I remember an article in the Wall Street Journal, many years ago. The gist was governments must do three things. Border security; national defense. Internal order; meaning protection of property, contracts and infrastructure. Thirdly, an honest buck. Governments may do other tasks, but that will be done at the expense of these three tasks that only a government can do.
A modest proposal though. A lot of current government is income transfers; the perpetual attraction of socialism being taking other people's stuff. Why not turn these transfers, through military procurement contracts, into jobs with bennies?
Well, there's a reason a lot of the beneficiaries of these programs are on them; they literally couldn't work in a modern factory. Close to 20% of the population is literally too stupid to be in the Army. They aren't going to be helpful making PGMs. Then there's the too old and/or physically incapable.
General Longstreet’s 70 year old widow during WW II would drive her roadster to her job at Boeing to rivet B29 bombers. Had some spicy comments about what her handiwork should do to Hitler and Tojo. And , in the late 30’s, FDR was selling rearmament as a jobs program to end run the isolationists.
Raytheon hunted down its 70 year old retirees to set up Stinger missile production to supply the Ukraines.
How about bring social security retirees back with no reduction in SS benefits for military procurement jobs.
How about giving millennials jobs that will take them out of ‘studies’ major rat hole. Maybe some debt relief for holding down a defense job.
Holy F'n Dorch Longstreet, that biography is crazy. It reads like the treatment for an irreverent yet empathic bio-pic that portrays her as a young lesbian who marries an elderly man to become a widow as quickly as possible.
Does anyone on the front porch know Tig Notaro's people or have a friend at HBO? I bet both could get behind a project centered on the very independent and strong, somewhat wacky and racist, postmistress of Gainesville, Florida at the turn of the last century.
Obviously I'm thinking Allison Janey for the hard-working, Jap-hating, Rosie-inspiring epilogue—with Richard Schiff as the General and a bunch of other West Wing cast members in supporting roles. Trust me, us millennials love us a West Wing cameo.
Anyone know which university has the general's widow's papers? Park me in the campus library, I'll write a first draft of the screenplay in, like, three weeks.
Sure, the liberal, DNC type you get in Hollywood's pool of really top level talent might not want to make what is totally going to be warmongering propaganda advocating rearmament. But with a reminder that a little picture called 'Casablanca' proved mongers get Oscars, some of the very best entertainment professionals will come on board.
Let's get this made, people!
Or at least let's start using ‘Holy F'n Dorch Longstreet’ in casual conversation.
Our federal government has demonstrated of late a reluctance to perform all three, and in fact actively works to inhibit any attempt to perform them on the part of the states.
Lee S. Dreyfus was an old school conservative Republican; the kind that don't exist anymore. When asked the role of the Federal Government he replied. “The government has three roles: Defend our shores, deliver the mail and stay the hell out of our lives.”
"A lot of current government is income transfers; the perpetual attraction of socialism being taking other people's stuff. Why not turn these transfers, through military procurement contracts, into jobs with bennies?"
I've been thinking for a while that we're turning into the 1980s Soviet Union - sclerotic leadership and a crazed ideology that nobody really believes in but nobody dares question (substitute DEI for Marxism-Leninism). Turning our useless mouths into defense workers would make the analogy even more apt. Not necessarily in a good way...
Let us hope we don't fulfill another meme: "So we finally meet face-to-face, the consequences of our previous (action / inactions, fill in blank as appropriate). Jim Croce had a line in a song: "It's what we've done that makes us what we are." Taken in isolation, the TLAM inventory is a bleak, difficult to understand, and harder to explain accounting exercise. IIRC, we were going to shut the line down completely several years ago. It was only after a UK purchase that the line remained open; I may have that wrong. Regardless, the numbers are what we've done, and what we are is ill-prepared to engage in a kinetic great power dispute in the Pacific. Unfortunately, you cannot take this in isolation: the closer you look into the combat supporting logistics, bad news is everywhere. Fixing this will take will and time; both appear in short supply as we continue to admire the problem and seek silver bullet solutions that are .ppt deep. We better make deterrence work. If someone calls what is apparently our "bluff" we may be going "all in" with a hand that the other guy knows he has beaten. Posted an article on "Deterrence".
F-16 line is actually doing well at present, in fact better than it has in years, and production is increasing to meet demand. But its a short term thing....I doubt many will be placing orders for F-16 past 2030. There will continue to be MLU work etc though.
SuperHornet line is limping to closure as there aren't the orders to keep it open any longer (which happens). Keeping the F-15EX line open is key as otherwise without an NGAD win Boeing are out of the game...
"We may not be prepared to fight a long war, but a long war may be prepared to fight us."
Point well made. I hope the "people in power"(pip) are willing to admit to it's rationales' and commit to a rational plan forward. Looking back 30 or 40 years there haven't been many well placed powerful people willing to make a difference in our preparedness.
For the price of a dozen Tomahawks you could build a few Airbnb's in the Darrien Gap or for the cost of a 100 you could build high-speed rail there. I am sure that land speculators are already salivating at getting a peek at the preliminary land surveys for the right-of-way.
That can be resolved with much lower-cost munitions.
It's not a capacity issue, it's a political leadership willpower issue.
We could end the Houthi problem in 48 hours with less than $100M in ordinance using JDAM's and unguided munitions if we were willing to make a big mess and kill a lot of people - mostly bad guys.
In the initial salvo, we're going to get our a$$es handed to us. And lose a lot of blood and treasure. Which will require months or a year+ to reconstitute to move into a viable position in theater to be able to take any retribution. Let alone mount a sustained campaign to restore territorial/ nation sovereignty to Taiwan. Not to mention the 10s of thousands of illegal Chinese already in CONUS that will take disruptive actions as sleeper cells/ CHICOM SOF cells activate. Yet we have hundreds of millions of dollars being allocated in dumb band-aid approaches like DSDs RDER and Replicator programs to that will be "affordable solutions in providing technological parity or ((if we're lucky)) overmatch". Rather then just focus on good old fashioned war fighting (i.e bombs and bullets) so we can kill people and break their stuff. Because a bad guy can't continue to fight or hold terrain if he's dead.
I was wondering if anyone was going to make the point of what's likely to happen D+1 to disrupt things in CONUS?
As to the "Hail Mary" attempt at "overmatch"??? Could one reasonable assume that the volume of "stuff that goes boom" needs to resemble what's required to make the contribution of "large numbers" of uncrewed kit to be actually meaninful? Asking for a friend...
It depends. The attacker chooses the time and place and how they open the war. If I was a PLA commander and was confident that the US was planning on striking mainland China bases once the war starts I'd preempt with attacks on US mainland bases. F18s on fire in Lemoore and DDGs sunk at a pier in SD are not going to be shooting at PLAN vessels. Not to mention attacks on critical satcom and orbital control nodes. How long will GPS work if you blow up the control centers in Vandenberg and Schriever?
If I was not confident that the US was willing to attack the mainland I'd be a lot more restrained in how I opened the war. But I'm also not a PLA senior officer, so who knows?
