Now that a couple of days have passed and the "first responder" commentariat is done, I will sneak in (hopefully unnoticed) and say my piece.
First and foremost, thank you for your time and efforts on this. I have enjoyed immensely the posts and have usually agreed more than disagreed with your thought thus far.
On this post, and after reading the comments, I have come to the conclusion there are a lot of folks out there who have "drank the Koolaid" concerning the omniscience and omnipotence of the US military.
This is a mistake, because in truth, the US military really isn't all that impressive nor has it ever been. We like to preen and crow about our lackluster efforts in WWII, but the truth of the matter is that the US saw WWII as more of a "full-employment" program than a serious shot at war. I strongly recommend that folks review the statistics presented at:
I find the second and third columns especially enlightening.
WWI is similar in results. The US Stands back, turns a tidy profit, then jumps in at the last minute to preen and grab another unearned laurel crown.
I will probably be castigated by the commentariat by my lack of faith in the American Military Tradition. But having spent time bungling through the jungle in SE Asia too many years ago and coming from a family who haven't missed a war since 1812 (all as NCO's) I find people who have faith in American military competence to be a nearly endless source of amusement.
"But to run down your defence forces, treat Russia as an enemy, and then not understand the consequences, must rank as the most miserable, brain-dead foreign and security policy decision since 1945."
Oh yeah! And historically, Russia is a friend of The USA, not an enemy.
Today, London (Johnson/Truss) and Washington (Nuland/Power) are attacking Eurasia in toto and in stultitia from trivially personal motivations. Europe is the western peninsula of Eurasia. https://therevdavidrgraham.substack.com/p/three-eyes
Two supplementary points in addition to the supremely well made points in the article:
a) The obvious one: the EU is currently undergoing a sharp rise in both the costs and the actual supply of gas and oil with which to manufacture any armaments.
b) Arms manufacturing in the 'west' is geared mainly at attaining profits. Actual efficacy in use is a very secondary aim. (Examples of this are: the UK 'Daring class destroyers, the US Navy 'Littoral' ships and new carriers, and the F-22 and F-35 aeroplanes, which all have extensive flaws, liabilities and design failures. Anyone desiring further information can consult the 'Military Watch Magazine' - which as far as I can ascertain, is reasonably impartial). Plus the US is failing to deal with a wide range of infrastructure problems, including the school and penitentiary systems, transport, sewage etc. - mainly because all the money goes to the for-profit arms industry. This is not conducive to having a civil society which can support a long war.
To this I would add the differences of philosophy that make it possible for Russia to maintain such awful (in the old sense of the term) military capabilities despite an economy recently enervated by the barbarian invasions of the 1990s.
It seems that in the West, military procurement--as you mention--emphasizes small numbers of expensive and sophisticated equipment. By its complex nature, this equipment is liable to malfunction and requires an equally complex and expensive support structure to function on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the enemy gets to participate in war as well and will no doubt seek to disrupt the support structures this sophisticated technology relies on.
My point is that the west invests enormous sums of money in technologies that may prove fragile in the face of the enemy. Even if it isn't fragile, the West can only produce small numbers of them.
The Russians, meanwhile, focus more on simpler "good enough" style equipment that's cheap to produce, that can be manufactured in massive quantities, and that do not rely on a sophisticated network to function. For instance, Russians do not seem to use "smart" shells for their howitzers, meaning they function whether or not the satellite positioning systems are still in orbit.
That's not to say the Russians don't produce state-of-the-art arms. Rather, they seem to make intelligent decisions about which arms need to be sophisticated and which arms are "good enough". The clearest example of this is the Russian S-series of ground-based air-defense systems. As far as I can tell, these are the best in the world and enable the overwhelming numerical superiority in "good enough" simple systems to be decisive on the battlefield by ensuring such systems are protected from missiles, areal bombing, and even drones.
To your observations regarding conditions necessary for the West's rearmament, I would add a change of philosophy away from complexity-favoring to simplicity-favoring. This would, I think, help soften the challenges inherent in building a new arms manufacturing base from scratch.
> To your observations regarding conditions necessary for the West's rearmament, I would add a change of philosophy away from complexity-favoring to simplicity-favoring.
