China agricultural imports in 2022 totaled $236B in a population of 1.4B (168 USD/person). The US imported $192B in a population of 0.33B (582 USD/person). The world agriculture market is interlinked. I suspect there are enough peasants remaining in China who know how to plant crops without Russian potash imports. I doubt that would be the same here in the US.
"We knew we were living a lie that we could sustain a big fight at sea. An entire generation of Flag Officers led this lie in the open and ordered everyone else to smile through it. Ignore your professional instincts, and trust The Smartest People in the Room™."
You hit the nail on the head right here Sal.
When did everyone approaching O-6 decide they were entitled to a cushy retirement board job, and that this was their ultimate purpose, and then make their career choices around what would be most likely to produce that outcome?
Let's call it what it is. Greedy, self-centered, self-serving, politically correct gamesmanship.
With few exceptions, our GOFO ranks are not serious warfighters. They are lackadaisical war-planners more interested in preserving their own path to being millionaires in retirement.
When William the Privateer get's elected to Congress (never gonna' happen) the first bill I will propose will be a permanent ban on Flag officers being employed in any capacity by the defense industry.
You want to pursue that star? Then accept you are NOT going to be a millionaire, or make sure your wife has a great job and invests wisely.
I'm not saying we have to lose their knowledge the day they retire. They can consult - for free (but not for anyone they - or their spouse - own more than $50k in stock for). They can teach in universities. They can work in business wholly unconnected to the Defense industry.
But no Flag Officer should ever be able to go to work in the defense industry, so there should never be any consideration of how their personal future would be impacted by their choices while in uniform.
With modifications, this same approach should also apply to every SES/SNIS position in the civilian bureaucracy, not just DoD, but amended to reflect you cannot go to work for a contractor who services your agency or similar missions to what you worked in the civilian world.
And obviously, this should apply to congress-critters as well. Not just "lobbying", but any employment for firms you worked with in any capacity, or who benefitted from any legislation you proposed.
I'd rather pay them all cushy retirements then put up with this horse manure.
100% agree. But...asking any organization to reform itself from within is unlikely to succeed. Example: Third largest government organization on the planet is UK National Health Service (PLA of China and India's Public Transportation Service are one and two respectively). Reforming the NHS would require people to vote to declare their job redundant, so you will never be able to reform the bloat in their medical system. I'd submit that our military establishment (composed of the Iron Triangle of Dod, Military Industrial Complex and Congress) will never "vote" to change the current revolving door / gravy train that exists for fun and profit at the upper levels. Or perhaps I'm just being cynical after four plus decades in the system...
Absolutely correct. It’s going to take a commander-in-chief who understands what true executive authority is, and rightfully should be, and is willing to come in there with a proverbial, rhetorical battle axe
As much as I personally dislike, DJ T, the primary reason he was opposed so heavily by so many across government is because he presents an existential threat, not to our national security, but to the job security of the way it’s done.
Which is why the next R administration had better hit the ground with an army of lawyers ready to fight to the death to preemptively legally nuke every group out there trying to hamstring the administration with lawfare.
D's have gotten excellent at Lawfare, while R's sat on their hands and talked about tea parties and manners.
It's time for the R party to field a Navy Seal equivalent hit team of Lawfare Tier-1 Operators, ready to spread legal destruction and mayhem among our enemies so great, they never show their heads in court again.
Correct...we no longer really have a functioning court system that follows "rule of law" either. A bellweather civil side example just now...Court in Hawaii just told a guy, after his Constitutional rights were openly violated...that they ARE NOT BOUND by the United States Consitution and its Bill of Rights. Courts are now non-functional..
It was the nationwide injunction that hamstrings a President's ability to make any effective reforms.
Justice Thomas has spoken and written on the need to reign in the nationwide injunction that a district court judge can issue. What we need is a good case with strong facts that would allow SCOTUS to issue an opinion that nukes the nationwide injunction.
A community I was not part of but worked with a lot had three basic dictums: Listen to what people say, watch what they do, and follow the money. I've found that works well in life in general as well...odd that. What people say is their "public face", what they do is, well, a lot of it is not public. But it is really what they "are". Greed is among the most common motivators among humans. When someone is already personally wealthy (regardless of how they acquired the wealth) they become less predictable and harder to coerce. Who wouldn't want a national leader who is in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame?
When I read your reply, my senator Mark Kelly immediately came to mind. Though not a flag officer, certainly a scheming grifter fixed on his personal wealth/success above all else.
I vote R because I believe in always choosing "the lesser of 2 wevils", but I'm an equal opportunity hater when it comes to politicians. The majority on BOTH sides are corrupt.
Not all, but enough that the good ones have a hard time making a difference.
"With few exceptions, our GOFO ranks are not serious warfighters."
George W. Bush tried to change this with the Army when he brought Jack Kean out of retirement to chair general officer promotion boards to ensure that actual innovative and effective warfighters were promoted instead of being capped out as Colonels. Barack Obama abandoned the initiatives.
It says a lot that the two most innovative strategic thinkers the US military developed in the past 50 years - John Nagl (Army) and John Boyd (Air Force) - topped out and left their services as LTCs. Boyd's sin was advocating the lightweight fighter program which produced the F-18 and F-16, cheaper and in the long run more capable platforms than the Air Force/Navy preferred F-15s and F-16s. Nagl's sin was being an armor branch officer who looked at non-kinetic ways to obtain political goals in stability operations and COIN.
"When William the Privateer get's elected to Congress (never gonna' happen) the first bill I will propose will be a permanent ban on Flag officers being employed in any capacity by the defense industry."
This won't survive contact with the Constitution. Retired officers are civilians. You want to live in a country where the government can tell civilians where they can and cannot work? The government already has way too much power.
It produced a fantastic aircraft. I've talked with plenty of current pilots. The F-35 really is a fantastic final result.
Does it still have issues? Sure. Go back and name any famous plane we ended up loving and I'll show you where it had major issues as it was coming out and even long after deployed (F-4U anyone? The 'ensign eliminator')
LCS by comparison was 'supposed' to show the benefit of having 2 designs from 2 builders to lower contract risk and price.
Instead we have the biggest embarrassment since, well, I don't know, we have a lot of them these days, but it's still pretty big...
So it is possible for a flawed process and waste to still produce an highly functional end-result.
Also possible to produce a total waste of money.
I think the F-35 is the former, whereas there is no doubt here on the porch that the LCS is the latter.
Actually, retired officers are subject to recall. There is ample legal pathway for this.
No, government cannot tell you where you can work. But nobody is forced to join the military as an officer. That is a privilege, and it can carry with it responsibilities that affect you beyond your term of service.
So, while the government should not be able to dictate to regular people where they can work, there is absolutely no reason Congress cannot dictate to those who CHOOSE to serve in the senior ranks of the military and civilian government that IF they chose that career, they will then be ineligible for certain other jobs after that time.
Supreme Court already upheld certain 'cooling off' periods for certain government officials.
Might be easier to handle it from the other end: No government contracts can be awarded to a company that employs any GOFO retired within the last X years.
This would still be difficult though. Would they have to fire employees that stayed in the reserves and got a star there?
