Military power is the first derivative of a nation’s energy and industrial power.
In the US, for example, Alfred Mahan didn’t just advocate for a new kind of Navy. He advocated for an American industrial base that could build that Navy. Decades later, Hyman Rickover spent much of his time promoting a national education system that could support an industrial system that could support the Navy.
In conjunction with that the Navy had the infrastructure to test, develop and create. A naval shipyard is a shipbuilding factory. The Navy had laboratories devoted to experimentation. Professional naval officers, commissioned and petty, had shore duty assignments which put them into direct contact with the folks who designed and built our warships.
When a sovereign builds a warship in his own shipyard, there are no commission salesmen hawking the latest buzzwords. Boring engineers with short sleeve shirts, skinny ties, and plastic pocket protectors call the shots.
None of the problems the Cdr. so aptly reports upon are going away until the US Navy returns to building warships in U.S. Naval Shipyards.
I appreciate what you are saying but there are some questions I would ask. Is said public shipyard going to have the technical capabilities of a 21st century shipbuilder to bend, fixture and weld large and complex steel assemblies as foreign shipyards are currently capable of doing? Over 40 years, I seen plenty of mechanical designs that placed a far greater emphasis on getting to a working design rather designing for serviceability and maintainability. I am amazed the extent to which engineering designs often produce ridiculous circumstances in order to maintain something that has long lost its "new car smell." It's an entirely different mindset to engineer and design something that is readily serviceable and maintainable vs. building something where decisions are fixated on getting to new capabilities.
I think that free enterprise is the best way to put consumer goods in the hands of the public. Building bullets is not a profit-driven enterprise. A sovereign nation engages in activities which are not profit driven. A country builds warships for self-defense, not to maximise shareholder returns.
Does it cost more to build warships in government yards than it does in private yards. In the short term, yes. But, this McNamaraian analysis has crippled our Navy in the long term. We can't supervise others building our warships because we lack the skillset.
Gov't can supervise shipbuilding when the gov't owns the design and the design is built on digital models that can be thoroughly vetted between the gov't and the shipbuilder. Would "requirements creep" become a legacy confined to private ship builders or is just as likely to show up in public shipyards (even more likely perhaps)? How much willingness do you imagine there will be fix broken industrial processes and/or to pursue innovations that are necessary? Under the Naval Industrial Improvement Program back in the '90s, it took on average 4 years for a capital project (e.g. purchase of a large CNC milling machine center) before the $'s showed up from Congress. Lastly, I don't imagine Senators and Representatives in Congress are going to be terribly interested to see jobs shed at private shipyards in their districts & are largely dedicated to building ships for the Navy.
I base my analysis on history. We did not build all our ships in government yards. There was always a place for private industry, so reopening the yards would not result in a loss of private shipyard jobs. And, let's be honest, we don't have a two ocean navy anymore, and we won't until we re-learn how to design and build capable warships.
It is easy to have a dumb idea in digital form. Microsoft has developed an entire industry composed of dumb digital ideas. It is a lot harder to build a dumb idea without recognising how dumb it is.
Warships are weapons. A nation needs to build the weapons it needs to defend itself. We cannot rely on anyone else.
Should the gov't build ships? I don't presume to know what that answer should be. Nevertheless, we are well into the age of long-range PGMs and seemingly persistent ISR that makes survivability of surface hulls in the future a challenging proposition. What fleet composition should the Navy have as a result? Again, I don't presume to know but circumstances in the Black Sea and the Red Sea would seem to suggest that we have some urgent questions that need answering in the present.
Im in the yes, and no categories here. Im all for expanded/new public shipyards. BRAC cut too deep and we're finally realizing it. The only problem I see with public yards utility is that even if we (Shazam!!) had them tomorrow, theres no institutional knowledge left to put to use. The General Board and BuShips of old are long gone. How can we expect a public yard to do any better than the private ones? Right now the Navy has NO idea whatsoever how to build a ship. They only know what they're told from private yards, and the for-profit model is not a basis to start from. Nobody in uniform is old enough to even know what the General Board or BuShips was or did, let alone retain any of the lessons and knowledge!! But having said that, trying to rebuild that knowledge isnt a fools errand at all, we just have to understand itll be generations before it bears meaningful fruit again.
All that aside, the expanded capability and regrowth of institutional knowledge is, imho, worth trying for...
The loss of institutional knowledge and the slow transition from officers & enlisted to military contractors is the most devastating of the cancers. Equipment can be replaced/rebuilt. Yes, it may take years but BRAC snuffed the knowledge and systems.
Speaking of education. One of the first things China did after the Cultural Revolution and the demise of the Gang of Four was to restore education. Out went Mao's Red Book and in came STEM. When we put an end to DEI and CRT then I know we are serious.
I have always been a disciple of “ToT”, Tactics over Technology. Innovation wins wars. Ie. LCDR Jimmy Thatch and the reorder of the composition of naval air formations, and of course the weave. One of ToT lesson for the Ukraine war / Houthi needs to be a discussion of FPV and offensive / defensive tactics to include economy of scales when defeating them. Passive and active defensive measure lessons must be learned and offensive countermeasure lessons must be learned. The FPV as an up close and personal killing weapon is a refinement of the reaper and shadows of the last 20-30 years. Cheaper and deadlier.
Regarding the Houthis, hypersonic missiles being used to attack maritime targets is also a lesson we need to learn and quickly.
Both threats apply to our coming war with China. We better be prepared. Regarding AI, I haven’t seen the continuity in relations of AI and ROE. That has to be worked out for all sides. Discerning friend from foe with an AI director should scare the shit out of all of us.
The "Secret Sauce" is not just Thatch or John OODA Boyd, it's the systemic effort to identify potential "Lessons Learned", distill the salient elements, distribute the knowledge to the field, then analyze the impacts. The Army has an organization with this mission: the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL). I assume from the USMC mantra of "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome" that they do something. Does the USAF and Navy?
Yes. The Navy sends out “tac memos” that have been suggested by the fleet, sent to the appropriate wing/staff ISIC and then tested at the various operational test units / squadrons. The OPTEVFOR / SWEDG / TACTRAGRU then mandates any change after testing. Many times during fleet-ex or JTFEX, a change to tactics is made by the strike group staffs due to changes in technology and weapons etc. It’s been my experience that naval aviation is more flexible in it’s ability to adapt than the surface navy is. Can’t speak to the Air Force but I suspect they have something similar based on their specific disciplines.
The problem remains though, that the changes in tactics is driven from evolution and not revolution. Meaning the changes or not are driven by institutional resistance (“this is how we have always done it.”) instead of an urgent change to developments of a potential enemy.
I didn’t say defeat them. I said we need to figure out how to deal with their weapons. Defeating them is strategic. I’m discussing tactics. Big difference.
Letting the Houthis shoot more missiles is not solving that problem. Shooting missiles back isn't solving it either.
You have to make it much more unpleasant for them to shoot missiles than not shooting them. What are they getting out of it? Take that away.
Unfortunately that will involve tactics that the US doesn't seem willing to do, and no other country either.
Oh yes and hypersonic missiles? That's been hyped almost as much as AI, and is about as useful. You don't need a hypersonic missile to hit a freighter and make insurance companies cancel their insurance on other freighters sailing on the same route.
We know how to fight a winning war. WW II. First being a stated goal to win. Just like the first two initials of General Grant's name.
All the lessons exist between Vison's Vinson-Trammell act of 1934. And the final denouement in August of 1945. It also played on a strong industrial that was readily converted to war production when the time came. It also played on a much stronger domestic merchant marine that created an infrastructure to build that Navy that Vinson pushed through congress.
And, what are the lessons that we are not learning. The need for all of those old-fashion things a military needs. Bullets, artillery shells to name a few. And lots and lots of them with the industrial infrastructure to make them all.
I think there were signs, even the first 12 hours of this war, that Russia wasn't going to win this war in 72 hours. It should have prompted a concerted effort on our part to put together the logistical support to win, I repeat win. Including the immediate transfer of Ukraine pilots for training on F16's. Ditto our Abrams tanks and supporting armour.