Was it not related to a general aversion to loss of staff? Has something changed in this aspect?
It is hard to avoid comparable losses using comparable equipment. Ceteris paribus of course... but war is quite good equalizer of approaches.
"Built for profit" is one thing, but having comparable equipment is not an option if you have to take into account the public's response to losses.
If anything, we should consider that this conditioning will only strengthen ... unless society changes in unexpected ways.
Yes, I agree--but I'm not sure the public conditioning against losses is strengthening.
The covid pandemic proved that the public is willing to bear enormous loss and that the propaganda system is quite adept at convincing the public to be happy beasts of burden!
I expect also that the type of war matters. For example, Americans may not be willing to bear all that much personally for Afghanistan or even Ukraine, but if push came to shove, they'd die by the thousands for Texas.
The question is: what kind of war do you want to be prepared for? The existential war to preserve your nation's "Texas" or the war against irregulars on the imperial periphery?
The latter, I think, comes with signifiant constraints vis-a-vis the public not present with the former.
> I'm not sure the public conditioning against losses is strengthening.
This is a very interesting point. On the one hand, we had a policy of "not a single tear" on other as a result of blocking early treatment, many died ... and it passed unnoticed ... or at least posed no threat to TPTB. So it seems that the control of information flow has a significant impact on the perception of losses.
> propaganda system is quite adept at convincing the public
Yes. It look like understanding how crowd control works has developed much more than people's ability to notice it, let alone to resist it effectively.
> I expect also that the type of war matters.
Oh, sure... but the question is, are we talking about reality or its presentation?
For Russian propaganda, SMO is defending its own people, for the West it is an act of aggression. Is Western propaganda less effective than Russian?...
> they'd die by the thousands for Texas.
And here we have to ask ourselves whether the planners will take into an account their information dominance when designing weapons or will they want to prepare for each variant and prefer a solution that is better from the point of view of PR ... and gives better income?
Maybe weapon systems SHOULD be "good enough"... but there are many reasons why they are what they are.
> The existential war to preserve your nation's "Texas" or the war against irregulars on the imperial periphery?
For Russians, the existential war is business as usual. For Americans it is failure of their government... At this point I am speculating because I am not an American. Saying that, I doubt blue haired crowd is ready for high losses even in case of TPTB having total information dominance... but I have the impression that we have moved far away from the topic of the philosophy of designing weapons.
If you go on some telegram channels there are lots of videos put out by the Russian side and the artillery bombardments are insane. Huge cannon to rocket artillery where you can see the shockwaves cascading outwards. There are drones and soldiers directing this often and it’s deadly.
Recently the Kamikaze drones from Iran are being used and if you are not killed you have arms and legs blown off. I hear that the Russian advantage in delivery of rounds is 10 to 1 yet the west is now running out if supplies
As Auruluen details how do you fix this situation to even gain parity with Artillery alone?
This rather detailed discourse appears to overlook that the United States disarmed after the First World War. Nevertheless, its Army, Navy, and Air Force performed well enough to defeat experienced and well-positioned enemy forces during the Second World War. There were not years available to prepare; but the country managed, indeed excelled. That historical fact casts a great deal of shade on the argument presented here.
There were a number of things to consider wrt the return of US as a military power in WW2.
1. US did not disarm as thoroughly after World War I as people think. Navy remained enormous, as large as Britain's and, in many ways, better resources.
2. There're a lot of similarities between the Reichswehr and US Army, as they were operating under similar constraints--Treaty of Versailles forbade large military organization for Germany, while Congress and Isolationist political tradition for US Army, but they also had numerous officers who drew up contingency plans in case they needed to "go big" again. US Army did not resort to setting up training camps abroad and such tricks, but there were officers who planned out how to organize logistics, training, etc in case they had to process, train, equip, and supply millions of new recruits in a hurry and mapped out in much detail how much of what would be required and where. They did, after all, have the experience of World War I.
3. Last, and most importantly, US military and industry went on quasi wartime footing in 1940: US began conscription in 1940, Lend Lease began in the Spring of 1941 (and the industry was already being mobilized in 1940 anyways), and so forth. So US was already partially mobilized for war for more than a year before Pearl Harbor. Yet, actually mobilizing the war machine to high gear and running it smoothly took time: US was not really ready to "go big" until at least halfway through 1943, 3 full years after starting to mobilize and 1 1/2 years of being at war.