Because whether the US attacks the mainland directly initially doesn't really matter, because the US will be attacking the mainland indirectly via a distant blockade of shipping...
Id bet on the schedule of the deployed CVN being one of the biggest factors in when the kickoff will be. Everything else can happen whenever, excepting severe weather in Taiwan/ the Strait...
My only question is: wont we detect the buildup and massing of invasion forces? Wont we see it coming? OR will they go after us first preemptively, and once we're Mission Incapable in Westpac, then go after Taiwan??
There will be no "buildup". The attack force will always be there, operating at sea on a daily basis. This will make traditional "indications and warning" problematic.
I just read this...and think its absurd. To see that PacFlt is advocating for a fleet of unmanned widgets and AI to do his intel chores, when he should likely be more worried about weapons inventory, sub maintenance, crew readiness and training, and a thousand other things... Sadly im no longer suprised.
Btw...while i did ask the question, I dont believe that we arent going to see a buildup. To think that we're so blind and oblivious that we need AI to figure out when the Chinese will kick off, sounds absurd.
IMO if the Chinese decide to go "all-in" against us then it will take ten-plus years, if ever, to be able to build another ship to replace the 40-50% of our fleet that is lost in the first few months. The "if ever" caveat depends on how effective their assets currently in CONUS turn out to be.
I fear we've outsourced our industry and degraded our resources and American culture of "can do" and "know how" not to mention exceptionalism too far to seriously consider winning a peer conflict.
And that, my friend, is one reason to hold 1400 acres of prime SC farmland well away from the coastal targets like Charleston Naval Weps and Beaufort MCAS, with a nice flowing river that has a 1930s water wheel/generator to keep the calves and piglets warm and toasty. And my neighbor has 2 1960s Ford trucks that run exceptionally well on used cooking oil, altho you can smell him coming a mile away. My only problems: no house there and no Starlink.
Montana State U at Bozeman has a very nice demonstration farm that recreates ag life of about the 1890s. They bake delicious bread and pastries almost every day.
And they will be fools. There are still enough redneck engineers and Yankee Green Mountain boys to become a PITA. Gaza sugar rockets will look like amateur hour.
While you are probably right about what happens in fly-over land, we will have no resources to devote attention overseas nor leadership to care. We have already made the decision to become a second rate world power. It's just going to take a while to get there
"It's just going to take a while to get there." I don't think so. This concept of "Fundamental Change", which began with the 2008 Presidential election, was well crafted. It was well known that the inertia of the "Deplorables" would make for a slow start and that it might take years for the juggernaut to get up a full head of steam, but once up on the plane the acceleration would become exponential. When the fruition of the plan comes, it'll be as sudden as Gallagher's mallet mating with the watermelon. It is 2024, there is very little while left to take, I fear, Orwell. The original George should have called his book 2025.
And like the merely somewhat annoying French partisans? The vast majority will have a short and futile career. (The Chinese will probably pay better than the Gestapo.)
I am visualizing the Chinese pay clerks handing out wads of $100 trillion Zimbabwe notes to smiling Gweilo cricketburger flippers at McDonalds who used to make only 20 USD before. Those careerists will be the lucky ones.
Wars of invasion fail because folks dig in and defend their homes with a ferocity unmatched by the invader. There are some smart kids in Ukraine; kids that were it not for war would be modding game systems and smoking pot. Now they are creating sea drones with cell phones wired into a Sony Playstation.
Before the invasion, Ukraine was bustling. The autobody repair guy, and the construction welder are sitting in a shop with a bunch of 17 year-olds turning mothballed summer toys into ship-killing weapons.
In the 80's the Slava was a beast; a fearsome carrier killer. Fast, and armed to the teeth. She got taken out by a nation with no navy. The pride of the Black Sea Fleet; gone. Coupling human ingenuity with a home invasion and you find folks sinking amphibs with toys.
I am not a betting man. Learned my lesson in the Navy, getting fleeced in gin rummy and cribbage. If I were to bet, I'd look at the big picture, see Ukraine for what it seems to be and then still call what I posted about the SkiDoo deal a safe bet. Still, Tom, what you posit may be all true. But I wouldn't bet on it.
I only grab 2-3 shells for my bolt action .410 when I see a squirrel stealing pecans. If there are two of them I only get one shot. That battle has been going on for 3+ decades and in the past 8-10 years I have harvested zero pecans. Those SOB's vandalize wiring in the attic and vehicles, poop in my workshop and mock me and my dogs. So what? I prudently stockpiled ammo in quantities of the high 5 digits. Am prepped for every caliber I own. Should the squirrels triple in size, grow wolf fangs and become carnivores, I am ready. I may be unnumbered and outwitted but never out-gunned. America needs to wake up.
Does anyone have any information about what we "hit" in Yemen and whether firing just one well-placed Tomahawk would have been just as useful, or useless, as firing 80? Are we "wasting" expensive, long-lead-time munitions, when we could be sending something relatively cheap and plentiful?
I do not have any non-open source info here. That said, the BDAs I've seen shared publicly make it almost impossible to believe the magnitude of the response, measured in terms of munitions used, was reasonable given the effects achieved. Estimates put the number of KIA at 20-30 (high end), against a much larger number of TLAMs and other PGMs expended. I don't have a conclusion that makes more sense than that our "leaders" wanted to be able to cite large numbers somewhere in their reporting, decided # of munitions used and # of "sites" targeted would sound good enough, and proceeded to waste valuable ordnance for the sake of a better press release. Open to other/conflicting ideas if they are out there.
No disagreement, other than that I strongly doubt that the decision would have been approached differently under this administration had it happened during a non-election year.
Well, in Kosovo our airstrikes claimed 93 tanks (out of 600), 153 APCs, 339 other vehicles, and 389 artillery systems were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty. Or 4 tanks, 12 self-propelled guns, 18 APCs, and 20 artillery systems if you look at what was actually found on the ground and comparing how many vehicles drove out of Kosovo.
The only explanation that makes sense is a concerted plan to draw down our stocks of munitions - we got rid of most 155mm artillery shells, now PGMs (and burning a $4-mil weapon to defeat a $4k POS is a poor deal)...what's next, 250# Mk-81's?
The question is why? As usual, following the money would be a good idea.
As far as rearming, Where exactly will that happen? Guam? Pearl? Subic Bay? Cam Rahn? Aside from having the reloads, you need a dock and a crane...
But I'm also always reminded not to ascribe to malevolent action what can easily be attributed to pure stupidity or ignorance.
These decisions are coming from a National Security Council that is both cowardly and clueless.
They demand 'clean' 'surgical' 'proportionate' response from the combatant commanders.
They never stop to think what they are doing to inventory.