It would also help to have a Pentagon and civilian leadership that said 'from now on, accountability gets more severe the more years you have in'
We might not be able to forcibly separate them...
But if they are still in uniform, they can be relived of their current duty with a word from the President, and they can be assigned to make coffee for the Chief's mess.
They might have legal protections to rank and service. They have ZERO entitlement to billet and duties.
My first appropriations bill would fund a waste disposal facility in Nome, Alaska, with ample billeting, and that would become the assignment duty for all Flag Officers who fucked up and refused to resign.
First, the provision applies to ALL retired military ranks, not just officers, if the member was a regular (and for some, but not all, reservists).
Second, officers who retired at O-5 or above under 10 U.S. Code § 638 - Selective early retirement due to failure to be promoted are specifically NOT subject to recall according to 10 U.S. Code § 688(d).
In addition, the length of recall is not more that 12 months unless one is a chaplain, medical MoS, or serves as an attache or on the Battle Monuments Commission. For the Navy, but not other services, retired enlisted personnel are in the Fleet Reserve until the total of active service + lapsed years is equal to 30. For those enlisted discharged from any service without retiring, they are subject to recall until the total term of enlistment (generally 8 years enlistment including both active and reserve obligations for a first enlistment) expire. Officers who resign their commission rather than retire are not subject to recall after expiration of their enlistment period - and would be recalled as an enlisted member unless recommissioned.
Only one relative recent case of a retired officer being recalled comes to mind - General Jack Keane being recalled by the George W. Bush administration to head the Army O-7 promotion board to ensure that warfighters were promoted rather than ticket-punchers, particularly those who had been mentally flexible enough for LIC.
Keane's case shows how reluctant DoD is to exercise this authority. Bush wanted to recall him first to command in Iraq during the surge, then to take over CENTCOM. He declined the offer both of those times with no pushback;
In fact, the last time I can recall significant use of recall authority for officers was in the Korean War. At that, most of the recalled officers were not retired, but on Individual Ready Reserve status from service in the Second World War. In the Second World War, a number of retired officers were recalled, including Vice Admiral Thomas Craven, Admiral Henry Wiley, Rear Admiral William Watts, Vice Admiral Middleton Elliot, Fleet Admiral William Leahy (simultaneously CJCS and White House Chief of Staff), Brigadier General Leonard Ayres, Major General William Donovan, Major General Dwight Davis (who had been Secretary of War!), General Malin Craig, Major General William Connor, Major General William Cole, Major General Guy Henry, Major General John Hughes, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General George Olmstead, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., etc)
He does. But the rocket motors in question here are all solid fuel. As far as I know, Space X hasn't done any work here. But I would love to see someone with Musk's mindset take the problem on.
He has publicly stated that he does not want to make weapons.
I’m hoping somebody he trusts can sit down with him, and explain that his ability to be the richest man on earth and support the causes he believes in is dependent upon our remaining the dominant military, political and economic force on the planet.
He really needs to get a better understanding of “Si vis Pacem, Parabellum “
yup. My eldest daughter is an aerospace engineering major at Alabama-Huntsville and wants to go to work for him on propulsion systems when she graduates. Her twin brother is training to be a pilot.
“Facing the People’s Republic of China on the other side of the International Date Line …. how efficient do you feel? How effective?”
China has the Mass and the Will. They possess the manpower reserves and the industrial capacity. We? Lol not even an half serious admiral can look himself in the mirror and accept this. Yet they do. What does that say about their integrity and fealty to the republic and the truth?
Regarding Mssr Cancian war gaming theory:
“If U.S. military planners’ worst-case scenario arose in the Pacific — having to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion — American military forces would target Chinese amphibious ships.”
He is half correct. This is predicated on China only limiting her attacks to Taiwan and not the entire 1-3 island chains and striking CONUS naval bases. It won’t be as neat and clean as he theorizes. He is very correct regarding the undersea warfare fight. What do our sonobuoy stocks look like? I remember dipping into war stocks in 2002 for an ASW exercise. We had to account for 5 fucking buoys. And we sold my Chief’s kidney for a DICASS.
I wonder what's inside NavMag Guam (or whatever they call it now) other than cobwebs. I lived a few hundred yards from its front gate back in 1995, and I always assumed it'd be targeted with a MIRV from the same warhead aimed at Anderson AFB & the sub tender at the pier in Inner Apra Harbor.
CDR Sal, one of your "best seen to date" articles. (What follows is "tongue in cheek"). Have to take issue with a couple of your logistical assertions, however, and I'm coming from a recent position and background with some level of knowledge. The munition replacement rates are not as bad as you point out. They're worse, way worse. That's why we have to win fast and violent or lose. Although, if you figure in loss rates, if the subs, aircraft and surface platforms never return to replenish, that makes the supply situation (in practical terms) not seem so bad...for all the wrong reasons(!!). Won't factor in theater supply depot survival rates where fixed targets are vulnerable in ways we haven't had to consider for a very, very long time. Nicely done, sir.
What you state is actually part of the cake recipe. They count on moving naval weapon stores from ship / sub to ship/sub based on availability and yard periods etc… the fact we transfer ammo stores during a two or three day carrier weapons onload / offload between the coming off deployment Carrier and the soon to be deploying Carrier during workups proves it. Ask any gun boss how he feels about his ability to support the airwing….
Sal brought up the topics of Mass and Will, which raises some questions in my mind.
How do we tell American families that the defense of Taiwan is worth the financial cost not to mention sacrificing the lives of their sons and daughters?
What exactly did we get for our investment in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Today, Vietnam is an important trading partner so what was the point of our going to war?
I am not buying the argument that if we don't fight them over there then we will be fighting them in California. Personally, I think Xi would be an improvement over Newsom.
I think we should heed the words of John Adams and not look for monsters to fight.
It's not that we will fight them over here. It's that they will destroy us economically and own us, and have so much control, that we will become little more than a client state.
Not all warfare is kinetic. The Chinese are bent on supplanting us atop the global dog-pile.
We might not like all that comes with being the most powerful nation on earth, but you know what sucks a lot more?
Being the formerly-most powerful nation on earth. That does not end well for most of us, even if it doesn't involve Chinese troops in our streets.
We destroyed ourselves economically be allowing our jobs and factories to be shipped overseas not to mention leaving our borders wide open.
Our politicians take bribes from China. Our economists shill for "free trade." Our investor class demand that companies outsource production to enhance quarterly returns. Our media reduced news to entertainment. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
The same people who so utterly mismanaged this country now want to take on the entire Eurasian landmass in a shooting war. Let them send their children to the DMZ and the Khyber Pass.
If you read my Substack, you'll note that I emphasize that nuance and fact are important distinctions.
Much of what you've just said is generally true, to degrees.
It does NOT lead, inescapably, to your conclusions.
Yes, we have screwed up to get where we are. We still have it better than anywhere else on earth, and we can still right this ship before it is too far gone.
That's why we are all posting on here, isn't it? To make things better?
Nobody is advocating for getting in a land-war in Asia. That is sensational extremist straw-man talking.
The only way we end up in a shooting war with Russia is IF we back off, let them win, and they then rebuild and threaten NATO. Right now they can't and they know it.