Are there the kind of preparations to "go big" in place comparable to those based on WW1 experience, in any country? I don't know, but I don't think Europeans do and US has changed direction so many times since 1990 so that I wonder how much of the Cold War era preparations remain in place. It appears that Russians still have a lot of their preparations in place, though. But, even then, to reiterate Aurelien's point, even during WW2, it took years to get mobilized properly, when things were simpler and most "industrial" countries had a lot of factories that were "close enough." Not only are things more complicated, we don't have factories and factory workers any more (we are "post industrial," but you can't convert hedge fund offices to make tanks the way you could car factories), let alone those that are "close enough" to war materials. And all these cone before the mindset of the people--what people expect and how much they are willing to put up with. Not saying it'll never happen, but it will be difficult.
There are no 'historical facts' but, if there were, recall that Russia and China defeated Germany and Japan and the only time the US army faced an undefeated foe was agains a PLA volunteer force in Korea, where our boys threw down their weapons and literally ran away. We are not prepared to fight peers.
Mr Roberts, did the United States not fight the German Army, commanded by Erwin Rommel, in North Africa? Did it not invade Italy successfully, and proceed, against bitter opposition, up the peninsula?
Well, of course it did. The historical fact (something which you deny exists) that Russia for three years successfully dealt with the entire weight of the German armed forces does not alter the equally valid historical fact that the United States, from a virtually demobilized position in December, 1941, in short order -- by November 1942 -- was fighting against Germans in North Africa (losing at the Battler of Kasserine Pass, yes, but not catastrophically).
I do not accept as historical fact your assertion that Russia and China defeated Japan.
Now that a couple of days have passed and the "first responder" commentariat is done, I will sneak in (hopefully unnoticed) and say my piece.
First and foremost, thank you for your time and efforts on this. I have enjoyed immensely the posts and have usually agreed more than disagreed with your thought thus far.
On this post, and after reading the comments, I have come to the conclusion there are a lot of folks out there who have "drank the Koolaid" concerning the omniscience and omnipotence of the US military.
This is a mistake, because in truth, the US military really isn't all that impressive nor has it ever been. We like to preen and crow about our lackluster efforts in WWII, but the truth of the matter is that the US saw WWII as more of a "full-employment" program than a serious shot at war. I strongly recommend that folks review the statistics presented at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#Human_losses_by_country
I find the second and third columns especially enlightening.
WWI is similar in results. The US Stands back, turns a tidy profit, then jumps in at the last minute to preen and grab another unearned laurel crown.
I will probably be castigated by the commentariat by my lack of faith in the American Military Tradition. But having spent time bungling through the jungle in SE Asia too many years ago and coming from a family who haven't missed a war since 1812 (all as NCO's) I find people who have faith in American military competence to be a nearly endless source of amusement.
No need to avoid being a 'first responder' - anyone coming to this site will almost by definition read all the below-the-line posts.
"But to run down your defence forces, treat Russia as an enemy, and then not understand the consequences, must rank as the most miserable, brain-dead foreign and security policy decision since 1945."
Oh yeah! And historically, Russia is a friend of The USA, not an enemy.
Today, London (Johnson/Truss) and Washington (Nuland/Power) are attacking Eurasia in toto and in stultitia from trivially personal motivations. Europe is the western peninsula of Eurasia. https://therevdavidrgraham.substack.com/p/three-eyes
Two supplementary points in addition to the supremely well made points in the article:
a) The obvious one: the EU is currently undergoing a sharp rise in both the costs and the actual supply of gas and oil with which to manufacture any armaments.
b) Arms manufacturing in the 'west' is geared mainly at attaining profits. Actual efficacy in use is a very secondary aim. (Examples of this are: the UK 'Daring class destroyers, the US Navy 'Littoral' ships and new carriers, and the F-22 and F-35 aeroplanes, which all have extensive flaws, liabilities and design failures. Anyone desiring further information can consult the 'Military Watch Magazine' - which as far as I can ascertain, is reasonably impartial). Plus the US is failing to deal with a wide range of infrastructure problems, including the school and penitentiary systems, transport, sewage etc. - mainly because all the money goes to the for-profit arms industry. This is not conducive to having a civil society which can support a long war.