The irony is that such a response would have probably given Iran pause before starting the Gaza war. Maybe China too.
But, the same said people who took a whole week off to prep the president in his just completed debated with Trump are the same people that are running this war. And writing our inadequate defense budgets. As an aside, can we rename the Department of Defense the Department of War?
It is important to consider that the sec of the navy was independent of war which really became the army. That naming was vastly superior and kept the time and purpose for an army crystal clear.
While eating breakfast this morning, I was watching Berhard Kast's interview with Col. Reisner on where the tactical situation in UKR has landed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZB6iMeyjX8
Where we seem to have landed is in a 21st century version of WW1 - a war of attrition caused by fundamental unveiling of the fog of war that has seriously degraded the opportunities to maneuver. This is less about some supercomputer AI and more about low-cost, widespread information collection increasing opportunities to react and reducing the time to do so. The former Soviet Union doctrine seem to work adequately in this environment. It remains to be seen, IMO, whether this would hold should the relatively free use of the EM spectrum that we see in the theater becomes challenged. Like all dependencies upon electronics, what happens to your units in the field/at sea when they go away?
"21st century version of WW1": Yes, Battle of the Somme, meaning guys in trenches, sniping away at each other when not getting blasted by artillery, all within a pervasive environment of EW and drones. Every day, immense levels of industrial output go up in smoke and shrapnel, with eye-popping casualty numbers in an environment where MedEvac is primitive, if avail at all.
"... it is School (2)’s concern that will buy us the time to see of School (1) can play."
Pretty sure you meant IF not OF. In the law of ironclad dependencies, if school 2 doesn't hold the line long enough, school 1 will never come into play, as the rest of your excellent article clearly laid out.
We no longer have the industrial base to support school 2. Even if we saw the light today, decreed that we are on a war footing and initiated a massive military buildup...we'd have to massively initiate the buildup of the industrial base first. Shipyards in short supply, munitions plant desperately short and shrinking in numbers, aircraft manufacturers...Boeing? Okay, I'll stop now.
Since we have degraded if not wrecked our economy, it's a pointless discussion anyway. But, we have the finest political and foreign policy leadership in charge since WWII, so we can sleep soundly at night. /sarc off.
Esp, see pg 20/23 re net import reliance for critical minerals; note numbers of minerals for which China is key US/global supplier, either as source or world's dominant refiner.
We actually have commercial deposits of almost all critical minerals but there are two problems. 1) commercial doesn't equate to profitable and few are willing to support tariffs to nurture a domestic industrial base for extraction and refinement, and 2) even if there were tariffs and the like to make domestic source pricing competitive then you have to spend decades defeating the Build Nothing Nowhere crowd and their packs of lawyers.
"In recent months, President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke have moved to gut bedrock environmental laws in order to accelerate the mining of so-called “critical minerals.” They claim America is over-reliant on foreign countries for these minerals and that fast-tracking permits for domestic mines will strengthen our national security.
It is either nonsense or a deliberate deception: a trojan horse built out of toothpicks and duct tape. The administration is using a national security rationale as cover for a gift to the mining industry, proposing further erosion of already flimsy community and environmental protections against the impacts of hardrock mining."
You, of course, are referring to the asymmetrical members of the Russian and CCP Red Green Corps. Follow the money. Most of the environmental groups that oppose development in the West are financed by organizations funded by the Russians and the Chinese.
It's not just about how many drones you can build, it's about how much energy you can generate. Not many people are talking about the ENORMOUS energy requirements the next gen of AI models will have, on top of the frankly staggering percentages of generating capapcity that they already consume.
Ask not how clever your AI is, ask instead how many bombs, bullets and power stations you can build by the end of the decade.
I read somewhere that one of the big new data/AI centers (Amazon maybe) was set up near one of the bigger nuke plants in the country and expects to consume more than a third of it's power.
That's quite believable, depending on the output of the power station. AI is hungry and could make the airline industry, and shipping, look frugal and efficient by comparison. For this reason it seems likely that there will only be a relatively small number of AI in the future: they will be as scarce as super computers are, now. Their designations will probably be household names. And only deep pockets will have access to them.
Can anyone recommend a good book or long form article that compares German efforts in WWII to find a new war changing super weapon to the Cult of Tech in the US today? It seems like there are really good lessons to be learned and applied.
I think if you look at the ME-262, for example, it's also likely that it wasn't the pursuit of some wonder weapon that was the problem but the consequences of higher ups putting their thumb on the scale because they are content to let "concepts" dictate decisions and resources rather than relying on hard work and costs of experimentation and validation. Hitler insisted on the ME-262 being employed as a fighter-bomber and that's credited with really gumming up the works. I often wonder if it is not so much the pursuit of technical wizardry that's the reason for failure as much as it is poorly framed assumptions and unwillingness to spend the resources to validate assumptions and concepts using said weapons.
You've hit upon a key factor on how promising tech can fail, and a reason why we shouldn't be overly critical of tech development. My (former) warfighting arena involves killing/destroying things hundreds/thousands of kilometers away. It's hard to do those things without tech, and doing those things are now becoming more pervasive. The other part, besides screwing up the tech dev itself, is the policy that drives the use, or more often - limitation on use after fielding of the tech. We can have the most perfect tech, but it will amount to nothing if we end up with a say-do gap. At this time, a lot of ideas about war/deterrence coming from the smart folks are based on a lot of wishful thinking and theories that work in classrooms and other discussion venues, but not so much in the real world. Think about how our high tech navy sailed up and down the SCS for a few decades and never deterred the PRC from building their artificial islands.
I stumbled upon the Mongoose mine clearing system that was proposed in the 90s to replace the MCLC. Which is spectacular but not hugely effective against modern mines.
Basically, instead of a single explosive hose it is a net studded with shaped charges. Apparently, after 30 years work it still doesn’t work any better than the MCLC. The army produced production versions in 2006 that were war reserve only and were apparently used for testing. Apparently getting a rocked propelled net to land flat and not wrinkled or twisted in actual field conditions is hard.
I don't know much, anything really, about the system but if smooth deployment was an issue that may be something that cheap drone-type deployment modules may be mature enough to handle 30 years later.
It's pretty heavy. But I can see something like 'The Mongoose butlers fly forward and use their grabbers get it all neat and tidy, before zipping back out the blast area.'
The tech that went into the Soviet's T-34 tank wasn't revolutionary but it was sufficient to be an absolute living nightmare for German armor and infantry when it showed up one day. In the history rhymes department, the Uk's pulled the M1A's back from the front lines due to vulnerabilities to a lesser tech (FPV drones, ATGMs, etc.). Ultimately, circumstances of late in Uk appear to have derailed the Army's plan for the next gen Abrams. The longer the time horizon, the more skeptical we should be of "predictions" of what is and what is not "game changing"... "revolutionary" ... blah blah blah. The real world often supplies a sledgehammer to such things. As for the SCS (let's add the ECS), one wonders how an aggressive, defensive mining strategy employed by the Taiwanese in the Strait (especially if Taiwan ups their game on that tech) would play out in the Taiwan Strait? I imagine that strategy is likely to be a lot more fruitful (in the deterrence department) than trying to logistically sustain marines in the littorals with a few dozen slow moving, minimally armed surface vessels.
True enough. The Germans suffered from a lot of things including their attempts to field uber tanks and other wonder weapons. However, the discussion on how long the "horizon" should be is dangerous. A question I was often asked about WW2 is "when should the US have bought tanks?" My answer is generally - "at least as early as the French, and definitely not as late as the Poles." I agree regarding your point ref mines in a Taiwan scenario. A force need not attain 100% tech conversion. I always remind people that during the start of WW2 (and throughout) the Germans relied on thousands upon thousands of horses to support the "high tech" blitzkrieg armor formations.
Propose to the Marines that they can better contribute to a china fight with small air-delivered radar stealthy boats with 10-20 mines each. LAPES or whatever that is called.
I'll have to disagree. The political meddling and high level diktat by Hitler certainly impacted it. But, the two biggest issues were diddiling around by a massive RLM apparatchik bureaucracy and mostly lack of available metals.