The best solution for our long term peace is a Ukraine with territorial integrity that is militarily a threat to Russia, so that even if Russia is able to re-arm, they have to maintain a significant presence opposite Ukraine.
We will NOT be fighting China on land in Asia. ZERO chance of this. Period.
We MAY have to fight China at sea to protect Taiwan. Because if we don't, we instantly cede global leadership to China as every other nation in their orbit will get the message that the US does NOT have their back.
That might sound hunky dory until you realize that we'll be facing economic shock on a scale you can't even imagine within a few tears.
You might think we can weather that. I guarantee 90% of our population won't.
And they won't starve. They'll elect people who will feed them, and those people will use that power, and control, to strip your rights away.
You might be looking forward to going down in a blaze of 2A glory.
I'm looking forward to living, watching my children grow up and have their own kids, and preserving our rights without having to kill to do it.
I've shed enough blood in my life to know that I can do it whenever I need to, but I far prefer to avoid it when possible.
We still have it better than anywhere else on earth,...[Have you been to Chiraq lately?]
Nobody is advocating for getting in a land-war in Asia. [We just spent a couple of decades in Afghanistan and Iraq following a decade in Vietnam.]
The only way we end up in a shooting war with Russia is IF we back off, let them win,...[Ike and LBJ did nothing when the USSR invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia and we did not end up in a shooting war with Russia. They let Russia "win."]
To paraphrase Bismarck, the Ukraine kleptocracy is not worth the life of one lance corporal.
We will NOT be fighting China on land in Asia. ZERO chance of this. [General MacArthur could not have said it better.]
We MAY have to fight China at sea to protect Taiwan. [Why should we fight China over Taiwan? We didn't fight them over Tibet.]
I am not sure how you went from the geopolitical to my AR15.
The best thing for your kids would be for America to stay out of other people's wars.
Everything you posted there is an extremist Strawman argument
1) Yes, I have been to Chiraq, and yes it sucks, and NO that does not mean we have it worse than anywhere else. I've also been to Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Georgia, and nearly all of Europe.
You think other countries don't have their shitholes? For all our problems, we still have it better - overall - than anywhere else on earth. If you disagree, please point to that place you think is better, and then please move there.
Saying we have it better than everywhere else is NOT saying we don't have problems. This is a classic strawman 'whataboutism' argument intended to deflect from the basic truth that for all our problems, we still have more freedom and wealth than anywhere else.
Yes, we should work to resolve those problems. No, that doesn't mean we are not the best there is.
2) Couple of decades in Afghanistan and Iraq? Yeah, in counter-insurgency nonsense, and yes, we should NOT have been there, and yes, most rational people nowadays would say we should NOT do that again, but that is NOT the same as fighting China in a land war. The one does not = the other.
3) What Ike did in the early 50's, and what happens today, are very different things. The Soviets were not engaged in a massive war in those countries, they just rolled in and occupied them. We were not supplying them in a war that was bleeding the Soviets.
But since you like historical comparisons, we DID supply the Afghans during the Soviet war there, and it DID bleed them heavily, and that DID contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets DID NOT go to war with us over it.
4) The Ukraine Kleptocracy. You people really need to get over yourselves. Ukraine's corruption is FAR less than Russia's, and probably no worse than our own. Biden is far more corrupt than Zelensky.
Wanna know why you know about Ukrainian corruption? BECAUSE THEY FUCKING INVESTIGATE IT, YOU TOOL. You read about it in the papers because the Ukrainians are fighting it. The corruption is a legacy of when the Russians had control. The corrupt people being arrested and driven out are the old school Russian types.
But people like you insist on swallowing up pro-Russian propaganda generated by a regime that throws it's political dissidents out windows and pretends they all committed suicide from depression.
But, more importantly, NOT ONE LANCE CORPORAL HAS DIED IN UKRAINE, and None will, because we are not sending troops there, we are sending equipment, equipment that was designed and purchased to keep Europe safe from Russian aggression, and that equipment is doing the very job it was purchased for, but WITHOUT US troops dying in the process.
You are arguing for the exact thing Putin wants, to be scared and give in so he can rearm and then come back for Ukraine, and later other countries.
5) McArthur. Really? I mean, shit, why not point to the colonial occupation of China.
Wake up. Nobody is going to invade mainland China, and we have no mutual defense treaties with nations that share a land-border with China, and the NorK's won't be invading in a serious way, and the ROK can deal with them if they did.
6) Tibet was 60 years ago. Taiwan is today. Tibet is behind hundreds of miles of land, is surrounded by mountains, and has NOTHING of value to us. Was it wrong for China to take it? Sure. But there was nothing we could have done short of nuclear war to stop it.
Taiwan is responsible for almost 90% of the worlds semi-conductors. It is a defensible location, it is small, and it has decades of history as independent from China.
I mean, your comparisons are so off the mark it's almost amusing. Like you learned foreign policy and geostrategic thinking from the University of Tucker Carlson.
There is a difference between NeoCon wars to try and remake the world in our image (like Afghanistan and Iraq - foolish) and fighting the good fight when it is needed.
Like it or not, your theories are what brought about WW2, by pretending what happens out there does not impact us here.
Weakness in the face of aggression will ALWAYS bring about more aggression.
Whatever problems we have, they are miniscule compared to living under Chinese or Russian stye rule.
You are preaching isolationism. You are welcome to the dustbin of history alongside the cowards who failed to act to prevent WW2 by appeasement of Hitler and Stalin when they could have still been stopped.
Don't try me on this son, I cut my teeth on history books when I was 4 years old and I've been studying our Constitution and World history every day since.
1. Baltimore, Newark, Oakland and St. Louis are pretty bad, too. I hear San Francisco is going down the drain, too.
2. War takes on a life of its own.
3. The Mujahideen whom we helped in the 80s showed us their gratitude on 911.
4. I haven't forgotten the Ukranian SS man who was honored in the Canadian parliament. He's worse than #3.
5. MacArthur was certain China would not intervene. See #2.
6. Maybe we should make semiconductors in Silicon Valley, so we don't have to worry what happens to Taiwan.
Not isolationism, but not the policeman of the world either. When I see Russian Battleships off Cape Ann or in Narragansett Bay, I will become alarmed.
Also, not every bad guy in the world is Hitler or Stalin.
You are very angry. You need to take a pill. Maybe, a glass of red wine. Watch a light musical comedy.
I take issue with your “go live there” comment. There are nations where the standard of living appears to be higher than ours. In Spain, France, and Denmark, folks who do the work I live better than I do. They work less hours, have more time with food, friends, and family, and they live in gorgeous surroundings. But, you know what, these places are not my home.
The affection and feeling one has for their home is unrelated to the quality of the environment. I don’t love the USA because “we’re number one!” I love it because it is home.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
So, yes there are nations where folks live better than us; so what. I’m going to stay right here and make my home better.
That's far more strategically stupid than not having enough ammo. (Something the US has faced in every single war it has ever fought. See the torpedo shortage and complete failure in WWII.)
All our systems run on chips.
All the chips are made in Taiwan.