COCOM's probably are never given a chance to voice those concerns - or are too politically correct to do so and risk careers, so they just keep burnin' the good stuff
I don't know... across the spectrum of things, seems like "manage the decline" was the mode of operation (see recapitalization of the entire strategic triad at the same time, EW, SHORAD, tacair fleet age, gov't munitions production capacity & decay, etc., etc.) for quite some time. Then someone sniffed the coffee and noticed that allowing critical capabilities and key weapon systems to age out and/or atrophy was probably not a good idea. The response that followed then emphasized a seemingly singular jibe of achieving overmatch... transformational.... exquisite. Then came the revelation that a foundational presumption of a "short" war with a near peer has the same probability of occuring as a "black swan" event. That revelation is likely to have DOD MBA's engaging in daily "pearl clutching" marathons. Yeah... the totality of what was neglected had such a wide sweep as to suggest this can't be solely the result of incompetence. This has the whiff of being intentional.
The one thing I learned working in the IC more than anything else is that few 'true conspiracies' exist.
But, what does exist is what I call 'conspiracies of opportunism'.
This is where different people and groups see similar patterns emerge and make similar, self-serving choices, usually without any coordination, but having the cumulative effect of supporting each other by chance or by volume.
In many cases, human nature - which excels at rationalization above all else - is unable even to recognize that they are part of it.
Case in point, COVID.
I knew early on just how manipulated it all was.
But if you think thousands of people in government and pharma willingly worked together to knowingly push poison on people, you need to think again.
MOST of those people were bending the rules on their personal little piece of the pie, either from fear or for profit, but they were telling themselves it was OK, because what they were doing was lining up with what everyone else was saying.
Their own cognitive dissonance prevented them from realizing that it was likely most of those other voices were also likely fudging things as well.
The cumulative result was a mass censorship and tyranny pushing poison, but most of those doing it honestly believed on some level they were being good.
Probably most of the Nazi's had convinced themselves that the means justified the ends as well, and assumed the most terrible things they heard about couldn't really be true.
Big conspiracies almost always fail, because people are stupid, and people talk.
"...what does exist is what I call 'conspiracies of opportunism'." And you sir get the award for capturing what I am thinking but did not have the ability to say with such brevity...
"The cumulative result was a mass censorship and tyranny pushing poison, but most of those doing it honestly believed on some level they were being good."
Also a good description of the anthropogenic climate change nonsense.
However, I think both of these and other attempts to tear down individual freedom actually do involve conspiracies, not of 1000's but perhaps dozens of people that can see how groups of people will react to the stimuli
Very true. There are always opportunities for groups to see which way the mob is running and get in front and yell 'follow me'
I think even when these larger conspiracies exist, they are rarely pushing a deep complicated plan, so much as they are responding to chaotic events with a singular goal in mind.
But rarely will they involve large groups, and I think my key point is that we tend to see people who are part of a system that is doing these things and then assume they must be willing participants in a conspiracy, when in fact they re likely just scared or greedy or both. Common human failings.
I like to think I rise above them, but I'm as human as the next person, just a little more self-aware of my own faults and failings.
"Dear Google, is there anyway to set up gmail so 'certain' emails are delayed in showing up in my inbox until after 5 pm so I won't be inclined to open them until I've had time to pour a couple of fingers of knob creek?"
Recall my reply on an earlier post. This gets solved by industry and wealthy Americans developing a solution outside the Pentagon.
I'm calling for a Defense Ordinance Investment Corporation.
The major defense contractors who produce all our munitions should jointly form an investment group.
People (mostly the wealthy) buy into this group like buying into a Government T-Bill. Call'em Missile-Bills.
The Investment group sets purchasing priorities by working with the major defense industries to identify everywhere that production can be increased with current capacity, and then purchasing enough of said munitions to ensure that production is AT capacity.
Defense industry sells said munitions to the investment group at cut rate due to increased production, with very small profit - far less than what Uncle Sam is paying for them in tiny lots
Those munitions are then stored by those defense companies - but marked to indicate they are Investment group owned.
When Uncle Sam get's their shit together and purchases more, the munitions are sold from the investment group 'inventory', at a markup (but still cheaper than it would have been for tiny lot production.
That profit goes back into the investment group to be used to pay for more bulk purchases, and strategic investment in expanding production capacity.
I'm not pretending this is back-of-napkin simple.
But our Wall Street Wiz kids come up with exponentially more complex investment tools for ESG and other BS.
There is literally no reason this would not work. Just needs a few wiz kids willing to put in the effort and just a few patriotic billionaires willing to kick start it.
Seems like a reasonable idea, but they’d likely have to clear a pathway through the regulations. I think there are equivalents to ITAR, though I don’t know which that prevent private entities from buying most active military equipment.
I don’t see why they couldn’t change these laws… but it leads to the questions of why are there laws like this in the first place and why hasn’t it been done before. Just inertia?
gotta be some simpler way to do it as an 'investment' since they would never be taking possession of them, they would remain with the vendor who produced them until the government needed them.
Maybe the investment mechanism is not actually taking ownership of the ordinance, but buying a theoretical investment 'product' mapped to individual missiles. investment product price is based on missile production cost + 1% net. Investment product return is based on missile sale price actual net.
Like I said, some wall st wiz could figure this out.
These points are all very important and have been hashed out ad nauseam by the porch. It really is simple, build more missiles now, develop a plan for at sea or rear remote island reloads and build a ship to ship missile that can destroy or mission kill the PLAN.
We cannot nor should not rely on any port west of Pearl and likely we won’t have access to Pearl
either.
As for the length of the war, the opening hours, days, and weeks will be what we can inflict and sustain and then it becomes a decades long war for both sides as we start to realize we don’t have a fucking industry to build new ships and super hornets let alone repair them on the scale we will need. Yet the Flags Pat themselves on the back and update their linkdn profiles and resumes.
The Mafia? You sure? Gonna have to add Sicilians to my list, which used to number just two: Belgians and Albanians. I hate that the list is becoming longer and fear for my soul.
I was recently called a variety of things for trying to ask the following:
China can be expected to have X anti-ship missiles?
We have approximately 1000 VLS sells at any given time in WestPAC.
If X>1000, which it seems to be according to many reports, aren’t we screwed?
And yes, I know there are a variety of complicating factors (such as “the Chinese untested missiles need to work and get in range” and “the US actually needs to have capable SAMs in the VLS”) but there doesn’t seem to be any getting around the basic math.
If we are facing many more missiles than we can shoot down, we will eventually be overwhelmed, right?
We don't have enough people for the military now and getting more with an unpopular draft after the war starts is a pipe dream. More of what? Physically fit people with education, mental acuity, a work ethic, love of country, no drug or mental problems? Good luck. I recall a war that was largely lost by college students (not the Weather Underground) acting like petulant children who when compared to Antifa, BLM and gratuitous looters were pussycats.
The recruiting crisis is virtually all created by the Flags and the administration. They wanted to stop recruiting military families and make the military less white. Well, they got it, when kids decided they were not going to deal with the institutionalized racism of the military. And now they are whining about it.
Which only impacts young white men, reducing recruitment by 50%? There was no significant change in recruitment of black or hispanic people into the military.