(We weren't immune to these problems stateside either. The 8th Airforce probably benefited from being a continent away from Wright Field.
We're going to establish a special trireme equipped navy so Sal doesn't have to worry about "transformation" anymore. In war, what has to be done in a broad sense has not changed for some time, but how we do it transforms. It's plain reality that transformation starts somewhere. The demise of battleships and horse cavalry are sufficient examples of transformation starting with the development of the airplane and automobile. Is "AI" THE transformational development? I would offer that it will support the different way we will do things, but it won't be THE driver. Current wars are just that - current. To borrow a phrase - history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes a lot. We need to do what we can to be ready for the fight we might have in the near term - 2 to four years from now, but we also need to pay attention to how things are turning out. Otherwise, we might end up with Sal on a trireme facing the Shandong battle group. That's a long way of agreeing that the battle over lessons learned is of prime importance.
The PURPOSE of war is to change the behavior of an opponent.
The TOOLS of war should be those which can achieve the PURPOSE at the lowest cost (blood and treasure) in the least amount of time.
The last CINC who understood this also was the last GO to win his war: Ike. His foreign & defense policy: MR; “Massive Retaliation,” as announced by Dulles to CFR in early 1954. Attack us or our allies & well nuke you.
History: The War Dept planners figured WW2 PTO would last until 1949. US Army estimated 1M US casualties, 5M Japanese casualties. USN est 1M, 9M. Remember - the Pacific was a USN war. Nuking Japan killed 0 US, 400,000 Japanese, saving between 6-8M lives… and four years of war.
War demands productivity above all human endeavors; we’re spending human lives. Not using our most productive weapons, conducting “combat without war,” is the most immoral choice we can make. Sending our kids out to kill their kids when we don’t even care if we win? Insanity.
Had Truman nuked Pyongyang in June, 1950, we wouldn’t have killed 2M Koreans, nor still be there 70 years on. And Vietnam may not have happened. Had JFK nuked Hanoi in 1963, we wouldn’t have killed 2M Vietnamese. And subsequent small wars may have been entirely avoided.
If we aren’t serious about changing the behavior of our opponent, we have no business sticking our kids in to kill and die.
Do we need F35s, B21s, FCS, etc., to conduct real war? Nope.
The ONLY logical and moral choice is Ike’s. If we aren’t ready for that, we have no business offshore.
A reasonable assessment--- when the other guys did not have nukes to fight back.
But, the basic point- commit to win and use overwhelming force to achieve victory is still correct.
However, last time I checked, we kinda sorta are lacking in overwhelming force to use, short of nukes. A diminished fleet, aged and short legged aircraft, near empty ammo bunkers, strained industrial base slowly falling behind needs, and an apathetic citizenry with military age kids ineligible or uninterested in military service. All made worse by politicians and their hand selected top military brass who are incompetent or unsuited for the jobs they fill, the former elected by voters more interested in free stuff than freedom.
Yeah, but my point remains overwhelming force and maximizing productivity, as stated. Ike spent much of his presidency fighting the Pentagon’s demand for ever-more conventional force to fight conventional wars. He understood the stupidity & futility of that course and tried to turn off of it. It’s the root of his MIC speech.
Do Houthi have nukes? Would the entire world be better off by evaporating their encampments? Yes.
Does Iran - yet - have nukes? Would the entire world be better-off evaporating Fordo? Of course.
Would this necessarily result in a response from PRC or Rus? Doubt it. Probably, just as Stalin watched Truman, we’re being tested for seriousness. We failed our test I. Korea and we can see the result.
Conventional warfare is not serious. Annihilating Houthi and Fordo - are.
The world is a far safer place when everyone knows the boundary lines that cannot be overstepped. An intelligent American administration would’ve grasped the Ukraine red line; now look at it…
You bring up critical points that many in the defense and foreign policy sector ignore, and we end up stuck where we are at. Far too many think of being able to conduct "clean" wars where no civilians are killed - essentially unrealistic purpose. This is clearly evident in recent articles and videos that criticize the Israelis for defending themselves and attempting to destroy Hamas. The "negotiate with Hamas" folks think they can achieve peace with Hamas maintaining position in Gaza. Then the cycle repeats again, and to your point - keeps the death toll piling up. Of course the "big idea people" don't suffer the consequence - just the Israelis, Palestinians. and third country nationals caught in commercial ships out in the open sea.
1. Wars are, by definition, national endeavors. Hezbollah, for example, may be an Iranian force in Lebanese territory, but the Lebanese people allow its presence. No such thing as “innocent civilians” exists; no nation survives other than at the behest of its civilians. This is why China was so harsh at Tiananmen Square: they KNOW this. Attempting to fight a war while minimizing the casualties among those enabling it is foolishness. In the last war we won, we bombed dams, power lines, farms, all transportation links for food, power plants, etc. If the goal of the war is importantly, and if we’re serious about our purpose, civilian casualties should be limited. But avoiding them entirely is stating that their civilians are more important than the lives of our soldiers. If this is the case, we have no business engaging. Our young men MUST be more important than their civilians or there is no purpose at all for the engagement.
2. Western governments - globalists - demand we be multicultural. If this is true, Western concepts of combat against non-Western opponents must fall, and enemies engaged as they engage us. It’s seriously dumb to handcuff ourselves in cross-cultural combat when that results in higher casualties for our kids, a longer and more expensive engagement and, as in Afghanistan, ultimately leaving the field to the enemy. Israel is in this position now: either they choose to win and defeat Hamas unconditionally, or they will leave the field to their enemy - and future guaranteed Israeli dead will be on the hands of those who quit the fight before defeating the enemy.
Wrt "clean" wars where no civilians are killed" this always tweaks me. If a people think something is worth fighting for and critical to a nation or people's survival, then a significant number of them will have to be killed to dissuade them. They aren't generally going to pick up their broken matchbox cars and IPads and go home.
To a point. After the war, when he was able to get on the ground in Japan, he did not quail form the fire raids anymore. He was concerned with them. But after he saw the machine tools poking from the ashes in the residential areas of Tokyo and other cities that were fire bombed, he concluded the fire raids were the right thing to do. The final analysis, civilians were not the target.
The Ukrainian red line was crossed by Putin. He started the war in 2014 and hoped to be able to take his land bridge to Crimea on the cheap. It didn't work, so he tried with a much force, and all it is getting him is the loss of men and equipment because the Ukrainians are not willing to give up pieces of their country, or go entirely back under the Russian thumb, which is the long term goal of Putin.
Putin is now increasingly desperate for the war to end and has been scouring the world for old soviet equipment, and is trying to con literate peoples in Africa to come fight his war. It will be interesting to see what the NorKs do when they start fighting. I doubt starvation is a good way to prepare an army.
LOL. Nahhh. We promised not to move NATO east. Then began gobbling former satellites
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Woerner.
Then we engineered the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in 2014.
Then “Joe Biden” put Ukraine on a serving platter for Russia when he said, maybe just a “minor incursion” would do the job, as Biden instructed Putin in advance of Putin’s invasion following his oft-announced “red line” of Ukraine joining NATO, and as Gorbachev was promised in 1990 by, essentially, all of Western Europe - who now are fighting Russia in rejection of their own assurances - at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
WE instigated that stupid war. Thinking otherwise only means one is not paying attention.
That is a common plaint, but it is also patently false. Baker made the "promise" as an off the cuff statement. He did not have the authority to make such a promise, and even if he did, he could not make it stick after he was gone. That would have required a treaty, something that was never signed.
Putin's "red line" was simply an attempt to push Ukraine into a corner, and it was cowardly, in the extreme, to say what Biden did. Joining NATO was Ukraine's business and as a sovereign country, was Ukraine's business and right to choose.
As for Gorbachev, it comes down to a treaty, which never existed.
Beyond Biden's stupid statement, the US had nothing to do with the start of the war. That falls entirely on Putin. He was planning the invasion as far back as 2008. It was part of his return to the Tsarist boundaries, at a minimum, and most likely the first step to Stalinist boundaries.