Lose Taiwan we have the choice of:
1. Destroy the chip fabs and collapse the world's economy.
2. Don't destroy them and China owns the world's economy.
It's going to take a lot of money, overtime, and willingness to ignore certain rules to get production up. With the EPA shutting down domestic neoprene production, the last isn't likely, thus negating items 1 and 2.
Well, we don't use lead anymore. Copper/tin projectiles to prevent lead contamination. Something else will be hit to hammer small arms. Probably copper mining.
A serious commander-in-chief could completely hobble agencies like the EPA through personnel policy. Appoint all the politicos in those agencies as persons determined to hobble that agency, and then empower them to refuse to staff empty billets and fire nearly all of the Atwill senior civilian staff.
The DOD is soooo hamstrung in so many ways by environmental regulations!!!
Ive read some unreal things in recent years... For instance, the Navy wanted to add more planes to a squadron near Seattle, but it was opposed and fought in court because of some birds migration pattern or somesuch. Thats absurd. While Im not suggesting we start pumping bilges in port again, there should damn sure be a lot of waivers and exceptions made that not only allow the military to operate, but at a significantly lower cost...!!!
Excellent analysis. the CMDR's passage discussing rocket motors put me in mind of Jeffrey Dyer's excellent work on supplier development in the Japanese auto industry (Dyer and Nobeoka 2000 is a leading example but Dyer has several excellent papers on the topic).
Fair points, but I think Dyer's insight about knowledge sharing, etc. is the key point. CMDR Sal referred to (paraphrasing) "learning to make rocket motors." That's what put me in mind of Dyer.
The thing is, the problem is way bigger than just rocket motors. We've exported most of our industrial capacity. There's a lot of things we can't make here anymore. We don't have the facilities, the skilled workers, or the raw materials (all of our strategic metals come from China). They're gone, and the executive branch agencies aren't going to let them come back.
Real leaders place the welfare of the troops ahead of their own.
Real leaders would have tendered their resignations after Kabul.
In a DoD that prioritized LEADERSHIP, we would forgive small mistakes by junior leaders, and focus on teaching and rehabilitating them, but we would punish the senior leaders who should know better.
Instead, we do just the opposite.
We have a culture across the DoD that 'preaches' accountability to all, but 'teaches' accountability only happens to those who are too low ranking to do anything about it, or who happen to have the wrong political views.
Correct on all counts. I would only modify that in my view, real leaders would have resigned when the administration minions directed them to bug out of Afghanistan in a way guaranteed to produce the disaster that it did,
Agreed! We should have left 15 years earlier, but on our own terms.
Trump, for all I dislike him, would have pulled out in strength. We'd have unbolted and taken with us every single piece of equipment we could, and burned in place anything we couldn't
Once again I must disagree. Can you offer any evidence that "administration minions directed them to bug out of Afghanistan in a way guaranteed to produce the disaster that it did"? To me it seems the mechanics/details of that withdrawal were decisions made by the military, not the civilian administration. I doubt, for example, that the administration ordered US troops to guard the perimeter of the airbase during the withdrawal, which should have been a rather trivial troop movement if done correctly.
So look: We've been here before. Google Biden administration overruled military advice on Afghanistan withdrawal. They also sent a soyboy administration twerp to make sure the military didn't "Cheat" and attempt to do the withdrawal right.
Exactly. Firing CO's for mistakes like that, especially when we don't give them the resources or properly trained JO's to really do their job, is pointless.
And then all the GOFO go on to make disastrous call after disastrous call, and none of them are held accountable unless they accidentally call someone by the wrong pronoun.
"Real leaders would have tendered their resignations after Kabul."
The problems started long before the fall of Kabul. Maybe even 20 years before. In The Afghanistan Papers, a repeated refrain is officers coming back knowing that what we were doing wasn't working, but doing and saying nothing. Or at most arguing for changes on the margin. Don't rock the boat, punch your ticket, move on with your career. There should have been lots of resignations from 2003 to 2008, not just after 2021.
I left the Intelligence Community in 2014 because I went to the IG at the agency I supported (I was a contractor at the time) to report what I was felt was clear illegal action by senior leaders that I observed.
I was told (the IG guy was a friend) 1) Your right, what they did is illegal. 2) Nothing will happen, they are protected, and 3) Your career working for the federal government in any capacity will be over.
On his recommendation, I declined to go forward with the formal complaint and chose to start looking for a job at an agency outside the IC,
Which was good because just weeks later I was removed from my role as PM on the contract I was on - for no reason. My company didn't fire me (they couldn't) but were going to shove me off onto a backwater desk that needed holding up.
I took the first federal job I could find in one of my areas of expertise at a non-IC agency. It's boring, but it pays the bills and I actually protect and help people here.
The during COVID, I was the agency's point man on the issue, until I started pushing back on obviously false CDC data (I was monitoring dozens of sources)
I was told to support the CDC line. I told them to find someone else to run the reporting, that I wouldn't push false propaganda. I didn't get fired, but they didn't like me as much after that.
Then, when they tried to force the clot shot on us, I was spokesperson for dozens of fellow workers who filed for exemptions, mostly religious.
They couldn't deny them, so they just sat on them and ignored them for months, right up to the deadline.
So I filed a religious discrimination and hostile workplace harassment claim against the top 3 persons at the agency and the HR director.
My exemption was approved 24 hours later.
I was persona non-grata amongst leadership after that (I had previously been first-name friendly with all of them)
Even now, 2 years later, they are still cold, but slowly warming now that they can see I was right about everything I said at the time.
All of which is to say, I have ZERO tolerance for officers who will not stand up for what is right, and take the easy path for career advancement.
China agricultural imports in 2022 totaled $236B in a population of 1.4B (168 USD/person). The US imported $192B in a population of 0.33B (582 USD/person). The world agriculture market is interlinked. I suspect there are enough peasants remaining in China who know how to plant crops without Russian potash imports. I doubt that would be the same here in the US.
"We knew we were living a lie that we could sustain a big fight at sea. An entire generation of Flag Officers led this lie in the open and ordered everyone else to smile through it. Ignore your professional instincts, and trust The Smartest People in the Room™."
You hit the nail on the head right here Sal.
When did everyone approaching O-6 decide they were entitled to a cushy retirement board job, and that this was their ultimate purpose, and then make their career choices around what would be most likely to produce that outcome?
Let's call it what it is. Greedy, self-centered, self-serving, politically correct gamesmanship.
With few exceptions, our GOFO ranks are not serious warfighters. They are lackadaisical war-planners more interested in preserving their own path to being millionaires in retirement.
When William the Privateer get's elected to Congress (never gonna' happen) the first bill I will propose will be a permanent ban on Flag officers being employed in any capacity by the defense industry.
You want to pursue that star? Then accept you are NOT going to be a millionaire, or make sure your wife has a great job and invests wisely.
I'm not saying we have to lose their knowledge the day they retire. They can consult - for free (but not for anyone they - or their spouse - own more than $50k in stock for). They can teach in universities. They can work in business wholly unconnected to the Defense industry.
But no Flag Officer should ever be able to go to work in the defense industry, so there should never be any consideration of how their personal future would be impacted by their choices while in uniform.