That military.com article blames right wing politicians lambasting the military for being "woke" and an underfunded public education system as a cause for recruitment failures. What a clever way to skewer politicians on the right for pointing out that wokeism is a buzzkill to any kid who doesn't want to become a Harrison Bergeron. And to say that education sucks because we are not tossing buckets more of money at it is laughable. Schools suck because of the people they hire and the permissiveness of bad behaviors they allow. Public & Parochial schools here, 1953-1965, K through 11 in FL, AL, KS & LA with "Yes, Sir/Ma'am", paddling, no social promotions, heavy emphasis in the 3 R's.
"getting more with an unpopular draft after the war starts is a pipe dream."
Amen.
On the other hand, we won't have the money to pay them, anyway. It's a good thing the FED prints money digitally now, because traditional mechanical printing won't be able to keep up. The FED will definitely exceed their target inflation rate of 2%. Like the Weimar Republik, the cart needed to carry grocery money TO the store will need to be bigger than the cart needed to carry the groceries FROM the store.
In Zimbabwe with its 10,000% inflation, a worker would be paid on Friday, catch the bus to rush home and then to the store to buy bread. Having spent all his or her money, then come Monday have no bus fare to get to work. "Socialism. It's what eats you for dinner." (Apologies to the National Livestock and Meat Board .)
Yes. PLARF is reported by best conservative estimates to have over 3500 strategic rockets (DF variety). Our DDG and CG skippers are going to be quite like Custer at the Little Bighorn. Where in the hell did all these Indians come from..?”
How many of those are actually anti-ship capable though? I haven't been able to pin down any solid numbers between about 600 and 2000 ASBMs. Of course, they seem to be building a lot more per year than we are building SM-6s, so I guess the question is how long do we have (if we have any time at all) to get our heads out of our asses.
Respectfully, this doesn't really answer the question. It says stuff like:
"Meanwhile, the conventional arm of the PLARF is the largest ground-based missile force in the world, with over 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles and with enough antiship missiles to attack every U.S. surface combatant vessel in the South China Sea with enough firepower to overcome each ship’s missile defense.4 "
But then the footnote goes to a National Interest article that says
I can’t give you a specific number as you require. My sources these days are OSINT. So I guess it’s likely safe to assume based on even half of the analysis that they possess more anti ship missiles than we possess surface combatants. It’s doubtful anyone knows the answer to your question. But we will certainly find out.
"How many of those are actually anti-ship capable though"
Doesn't matter. When your radar shows lots and lots of incoming and you only have seconds to respond, they are ALL anti-ship capable. It's first come, first served.
Theoretically, this is something our fancy MIC-created systems could tell us. EG the system should say something like:
"There are 600 incoming missiles. 400 have 0 mathematical chance of hitting you. Don't waste your missiles on those."
That would be extremely valuable. It would also, of course, take balls of steel and require some level of "trusting the computer" more than we're probably comfortable with.
But, it would be one way to beat the math that, otherwise, looks pretty inescapable.
"400 have 0 mathematical chance of hitting you [at present course/speed/range; ask me again in 1.0 seconds]".
Some of those 400 may have terminal guidance and change course at the last second(s), and if you are escorting other ships some of those 400 will probably need to be dealt with because they have a non-zero chance of hitting another ship. I don't know how many targets can be handled by AA systems, but I would bet there is a finite upper limit.
geez CDR, yer such a downer in the early AM
but by God, yer right!
We all have our skillsets.
I remember an article in the Wall Street Journal, many years ago. The gist was governments must do three things. Border security; national defense. Internal order; meaning protection of property, contracts and infrastructure. Thirdly, an honest buck. Governments may do other tasks, but that will be done at the expense of these three tasks that only a government can do.
A modest proposal though. A lot of current government is income transfers; the perpetual attraction of socialism being taking other people's stuff. Why not turn these transfers, through military procurement contracts, into jobs with bennies?
Well, there's a reason a lot of the beneficiaries of these programs are on them; they literally couldn't work in a modern factory. Close to 20% of the population is literally too stupid to be in the Army. They aren't going to be helpful making PGMs. Then there's the too old and/or physically incapable.
They can stamp parts.
I am worried it would be like early WW2. "It was actually more dangerous to work in a factory from late 1941 to mid-1942 than be in the military.
General Longstreet’s 70 year old widow during WW II would drive her roadster to her job at Boeing to rivet B29 bombers. Had some spicy comments about what her handiwork should do to Hitler and Tojo. And , in the late 30’s, FDR was selling rearmament as a jobs program to end run the isolationists.
Raytheon hunted down its 70 year old retirees to set up Stinger missile production to supply the Ukraines.
How about bring social security retirees back with no reduction in SS benefits for military procurement jobs.
How about giving millennials jobs that will take them out of ‘studies’ major rat hole. Maybe some debt relief for holding down a defense job.
Good Lord man! Are you wishing to get yourself cancelled? Mentioning Helen Dortch Longstreet on an electronic media platform like this. Sheesh!
https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/history-archaeology/helen-dortch-longstreet-1863-1962/
Holy F'n Dorch Longstreet, that biography is crazy. It reads like the treatment for an irreverent yet empathic bio-pic that portrays her as a young lesbian who marries an elderly man to become a widow as quickly as possible.
Does anyone on the front porch know Tig Notaro's people or have a friend at HBO? I bet both could get behind a project centered on the very independent and strong, somewhat wacky and racist, postmistress of Gainesville, Florida at the turn of the last century.
Obviously I'm thinking Allison Janey for the hard-working, Jap-hating, Rosie-inspiring epilogue—with Richard Schiff as the General and a bunch of other West Wing cast members in supporting roles. Trust me, us millennials love us a West Wing cameo.
Anyone know which university has the general's widow's papers? Park me in the campus library, I'll write a first draft of the screenplay in, like, three weeks.
Sure, the liberal, DNC type you get in Hollywood's pool of really top level talent might not want to make what is totally going to be warmongering propaganda advocating rearmament. But with a reminder that a little picture called 'Casablanca' proved mongers get Oscars, some of the very best entertainment professionals will come on board.
Let's get this made, people!
Or at least let's start using ‘Holy F'n Dorch Longstreet’ in casual conversation.
I doubt many 70 year old Vietnam veterans will be fooled again.
Our federal government has demonstrated of late a reluctance to perform all three, and in fact actively works to inhibit any attempt to perform them on the part of the states.
Lee S. Dreyfus was an old school conservative Republican; the kind that don't exist anymore. When asked the role of the Federal Government he replied. “The government has three roles: Defend our shores, deliver the mail and stay the hell out of our lives.”
"A lot of current government is income transfers; the perpetual attraction of socialism being taking other people's stuff. Why not turn these transfers, through military procurement contracts, into jobs with bennies?"
I've been thinking for a while that we're turning into the 1980s Soviet Union - sclerotic leadership and a crazed ideology that nobody really believes in but nobody dares question (substitute DEI for Marxism-Leninism). Turning our useless mouths into defense workers would make the analogy even more apt. Not necessarily in a good way...
