The answer to "why," is easy. Humans don't like to admit that they were wrong. We just don't. It is human nature to engage in complicated mental gymnastics to avoid saying three simple words, "I was wrong." We lie to ourselves, so lying to others follows.
Certainly that's death in the high up places. I just have to figure they do know and there is something else at play because it all seems kind of obvious....at least seems that way.
Just as a point of order, I strongly suggest that the ammunition consumption rates used for planning assumptions in OPLANs were arrived at via Modeling and Simulation methods, which is very different than War Gaming. Also, I would not be surprised if we failed to procure at least some ordnance to the already too low forecast rates. When I was at the Pentagon, the catch phrase was that “ordnance is a bill payer.” That is, if a given resource sponsor had to take a top line cut for some reason, then that cut manifested itself as a reduction in a weapons buy. Turns out, it’s hard to buy 10% less of a DDG or F-35, but easy to buy 90 missiles instead of 100. I’ve been in the room when it was decided to “accept risk” in this way.
Additionally, we've been sending a hell of a lot of ordnance to Ukraine. Not Navy stuff, but the purchasing of Navy missiles is certainly constrained by paying for all the Ukrainian weapons systems.
Take a look at the Scranton Army Ammo plant and note that Navy 5" production is currently TBD due to focus on 155 production for Ukraine. I hope the accountants got nice bonuses for creating that bottleneck.
"Congress needs to call these people out," Uh huh, but ultimately Congress is responsible for the low stockpiles. There is never going to be enough ammo, particularly when we buy it during relative peace with rosy unrealistic estimates...
Yes. And politicians don't want to spend tax dollars for explosives in a warehouse during peacetime when they can spend those same dollars on giveaways that translate into votes.
It's not justified unless the Barbarians are thumping the fortress gates with their axes.
Our current SecDef and the Joint Chiefs remind me of the senior French Generals/Admirals just prior to and during the early days of WWII- Self-serving, incompetent and supremely assured of their infallibility.
"We made mistakes in our estimates of the nature of war, and we're moving to correct them." None of our senior leaders at this point in their careers seem willing to admit that they were wrong.
I remember the first time I read the Caine Mutiny and was surprised to discover that's basically the book's take on Captain Queeq, rather than the actor-friendly Lear characterization of him in the movie.
The novel even ends with a great monologue about how, in peacetime, smarter, less venal thinkers don't get promoted and end up quitting to teach school like certain retired colonels or maybe go start podcasts
When I was studying law, and Mr. Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no, we knew you couldn't make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn't crack up like Queeg.
Current? Not just current. I've been retired fifteen years. In few cases since I first went to sea did they appear to have any appreciation or memory of what was going on out on the deckplates.
Planning assumptions, made much higher than my level, were absurdly unrealistic and not what we sent up the food chain in initial drafts.
This is the point about devolution of tactics on the battlefield. Task and Purpose. You use all the top line stuff to take out targets of strategic or long-term tactical value (Facilities, 4C, ISR, SEADs etc.), winnowing down to the next set of tactical targets in support of offensive actions, etc. until the magazines are Winchester. Then we are down to tanks, artillery, whatever the Air arm has left, and infantry. See: Russia; Ukraine.
To some extent, that happens naturally. Task and Purpose again. You aren't using some of those weapons against armored formations - so they were used for their purpose and maybe they aren't necessary after they do their job and take out their targets. Others that are more general use - such as LRASM/JASM-ERs - we need to have more of and distribute. You have to match the arsenal to how you intend to use it. In an extreme example, we could have thousands of missiles to strike ships, but once the ships in the opponents Navy are gone...how else can you use them?
But, in general, it is better to have them and not have to use all of them than to not have enough. That also has to be matched to delivery vehicles/platforms. As we know, war is not convenient and doesn't care how you planned to fight your battle - the enemy gets a say. The lesson has been, though, don't forget the basics because the Ukrainians and Russians are using a LOT of ATGMs, MANPADS, artillery shells, and tank rounds...along with a lot of bullets. Having THAT magazine stocked is of equal importance because we WILL get to that type of battle - at least in Europe.
