energy losses in a war (stopping or limiting diesel and other fuels means their domestic coal can't be transported to the coast, for example)
I agree that the US needs to up it's industrial base, better to have and not need than need and not have, but I'm also recalling the much-ballyhooed Russian buying spree and all those airframes don't seem to have been worth the rubles... China is a peer-threat but they aren't the Zerg. They don't have infinite resources and may not be spending the resources they have wisely. We don't have a monopoly on dumb-dumb logic.
Given the likelihood of CHICOM development of effective AShMs, the concentration of any resource, be it be it Ammo, MREs, or Marines Ready to Employ would seem to place some urgency on effective anti-missile defenses. Stockpiles (of anything) are obvious targets, mobile stockpiles are obvious, but not necessarily easy, targets. The only "easy" answer is redundant, mobile stockpiles of all critical resources, somewhat akin to railroad mounted ICBMs
Did I say easy? My bad! I failed to consider the pennywatchers who are sure to observe that redundancy is expensive.
Some good points here. from Cmdr. Sal and Mr. Brown both. If you'll permit me to interpret and extend:
Fewer, larger weapons platforms can deliver more firepower individually, and may be more able to survive damage that would be fatal to a smaller platform...but mission killed is mission killed, and even though the platform (using warship as an example in this case) survives to fight another day (eventually), it's a loss of a considerable percentage of capability. Small dispersed platforms able to coordinate to deliver a large volume of fire on a target (it's been a minute since I read Hughes' third edition of Fleet Tactics, but I think maybe he talked about it there) are harder to coordinate and less "efficient" depending on the yardstick used to measure efficiency, but the loss of any one node doesn't degrade overall capability much.
To apply similar logic to logistics seems to be financially and intellectually daunting, but the outfit what figures it out (assuming it _can_ be figured out) just might win the gold-plated Kewpie doll one fine day.
This will be a replay of WWII, if we're lucky. They'll slaughter everything in the Western Pacific, and we'll be lucky if we can hold at the West Coast. Not optimistic.
Highly recommend reading Unrivaled and looking at the current economic news out of China. This isn't to dismiss the threat but to say that their industrial prowess is overblown. The levels of malinvestments in infrastructure (high speed rails to nowhere) and a real estate bubble by various measures 2-3x Japans at it's peak... There's a bearish case for the Chinese economy we're seeing, nevermind it's energy losses in a war (stopping or limiting diesel and other fuels means their domestic coal can't be transported to the coast, for example)
I agree that the US needs to up it's industrial base, better to have and not need than need and not have, but I'm also recalling the much-ballyhooed Russian buying spree and all those airframes don't seem to have been worth the rubles... China is a peer-threat but they aren't the Zerg. They don't have infinite resources and may not be spending the resources they have wisely. We don't have a monopoly on dumb-dumb logic.