With modifications, this same approach should also apply to every SES/SNIS position in the civilian bureaucracy, not just DoD, but amended to reflect you cannot go to work for a contractor who services your agency or similar missions to what you worked in the civilian world.
And obviously, this should apply to congress-critters as well. Not just "lobbying", but any employment for firms you worked with in any capacity, or who benefitted from any legislation you proposed.
I'd rather pay them all cushy retirements then put up with this horse manure.
Amen.
100% agree. But...asking any organization to reform itself from within is unlikely to succeed. Example: Third largest government organization on the planet is UK National Health Service (PLA of China and India's Public Transportation Service are one and two respectively). Reforming the NHS would require people to vote to declare their job redundant, so you will never be able to reform the bloat in their medical system. I'd submit that our military establishment (composed of the Iron Triangle of Dod, Military Industrial Complex and Congress) will never "vote" to change the current revolving door / gravy train that exists for fun and profit at the upper levels. Or perhaps I'm just being cynical after four plus decades in the system...
Absolutely correct. It’s going to take a commander-in-chief who understands what true executive authority is, and rightfully should be, and is willing to come in there with a proverbial, rhetorical battle axe
As much as I personally dislike, DJ T, the primary reason he was opposed so heavily by so many across government is because he presents an existential threat, not to our national security, but to the job security of the way it’s done.
I agree but from what I see today, Executive and Legislative authority are what any particular Federal judge wants it to be.
Which is why the next R administration had better hit the ground with an army of lawyers ready to fight to the death to preemptively legally nuke every group out there trying to hamstring the administration with lawfare.
D's have gotten excellent at Lawfare, while R's sat on their hands and talked about tea parties and manners.
It's time for the R party to field a Navy Seal equivalent hit team of Lawfare Tier-1 Operators, ready to spread legal destruction and mayhem among our enemies so great, they never show their heads in court again.
Correct...we no longer really have a functioning court system that follows "rule of law" either. A bellweather civil side example just now...Court in Hawaii just told a guy, after his Constitutional rights were openly violated...that they ARE NOT BOUND by the United States Consitution and its Bill of Rights. Courts are now non-functional..
It was the nationwide injunction that hamstrings a President's ability to make any effective reforms.
Justice Thomas has spoken and written on the need to reign in the nationwide injunction that a district court judge can issue. What we need is a good case with strong facts that would allow SCOTUS to issue an opinion that nukes the nationwide injunction.
A community I was not part of but worked with a lot had three basic dictums: Listen to what people say, watch what they do, and follow the money. I've found that works well in life in general as well...odd that. What people say is their "public face", what they do is, well, a lot of it is not public. But it is really what they "are". Greed is among the most common motivators among humans. When someone is already personally wealthy (regardless of how they acquired the wealth) they become less predictable and harder to coerce. Who wouldn't want a national leader who is in the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame?
Trump was not a member of the club and had no desire to join the club.
When I read your reply, my senator Mark Kelly immediately came to mind. Though not a flag officer, certainly a scheming grifter fixed on his personal wealth/success above all else.
I vote R because I believe in always choosing "the lesser of 2 wevils", but I'm an equal opportunity hater when it comes to politicians. The majority on BOTH sides are corrupt.
Not all, but enough that the good ones have a hard time making a difference.
Yes. Also love the M&C reference!!
Always!
"With few exceptions, our GOFO ranks are not serious warfighters."
George W. Bush tried to change this with the Army when he brought Jack Kean out of retirement to chair general officer promotion boards to ensure that actual innovative and effective warfighters were promoted instead of being capped out as Colonels. Barack Obama abandoned the initiatives.
It says a lot that the two most innovative strategic thinkers the US military developed in the past 50 years - John Nagl (Army) and John Boyd (Air Force) - topped out and left their services as LTCs. Boyd's sin was advocating the lightweight fighter program which produced the F-18 and F-16, cheaper and in the long run more capable platforms than the Air Force/Navy preferred F-15s and F-16s. Nagl's sin was being an armor branch officer who looked at non-kinetic ways to obtain political goals in stability operations and COIN.
"When William the Privateer get's elected to Congress (never gonna' happen) the first bill I will propose will be a permanent ban on Flag officers being employed in any capacity by the defense industry."
This won't survive contact with the Constitution. Retired officers are civilians. You want to live in a country where the government can tell civilians where they can and cannot work? The government already has way too much power.
I'm a believer in nuance.
F-35 was a boondoggle of a procurement process.
It produced a fantastic aircraft. I've talked with plenty of current pilots. The F-35 really is a fantastic final result.
Does it still have issues? Sure. Go back and name any famous plane we ended up loving and I'll show you where it had major issues as it was coming out and even long after deployed (F-4U anyone? The 'ensign eliminator')
LCS by comparison was 'supposed' to show the benefit of having 2 designs from 2 builders to lower contract risk and price.
Instead we have the biggest embarrassment since, well, I don't know, we have a lot of them these days, but it's still pretty big...
So it is possible for a flawed process and waste to still produce an highly functional end-result.
Also possible to produce a total waste of money.
I think the F-35 is the former, whereas there is no doubt here on the porch that the LCS is the latter.
If Marines didn't buy the F-35B, they would be stuck with Harriers longer.
Actually, retired officers are subject to recall. There is ample legal pathway for this.
No, government cannot tell you where you can work. But nobody is forced to join the military as an officer. That is a privilege, and it can carry with it responsibilities that affect you beyond your term of service.
So, while the government should not be able to dictate to regular people where they can work, there is absolutely no reason Congress cannot dictate to those who CHOOSE to serve in the senior ranks of the military and civilian government that IF they chose that career, they will then be ineligible for certain other jobs after that time.
Supreme Court already upheld certain 'cooling off' periods for certain government officials.
Might be easier to handle it from the other end: No government contracts can be awarded to a company that employs any GOFO retired within the last X years.
This would still be difficult though. Would they have to fire employees that stayed in the reserves and got a star there?
So, it would not be simple.
But it would be do-able.
It would also help to have a Pentagon and civilian leadership that said 'from now on, accountability gets more severe the more years you have in'
We might not be able to forcibly separate them...
But if they are still in uniform, they can be relived of their current duty with a word from the President, and they can be assigned to make coffee for the Chief's mess.
They might have legal protections to rank and service. They have ZERO entitlement to billet and duties.
My first appropriations bill would fund a waste disposal facility in Nome, Alaska, with ample billeting, and that would become the assignment duty for all Flag Officers who fucked up and refused to resign.
That is not entirely true.
First, the provision applies to ALL retired military ranks, not just officers, if the member was a regular (and for some, but not all, reservists).
Second, officers who retired at O-5 or above under 10 U.S. Code § 638 - Selective early retirement due to failure to be promoted are specifically NOT subject to recall according to 10 U.S. Code § 688(d).
In addition, the length of recall is not more that 12 months unless one is a chaplain, medical MoS, or serves as an attache or on the Battle Monuments Commission. For the Navy, but not other services, retired enlisted personnel are in the Fleet Reserve until the total of active service + lapsed years is equal to 30. For those enlisted discharged from any service without retiring, they are subject to recall until the total term of enlistment (generally 8 years enlistment including both active and reserve obligations for a first enlistment) expire. Officers who resign their commission rather than retire are not subject to recall after expiration of their enlistment period - and would be recalled as an enlisted member unless recommissioned.