The Russians deserve to win. Serves us well in the west for not being able to build a culture of peace and cooperation when we had ample opportunity.
To this I would add the differences of philosophy that make it possible for Russia to maintain such awful (in the old sense of the term) military capabilities despite an economy recently enervated by the barbarian invasions of the 1990s.
It seems that in the West, military procurement--as you mention--emphasizes small numbers of expensive and sophisticated equipment. By its complex nature, this equipment is liable to malfunction and requires an equally complex and expensive support structure to function on the battlefield. Unfortunately, the enemy gets to participate in war as well and will no doubt seek to disrupt the support structures this sophisticated technology relies on.
My point is that the west invests enormous sums of money in technologies that may prove fragile in the face of the enemy. Even if it isn't fragile, the West can only produce small numbers of them.
The Russians, meanwhile, focus more on simpler "good enough" style equipment that's cheap to produce, that can be manufactured in massive quantities, and that do not rely on a sophisticated network to function. For instance, Russians do not seem to use "smart" shells for their howitzers, meaning they function whether or not the satellite positioning systems are still in orbit.
That's not to say the Russians don't produce state-of-the-art arms. Rather, they seem to make intelligent decisions about which arms need to be sophisticated and which arms are "good enough". The clearest example of this is the Russian S-series of ground-based air-defense systems. As far as I can tell, these are the best in the world and enable the overwhelming numerical superiority in "good enough" simple systems to be decisive on the battlefield by ensuring such systems are protected from missiles, areal bombing, and even drones.
To your observations regarding conditions necessary for the West's rearmament, I would add a change of philosophy away from complexity-favoring to simplicity-favoring. This would, I think, help soften the challenges inherent in building a new arms manufacturing base from scratch.
> To your observations regarding conditions necessary for the West's rearmament, I would add a change of philosophy away from complexity-favoring to simplicity-favoring.
Was it not related to a general aversion to loss of staff? Has something changed in this aspect?
It is hard to avoid comparable losses using comparable equipment. Ceteris paribus of course... but war is quite good equalizer of approaches.
"Built for profit" is one thing, but having comparable equipment is not an option if you have to take into account the public's response to losses.
If anything, we should consider that this conditioning will only strengthen ... unless society changes in unexpected ways.
Yes, I agree--but I'm not sure the public conditioning against losses is strengthening.
The covid pandemic proved that the public is willing to bear enormous loss and that the propaganda system is quite adept at convincing the public to be happy beasts of burden!
I expect also that the type of war matters. For example, Americans may not be willing to bear all that much personally for Afghanistan or even Ukraine, but if push came to shove, they'd die by the thousands for Texas.
The question is: what kind of war do you want to be prepared for? The existential war to preserve your nation's "Texas" or the war against irregulars on the imperial periphery?
The latter, I think, comes with signifiant constraints vis-a-vis the public not present with the former.
> I'm not sure the public conditioning against losses is strengthening.
This is a very interesting point. On the one hand, we had a policy of "not a single tear" on other as a result of blocking early treatment, many died ... and it passed unnoticed ... or at least posed no threat to TPTB. So it seems that the control of information flow has a significant impact on the perception of losses.
> propaganda system is quite adept at convincing the public
Yes. It look like understanding how crowd control works has developed much more than people's ability to notice it, let alone to resist it effectively.
> I expect also that the type of war matters.
Oh, sure... but the question is, are we talking about reality or its presentation?
For Russian propaganda, SMO is defending its own people, for the West it is an act of aggression. Is Western propaganda less effective than Russian?...
> they'd die by the thousands for Texas.
And here we have to ask ourselves whether the planners will take into an account their information dominance when designing weapons or will they want to prepare for each variant and prefer a solution that is better from the point of view of PR ... and gives better income?
Maybe weapon systems SHOULD be "good enough"... but there are many reasons why they are what they are.