Which takes us to the Navy, replenishment ships and logistical capabilities, and that they all use missiles now for nearly everything. If you don't have enough missiles, they are useless. If you can't reload them quickly, they are useless after they go Winchester. I suppose if you have the luxury and can get everyone out of Replenishment, you could rotate carrier groups and SAGs so they get replaced on station and can go home to reload. But it seems to me that in the Pacific this will be a situation where you have 5 CVNs with their surface groups, all the active big deck Amphibs with 20 or so F-35Bs, subs, bombers, and everything else you can muster hitting all at once.
Then a big lull? It may be the TEMPO of operations that decides things for both sides, along with hitting what you aim at.
I have not liked our CJCS for quite a while - since, at least 2014. I see him as an icon of the bureaucratized GOs (for me - the Army) in our armed forces - hyperpolitical, risk averse, arrogant in our (and their) superiority.
Consider that Mark Milley grew up on small country "swat downs" like Haiti, "video game" wars like Iraqi Freedom, and really came of age in the anti-terrorist war(s) of the 2000s. He's never faced a peer or near peer, nor has he ever needed to make the hard decisions of winning a losable war.
I would never discount the efforts of our military in these conflicts. But I don't think they were ever going to provide the right lessons for leaders. Now those leaders are more interested in happy talk for budgets, "war" games that follow the same path or reach the conclusion desired, and political/bureaucratic clout.
"nor has he ever needed to make the hard decisions of winning a losable war." Bravo. I am adding this quote to my signature block. That is one of the highest accolades I can provide in our garrison/bureaucratic/peacetime Army. Just behind the ultimate compliment, "this is a really good slide."
When Milley and Gulday are worrying about pronouns, there is ZERO chance that they'll spend a second worrying about logistics. They are the worst sort of political flag officers, who ALL need to be purged before the war starts, or gets much hotter. Fire or retire every O7 and above, and rebuild the command structure with mid-grade officers. Virtually EVERY officer who earned his stars under Obama is compromised.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder .War gaming has to be more realistic than I suspect our leaders are willing to risk their careers over. The enemy is going to do its best to be unpredictable - to surprise us in any way possible - even down to what could be an inconsequential consideration.
"Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said he sees fighting climate change as a top priority for the Navy as the Biden administration proposes shrinking the fleet by two ships and worries grow about how the U.S. Navy stacks up to China’s.
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Toro said March 1 in remarks at the University of the Bahamas."
There was an old "chalk talk" video called "Sex and the Naval Aviator", in which the professor talked about "failing Naval officers" who gave up trying to do their whole jobs and focused all of their energies on one tiny, and pointless, part of their responsibilities. Certainly Del Toro epitomizes that attitude.
Worse; "climate change" is an utter and absolute hoax. It isn't happening. It never was. Any Navy officer or senior person focused on climate change needs to be terminated immediately.
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Toro said March 1 in remarks at the University of the Bahamas. And this: “We view the climate crisis much the same way as damage control efforts on a stricken ship. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” he added.
-----------------------------------------
You can almost see the wheels turning in SecNav's head...thoughts of the polar ice caps melting and that old JFK aphorism that "A rising tide sinks all boats". Yup, this is indeed an all-hands-on-deck moment, because you can't abandon ship from below decks. This is either an Om-m-m-m or OMG! moment. God save us.
Simple, voluntary service naturally begets an unnatural and involuntary conforming to the politics du jour. In other words, wild swings, from one extreme to the other, have produced only orphaned, non-functional, money pits sold by careerists as grand system/platform schemes completely misaligned with real world threats. Go along to get along to the nth degree is how you become promoted.
Robert Townsend wrote a book called “Up the Organization”. After Mr. Townsend became the CEO of Avis Rentals, they experienced their first year of black ink. One of his dictums is that every organization needs a person, whose job is eternally safe from he chopping block, and whose only task is to yell “B.S. !” whenever necessary. The Navy, and DoD as a whole, need such a billet and person as it is the only way to shine a light on idiotic non-think.
Isn't this why we have E-9s? MCPON's main function should be this. Certainly my OSCM (ret) dad saw his role as being the guy to call the Admirals on their BS while the various Captains jockeying for their own flag sat quietly.
Seriously, no one in the war colleges or all the other places that our great military minds congregate to contemplate future wars could consider past conflicts and develop contingency planning? Profligate use of muntions is a normal daily event during a war. (And these boys and girls should remember the run up to GWI.)
This isn't 1938.
There is no Vinson in Congress, and the British and French are not coming to pay for the new factories or plant expansion.