Let us hope we don't fulfill another meme: "So we finally meet face-to-face, the consequences of our previous (action / inactions, fill in blank as appropriate). Jim Croce had a line in a song: "It's what we've done that makes us what we are." Taken in isolation, the TLAM inventory is a bleak, difficult to understand, and harder to explain accounting exercise. IIRC, we were going to shut the line down completely several years ago. It was only after a UK purchase that the line remained open; I may have that wrong. Regardless, the numbers are what we've done, and what we are is ill-prepared to engage in a kinetic great power dispute in the Pacific. Unfortunately, you cannot take this in isolation: the closer you look into the combat supporting logistics, bad news is everywhere. Fixing this will take will and time; both appear in short supply as we continue to admire the problem and seek silver bullet solutions that are .ppt deep. We better make deterrence work. If someone calls what is apparently our "bluff" we may be going "all in" with a hand that the other guy knows he has beaten. Posted an article on "Deterrence".
Time is a luxury we don’t have.
I'm trying to remember what old movie had the motto:
"Waste anything but time! Time is the only resource that is not replaceable or renewable."
Napoleon said of his generals, “ask me for anything but time..”
paraphrased.
I believe Napoleon said that right after the Battle of Borodino.
I think Ben Franklin said something about not wasting time as it was the stuff from which life was made.
How many other things are we producing "just enough to keep the line open'?
A few months (years?) ago I read that the F/A-18 line was running at minimum, and the F-16 line would be shut down if not for foreign orders.
F-16 line is actually doing well at present, in fact better than it has in years, and production is increasing to meet demand. But its a short term thing....I doubt many will be placing orders for F-16 past 2030. There will continue to be MLU work etc though.
SuperHornet line is limping to closure as there aren't the orders to keep it open any longer (which happens). Keeping the F-15EX line open is key as otherwise without an NGAD win Boeing are out of the game...
"We may not be prepared to fight a long war, but a long war may be prepared to fight us."
Point well made. I hope the "people in power"(pip) are willing to admit to it's rationales' and commit to a rational plan forward. Looking back 30 or 40 years there haven't been many well placed powerful people willing to make a difference in our preparedness.
You can support a lot of illegal aliens on their path from the Darien Gap to U.S. citizenship for the price of just one Tomahawk!
For the price of a dozen Tomahawks you could build a few Airbnb's in the Darrien Gap or for the cost of a 100 you could build high-speed rail there. I am sure that land speculators are already salivating at getting a peek at the preliminary land surveys for the right-of-way.
The Chinese are already extending the highway through the gap and into South America.
Good news then. Fewer T-Bills to sell, fewer to default on.
West Pac? What about the conflict with Iran that has been forty some years in the making?
That can be resolved with much lower-cost munitions.
It's not a capacity issue, it's a political leadership willpower issue.
We could end the Houthi problem in 48 hours with less than $100M in ordinance using JDAM's and unguided munitions if we were willing to make a big mess and kill a lot of people - mostly bad guys.
The Iranian war on the United States has not elevated to a point where the American constituency has noticed the roaring mouse.
Didn't mice bring the plague to Europe?
In the initial salvo, we're going to get our a$$es handed to us. And lose a lot of blood and treasure. Which will require months or a year+ to reconstitute to move into a viable position in theater to be able to take any retribution. Let alone mount a sustained campaign to restore territorial/ nation sovereignty to Taiwan. Not to mention the 10s of thousands of illegal Chinese already in CONUS that will take disruptive actions as sleeper cells/ CHICOM SOF cells activate. Yet we have hundreds of millions of dollars being allocated in dumb band-aid approaches like DSDs RDER and Replicator programs to that will be "affordable solutions in providing technological parity or ((if we're lucky)) overmatch". Rather then just focus on good old fashioned war fighting (i.e bombs and bullets) so we can kill people and break their stuff. Because a bad guy can't continue to fight or hold terrain if he's dead.
I was wondering if anyone was going to make the point of what's likely to happen D+1 to disrupt things in CONUS?
As to the "Hail Mary" attempt at "overmatch"??? Could one reasonable assume that the volume of "stuff that goes boom" needs to resemble what's required to make the contribution of "large numbers" of uncrewed kit to be actually meaninful? Asking for a friend...
It depends. The attacker chooses the time and place and how they open the war. If I was a PLA commander and was confident that the US was planning on striking mainland China bases once the war starts I'd preempt with attacks on US mainland bases. F18s on fire in Lemoore and DDGs sunk at a pier in SD are not going to be shooting at PLAN vessels. Not to mention attacks on critical satcom and orbital control nodes. How long will GPS work if you blow up the control centers in Vandenberg and Schriever?
If I was not confident that the US was willing to attack the mainland I'd be a lot more restrained in how I opened the war. But I'm also not a PLA senior officer, so who knows?
That’s how I see it going down.
If I was the PLA I'd go all in....
Because whether the US attacks the mainland directly initially doesn't really matter, because the US will be attacking the mainland indirectly via a distant blockade of shipping...
Id bet on the schedule of the deployed CVN being one of the biggest factors in when the kickoff will be. Everything else can happen whenever, excepting severe weather in Taiwan/ the Strait...
My only question is: wont we detect the buildup and massing of invasion forces? Wont we see it coming? OR will they go after us first preemptively, and once we're Mission Incapable in Westpac, then go after Taiwan??
There will be no "buildup". The attack force will always be there, operating at sea on a daily basis. This will make traditional "indications and warning" problematic.
https://breakingdefense.com/2024/02/constant-stare-us-pacific-commander-wants-ai-to-tell-chinese-military-exercises-from-invasion/
I just read this...and think its absurd. To see that PacFlt is advocating for a fleet of unmanned widgets and AI to do his intel chores, when he should likely be more worried about weapons inventory, sub maintenance, crew readiness and training, and a thousand other things... Sadly im no longer suprised.
Btw...while i did ask the question, I dont believe that we arent going to see a buildup. To think that we're so blind and oblivious that we need AI to figure out when the Chinese will kick off, sounds absurd.
IMO if the Chinese decide to go "all-in" against us then it will take ten-plus years, if ever, to be able to build another ship to replace the 40-50% of our fleet that is lost in the first few months. The "if ever" caveat depends on how effective their assets currently in CONUS turn out to be.
I fear we've outsourced our industry and degraded our resources and American culture of "can do" and "know how" not to mention exceptionalism too far to seriously consider winning a peer conflict.
Winner winner.
Learn to farm.
I hate to admit it, but it's going to be a lot more useful than code when the power goes out
When you lose the internet, you're back to 1970.
When you lose the electricity, you're back to 1870.
I'm sure there are some hobbyists and re-enactors that are skilled with hand tools. But the rest of us will have a steep learning curve.
And that, my friend, is one reason to hold 1400 acres of prime SC farmland well away from the coastal targets like Charleston Naval Weps and Beaufort MCAS, with a nice flowing river that has a 1930s water wheel/generator to keep the calves and piglets warm and toasty. And my neighbor has 2 1960s Ford trucks that run exceptionally well on used cooking oil, altho you can smell him coming a mile away. My only problems: no house there and no Starlink.