Only one relative recent case of a retired officer being recalled comes to mind - General Jack Keane being recalled by the George W. Bush administration to head the Army O-7 promotion board to ensure that warfighters were promoted rather than ticket-punchers, particularly those who had been mentally flexible enough for LIC.
Keane's case shows how reluctant DoD is to exercise this authority. Bush wanted to recall him first to command in Iraq during the surge, then to take over CENTCOM. He declined the offer both of those times with no pushback;
In fact, the last time I can recall significant use of recall authority for officers was in the Korean War. At that, most of the recalled officers were not retired, but on Individual Ready Reserve status from service in the Second World War. In the Second World War, a number of retired officers were recalled, including Vice Admiral Thomas Craven, Admiral Henry Wiley, Rear Admiral William Watts, Vice Admiral Middleton Elliot, Fleet Admiral William Leahy (simultaneously CJCS and White House Chief of Staff), Brigadier General Leonard Ayres, Major General William Donovan, Major General Dwight Davis (who had been Secretary of War!), General Malin Craig, Major General William Connor, Major General William Cole, Major General Guy Henry, Major General John Hughes, General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Brigadier General George Olmstead, Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr., etc)
Lack of warfighting mindset and DoD a slave to the budget.
We are fooling ourselves, a shell of what we were and what we need.
YJ-21 Strike Eagle!
Amazing graphic on the last suppers results. 125 or so suppliers to 5.
Amen! (Ditto for the other Services, too, of course).
You get one chance to leave.
Now youse can’t leave.
https://youtu.be/4UBXTC24T8g
I instantly knew which movie scene that link was taking me to, long before I clicked it.
It’s all part of a program called “No Admiral Left Behind”.
Re:
Rocket motors - why doesn’t somebody talk to Elon Musk? He seems to know a few things about rocket motors and mass production.
He does. But the rocket motors in question here are all solid fuel. As far as I know, Space X hasn't done any work here. But I would love to see someone with Musk's mindset take the problem on.
He has publicly stated that he does not want to make weapons.
I’m hoping somebody he trusts can sit down with him, and explain that his ability to be the richest man on earth and support the causes he believes in is dependent upon our remaining the dominant military, political and economic force on the planet.
He really needs to get a better understanding of “Si vis Pacem, Parabellum “
However he is training a butt load of young engineers. Some of those will seep out into the aerospace workforce and rise through the ranks.
yup. My eldest daughter is an aerospace engineering major at Alabama-Huntsville and wants to go to work for him on propulsion systems when she graduates. Her twin brother is training to be a pilot.
Good for them!
Thanks for the info. I didn’t know he doesn’t want to make weapons. I, too, hope someone sits down with him & asks him to reconsider.
“Facing the People’s Republic of China on the other side of the International Date Line …. how efficient do you feel? How effective?”
China has the Mass and the Will. They possess the manpower reserves and the industrial capacity. We? Lol not even an half serious admiral can look himself in the mirror and accept this. Yet they do. What does that say about their integrity and fealty to the republic and the truth?
Regarding Mssr Cancian war gaming theory:
“If U.S. military planners’ worst-case scenario arose in the Pacific — having to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion — American military forces would target Chinese amphibious ships.”
He is half correct. This is predicated on China only limiting her attacks to Taiwan and not the entire 1-3 island chains and striking CONUS naval bases. It won’t be as neat and clean as he theorizes. He is very correct regarding the undersea warfare fight. What do our sonobuoy stocks look like? I remember dipping into war stocks in 2002 for an ASW exercise. We had to account for 5 fucking buoys. And we sold my Chief’s kidney for a DICASS.
If only you knew the reality of Navy Munitions Command Unit Okinawa.
I know, I was stationed there for 3 years.
I do know the reality.
Love to hear the sordid details!!
As an aside Dirk, Ive been following your adventures since the 1980s LOL
I won't go into any detail, but lets just say that wartime conditions are not drilled, and Japanese civilians are relied upon to do crucial jobs.
I wonder what's inside NavMag Guam (or whatever they call it now) other than cobwebs. I lived a few hundred yards from its front gate back in 1995, and I always assumed it'd be targeted with a MIRV from the same warhead aimed at Anderson AFB & the sub tender at the pier in Inner Apra Harbor.
I believe the Mad Tea Party is a better analogy for the Navy's procurement system than Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.
CDR Sal, one of your "best seen to date" articles. (What follows is "tongue in cheek"). Have to take issue with a couple of your logistical assertions, however, and I'm coming from a recent position and background with some level of knowledge. The munition replacement rates are not as bad as you point out. They're worse, way worse. That's why we have to win fast and violent or lose. Although, if you figure in loss rates, if the subs, aircraft and surface platforms never return to replenish, that makes the supply situation (in practical terms) not seem so bad...for all the wrong reasons(!!). Won't factor in theater supply depot survival rates where fixed targets are vulnerable in ways we haven't had to consider for a very, very long time. Nicely done, sir.
What you state is actually part of the cake recipe. They count on moving naval weapon stores from ship / sub to ship/sub based on availability and yard periods etc… the fact we transfer ammo stores during a two or three day carrier weapons onload / offload between the coming off deployment Carrier and the soon to be deploying Carrier during workups proves it. Ask any gun boss how he feels about his ability to support the airwing….
Sal brought up the topics of Mass and Will, which raises some questions in my mind.
How do we tell American families that the defense of Taiwan is worth the financial cost not to mention sacrificing the lives of their sons and daughters?
What exactly did we get for our investment in Afghanistan and Iraq?
Today, Vietnam is an important trading partner so what was the point of our going to war?
I am not buying the argument that if we don't fight them over there then we will be fighting them in California. Personally, I think Xi would be an improvement over Newsom.
I think we should heed the words of John Adams and not look for monsters to fight.
It's not that we will fight them over here. It's that they will destroy us economically and own us, and have so much control, that we will become little more than a client state.
Not all warfare is kinetic. The Chinese are bent on supplanting us atop the global dog-pile.
We might not like all that comes with being the most powerful nation on earth, but you know what sucks a lot more?
Being the formerly-most powerful nation on earth. That does not end well for most of us, even if it doesn't involve Chinese troops in our streets.
We destroyed ourselves economically be allowing our jobs and factories to be shipped overseas not to mention leaving our borders wide open.
Our politicians take bribes from China. Our economists shill for "free trade." Our investor class demand that companies outsource production to enhance quarterly returns. Our media reduced news to entertainment. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
The same people who so utterly mismanaged this country now want to take on the entire Eurasian landmass in a shooting war. Let them send their children to the DMZ and the Khyber Pass.
If you read my Substack, you'll note that I emphasize that nuance and fact are important distinctions.
Much of what you've just said is generally true, to degrees.
It does NOT lead, inescapably, to your conclusions.
Yes, we have screwed up to get where we are. We still have it better than anywhere else on earth, and we can still right this ship before it is too far gone.
That's why we are all posting on here, isn't it? To make things better?