Sadly, our leaders for the past 20+ years have mastered "happy talk" and squashed anything that wasn't. That's how got LCS ("Get on the bus") and DDG-1000 and a shrinking attack submarine force.
I remember Rick Santorum, after the first Gulf War, questioning the need to replenish our stocks of missiles and bullets ... that it cost too much ... why didn't we just wait until the next war to buy replacement stocks? He's not in Congress any more. But his thinking is still there and it's not limited to one party.
Remember whose bright idea it was to cut the VA by >$4B in 2004-5, just as the first waves of mangled troops were coming home?
The problem is perpetual and bigger than one party. And the perfumed princes of peacetime are always with us.
When the balloon goes up, some smart O-6 will be promoted over all of them & save us ... if there is time.
The two-party construct is there to fool us into fighting each other instead of paying attention to what our rulers are doing to us. Whether we root for Ds or Rs, the AGL (All Government League) wins either way
One has to assume that they're well aware and are simply disassembling on the issue. The eternal question is: why?
Art,
The answer to "why," is easy. Humans don't like to admit that they were wrong. We just don't. It is human nature to engage in complicated mental gymnastics to avoid saying three simple words, "I was wrong." We lie to ourselves, so lying to others follows.
Certainly that's death in the high up places. I just have to figure they do know and there is something else at play because it all seems kind of obvious....at least seems that way.
Because if you admit you f*&ked up something this important, what else might have you got wrong?
I fail to see how deeper magazines will help the good General find the roots of White Rage, which I believe he has set as a priority
Does anyone still take the current CJCS seriously?
Just as a point of order, I strongly suggest that the ammunition consumption rates used for planning assumptions in OPLANs were arrived at via Modeling and Simulation methods, which is very different than War Gaming. Also, I would not be surprised if we failed to procure at least some ordnance to the already too low forecast rates. When I was at the Pentagon, the catch phrase was that “ordnance is a bill payer.” That is, if a given resource sponsor had to take a top line cut for some reason, then that cut manifested itself as a reduction in a weapons buy. Turns out, it’s hard to buy 10% less of a DDG or F-35, but easy to buy 90 missiles instead of 100. I’ve been in the room when it was decided to “accept risk” in this way.
Additionally, we've been sending a hell of a lot of ordnance to Ukraine. Not Navy stuff, but the purchasing of Navy missiles is certainly constrained by paying for all the Ukrainian weapons systems.
Take a look at the Scranton Army Ammo plant and note that Navy 5" production is currently TBD due to focus on 155 production for Ukraine. I hope the accountants got nice bonuses for creating that bottleneck.
That's still a saying in the building. Well, at least it was in 2021. I promptly stopped hearing it around ehh.... Mar 2022.
"Congress needs to call these people out," Uh huh, but ultimately Congress is responsible for the low stockpiles. There is never going to be enough ammo, particularly when we buy it during relative peace with rosy unrealistic estimates...
Yes. And politicians don't want to spend tax dollars for explosives in a warehouse during peacetime when they can spend those same dollars on giveaways that translate into votes.
It's not justified unless the Barbarians are thumping the fortress gates with their axes.
Congress fsks the munitions budget every year. Lets try; take 1 years highway bill $42B~ and buy that much munitions. That would be a 44X increase.
Well, if you buy more munitions, someone might get the bright idea of using some of them up in training, so what's the point?
Our current SecDef and the Joint Chiefs remind me of the senior French Generals/Admirals just prior to and during the early days of WWII- Self-serving, incompetent and supremely assured of their infallibility.
"We made mistakes in our estimates of the nature of war, and we're moving to correct them." None of our senior leaders at this point in their careers seem willing to admit that they were wrong.
I remember the first time I read the Caine Mutiny and was surprised to discover that's basically the book's take on Captain Queeq, rather than the actor-friendly Lear characterization of him in the movie.
The novel even ends with a great monologue about how, in peacetime, smarter, less venal thinkers don't get promoted and end up quitting to teach school like certain retired colonels or maybe go start podcasts
When I was studying law, and Mr. Keefer here was writing his stories, and you, Willie, were tearing up the playing fields of dear old Princeton, who was standing guard over this fat, dumb, happy country of ours, eh? Not us. Oh, no, we knew you couldn't make any money in the service. So who did the dirty work for us? Queeg did! And a lot of other guys. Tough, sharp guys who didn't crack up like Queeg.