I'm recalling that a nuke was dropped on Florence (accidentally) back in the fifties. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place.
Sounds like you've got a great place for when the rest of the world goes crazy.
One nice thing I guess; all the extra genders go away with the power.
Montana State U at Bozeman has a very nice demonstration farm that recreates ag life of about the 1890s. They bake delicious bread and pastries almost every day.
^ You mean, "Learn to collective farm", right?
The Chinese will probably allow us to keep some manufacturing/technology under the peace treaty as they turn us into their breadbasket.
And they will be fools. There are still enough redneck engineers and Yankee Green Mountain boys to become a PITA. Gaza sugar rockets will look like amateur hour.
While you are probably right about what happens in fly-over land, we will have no resources to devote attention overseas nor leadership to care. We have already made the decision to become a second rate world power. It's just going to take a while to get there
"It's just going to take a while to get there." I don't think so. This concept of "Fundamental Change", which began with the 2008 Presidential election, was well crafted. It was well known that the inertia of the "Deplorables" would make for a slow start and that it might take years for the juggernaut to get up a full head of steam, but once up on the plane the acceleration would become exponential. When the fruition of the plan comes, it'll be as sudden as Gallagher's mallet mating with the watermelon. It is 2024, there is very little while left to take, I fear, Orwell. The original George should have called his book 2025.
You could be right about the acceleration. Our Republic is in dire peril, certainly.
And like the merely somewhat annoying French partisans? The vast majority will have a short and futile career. (The Chinese will probably pay better than the Gestapo.)
I am visualizing the Chinese pay clerks handing out wads of $100 trillion Zimbabwe notes to smiling Gweilo cricketburger flippers at McDonalds who used to make only 20 USD before. Those careerists will be the lucky ones.
Look at what the Ukrainians are doing with SeaDoos. They took out the Cesar Kunikov with ten of Canada's best jet skis.
The Japanese sunk the Indianapolis in July 1945.
Safe bet that most of those donated SeaDoo's are going to the black market in Turkey.
Who says they were donated?
Wars of invasion fail because folks dig in and defend their homes with a ferocity unmatched by the invader. There are some smart kids in Ukraine; kids that were it not for war would be modding game systems and smoking pot. Now they are creating sea drones with cell phones wired into a Sony Playstation.
Before the invasion, Ukraine was bustling. The autobody repair guy, and the construction welder are sitting in a shop with a bunch of 17 year-olds turning mothballed summer toys into ship-killing weapons.
In the 80's the Slava was a beast; a fearsome carrier killer. Fast, and armed to the teeth. She got taken out by a nation with no navy. The pride of the Black Sea Fleet; gone. Coupling human ingenuity with a home invasion and you find folks sinking amphibs with toys.
I am not a betting man. Learned my lesson in the Navy, getting fleeced in gin rummy and cribbage. If I were to bet, I'd look at the big picture, see Ukraine for what it seems to be and then still call what I posted about the SkiDoo deal a safe bet. Still, Tom, what you posit may be all true. But I wouldn't bet on it.
I think the Chinese plan to empty our North America and Australia to accommodate their billion people.
The Chinese population is in a death spiral. They don't need land, they need fertile women who want to have kids.
Get ready to find out how well RAM and ESSM work as ASM?
"No one goes to opening day of dove season with only a half-dozen shells, and no one should plan for a Great Pacific War like we have."
Corollary:
The 'lucky' hunter that fills all his (her) deer tags for the season spent more rounds zeroing their rifle that fall than filling the tags.
oh if you're going to be like that and stuff...
I only grab 2-3 shells for my bolt action .410 when I see a squirrel stealing pecans. If there are two of them I only get one shot. That battle has been going on for 3+ decades and in the past 8-10 years I have harvested zero pecans. Those SOB's vandalize wiring in the attic and vehicles, poop in my workshop and mock me and my dogs. So what? I prudently stockpiled ammo in quantities of the high 5 digits. Am prepped for every caliber I own. Should the squirrels triple in size, grow wolf fangs and become carnivores, I am ready. I may be unnumbered and outwitted but never out-gunned. America needs to wake up.
Does anyone have any information about what we "hit" in Yemen and whether firing just one well-placed Tomahawk would have been just as useful, or useless, as firing 80? Are we "wasting" expensive, long-lead-time munitions, when we could be sending something relatively cheap and plentiful?
I do not have any non-open source info here. That said, the BDAs I've seen shared publicly make it almost impossible to believe the magnitude of the response, measured in terms of munitions used, was reasonable given the effects achieved. Estimates put the number of KIA at 20-30 (high end), against a much larger number of TLAMs and other PGMs expended. I don't have a conclusion that makes more sense than that our "leaders" wanted to be able to cite large numbers somewhere in their reporting, decided # of munitions used and # of "sites" targeted would sound good enough, and proceeded to waste valuable ordnance for the sake of a better press release. Open to other/conflicting ideas if they are out there.
I believe that good headlines is a good election strategy in an election year and that drives the tactical strategy our military is given.
No disagreement, other than that I strongly doubt that the decision would have been approached differently under this administration had it happened during a non-election year.
I'm sure that information is classified. Wouldn't want the Houthis to find out how effective our weapons are.
Well, in Kosovo our airstrikes claimed 93 tanks (out of 600), 153 APCs, 339 other vehicles, and 389 artillery systems were believed to have been disabled or destroyed with certainty. Or 4 tanks, 12 self-propelled guns, 18 APCs, and 20 artillery systems if you look at what was actually found on the ground and comparing how many vehicles drove out of Kosovo.
The only explanation that makes sense is a concerted plan to draw down our stocks of munitions - we got rid of most 155mm artillery shells, now PGMs (and burning a $4-mil weapon to defeat a $4k POS is a poor deal)...what's next, 250# Mk-81's?
The question is why? As usual, following the money would be a good idea.
As far as rearming, Where exactly will that happen? Guam? Pearl? Subic Bay? Cam Rahn? Aside from having the reloads, you need a dock and a crane...
I agree with the end result.
But I'm also always reminded not to ascribe to malevolent action what can easily be attributed to pure stupidity or ignorance.
These decisions are coming from a National Security Council that is both cowardly and clueless.
They demand 'clean' 'surgical' 'proportionate' response from the combatant commanders.
They never stop to think what they are doing to inventory.
COCOM's probably are never given a chance to voice those concerns - or are too politically correct to do so and risk careers, so they just keep burnin' the good stuff
I don't know... across the spectrum of things, seems like "manage the decline" was the mode of operation (see recapitalization of the entire strategic triad at the same time, EW, SHORAD, tacair fleet age, gov't munitions production capacity & decay, etc., etc.) for quite some time. Then someone sniffed the coffee and noticed that allowing critical capabilities and key weapon systems to age out and/or atrophy was probably not a good idea. The response that followed then emphasized a seemingly singular jibe of achieving overmatch... transformational.... exquisite. Then came the revelation that a foundational presumption of a "short" war with a near peer has the same probability of occuring as a "black swan" event. That revelation is likely to have DOD MBA's engaging in daily "pearl clutching" marathons. Yeah... the totality of what was neglected had such a wide sweep as to suggest this can't be solely the result of incompetence. This has the whiff of being intentional.