Nobody is advocating for getting in a land-war in Asia. That is sensational extremist straw-man talking.
The only way we end up in a shooting war with Russia is IF we back off, let them win, and they then rebuild and threaten NATO. Right now they can't and they know it.
The best solution for our long term peace is a Ukraine with territorial integrity that is militarily a threat to Russia, so that even if Russia is able to re-arm, they have to maintain a significant presence opposite Ukraine.
We will NOT be fighting China on land in Asia. ZERO chance of this. Period.
We MAY have to fight China at sea to protect Taiwan. Because if we don't, we instantly cede global leadership to China as every other nation in their orbit will get the message that the US does NOT have their back.
That might sound hunky dory until you realize that we'll be facing economic shock on a scale you can't even imagine within a few tears.
You might think we can weather that. I guarantee 90% of our population won't.
And they won't starve. They'll elect people who will feed them, and those people will use that power, and control, to strip your rights away.
You might be looking forward to going down in a blaze of 2A glory.
I'm looking forward to living, watching my children grow up and have their own kids, and preserving our rights without having to kill to do it.
I've shed enough blood in my life to know that I can do it whenever I need to, but I far prefer to avoid it when possible.
We still have it better than anywhere else on earth,...[Have you been to Chiraq lately?]
Nobody is advocating for getting in a land-war in Asia. [We just spent a couple of decades in Afghanistan and Iraq following a decade in Vietnam.]
The only way we end up in a shooting war with Russia is IF we back off, let them win,...[Ike and LBJ did nothing when the USSR invaded Hungary and Czechoslovakia and we did not end up in a shooting war with Russia. They let Russia "win."]
To paraphrase Bismarck, the Ukraine kleptocracy is not worth the life of one lance corporal.
We will NOT be fighting China on land in Asia. ZERO chance of this. [General MacArthur could not have said it better.]
We MAY have to fight China at sea to protect Taiwan. [Why should we fight China over Taiwan? We didn't fight them over Tibet.]
I am not sure how you went from the geopolitical to my AR15.
The best thing for your kids would be for America to stay out of other people's wars.
Everything you posted there is an extremist Strawman argument
1) Yes, I have been to Chiraq, and yes it sucks, and NO that does not mean we have it worse than anywhere else. I've also been to Iraq, Jordan, Syria, Libya, Georgia, and nearly all of Europe.
You think other countries don't have their shitholes? For all our problems, we still have it better - overall - than anywhere else on earth. If you disagree, please point to that place you think is better, and then please move there.
Saying we have it better than everywhere else is NOT saying we don't have problems. This is a classic strawman 'whataboutism' argument intended to deflect from the basic truth that for all our problems, we still have more freedom and wealth than anywhere else.
Yes, we should work to resolve those problems. No, that doesn't mean we are not the best there is.
2) Couple of decades in Afghanistan and Iraq? Yeah, in counter-insurgency nonsense, and yes, we should NOT have been there, and yes, most rational people nowadays would say we should NOT do that again, but that is NOT the same as fighting China in a land war. The one does not = the other.
3) What Ike did in the early 50's, and what happens today, are very different things. The Soviets were not engaged in a massive war in those countries, they just rolled in and occupied them. We were not supplying them in a war that was bleeding the Soviets.
But since you like historical comparisons, we DID supply the Afghans during the Soviet war there, and it DID bleed them heavily, and that DID contribute to the fall of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets DID NOT go to war with us over it.
4) The Ukraine Kleptocracy. You people really need to get over yourselves. Ukraine's corruption is FAR less than Russia's, and probably no worse than our own. Biden is far more corrupt than Zelensky.
Wanna know why you know about Ukrainian corruption? BECAUSE THEY FUCKING INVESTIGATE IT, YOU TOOL. You read about it in the papers because the Ukrainians are fighting it. The corruption is a legacy of when the Russians had control. The corrupt people being arrested and driven out are the old school Russian types.
But people like you insist on swallowing up pro-Russian propaganda generated by a regime that throws it's political dissidents out windows and pretends they all committed suicide from depression.
But, more importantly, NOT ONE LANCE CORPORAL HAS DIED IN UKRAINE, and None will, because we are not sending troops there, we are sending equipment, equipment that was designed and purchased to keep Europe safe from Russian aggression, and that equipment is doing the very job it was purchased for, but WITHOUT US troops dying in the process.
You are arguing for the exact thing Putin wants, to be scared and give in so he can rearm and then come back for Ukraine, and later other countries.
5) McArthur. Really? I mean, shit, why not point to the colonial occupation of China.
Wake up. Nobody is going to invade mainland China, and we have no mutual defense treaties with nations that share a land-border with China, and the NorK's won't be invading in a serious way, and the ROK can deal with them if they did.
6) Tibet was 60 years ago. Taiwan is today. Tibet is behind hundreds of miles of land, is surrounded by mountains, and has NOTHING of value to us. Was it wrong for China to take it? Sure. But there was nothing we could have done short of nuclear war to stop it.
Taiwan is responsible for almost 90% of the worlds semi-conductors. It is a defensible location, it is small, and it has decades of history as independent from China.
I mean, your comparisons are so off the mark it's almost amusing. Like you learned foreign policy and geostrategic thinking from the University of Tucker Carlson.
There is a difference between NeoCon wars to try and remake the world in our image (like Afghanistan and Iraq - foolish) and fighting the good fight when it is needed.
Like it or not, your theories are what brought about WW2, by pretending what happens out there does not impact us here.
Weakness in the face of aggression will ALWAYS bring about more aggression.
Whatever problems we have, they are miniscule compared to living under Chinese or Russian stye rule.
You are preaching isolationism. You are welcome to the dustbin of history alongside the cowards who failed to act to prevent WW2 by appeasement of Hitler and Stalin when they could have still been stopped.
Don't try me on this son, I cut my teeth on history books when I was 4 years old and I've been studying our Constitution and World history every day since.
1. Baltimore, Newark, Oakland and St. Louis are pretty bad, too. I hear San Francisco is going down the drain, too.
2. War takes on a life of its own.
3. The Mujahideen whom we helped in the 80s showed us their gratitude on 911.
4. I haven't forgotten the Ukranian SS man who was honored in the Canadian parliament. He's worse than #3.
5. MacArthur was certain China would not intervene. See #2.
6. Maybe we should make semiconductors in Silicon Valley, so we don't have to worry what happens to Taiwan.
Not isolationism, but not the policeman of the world either. When I see Russian Battleships off Cape Ann or in Narragansett Bay, I will become alarmed.
Also, not every bad guy in the world is Hitler or Stalin.
You are very angry. You need to take a pill. Maybe, a glass of red wine. Watch a light musical comedy.
I take issue with your “go live there” comment. There are nations where the standard of living appears to be higher than ours. In Spain, France, and Denmark, folks who do the work I live better than I do. They work less hours, have more time with food, friends, and family, and they live in gorgeous surroundings. But, you know what, these places are not my home.
The affection and feeling one has for their home is unrelated to the quality of the environment. I don’t love the USA because “we’re number one!” I love it because it is home.
Breathes there the man, with soul so dead,
Who never to himself hath said,
This is my own, my native land!