That's not actually dialogue from the film, is it?
Because the speech in the novel has a very different tone.
Current? Not just current. I've been retired fifteen years. In few cases since I first went to sea did they appear to have any appreciation or memory of what was going on out on the deckplates.
Planning assumptions, made much higher than my level, were absurdly unrealistic and not what we sent up the food chain in initial drafts.
This is the point about devolution of tactics on the battlefield. Task and Purpose. You use all the top line stuff to take out targets of strategic or long-term tactical value (Facilities, 4C, ISR, SEADs etc.), winnowing down to the next set of tactical targets in support of offensive actions, etc. until the magazines are Winchester. Then we are down to tanks, artillery, whatever the Air arm has left, and infantry. See: Russia; Ukraine.
To some extent, that happens naturally. Task and Purpose again. You aren't using some of those weapons against armored formations - so they were used for their purpose and maybe they aren't necessary after they do their job and take out their targets. Others that are more general use - such as LRASM/JASM-ERs - we need to have more of and distribute. You have to match the arsenal to how you intend to use it. In an extreme example, we could have thousands of missiles to strike ships, but once the ships in the opponents Navy are gone...how else can you use them?
But, in general, it is better to have them and not have to use all of them than to not have enough. That also has to be matched to delivery vehicles/platforms. As we know, war is not convenient and doesn't care how you planned to fight your battle - the enemy gets a say. The lesson has been, though, don't forget the basics because the Ukrainians and Russians are using a LOT of ATGMs, MANPADS, artillery shells, and tank rounds...along with a lot of bullets. Having THAT magazine stocked is of equal importance because we WILL get to that type of battle - at least in Europe.
Which takes us to the Navy, replenishment ships and logistical capabilities, and that they all use missiles now for nearly everything. If you don't have enough missiles, they are useless. If you can't reload them quickly, they are useless after they go Winchester. I suppose if you have the luxury and can get everyone out of Replenishment, you could rotate carrier groups and SAGs so they get replaced on station and can go home to reload. But it seems to me that in the Pacific this will be a situation where you have 5 CVNs with their surface groups, all the active big deck Amphibs with 20 or so F-35Bs, subs, bombers, and everything else you can muster hitting all at once.
Then a big lull? It may be the TEMPO of operations that decides things for both sides, along with hitting what you aim at.
I have not liked our CJCS for quite a while - since, at least 2014. I see him as an icon of the bureaucratized GOs (for me - the Army) in our armed forces - hyperpolitical, risk averse, arrogant in our (and their) superiority.
Consider that Mark Milley grew up on small country "swat downs" like Haiti, "video game" wars like Iraqi Freedom, and really came of age in the anti-terrorist war(s) of the 2000s. He's never faced a peer or near peer, nor has he ever needed to make the hard decisions of winning a losable war.
I would never discount the efforts of our military in these conflicts. But I don't think they were ever going to provide the right lessons for leaders. Now those leaders are more interested in happy talk for budgets, "war" games that follow the same path or reach the conclusion desired, and political/bureaucratic clout.
"nor has he ever needed to make the hard decisions of winning a losable war." Bravo. I am adding this quote to my signature block. That is one of the highest accolades I can provide in our garrison/bureaucratic/peacetime Army. Just behind the ultimate compliment, "this is a really good slide."
When Milley and Gulday are worrying about pronouns, there is ZERO chance that they'll spend a second worrying about logistics. They are the worst sort of political flag officers, who ALL need to be purged before the war starts, or gets much hotter. Fire or retire every O7 and above, and rebuild the command structure with mid-grade officers. Virtually EVERY officer who earned his stars under Obama is compromised.
“What would it take to bring you back?” (Actual Recruitment question).
1. Stalin’s Great Purge.
2. Restore the Republic we swore to, it’s gone and that changes matters.
No battle plan ever survives contact with the enemy.” - Helmuth von Moltke the Elder .War gaming has to be more realistic than I suspect our leaders are willing to risk their careers over. The enemy is going to do its best to be unpredictable - to surprise us in any way possible - even down to what could be an inconsequential consideration.
"No plan ever survives contact with the wife" - Jetcal1
They can predict we’ll run out of ammo. Let’s buy extra fuel so we can run.
"Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro said he sees fighting climate change as a top priority for the Navy as the Biden administration proposes shrinking the fleet by two ships and worries grow about how the U.S. Navy stacks up to China’s.