The US did not engineer the overthrow of Yanukovych. Yanukovych precipitated the uprising by refusing to sign the EU agreement, and showing his inclination of doing Putin's bidding, rather than that of his own people. He gave orders to put down the uprising and the Berkut started shooting protesters. Rather than stand trial for ordering the killing, he ran of asylum to his puppet master, Putin, who was the ultimate cause of the uprising.
In running, Yanukovych abandoned his office, and running with a cloud over his head, he is still a fugitive from justice. Thinking the US instigated the war is a sign you don't know a lot of what you claim to know. Alas, your problem is all too common.
Oh boy what a rich topic. Ukraine is a modern Spanish Civil War fought with a hodgepodge of weapons that were scraped up. WWII started using the lessons learned from that war and finished with jet engines, cruise missiles, a battleship sunk by a missile, ballistic missiles and fission weapons.
The UK had tech but a small ndustrial base. Germany had tech, a fair industrial base until 1944, and no raw materials, and a huge research/administrative bureaucracy. Japan and Italy had nothing but went to war anyway.
The US had everything with relatively minimal constraints. The Soviets had a smaller, lesser, but similar mixture but had purged itself of talent who didn't make the party purity standards.
Fast forward? The US is sorta' like the UK, but our Soviet style universities, government, and corporations are now shooting themselves in the foot with the corruption of military leadership, incompetent political leadership, and the DEI playing the equivalent of "Jewish Science" in our hiring practices like party membership in Russia and Germany.
In the home islands, when war kicked into gear, Japan had a solid industrial base, but very poor resource base for energy and minerals. Between 1910s - 1945, Japan's Korea "colony" was a key source of basic mineral resources and energy supply, esp in northern regions. Eg, Chosin Reservoir (later, of Korean War fame) was constructed in 1920s as a waterpower system by the Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer Company to produce electric power to manufacture... nitrogen fertilizer -- which also happens to be a key chemical component in high exlosives. Elsewhere, Manchukuo -- now Manchuria -- was a source for energy & mineral resources for Japanese industry. And all through rest of Asia, 1880s through the war, Japan sourced energy and minerals. Finally, USA/Canada also had robust export markets in Japan for coal, oil, minerals, metal scrap and other basic precursors.
Good points. In hindsight, it's easy to point out Japan's shortcomings. However, they did manage to sweep through Southeast Asia following Pearl Harbor. Things might have continued going their way had not their code been cracked.
No. They were nearing the end of their neglected logistical network. Once the torpedo problem was solved, many Japanese convoys were eaten up by submarines, and poorly escorted.
They were not prepared to fight a naval war and their own industry was compromised by internecine warfare between the Army and Navy. (Let's not forget their political assassinations during the ‘30's as well.)
Also, as Byron pointed out, even though they were technically advanced they were short of resources, so my comment about a decent industrial base was not wholly accurate.
Chief designer of Mitsubishi A6M Zero Jiro Horikoshi wrote in his book "Zero Fighter" about the man hour needed to complete an A6M estimated at 10,000 during 1943-44 period, comparing this to 2,700 for a P-51 during 1944-45. (A P-38 took 9600 hours. The P-38 was 12K empty, the Zero about 1/3rd of that.)
I couldn't find a video of a machine that was automatically drilling and countersinking hundreds of rivet holes for a major B-26 component as it was moving down a conveyor. (Without a computer.)
Good piece, I just subscribed. There is much talk about rebuilding the industrial base in the United States and the collective West - and it is a good talk to have, provided it results in that industrial base being built, and a generational cohort being educated for it. My big question at the moment is, beyond just expanding the size of that industrial base, what immediate improvements in yield could be made by greater efficiency or reengineering of production processes, materials, or designs. This is something I honestly don't know: are the engines for F-35s produced in the most efficiency, material and labor saving way possible? Is there a way that the production of 155mm artillery shells could be speeded up by a 10% reduction in metal used? I ask these questions from a position of ignorance, but speaking from my own field of software development, vast improvements in yield (stuff done) can be achieved by small tweaks to how the process is done, and done in the near term, faster and less expensively than piling on more compute infrastructure. And you can do it while you wait for the compute to be built out.
Atoms aren't bits, as some of the guys trying to get into defense work are pointing out. US tends to overbuild platforms due to survivability concerns (looking at Constellation class issues).
making things, and making war....both are hard and dirty work.
If one is focused on avoiding the hard and dirty, of either, less is accomplished and it takes more time to do even that. Our culture tends to avoid hard and dirty. Get rid of that mindset, and efficiencies will follow
The new Turkish machine tools (Repkon) that GX bought for their new artillery shell factory in Mesquite TX are quite different from the traditional way of making shells. The other non-traditional approach is cast iron, which the AF has started to use for Mk80 series bombs.
As to why we are buying machine tools from Turkey, well, that’s what 30+ years of pretending that machine tools don’t matter gets you.
I can see logical fits for neural networks, especially WRT cyber and EW. And neural networks are not static designs. So has DOD established the testing and real-world training environments to validate the 'holy grail' that AI's proponents keep pushing? The scale of the comms needed for all of this is immense. Funded and procured? How certain can one be if the strategy and tactics have not been validated at the scale of what's involved? In contrast, the Uk seems to be messing things up bigly for Ru and they're following a practical evolution of weapons and tactics. Not saying AI isn't relevant, but validated at the immense scales doesn't appear to have occurred as yet and being able to validate the promises being pushed seems rather prudent.
I think AI is going to be the root of significant progress in all fields within a decade or so, if the power stays on. From improved design, manufacturing, repair processes, materials science, chemistry, medicine, not to mention software, EW, Comms, and Cyber.
It doesn't eliminate the need to be improving our baseline in all those other areas, but use of AI will likely lead to orders of magnitude faster product development across the board, including testing and risk analysis, including military.
Engineering experience should lead to a greater intuition as regards solving specific problems. I don't know how much "intuition" one gains from the topology of a neural network? I agree it will be helpful but I question whether it will produce better engineers.
A valid question. On the software front I think I think fairly soon the software will be writing more efficient software for more complex systems, and testing it faster, than people will veer be able to do, but that may not translate as easily to actually designing and building products that work
Already happening in some areas WRT software and embedded hardware design. That said, I am always mindful of our capacity (by historical examples) to lose perspective on things; especially when a bunch of folks are hyper-ventilating over this or that new tech in the pursuit of new markets.
I try to not forget that there are often single points of failure that exist and are often not properly accounted for in the scheme of things. Like what happens when you allow 1000's of military age men from adversarial countries into your own country through our southern border... gee I wonder what havoc they could possibly cause that isn't remotely tied to activities on a military base... hmm I wonder?
Military power is the first derivative of a nation’s energy and industrial power.
In the US, for example, Alfred Mahan didn’t just advocate for a new kind of Navy. He advocated for an American industrial base that could build that Navy. Decades later, Hyman Rickover spent much of his time promoting a national education system that could support an industrial system that could support the Navy.
In conjunction with that the Navy had the infrastructure to test, develop and create. A naval shipyard is a shipbuilding factory. The Navy had laboratories devoted to experimentation. Professional naval officers, commissioned and petty, had shore duty assignments which put them into direct contact with the folks who designed and built our warships.
When a sovereign builds a warship in his own shipyard, there are no commission salesmen hawking the latest buzzwords. Boring engineers with short sleeve shirts, skinny ties, and plastic pocket protectors call the shots.
None of the problems the Cdr. so aptly reports upon are going away until the US Navy returns to building warships in U.S. Naval Shipyards.
I appreciate what you are saying but there are some questions I would ask. Is said public shipyard going to have the technical capabilities of a 21st century shipbuilder to bend, fixture and weld large and complex steel assemblies as foreign shipyards are currently capable of doing? Over 40 years, I seen plenty of mechanical designs that placed a far greater emphasis on getting to a working design rather designing for serviceability and maintainability. I am amazed the extent to which engineering designs often produce ridiculous circumstances in order to maintain something that has long lost its "new car smell." It's an entirely different mindset to engineer and design something that is readily serviceable and maintainable vs. building something where decisions are fixated on getting to new capabilities.
I think that free enterprise is the best way to put consumer goods in the hands of the public. Building bullets is not a profit-driven enterprise. A sovereign nation engages in activities which are not profit driven. A country builds warships for self-defense, not to maximise shareholder returns.