Whose heart hath ne’er within him burn’d,
As home his footsteps he hath turn’d,
From wandering on a foreign strand!
So, yes there are nations where folks live better than us; so what. I’m going to stay right here and make my home better.
"What exactly did we get for our investment in Afghanistan and Iraq?"
Twenty+ years of no mass casualty terrorist attacks on the Homeland.
Then perhaps we should repeat the process in some other countries.
We did. That's why Vietnam, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc. have never attacked our Homeland.
Neither Afghanistan nor Iraq has attacked our Homeland. Nor has anybody produced any evidence that they planned to.
9/10 chip fabs in the world are in Taiwan.
That's far more strategically stupid than not having enough ammo. (Something the US has faced in every single war it has ever fought. See the torpedo shortage and complete failure in WWII.)
All our systems run on chips.
All the chips are made in Taiwan.
Lose Taiwan we have the choice of:
1. Destroy the chip fabs and collapse the world's economy.
2. Don't destroy them and China owns the world's economy.
How about building chips in Silicon Valley?
It's going to take a lot of money, overtime, and willingness to ignore certain rules to get production up. With the EPA shutting down domestic neoprene production, the last isn't likely, thus negating items 1 and 2.
And simple components needed for rifles. Like lead.
Well, we don't use lead anymore. Copper/tin projectiles to prevent lead contamination. Something else will be hit to hammer small arms. Probably copper mining.
A serious commander-in-chief could completely hobble agencies like the EPA through personnel policy. Appoint all the politicos in those agencies as persons determined to hobble that agency, and then empower them to refuse to staff empty billets and fire nearly all of the Atwill senior civilian staff.
The DOD is soooo hamstrung in so many ways by environmental regulations!!!
Ive read some unreal things in recent years... For instance, the Navy wanted to add more planes to a squadron near Seattle, but it was opposed and fought in court because of some birds migration pattern or somesuch. Thats absurd. While Im not suggesting we start pumping bilges in port again, there should damn sure be a lot of waivers and exceptions made that not only allow the military to operate, but at a significantly lower cost...!!!
Excellent analysis. the CMDR's passage discussing rocket motors put me in mind of Jeffrey Dyer's excellent work on supplier development in the Japanese auto industry (Dyer and Nobeoka 2000 is a leading example but Dyer has several excellent papers on the topic).
Dyer is an expert at entrepreneurship and innovation.
But the problems in procurement seem far deeper than just applying Japanese concepts of teamwork and continuous improvement to a particular program.
Fair points, but I think Dyer's insight about knowledge sharing, etc. is the key point. CMDR Sal referred to (paraphrasing) "learning to make rocket motors." That's what put me in mind of Dyer.
The thing is, the problem is way bigger than just rocket motors. We've exported most of our industrial capacity. There's a lot of things we can't make here anymore. We don't have the facilities, the skilled workers, or the raw materials (all of our strategic metals come from China). They're gone, and the executive branch agencies aren't going to let them come back.
This is what happens when we value "Management" over Leadership. "Managers" know the exact price of everything, and the real value of nothing.
Wisdom
Real leaders place the welfare of the troops ahead of their own.
Real leaders would have tendered their resignations after Kabul.
In a DoD that prioritized LEADERSHIP, we would forgive small mistakes by junior leaders, and focus on teaching and rehabilitating them, but we would punish the senior leaders who should know better.
Instead, we do just the opposite.
We have a culture across the DoD that 'preaches' accountability to all, but 'teaches' accountability only happens to those who are too low ranking to do anything about it, or who happen to have the wrong political views.
Correct on all counts. I would only modify that in my view, real leaders would have resigned when the administration minions directed them to bug out of Afghanistan in a way guaranteed to produce the disaster that it did,
Agreed! We should have left 15 years earlier, but on our own terms.
Trump, for all I dislike him, would have pulled out in strength. We'd have unbolted and taken with us every single piece of equipment we could, and burned in place anything we couldn't
Concur all.
Once again I must disagree. Can you offer any evidence that "administration minions directed them to bug out of Afghanistan in a way guaranteed to produce the disaster that it did"? To me it seems the mechanics/details of that withdrawal were decisions made by the military, not the civilian administration. I doubt, for example, that the administration ordered US troops to guard the perimeter of the airbase during the withdrawal, which should have been a rather trivial troop movement if done correctly.
So look: We've been here before. Google Biden administration overruled military advice on Afghanistan withdrawal. They also sent a soyboy administration twerp to make sure the military didn't "Cheat" and attempt to do the withdrawal right.
There was an ensign Nimitz who was court-martialed after grounding his ship in 1908....
Exactly. Firing CO's for mistakes like that, especially when we don't give them the resources or properly trained JO's to really do their job, is pointless.
And then all the GOFO go on to make disastrous call after disastrous call, and none of them are held accountable unless they accidentally call someone by the wrong pronoun.
"Real leaders would have tendered their resignations after Kabul."
The problems started long before the fall of Kabul. Maybe even 20 years before. In The Afghanistan Papers, a repeated refrain is officers coming back knowing that what we were doing wasn't working, but doing and saying nothing. Or at most arguing for changes on the margin. Don't rock the boat, punch your ticket, move on with your career. There should have been lots of resignations from 2003 to 2008, not just after 2021.
100% agree.
I left the Intelligence Community in 2014 because I went to the IG at the agency I supported (I was a contractor at the time) to report what I was felt was clear illegal action by senior leaders that I observed.
I was told (the IG guy was a friend) 1) Your right, what they did is illegal. 2) Nothing will happen, they are protected, and 3) Your career working for the federal government in any capacity will be over.
On his recommendation, I declined to go forward with the formal complaint and chose to start looking for a job at an agency outside the IC,
Which was good because just weeks later I was removed from my role as PM on the contract I was on - for no reason. My company didn't fire me (they couldn't) but were going to shove me off onto a backwater desk that needed holding up.
I took the first federal job I could find in one of my areas of expertise at a non-IC agency. It's boring, but it pays the bills and I actually protect and help people here.
The during COVID, I was the agency's point man on the issue, until I started pushing back on obviously false CDC data (I was monitoring dozens of sources)
I was told to support the CDC line. I told them to find someone else to run the reporting, that I wouldn't push false propaganda. I didn't get fired, but they didn't like me as much after that.
Then, when they tried to force the clot shot on us, I was spokesperson for dozens of fellow workers who filed for exemptions, mostly religious.
They couldn't deny them, so they just sat on them and ignored them for months, right up to the deadline.
So I filed a religious discrimination and hostile workplace harassment claim against the top 3 persons at the agency and the HR director.
My exemption was approved 24 hours later.
I was persona non-grata amongst leadership after that (I had previously been first-name friendly with all of them)
Even now, 2 years later, they are still cold, but slowly warming now that they can see I was right about everything I said at the time.
All of which is to say, I have ZERO tolerance for officers who will not stand up for what is right, and take the easy path for career advancement.
I've walked that walk.
Pg. 134 provides a bit more detail on the Defense Industry (MIC) consolidation. Courtesy of the Wayback Magic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20090226230205/http://trade.gov/static/aero_rpt_aero_commission.pdf