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Toro said March 1 in remarks at the University of the Bahamas."
https://streetwiseprofessor.com/the-termite-years-ideologues-eating-the-american-military-from-the-inside/
Another "leader" who has NO IDEA what he's doing.
There was an old "chalk talk" video called "Sex and the Naval Aviator", in which the professor talked about "failing Naval officers" who gave up trying to do their whole jobs and focused all of their energies on one tiny, and pointless, part of their responsibilities. Certainly Del Toro epitomizes that attitude.
Worse; "climate change" is an utter and absolute hoax. It isn't happening. It never was. Any Navy officer or senior person focused on climate change needs to be terminated immediately.
Climate change is to war fighting what chainsaws are to fish.
I don't know. A chain saw can effectively beat a fish, but climate change focus will never win a war
^ From your link, Ken Mitchell:
“As the Secretary of the Navy, I can tell you that I have made climate one of my top priorities since the first day I came into office,” Del Toro said March 1 in remarks at the University of the Bahamas. And this: “We view the climate crisis much the same way as damage control efforts on a stricken ship. This is an all-hands-on-deck moment,” he added.
-----------------------------------------
You can almost see the wheels turning in SecNav's head...thoughts of the polar ice caps melting and that old JFK aphorism that "A rising tide sinks all boats". Yup, this is indeed an all-hands-on-deck moment, because you can't abandon ship from below decks. This is either an Om-m-m-m or OMG! moment. God save us.
Simple, voluntary service naturally begets an unnatural and involuntary conforming to the politics du jour. In other words, wild swings, from one extreme to the other, have produced only orphaned, non-functional, money pits sold by careerists as grand system/platform schemes completely misaligned with real world threats. Go along to get along to the nth degree is how you become promoted.
That’s up or out careerists not volunteer service. Up or out (insane, that’s for a sales force) is McNamara, conscription was still going.
Pardon my (used to be French...not sure what is ok now), bur Fuckin' A! Spot on!
Robert Townsend wrote a book called “Up the Organization”. After Mr. Townsend became the CEO of Avis Rentals, they experienced their first year of black ink. One of his dictums is that every organization needs a person, whose job is eternally safe from he chopping block, and whose only task is to yell “B.S. !” whenever necessary. The Navy, and DoD as a whole, need such a billet and person as it is the only way to shine a light on idiotic non-think.
Isn't this why we have E-9s? MCPON's main function should be this. Certainly my OSCM (ret) dad saw his role as being the guy to call the Admirals on their BS while the various Captains jockeying for their own flag sat quietly.
Seriously, no one in the war colleges or all the other places that our great military minds congregate to contemplate future wars could consider past conflicts and develop contingency planning? Profligate use of muntions is a normal daily event during a war. (And these boys and girls should remember the run up to GWI.)
This isn't 1938.
There is no Vinson in Congress, and the British and French are not coming to pay for the new factories or plant expansion.
Sadly, our leaders for the past 20+ years have mastered "happy talk" and squashed anything that wasn't. That's how got LCS ("Get on the bus") and DDG-1000 and a shrinking attack submarine force.
the Air Force ran out of bombs within a year in Vietnam. They ended up using WWII stocks.
The Army put strict limits on how much HE you could use in a day in Vietnam.
As the CDR says, this isn't new. But logistics - and comms - always get short shrift in planning - and in wargames - until the rubber meets the road.
And please remember, we went into Iraq in 2003 with one unit of resupply because the SECDEF threw out the TPFDDL.
We should flail ourselves with rubber hoses until we bleed.
The Navy did too. See the Forestal Fire
I remember Rick Santorum, after the first Gulf War, questioning the need to replenish our stocks of missiles and bullets ... that it cost too much ... why didn't we just wait until the next war to buy replacement stocks? He's not in Congress any more. But his thinking is still there and it's not limited to one party.
Remember whose bright idea it was to cut the VA by >$4B in 2004-5, just as the first waves of mangled troops were coming home?
The problem is perpetual and bigger than one party. And the perfumed princes of peacetime are always with us.
When the balloon goes up, some smart O-6 will be promoted over all of them & save us ... if there is time.
The two-party construct is there to fool us into fighting each other instead of paying attention to what our rulers are doing to us. Whether we root for Ds or Rs, the AGL (All Government League) wins either way