The one thing I learned working in the IC more than anything else is that few 'true conspiracies' exist.
But, what does exist is what I call 'conspiracies of opportunism'.
This is where different people and groups see similar patterns emerge and make similar, self-serving choices, usually without any coordination, but having the cumulative effect of supporting each other by chance or by volume.
In many cases, human nature - which excels at rationalization above all else - is unable even to recognize that they are part of it.
Case in point, COVID.
I knew early on just how manipulated it all was.
But if you think thousands of people in government and pharma willingly worked together to knowingly push poison on people, you need to think again.
MOST of those people were bending the rules on their personal little piece of the pie, either from fear or for profit, but they were telling themselves it was OK, because what they were doing was lining up with what everyone else was saying.
Their own cognitive dissonance prevented them from realizing that it was likely most of those other voices were also likely fudging things as well.
The cumulative result was a mass censorship and tyranny pushing poison, but most of those doing it honestly believed on some level they were being good.
Probably most of the Nazi's had convinced themselves that the means justified the ends as well, and assumed the most terrible things they heard about couldn't really be true.
Big conspiracies almost always fail, because people are stupid, and people talk.
"...what does exist is what I call 'conspiracies of opportunism'." And you sir get the award for capturing what I am thinking but did not have the ability to say with such brevity...
Well, I've whined about it enough to enough people that by now I have it down to an elevator speech :)
"The cumulative result was a mass censorship and tyranny pushing poison, but most of those doing it honestly believed on some level they were being good."
Also a good description of the anthropogenic climate change nonsense.
However, I think both of these and other attempts to tear down individual freedom actually do involve conspiracies, not of 1000's but perhaps dozens of people that can see how groups of people will react to the stimuli
Very true. There are always opportunities for groups to see which way the mob is running and get in front and yell 'follow me'
I think even when these larger conspiracies exist, they are rarely pushing a deep complicated plan, so much as they are responding to chaotic events with a singular goal in mind.
But rarely will they involve large groups, and I think my key point is that we tend to see people who are part of a system that is doing these things and then assume they must be willing participants in a conspiracy, when in fact they re likely just scared or greedy or both. Common human failings.
I like to think I rise above them, but I'm as human as the next person, just a little more self-aware of my own faults and failings.
Sometimes people remind me of the videos of flocks of birds or schools of fish acting in a coordinated way.
Easier done when its 4 Tomahawks in a container and it can be any port with container crane loading it.
True. And when those cranes are destroyed on day D+2 of the war?
The enemy knows how vulnerable we are in that respect
Good point. A cheap drone can take out an expensive crane.
And ye it seems Ukraine's and Russia's seem to be intact. Tough to hit everything, everywhere all at once.
The world is full of them. Same cranes are in most rail yards now, just smaller than the big ship ones.
Sure. Just need to get the boat under them
"Aside from having the reloads, you need a dock and a crane..."
And all in the same spot at the same time as reloadee.
Just read in the Navy Times that sailors will now be allowed to put their hands in their pockets while in uniform.
Is this symbolic or prophetic since theyll have nothing to shoot and nothing to do by about D+3???
Yes. Also, Chiefs heads exploding...
But I'm glad the Navy has dealt with all the important issues.
"Dear Google, is there anyway to set up gmail so 'certain' emails are delayed in showing up in my inbox until after 5 pm so I won't be inclined to open them until I've had time to pour a couple of fingers of knob creek?"
Sal,
Recall my reply on an earlier post. This gets solved by industry and wealthy Americans developing a solution outside the Pentagon.
I'm calling for a Defense Ordinance Investment Corporation.
The major defense contractors who produce all our munitions should jointly form an investment group.
People (mostly the wealthy) buy into this group like buying into a Government T-Bill. Call'em Missile-Bills.
The Investment group sets purchasing priorities by working with the major defense industries to identify everywhere that production can be increased with current capacity, and then purchasing enough of said munitions to ensure that production is AT capacity.
Defense industry sells said munitions to the investment group at cut rate due to increased production, with very small profit - far less than what Uncle Sam is paying for them in tiny lots
Those munitions are then stored by those defense companies - but marked to indicate they are Investment group owned.
When Uncle Sam get's their shit together and purchases more, the munitions are sold from the investment group 'inventory', at a markup (but still cheaper than it would have been for tiny lot production.
That profit goes back into the investment group to be used to pay for more bulk purchases, and strategic investment in expanding production capacity.
I'm not pretending this is back-of-napkin simple.
But our Wall Street Wiz kids come up with exponentially more complex investment tools for ESG and other BS.
There is literally no reason this would not work. Just needs a few wiz kids willing to put in the effort and just a few patriotic billionaires willing to kick start it.
Seems like a reasonable idea, but they’d likely have to clear a pathway through the regulations. I think there are equivalents to ITAR, though I don’t know which that prevent private entities from buying most active military equipment.
I don’t see why they couldn’t change these laws… but it leads to the questions of why are there laws like this in the first place and why hasn’t it been done before. Just inertia?
gotta be some simpler way to do it as an 'investment' since they would never be taking possession of them, they would remain with the vendor who produced them until the government needed them.
Maybe the investment mechanism is not actually taking ownership of the ordinance, but buying a theoretical investment 'product' mapped to individual missiles. investment product price is based on missile production cost + 1% net. Investment product return is based on missile sale price actual net.
Like I said, some wall st wiz could figure this out.
These points are all very important and have been hashed out ad nauseam by the porch. It really is simple, build more missiles now, develop a plan for at sea or rear remote island reloads and build a ship to ship missile that can destroy or mission kill the PLAN.
We cannot nor should not rely on any port west of Pearl and likely we won’t have access to Pearl
either.
As for the length of the war, the opening hours, days, and weeks will be what we can inflict and sustain and then it becomes a decades long war for both sides as we start to realize we don’t have a fucking industry to build new ships and super hornets let alone repair them on the scale we will need. Yet the Flags Pat themselves on the back and update their linkdn profiles and resumes.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, their plan said it would be all over by D+7.
It is now about D+720. To paraphrase Yogi, 'the fat lady isn't even warming up, getting ready to sing.'
Is there a plan for D+1,000 in the Western Pacific? D+1,500?
China is prepared for a long war. We are planning on a 30 day war. With zero reserves and an anemic repair capability. We are quite fooked.
We are doubly fooked, maybe even Tripoli Fooked©, Mr T. Kissinger just died. Who will negotiate peace with honor for us now? Kerry, Hillary, Blinkin, Kamala...the President himself?
None of our political class that we are possessed with have the capacity or the intelligence to be statesmen or diplomats. It’s a mafia.
The Mafia? You sure? Gonna have to add Sicilians to my list, which used to number just two: Belgians and Albanians. I hate that the list is becoming longer and fear for my soul.