> The existential war to preserve your nation's "Texas" or the war against irregulars on the imperial periphery?
For Russians, the existential war is business as usual. For Americans it is failure of their government... At this point I am speculating because I am not an American. Saying that, I doubt blue haired crowd is ready for high losses even in case of TPTB having total information dominance... but I have the impression that we have moved far away from the topic of the philosophy of designing weapons.
If you go on some telegram channels there are lots of videos put out by the Russian side and the artillery bombardments are insane. Huge cannon to rocket artillery where you can see the shockwaves cascading outwards. There are drones and soldiers directing this often and it’s deadly.
Recently the Kamikaze drones from Iran are being used and if you are not killed you have arms and legs blown off. I hear that the Russian advantage in delivery of rounds is 10 to 1 yet the west is now running out if supplies
As Auruluen details how do you fix this situation to even gain parity with Artillery alone?
This rather detailed discourse appears to overlook that the United States disarmed after the First World War. Nevertheless, its Army, Navy, and Air Force performed well enough to defeat experienced and well-positioned enemy forces during the Second World War. There were not years available to prepare; but the country managed, indeed excelled. That historical fact casts a great deal of shade on the argument presented here.
There were a number of things to consider wrt the return of US as a military power in WW2.
1. US did not disarm as thoroughly after World War I as people think. Navy remained enormous, as large as Britain's and, in many ways, better resources.
2. There're a lot of similarities between the Reichswehr and US Army, as they were operating under similar constraints--Treaty of Versailles forbade large military organization for Germany, while Congress and Isolationist political tradition for US Army, but they also had numerous officers who drew up contingency plans in case they needed to "go big" again. US Army did not resort to setting up training camps abroad and such tricks, but there were officers who planned out how to organize logistics, training, etc in case they had to process, train, equip, and supply millions of new recruits in a hurry and mapped out in much detail how much of what would be required and where. They did, after all, have the experience of World War I.
3. Last, and most importantly, US military and industry went on quasi wartime footing in 1940: US began conscription in 1940, Lend Lease began in the Spring of 1941 (and the industry was already being mobilized in 1940 anyways), and so forth. So US was already partially mobilized for war for more than a year before Pearl Harbor. Yet, actually mobilizing the war machine to high gear and running it smoothly took time: US was not really ready to "go big" until at least halfway through 1943, 3 full years after starting to mobilize and 1 1/2 years of being at war.
Are there the kind of preparations to "go big" in place comparable to those based on WW1 experience, in any country? I don't know, but I don't think Europeans do and US has changed direction so many times since 1990 so that I wonder how much of the Cold War era preparations remain in place. It appears that Russians still have a lot of their preparations in place, though. But, even then, to reiterate Aurelien's point, even during WW2, it took years to get mobilized properly, when things were simpler and most "industrial" countries had a lot of factories that were "close enough." Not only are things more complicated, we don't have factories and factory workers any more (we are "post industrial," but you can't convert hedge fund offices to make tanks the way you could car factories), let alone those that are "close enough" to war materials. And all these cone before the mindset of the people--what people expect and how much they are willing to put up with. Not saying it'll never happen, but it will be difficult.
There are no 'historical facts' but, if there were, recall that Russia and China defeated Germany and Japan and the only time the US army faced an undefeated foe was agains a PLA volunteer force in Korea, where our boys threw down their weapons and literally ran away. We are not prepared to fight peers.
Mr Roberts, did the United States not fight the German Army, commanded by Erwin Rommel, in North Africa? Did it not invade Italy successfully, and proceed, against bitter opposition, up the peninsula?
Well, of course it did. The historical fact (something which you deny exists) that Russia for three years successfully dealt with the entire weight of the German armed forces does not alter the equally valid historical fact that the United States, from a virtually demobilized position in December, 1941, in short order -- by November 1942 -- was fighting against Germans in North Africa (losing at the Battler of Kasserine Pass, yes, but not catastrophically).
I do not accept as historical fact your assertion that Russia and China defeated Japan.
The British defeated Rommel's forces at El Alamein, primarily because the RN cut off fuel shipments to him.
As to who won the war, the best quantitative study is Europe at War 1939-1945: No Simple Victory by Norman Davies.