Does it cost more to build warships in government yards than it does in private yards. In the short term, yes. But, this McNamaraian analysis has crippled our Navy in the long term. We can't supervise others building our warships because we lack the skillset.
Gov't can supervise shipbuilding when the gov't owns the design and the design is built on digital models that can be thoroughly vetted between the gov't and the shipbuilder. Would "requirements creep" become a legacy confined to private ship builders or is just as likely to show up in public shipyards (even more likely perhaps)? How much willingness do you imagine there will be fix broken industrial processes and/or to pursue innovations that are necessary? Under the Naval Industrial Improvement Program back in the '90s, it took on average 4 years for a capital project (e.g. purchase of a large CNC milling machine center) before the $'s showed up from Congress. Lastly, I don't imagine Senators and Representatives in Congress are going to be terribly interested to see jobs shed at private shipyards in their districts & are largely dedicated to building ships for the Navy.
I base my analysis on history. We did not build all our ships in government yards. There was always a place for private industry, so reopening the yards would not result in a loss of private shipyard jobs. And, let's be honest, we don't have a two ocean navy anymore, and we won't until we re-learn how to design and build capable warships.
It is easy to have a dumb idea in digital form. Microsoft has developed an entire industry composed of dumb digital ideas. It is a lot harder to build a dumb idea without recognising how dumb it is.
Warships are weapons. A nation needs to build the weapons it needs to defend itself. We cannot rely on anyone else.
Should the gov't build ships? I don't presume to know what that answer should be. Nevertheless, we are well into the age of long-range PGMs and seemingly persistent ISR that makes survivability of surface hulls in the future a challenging proposition. What fleet composition should the Navy have as a result? Again, I don't presume to know but circumstances in the Black Sea and the Red Sea would seem to suggest that we have some urgent questions that need answering in the present.
Im in the yes, and no categories here. Im all for expanded/new public shipyards. BRAC cut too deep and we're finally realizing it. The only problem I see with public yards utility is that even if we (Shazam!!) had them tomorrow, theres no institutional knowledge left to put to use. The General Board and BuShips of old are long gone. How can we expect a public yard to do any better than the private ones? Right now the Navy has NO idea whatsoever how to build a ship. They only know what they're told from private yards, and the for-profit model is not a basis to start from. Nobody in uniform is old enough to even know what the General Board or BuShips was or did, let alone retain any of the lessons and knowledge!! But having said that, trying to rebuild that knowledge isnt a fools errand at all, we just have to understand itll be generations before it bears meaningful fruit again.
All that aside, the expanded capability and regrowth of institutional knowledge is, imho, worth trying for...
The loss of institutional knowledge and the slow transition from officers & enlisted to military contractors is the most devastating of the cancers. Equipment can be replaced/rebuilt. Yes, it may take years but BRAC snuffed the knowledge and systems.
When you want to grow a tree that takes 50 years even to begin to mature, you must get to work. There's no time to lose.
Speaking of education. One of the first things China did after the Cultural Revolution and the demise of the Gang of Four was to restore education. Out went Mao's Red Book and in came STEM. When we put an end to DEI and CRT then I know we are serious.
Our educational system still supports our national priorities. About those priorities...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ImkTh6epuKw&ab_channel=It%27sAGundam
Well said, sir. Right on the mark.
I have always been a disciple of “ToT”, Tactics over Technology. Innovation wins wars. Ie. LCDR Jimmy Thatch and the reorder of the composition of naval air formations, and of course the weave. One of ToT lesson for the Ukraine war / Houthi needs to be a discussion of FPV and offensive / defensive tactics to include economy of scales when defeating them. Passive and active defensive measure lessons must be learned and offensive countermeasure lessons must be learned. The FPV as an up close and personal killing weapon is a refinement of the reaper and shadows of the last 20-30 years. Cheaper and deadlier.
Regarding the Houthis, hypersonic missiles being used to attack maritime targets is also a lesson we need to learn and quickly.
Both threats apply to our coming war with China. We better be prepared. Regarding AI, I haven’t seen the continuity in relations of AI and ROE. That has to be worked out for all sides. Discerning friend from foe with an AI director should scare the shit out of all of us.
The "Secret Sauce" is not just Thatch or John OODA Boyd, it's the systemic effort to identify potential "Lessons Learned", distill the salient elements, distribute the knowledge to the field, then analyze the impacts. The Army has an organization with this mission: the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL). I assume from the USMC mantra of "Improvise, Adapt, Overcome" that they do something. Does the USAF and Navy?
Yes. The Navy sends out “tac memos” that have been suggested by the fleet, sent to the appropriate wing/staff ISIC and then tested at the various operational test units / squadrons. The OPTEVFOR / SWEDG / TACTRAGRU then mandates any change after testing. Many times during fleet-ex or JTFEX, a change to tactics is made by the strike group staffs due to changes in technology and weapons etc. It’s been my experience that naval aviation is more flexible in it’s ability to adapt than the surface navy is. Can’t speak to the Air Force but I suspect they have something similar based on their specific disciplines.
The problem remains though, that the changes in tactics is driven from evolution and not revolution. Meaning the changes or not are driven by institutional resistance (“this is how we have always done it.”) instead of an urgent change to developments of a potential enemy.
You don't defeat the Houthis by shooting down their drones & missiles: you defeat them by erasing them from the earth.
I didn’t say defeat them. I said we need to figure out how to deal with their weapons. Defeating them is strategic. I’m discussing tactics. Big difference.
But I agree.
Letting the Houthis shoot more missiles is not solving that problem. Shooting missiles back isn't solving it either.
You have to make it much more unpleasant for them to shoot missiles than not shooting them. What are they getting out of it? Take that away.
Unfortunately that will involve tactics that the US doesn't seem willing to do, and no other country either.
Oh yes and hypersonic missiles? That's been hyped almost as much as AI, and is about as useful. You don't need a hypersonic missile to hit a freighter and make insurance companies cancel their insurance on other freighters sailing on the same route.
I'm confused. Alex sounds like the tech bro to me, and LaPlante sounds like the "build and buy something we know will work now" guy.
We know how to fight a winning war. WW II. First being a stated goal to win. Just like the first two initials of General Grant's name.
All the lessons exist between Vison's Vinson-Trammell act of 1934. And the final denouement in August of 1945. It also played on a strong industrial that was readily converted to war production when the time came. It also played on a much stronger domestic merchant marine that created an infrastructure to build that Navy that Vinson pushed through congress.
And, what are the lessons that we are not learning. The need for all of those old-fashion things a military needs. Bullets, artillery shells to name a few. And lots and lots of them with the industrial infrastructure to make them all.
I think there were signs, even the first 12 hours of this war, that Russia wasn't going to win this war in 72 hours. It should have prompted a concerted effort on our part to put together the logistical support to win, I repeat win. Including the immediate transfer of Ukraine pilots for training on F16's. Ditto our Abrams tanks and supporting armour.
The irony is that such a response would have probably given Iran pause before starting the Gaza war. Maybe China too.
But, the same said people who took a whole week off to prep the president in his just completed debated with Trump are the same people that are running this war. And writing our inadequate defense budgets. As an aside, can we rename the Department of Defense the Department of War?
It is important to consider that the sec of the navy was independent of war which really became the army. That naming was vastly superior and kept the time and purpose for an army crystal clear.
I'm aware of that the Department of the Navy was separate. Right now I'll just settle for appropriate nomenclature.
While eating breakfast this morning, I was watching Berhard Kast's interview with Col. Reisner on where the tactical situation in UKR has landed. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZB6iMeyjX8
Where we seem to have landed is in a 21st century version of WW1 - a war of attrition caused by fundamental unveiling of the fog of war that has seriously degraded the opportunities to maneuver. This is less about some supercomputer AI and more about low-cost, widespread information collection increasing opportunities to react and reducing the time to do so. The former Soviet Union doctrine seem to work adequately in this environment. It remains to be seen, IMO, whether this would hold should the relatively free use of the EM spectrum that we see in the theater becomes challenged. Like all dependencies upon electronics, what happens to your units in the field/at sea when they go away?