That's OK, we won't have any missiles for them either. We do have a lot of JDAMs and Mk82 family...
I was recently called a variety of things for trying to ask the following:
China can be expected to have X anti-ship missiles?
We have approximately 1000 VLS sells at any given time in WestPAC.
If X>1000, which it seems to be according to many reports, aren’t we screwed?
And yes, I know there are a variety of complicating factors (such as “the Chinese untested missiles need to work and get in range” and “the US actually needs to have capable SAMs in the VLS”) but there doesn’t seem to be any getting around the basic math.
If we are facing many more missiles than we can shoot down, we will eventually be overwhelmed, right?
Sounds like Korea when the Allies ran out of bullets before the Chinese ran out of soldiers.
Air cover can help, possibly help a lot, but the math doesn't look good.
We don't have enough people for the military now and getting more with an unpopular draft after the war starts is a pipe dream. More of what? Physically fit people with education, mental acuity, a work ethic, love of country, no drug or mental problems? Good luck. I recall a war that was largely lost by college students (not the Weather Underground) acting like petulant children who when compared to Antifa, BLM and gratuitous looters were pussycats.
So what? It's not like we are planning to win any wars.
The recruiting crisis is virtually all created by the Flags and the administration. They wanted to stop recruiting military families and make the military less white. Well, they got it, when kids decided they were not going to deal with the institutionalized racism of the military. And now they are whining about it.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/01/10/army-sees-sharp-decline-white-recruits.html
Digitized healthcare records. Read up.
Which only impacts young white men, reducing recruitment by 50%? There was no significant change in recruitment of black or hispanic people into the military.
That military.com article blames right wing politicians lambasting the military for being "woke" and an underfunded public education system as a cause for recruitment failures. What a clever way to skewer politicians on the right for pointing out that wokeism is a buzzkill to any kid who doesn't want to become a Harrison Bergeron. And to say that education sucks because we are not tossing buckets more of money at it is laughable. Schools suck because of the people they hire and the permissiveness of bad behaviors they allow. Public & Parochial schools here, 1953-1965, K through 11 in FL, AL, KS & LA with "Yes, Sir/Ma'am", paddling, no social promotions, heavy emphasis in the 3 R's.
"getting more with an unpopular draft after the war starts is a pipe dream."
Amen.
On the other hand, we won't have the money to pay them, anyway. It's a good thing the FED prints money digitally now, because traditional mechanical printing won't be able to keep up. The FED will definitely exceed their target inflation rate of 2%. Like the Weimar Republik, the cart needed to carry grocery money TO the store will need to be bigger than the cart needed to carry the groceries FROM the store.
In Zimbabwe with its 10,000% inflation, a worker would be paid on Friday, catch the bus to rush home and then to the store to buy bread. Having spent all his or her money, then come Monday have no bus fare to get to work. "Socialism. It's what eats you for dinner." (Apologies to the National Livestock and Meat Board .)
Yes. PLARF is reported by best conservative estimates to have over 3500 strategic rockets (DF variety). Our DDG and CG skippers are going to be quite like Custer at the Little Bighorn. Where in the hell did all these Indians come from..?”
How many of those are actually anti-ship capable though? I haven't been able to pin down any solid numbers between about 600 and 2000 ASBMs. Of course, they seem to be building a lot more per year than we are building SM-6s, so I guess the question is how long do we have (if we have any time at all) to get our heads out of our asses.
Here is a recent analysis.
Regarding anti-ship capability: if you shoot a target with a shot gun at say 40 ft it doesn’t matter how accurate your aim you will hit something.
https://www.airuniversity.af.edu/Portals/10/CASI/documents/Research/PLARF/2022-01-05%20PLARF%20Organization%20ExecSum.pdf
A couple more data points from offshore.
https://www.armyupress.army.mil/Journals/Military-Review/English-Edition-Archives/July-August-2021/Mihal-PLA-Rocket-Force/
Respectfully, this doesn't really answer the question. It says stuff like:
"Meanwhile, the conventional arm of the PLARF is the largest ground-based missile force in the world, with over 2,200 conventionally armed ballistic and cruise missiles and with enough antiship missiles to attack every U.S. surface combatant vessel in the South China Sea with enough firepower to overcome each ship’s missile defense.4 "
But then the footnote goes to a National Interest article that says
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/skeptics/fact-95-chinas-cruise-and-ballistic-missile-inventory-would-violate-inf-treaty-161426
"The Asian power now possesses the largest stockpile of INF Treaty-class, land-based missiles in the world, with the most recent estimate at 2,200. "
but doesn't actually specify anything. How many of those are actual anti-ship variants?
CSIS has numbers, but they're 3 years out of date
https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/china/
(and that's setting aside whether I believe much associated with CSIS, which seems to say a lot of ridiculous things).
I can’t give you a specific number as you require. My sources these days are OSINT. So I guess it’s likely safe to assume based on even half of the analysis that they possess more anti ship missiles than we possess surface combatants. It’s doubtful anyone knows the answer to your question. But we will certainly find out.
Yeah, I guess that's the bottom line. If it's not that way now, it will be soon. :\
China isn’t a signatory to the INF.
https://www.uscc.gov/research/chinas-missile-program-and-potential-us-withdrawal-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-inf#:~:text=China%20is%20not%20a%20party,allied%20military%20power%20in%20Asia.
Figure at least 200 DF26 and 600 DF21
https://missilethreat.csis.org/missile/dong-feng-26-df-26/#:~:text=Service%20History,%2C%20including%20the%20DF%2D26.&text=Each%20DF%2D26%20brigade%20may,80%20and%20100%20in%202020.
https://www.fpri.org/article/2021/05/chinas-anti-ship-ballistic-missile-capability-in-the-south-china-sea/
Perhaps this can help. It goes into some assumptions of how China will use her PLARF in anti-ship roles.
https://cimsec.org/fighting-dmo-pt-8-chinas-anti-ship-firepower-and-mass-firing-schemes/
"How many of those are actually anti-ship capable though"
Doesn't matter. When your radar shows lots and lots of incoming and you only have seconds to respond, they are ALL anti-ship capable. It's first come, first served.
Theoretically, this is something our fancy MIC-created systems could tell us. EG the system should say something like:
"There are 600 incoming missiles. 400 have 0 mathematical chance of hitting you. Don't waste your missiles on those."
That would be extremely valuable. It would also, of course, take balls of steel and require some level of "trusting the computer" more than we're probably comfortable with.
But, it would be one way to beat the math that, otherwise, looks pretty inescapable.
Allow me to amend;
"400 have 0 mathematical chance of hitting you [at present course/speed/range; ask me again in 1.0 seconds]".
Some of those 400 may have terminal guidance and change course at the last second(s), and if you are escorting other ships some of those 400 will probably need to be dealt with because they have a non-zero chance of hitting another ship. I don't know how many targets can be handled by AA systems, but I would bet there is a finite upper limit.
Not to worry, CIWS will take up the slack.