6 Comments

Lots to unpack here. Ghost Fleet was an eye-opening novel. There is a parallel thought about our whole high-tech approach where we have relatively few high-tech platforms. Seems to me that numbers still count. In the air, not every encounter is going to be a peer platform encounter. Plus the need for a second wave. At the other end of the spectrum, our logistics supply chain is so vulnerable. Wonder where we get out boots and uniforms. Winter coats. Belts and underwear. Other mundane, but necessary stuff.

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I always wondered, because I definitely don’t know, how all the lessons learned and paid for in blood in WWII could seemingly have been forgotten in the short interval between then and our opening troubles in Korea. I read books like An Army at Dawn and I come to a belief similar to what you are inferring-the first engagements are filled with tremendous and costly errors. We lose warfighting capabilities in peacetime for a multitude of reasons, not the least of which it the s-canning of warriors as the administration types rise. How fast is that decay?

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Douglas MacGregor likes to point out how we have sheer numbers of generals & admirals with no real experience other than kidding azz on the way up. The military it appears is now a political arm. Watching Lloyd Austin enforce wokesterism upon it solidifies this idea.

At the same time, we’re watching real world examples of our ‘tech’ breaking down in Ukraine. Howitzers made of titanium can’t stand up to high round firing, etc. Like everything else, the military has become totally corrupted by politics.

Russia is going to win in Ukraine, as well they should. The less we take away should not be the defeat, it should be that our systems are corrupt, our weapons too whizz-bang where not needed, and our leadership out of touch.

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My observation is that someone with THE answer to national defense usually has an ax to grind.

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Nov 30, 2022·edited Nov 30, 2022

Given that the BURKEs are not really destroyers, but the modern version of the ATLANTA class CLAA, and the Little Coffin Ship is just that, I find our lack of destroyers very worrying, and that the ships have, at most one five inch gun, with limits damage capacity, and eliminates engaging more than one target, to be terrifying. Not every target is worth a Buck Rogers missile, and small craft and shore targets can be dealt with quite effectively with gunsWe will never again see the likes of the Big Badger Boat, BB-64, but can't we return to the guns of the SPRUCANS and TICOs?

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