"21st century version of WW1": Yes, Battle of the Somme, meaning guys in trenches, sniping away at each other when not getting blasted by artillery, all within a pervasive environment of EW and drones. Every day, immense levels of industrial output go up in smoke and shrapnel, with eye-popping casualty numbers in an environment where MedEvac is primitive, if avail at all.
For IndoPaCom thinkers... just add water.
The Battle of the Somme is one of the worst disasters in human history. The best and brightest of an entire continent slaughtered. For nothing.
What do come up with next? Passchendaele?
The General
BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
“Good-morning, good-morning!” the General said
When we met him last week on our way to the line.
Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of 'em dead,
And we're cursing his staff for incompetent swine.
“He's a cheery old card,” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both by his plan of attack.
CDR Sal,
Harsh and accurate.
Question: Is there a typo here?
"... it is School (2)’s concern that will buy us the time to see of School (1) can play."
Pretty sure you meant IF not OF. In the law of ironclad dependencies, if school 2 doesn't hold the line long enough, school 1 will never come into play, as the rest of your excellent article clearly laid out.
We no longer have the industrial base to support school 2. Even if we saw the light today, decreed that we are on a war footing and initiated a massive military buildup...we'd have to massively initiate the buildup of the industrial base first. Shipyards in short supply, munitions plant desperately short and shrinking in numbers, aircraft manufacturers...Boeing? Okay, I'll stop now.
Since we have degraded if not wrecked our economy, it's a pointless discussion anyway. But, we have the finest political and foreign policy leadership in charge since WWII, so we can sleep soundly at night. /sarc off.
Not just an industrial base problem, but a resource base issue as well. Gets back to ores and minerals in the ground. See: https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R48005
Esp, see pg 20/23 re net import reliance for critical minerals; note numbers of minerals for which China is key US/global supplier, either as source or world's dominant refiner.
We actually have commercial deposits of almost all critical minerals but there are two problems. 1) commercial doesn't equate to profitable and few are willing to support tariffs to nurture a domestic industrial base for extraction and refinement, and 2) even if there were tariffs and the like to make domestic source pricing competitive then you have to spend decades defeating the Build Nothing Nowhere crowd and their packs of lawyers.
From 2018 -
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/373656-the-mining-reform-america-really-needs/
"In recent months, President Trump and Interior Secretary Zinke have moved to gut bedrock environmental laws in order to accelerate the mining of so-called “critical minerals.” They claim America is over-reliant on foreign countries for these minerals and that fast-tracking permits for domestic mines will strengthen our national security.
It is either nonsense or a deliberate deception: a trojan horse built out of toothpicks and duct tape. The administration is using a national security rationale as cover for a gift to the mining industry, proposing further erosion of already flimsy community and environmental protections against the impacts of hardrock mining."
I guess after our defeat our new CCCP masters won't have to worry about those regs; they'll do it over here just as they do at home.
You, of course, are referring to the asymmetrical members of the Russian and CCP Red Green Corps. Follow the money. Most of the environmental groups that oppose development in the West are financed by organizations funded by the Russians and the Chinese.
Yes, that was corrected after the email went out.
https://fromthegreennotebook.com/2023/05/22/4-types-of-officers-and-how-to-develop-yourself-and-others/
Logistics and energy supply.
It's not just about how many drones you can build, it's about how much energy you can generate. Not many people are talking about the ENORMOUS energy requirements the next gen of AI models will have, on top of the frankly staggering percentages of generating capapcity that they already consume.
Ask not how clever your AI is, ask instead how many bombs, bullets and power stations you can build by the end of the decade.
Power stations? Ewww! Low density unicorn farts are much better.
🤣🤣🤣
I read somewhere that one of the big new data/AI centers (Amazon maybe) was set up near one of the bigger nuke plants in the country and expects to consume more than a third of it's power.
That's quite believable, depending on the output of the power station. AI is hungry and could make the airline industry, and shipping, look frugal and efficient by comparison. For this reason it seems likely that there will only be a relatively small number of AI in the future: they will be as scarce as super computers are, now. Their designations will probably be household names. And only deep pockets will have access to them.
Can anyone recommend a good book or long form article that compares German efforts in WWII to find a new war changing super weapon to the Cult of Tech in the US today? It seems like there are really good lessons to be learned and applied.
I think if you look at the ME-262, for example, it's also likely that it wasn't the pursuit of some wonder weapon that was the problem but the consequences of higher ups putting their thumb on the scale because they are content to let "concepts" dictate decisions and resources rather than relying on hard work and costs of experimentation and validation. Hitler insisted on the ME-262 being employed as a fighter-bomber and that's credited with really gumming up the works. I often wonder if it is not so much the pursuit of technical wizardry that's the reason for failure as much as it is poorly framed assumptions and unwillingness to spend the resources to validate assumptions and concepts using said weapons.
You've hit upon a key factor on how promising tech can fail, and a reason why we shouldn't be overly critical of tech development. My (former) warfighting arena involves killing/destroying things hundreds/thousands of kilometers away. It's hard to do those things without tech, and doing those things are now becoming more pervasive. The other part, besides screwing up the tech dev itself, is the policy that drives the use, or more often - limitation on use after fielding of the tech. We can have the most perfect tech, but it will amount to nothing if we end up with a say-do gap. At this time, a lot of ideas about war/deterrence coming from the smart folks are based on a lot of wishful thinking and theories that work in classrooms and other discussion venues, but not so much in the real world. Think about how our high tech navy sailed up and down the SCS for a few decades and never deterred the PRC from building their artificial islands.
I stumbled upon the Mongoose mine clearing system that was proposed in the 90s to replace the MCLC. Which is spectacular but not hugely effective against modern mines.
Basically, instead of a single explosive hose it is a net studded with shaped charges. Apparently, after 30 years work it still doesn’t work any better than the MCLC. The army produced production versions in 2006 that were war reserve only and were apparently used for testing. Apparently getting a rocked propelled net to land flat and not wrinkled or twisted in actual field conditions is hard.
I don't know much, anything really, about the system but if smooth deployment was an issue that may be something that cheap drone-type deployment modules may be mature enough to handle 30 years later.
It's pretty heavy. But I can see something like 'The Mongoose butlers fly forward and use their grabbers get it all neat and tidy, before zipping back out the blast area.'
:)
The tech that went into the Soviet's T-34 tank wasn't revolutionary but it was sufficient to be an absolute living nightmare for German armor and infantry when it showed up one day. In the history rhymes department, the Uk's pulled the M1A's back from the front lines due to vulnerabilities to a lesser tech (FPV drones, ATGMs, etc.). Ultimately, circumstances of late in Uk appear to have derailed the Army's plan for the next gen Abrams. The longer the time horizon, the more skeptical we should be of "predictions" of what is and what is not "game changing"... "revolutionary" ... blah blah blah. The real world often supplies a sledgehammer to such things. As for the SCS (let's add the ECS), one wonders how an aggressive, defensive mining strategy employed by the Taiwanese in the Strait (especially if Taiwan ups their game on that tech) would play out in the Taiwan Strait? I imagine that strategy is likely to be a lot more fruitful (in the deterrence department) than trying to logistically sustain marines in the littorals with a few dozen slow moving, minimally armed surface vessels.
True enough. The Germans suffered from a lot of things including their attempts to field uber tanks and other wonder weapons. However, the discussion on how long the "horizon" should be is dangerous. A question I was often asked about WW2 is "when should the US have bought tanks?" My answer is generally - "at least as early as the French, and definitely not as late as the Poles." I agree regarding your point ref mines in a Taiwan scenario. A force need not attain 100% tech conversion. I always remind people that during the start of WW2 (and throughout) the Germans relied on thousands upon thousands of horses to support the "high tech" blitzkrieg armor formations.
Propose to the Marines that they can better contribute to a china fight with small air-delivered radar stealthy boats with 10-20 mines each. LAPES or whatever that is called.
I'll have to disagree. The political meddling and high level diktat by Hitler certainly impacted it. But, the two biggest issues were diddiling around by a massive RLM apparatchik bureaucracy and mostly lack of available metals.
