The Morning Rant: Minimalist Edition

Ukraine's border war with Russia is a small conflict. No matter what the hysterics and the military/industrial complex grifters say about it, the odds of it expanding into the rest of Europe are low. Russia has demonstrated its military limitations in a conventional conflict by being unable to achieve its modest goals in Ukraine after 900 days of operations.

If the evaluations of the various European countries that are much closer to that conflict than America were suggestive of an expansion into central Europe, there would be a much more energetic push, including troops on the ground and the use of European air power. It is telling that there is a lot of talk, mostly pushing NATO (that means America) to do more, but absent French and German troops on the front lines, that is political blather designed to maximize American participation.

But...many people see the conflict as indicative of the future of warfare, with cheap commercial drones repurposed as surprisingly effective weapons of war, and the battle space that was expected to be overwhelmed by high tech missiles and stealth aircraft are instead being controlled by counter measures that are surprisingly effective.

But they are still churning through those weapons at a startling rate, in addition to the incredible expenditure of low-tech artillery shells and plain old rifle ammo.

And as Kurt Schlichter observes, In post-industrial America, we can't build those weapons fast enough to supply our own forces in the event of a major conflict. Add in the typical stupidity of our procurement process, the refocusing of our military on more important things like what shade of red pumps goes with BDUs, and the resupply of Ukraine and Israel without a robust system to replace that weaponry, and we are in a bit of a pickle.

What Is Happening in the Ukraine War Should Scare the Hell Out of Us

Here’s what no one talks about because it’s not exciting or cool – America fights with logistics. We overwhelm the enemy with stuff, including stuff that goes “Boom!” In the Gulf War, we moved a city to the middle of the desert, then moved it forward in an attack. But we can’t do that today. Our military-industrial base has withered. The arsenal of democracy has become the gun-safe of democracy. We cannot just spin up to rearm once the next war – which is coming – starts. That goes for artillery tubes, tanks, planes, and ships – the Chinese Navy is now bigger than ours and growing exponentially faster. Maybe their stuff is not as good as ours ship-to-ship – though with the Chinese spies here in America running rampant stealing our secrets because the FBI is busy arresting grandmas for praying at abortion mills, their ships probably are our ships – but the enemy has something we do not have. It’s “quantity.”

The fighting in Ukraine diverges massively from how we train to fight. Look at the drone factor. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using drones as precision weapons – the web is full of videos of drones taking out tanks, fortifications, and individual soldiers. Our enemies know about it. Hamas used drones to take ou[t] IDF defenses on October 7th. Our bases in the Middle East are getting hit with cheap drones; we have taken dead and wounded from them. We’re not droning up like the enemy; we’re not prepared to defend against the swarms of them that are coming.

The Ukrainian and Russians are innovating, adapting, and improvising, finding new solutions to new problems. Our ossified military, which once relied on American ingenuity to win, cannot do that. At the procurement level, our methods of buying new weapons are guaranteed to provide the wrong system for too much money far too late. At the soldier level, innovation will be discouraged by a risk-averse officer corps with warfighting as its last priority. Do you think US troops are going to be able to obtain a bunch of cheap drones and make them into tank killers themselves without going through some arduous process? They innovated in Ukraine, though. Our future foe will be nimble, agile, and run circles around our bureaucracy.

The counter-argument is that what Schlichter describes has always been the status quo before America's wars. And that is correct. Sclerotic and rigid officers and civilian management of our armed forces is typical, but are quickly retired and revamped and refocused as we are blooded. But the logistics time line in modern warfare is measured in years, not weeks. Spooling up to build 300,000 warplanes in World War II took us a short time. Spooling up nonexistent industries to build incredibly complex modern weaponry will take far longer, and even basic stuff like artillery shells and small-arms ammunition will be problematic. And those officers? Where are we going to find the good ones to replace the lipstick-wearing cross-dressers?

The reality is that we are already far behind, and a Harris/Walz/Obama administration will be the final nail in the coffin of American influence in the Pacific, and very possibly everywhere else!

[Crossposted at CutJibNewsletter]

posted by CBD at 11:00 AM

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