(We weren't immune to these problems stateside either. The 8th Airforce probably benefited from being a continent away from Wright Field.
We're going to establish a special trireme equipped navy so Sal doesn't have to worry about "transformation" anymore. In war, what has to be done in a broad sense has not changed for some time, but how we do it transforms. It's plain reality that transformation starts somewhere. The demise of battleships and horse cavalry are sufficient examples of transformation starting with the development of the airplane and automobile. Is "AI" THE transformational development? I would offer that it will support the different way we will do things, but it won't be THE driver. Current wars are just that - current. To borrow a phrase - history doesn't repeat itself, it just rhymes a lot. We need to do what we can to be ready for the fight we might have in the near term - 2 to four years from now, but we also need to pay attention to how things are turning out. Otherwise, we might end up with Sal on a trireme facing the Shandong battle group. That's a long way of agreeing that the battle over lessons learned is of prime importance.
You must be new here.
Long time listener, first time commenting. I appreciate your tireless effort saying/typing things out loud the things need to be said/written.
Having read your comment a second time, I believe I may have been too snarky. Perhaps it is time for a 3rd cup of coffee.
The issue really comes down to purpose and tools.
The PURPOSE of war is to change the behavior of an opponent.
The TOOLS of war should be those which can achieve the PURPOSE at the lowest cost (blood and treasure) in the least amount of time.
The last CINC who understood this also was the last GO to win his war: Ike. His foreign & defense policy: MR; “Massive Retaliation,” as announced by Dulles to CFR in early 1954. Attack us or our allies & well nuke you.
History: The War Dept planners figured WW2 PTO would last until 1949. US Army estimated 1M US casualties, 5M Japanese casualties. USN est 1M, 9M. Remember - the Pacific was a USN war. Nuking Japan killed 0 US, 400,000 Japanese, saving between 6-8M lives… and four years of war.
War demands productivity above all human endeavors; we’re spending human lives. Not using our most productive weapons, conducting “combat without war,” is the most immoral choice we can make. Sending our kids out to kill their kids when we don’t even care if we win? Insanity.
Had Truman nuked Pyongyang in June, 1950, we wouldn’t have killed 2M Koreans, nor still be there 70 years on. And Vietnam may not have happened. Had JFK nuked Hanoi in 1963, we wouldn’t have killed 2M Vietnamese. And subsequent small wars may have been entirely avoided.
If we aren’t serious about changing the behavior of our opponent, we have no business sticking our kids in to kill and die.
Do we need F35s, B21s, FCS, etc., to conduct real war? Nope.
The ONLY logical and moral choice is Ike’s. If we aren’t ready for that, we have no business offshore.
A reasonable assessment--- when the other guys did not have nukes to fight back.
But, the basic point- commit to win and use overwhelming force to achieve victory is still correct.
However, last time I checked, we kinda sorta are lacking in overwhelming force to use, short of nukes. A diminished fleet, aged and short legged aircraft, near empty ammo bunkers, strained industrial base slowly falling behind needs, and an apathetic citizenry with military age kids ineligible or uninterested in military service. All made worse by politicians and their hand selected top military brass who are incompetent or unsuited for the jobs they fill, the former elected by voters more interested in free stuff than freedom.
Yeah, but my point remains overwhelming force and maximizing productivity, as stated. Ike spent much of his presidency fighting the Pentagon’s demand for ever-more conventional force to fight conventional wars. He understood the stupidity & futility of that course and tried to turn off of it. It’s the root of his MIC speech.
Do Houthi have nukes? Would the entire world be better off by evaporating their encampments? Yes.
Does Iran - yet - have nukes? Would the entire world be better-off evaporating Fordo? Of course.
Would this necessarily result in a response from PRC or Rus? Doubt it. Probably, just as Stalin watched Truman, we’re being tested for seriousness. We failed our test I. Korea and we can see the result.
Conventional warfare is not serious. Annihilating Houthi and Fordo - are.
The world is a far safer place when everyone knows the boundary lines that cannot be overstepped. An intelligent American administration would’ve grasped the Ukraine red line; now look at it…
You bring up critical points that many in the defense and foreign policy sector ignore, and we end up stuck where we are at. Far too many think of being able to conduct "clean" wars where no civilians are killed - essentially unrealistic purpose. This is clearly evident in recent articles and videos that criticize the Israelis for defending themselves and attempting to destroy Hamas. The "negotiate with Hamas" folks think they can achieve peace with Hamas maintaining position in Gaza. Then the cycle repeats again, and to your point - keeps the death toll piling up. Of course the "big idea people" don't suffer the consequence - just the Israelis, Palestinians. and third country nationals caught in commercial ships out in the open sea.
Yup. The problems are twofold.
1. Wars are, by definition, national endeavors. Hezbollah, for example, may be an Iranian force in Lebanese territory, but the Lebanese people allow its presence. No such thing as “innocent civilians” exists; no nation survives other than at the behest of its civilians. This is why China was so harsh at Tiananmen Square: they KNOW this. Attempting to fight a war while minimizing the casualties among those enabling it is foolishness. In the last war we won, we bombed dams, power lines, farms, all transportation links for food, power plants, etc. If the goal of the war is importantly, and if we’re serious about our purpose, civilian casualties should be limited. But avoiding them entirely is stating that their civilians are more important than the lives of our soldiers. If this is the case, we have no business engaging. Our young men MUST be more important than their civilians or there is no purpose at all for the engagement.
2. Western governments - globalists - demand we be multicultural. If this is true, Western concepts of combat against non-Western opponents must fall, and enemies engaged as they engage us. It’s seriously dumb to handcuff ourselves in cross-cultural combat when that results in higher casualties for our kids, a longer and more expensive engagement and, as in Afghanistan, ultimately leaving the field to the enemy. Israel is in this position now: either they choose to win and defeat Hamas unconditionally, or they will leave the field to their enemy - and future guaranteed Israeli dead will be on the hands of those who quit the fight before defeating the enemy.
Wrt "clean" wars where no civilians are killed" this always tweaks me. If a people think something is worth fighting for and critical to a nation or people's survival, then a significant number of them will have to be killed to dissuade them. They aren't generally going to pick up their broken matchbox cars and IPads and go home.
LeMay agrees.
To a point. After the war, when he was able to get on the ground in Japan, he did not quail form the fire raids anymore. He was concerned with them. But after he saw the machine tools poking from the ashes in the residential areas of Tokyo and other cities that were fire bombed, he concluded the fire raids were the right thing to do. The final analysis, civilians were not the target.
The Ukrainian red line was crossed by Putin. He started the war in 2014 and hoped to be able to take his land bridge to Crimea on the cheap. It didn't work, so he tried with a much force, and all it is getting him is the loss of men and equipment because the Ukrainians are not willing to give up pieces of their country, or go entirely back under the Russian thumb, which is the long term goal of Putin.
Putin is now increasingly desperate for the war to end and has been scouring the world for old soviet equipment, and is trying to con literate peoples in Africa to come fight his war. It will be interesting to see what the NorKs do when they start fighting. I doubt starvation is a good way to prepare an army.
LOL. Nahhh. We promised not to move NATO east. Then began gobbling former satellites
Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Woerner.
https://natowatch.org/newsbriefs/2018/how-gorbachev-was-misled-over-assurances-against-nato-expansion
Then we engineered the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine in 2014.
Then “Joe Biden” put Ukraine on a serving platter for Russia when he said, maybe just a “minor incursion” would do the job, as Biden instructed Putin in advance of Putin’s invasion following his oft-announced “red line” of Ukraine joining NATO, and as Gorbachev was promised in 1990 by, essentially, all of Western Europe - who now are fighting Russia in rejection of their own assurances - at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives.
WE instigated that stupid war. Thinking otherwise only means one is not paying attention.
That is a common plaint, but it is also patently false. Baker made the "promise" as an off the cuff statement. He did not have the authority to make such a promise, and even if he did, he could not make it stick after he was gone. That would have required a treaty, something that was never signed.
Putin's "red line" was simply an attempt to push Ukraine into a corner, and it was cowardly, in the extreme, to say what Biden did. Joining NATO was Ukraine's business and as a sovereign country, was Ukraine's business and right to choose.
As for Gorbachev, it comes down to a treaty, which never existed.
Beyond Biden's stupid statement, the US had nothing to do with the start of the war. That falls entirely on Putin. He was planning the invasion as far back as 2008. It was part of his return to the Tsarist boundaries, at a minimum, and most likely the first step to Stalinist boundaries.
The US did not engineer the overthrow of Yanukovych. Yanukovych precipitated the uprising by refusing to sign the EU agreement, and showing his inclination of doing Putin's bidding, rather than that of his own people. He gave orders to put down the uprising and the Berkut started shooting protesters. Rather than stand trial for ordering the killing, he ran of asylum to his puppet master, Putin, who was the ultimate cause of the uprising.
In running, Yanukovych abandoned his office, and running with a cloud over his head, he is still a fugitive from justice. Thinking the US instigated the war is a sign you don't know a lot of what you claim to know. Alas, your problem is all too common.
Concur except in the last few elections I thin we've had far more ballots than voters, especially in the most critical cities and counties.
*estimated in an invasion of Japan.
the three ... on the lower right of your post hide your edit function
The edit function does not come up in my phone, only on my PC…
Oh boy what a rich topic. Ukraine is a modern Spanish Civil War fought with a hodgepodge of weapons that were scraped up. WWII started using the lessons learned from that war and finished with jet engines, cruise missiles, a battleship sunk by a missile, ballistic missiles and fission weapons.
The UK had tech but a small ndustrial base. Germany had tech, a fair industrial base until 1944, and no raw materials, and a huge research/administrative bureaucracy. Japan and Italy had nothing but went to war anyway.
The US had everything with relatively minimal constraints. The Soviets had a smaller, lesser, but similar mixture but had purged itself of talent who didn't make the party purity standards.
Fast forward? The US is sorta' like the UK, but our Soviet style universities, government, and corporations are now shooting themselves in the foot with the corruption of military leadership, incompetent political leadership, and the DEI playing the equivalent of "Jewish Science" in our hiring practices like party membership in Russia and Germany.
We've flunked school 1 and school 2.
Concur except I'd think the Japanese had a decent industrial base and technology as well by the 1930s, perhaps beaten down a bit by overuse
In the home islands, when war kicked into gear, Japan had a solid industrial base, but very poor resource base for energy and minerals. Between 1910s - 1945, Japan's Korea "colony" was a key source of basic mineral resources and energy supply, esp in northern regions. Eg, Chosin Reservoir (later, of Korean War fame) was constructed in 1920s as a waterpower system by the Japan Nitrogen Fertilizer Company to produce electric power to manufacture... nitrogen fertilizer -- which also happens to be a key chemical component in high exlosives. Elsewhere, Manchukuo -- now Manchuria -- was a source for energy & mineral resources for Japanese industry. And all through rest of Asia, 1880s through the war, Japan sourced energy and minerals. Finally, USA/Canada also had robust export markets in Japan for coal, oil, minerals, metal scrap and other basic precursors.
Good points. In hindsight, it's easy to point out Japan's shortcomings. However, they did manage to sweep through Southeast Asia following Pearl Harbor. Things might have continued going their way had not their code been cracked.
No. They were nearing the end of their neglected logistical network. Once the torpedo problem was solved, many Japanese convoys were eaten up by submarines, and poorly escorted.
That's all true. I was thinking of technical knowledge and capability from a technology view, but neglected the significant resource issues.
They were not prepared to fight a naval war and their own industry was compromised by internecine warfare between the Army and Navy. (Let's not forget their political assassinations during the ‘30's as well.)
That's true.
Also, as Byron pointed out, even though they were technically advanced they were short of resources, so my comment about a decent industrial base was not wholly accurate.
Too much manual manufacturing, lack of technical resources to exploit new technologies like missiles or jet engines.
(See the first paragraph.)
http://www.autolife.umd.umich.edu/Labor/L_Overview/L_Overview7.htm
Chief designer of Mitsubishi A6M Zero Jiro Horikoshi wrote in his book "Zero Fighter" about the man hour needed to complete an A6M estimated at 10,000 during 1943-44 period, comparing this to 2,700 for a P-51 during 1944-45. (A P-38 took 9600 hours. The P-38 was 12K empty, the Zero about 1/3rd of that.)
Interesting:)
I couldn't find a video of a machine that was automatically drilling and countersinking hundreds of rivet holes for a major B-26 component as it was moving down a conveyor. (Without a computer.)
Good piece, I just subscribed. There is much talk about rebuilding the industrial base in the United States and the collective West - and it is a good talk to have, provided it results in that industrial base being built, and a generational cohort being educated for it. My big question at the moment is, beyond just expanding the size of that industrial base, what immediate improvements in yield could be made by greater efficiency or reengineering of production processes, materials, or designs. This is something I honestly don't know: are the engines for F-35s produced in the most efficiency, material and labor saving way possible? Is there a way that the production of 155mm artillery shells could be speeded up by a 10% reduction in metal used? I ask these questions from a position of ignorance, but speaking from my own field of software development, vast improvements in yield (stuff done) can be achieved by small tweaks to how the process is done, and done in the near term, faster and less expensively than piling on more compute infrastructure. And you can do it while you wait for the compute to be built out.
Atoms aren't bits, as some of the guys trying to get into defense work are pointing out. US tends to overbuild platforms due to survivability concerns (looking at Constellation class issues).
making things, and making war....both are hard and dirty work.
If one is focused on avoiding the hard and dirty, of either, less is accomplished and it takes more time to do even that. Our culture tends to avoid hard and dirty. Get rid of that mindset, and efficiencies will follow
The new Turkish machine tools (Repkon) that GX bought for their new artillery shell factory in Mesquite TX are quite different from the traditional way of making shells. The other non-traditional approach is cast iron, which the AF has started to use for Mk80 series bombs.
As to why we are buying machine tools from Turkey, well, that’s what 30+ years of pretending that machine tools don’t matter gets you.
You can plan,fight and win a72-hour war; you just have to be set up for a 72-month one.
and the enemy has to believe you are so set up
I can see logical fits for neural networks, especially WRT cyber and EW. And neural networks are not static designs. So has DOD established the testing and real-world training environments to validate the 'holy grail' that AI's proponents keep pushing? The scale of the comms needed for all of this is immense. Funded and procured? How certain can one be if the strategy and tactics have not been validated at the scale of what's involved? In contrast, the Uk seems to be messing things up bigly for Ru and they're following a practical evolution of weapons and tactics. Not saying AI isn't relevant, but validated at the immense scales doesn't appear to have occurred as yet and being able to validate the promises being pushed seems rather prudent.
I think AI is going to be the root of significant progress in all fields within a decade or so, if the power stays on. From improved design, manufacturing, repair processes, materials science, chemistry, medicine, not to mention software, EW, Comms, and Cyber.
It doesn't eliminate the need to be improving our baseline in all those other areas, but use of AI will likely lead to orders of magnitude faster product development across the board, including testing and risk analysis, including military.
Engineering experience should lead to a greater intuition as regards solving specific problems. I don't know how much "intuition" one gains from the topology of a neural network? I agree it will be helpful but I question whether it will produce better engineers.
A valid question. On the software front I think I think fairly soon the software will be writing more efficient software for more complex systems, and testing it faster, than people will veer be able to do, but that may not translate as easily to actually designing and building products that work
Already happening in some areas WRT software and embedded hardware design. That said, I am always mindful of our capacity (by historical examples) to lose perspective on things; especially when a bunch of folks are hyper-ventilating over this or that new tech in the pursuit of new markets.
The only way to ensure that an enemies AI capacity is destroyed is to pull the plug. How to best do that? EMP / Cyber warfare and lastly, nukes.
I try to not forget that there are often single points of failure that exist and are often not properly accounted for in the scheme of things. Like what happens when you allow 1000's of military age men from adversarial countries into your own country through our southern border... gee I wonder what havoc they could possibly cause that isn't remotely tied to activities on a military base... hmm I wonder?