rickair7777

Probably giving RU waaaayyyy too much credit, odds are good they were simply operating at the "crawl" stage of competency, and effed up when they assessed that would be good enough. Pleny of deets have come out about the state of RU military readiness recently, and it ain't pretty.

And by the way WE can most certainly still execute joint warfare. Without getting too far into the details, satellites and drones require full access to the EM spectrum... suggestions that we'd suffer the same fate is just RU fan-boy delusion.

Excargodog

I don't think the article addresses Russian competency or incompetency so much as the author's assertion of the necessity for extended wars to address the defense industrial base. Against anything approaching a near peer competitor an extended war will depend on either the extent of war materiel in your war readiness inventory and the inventory of trained (or at least partially trained) troops in reserve.

We have adopted a number of efficiencies that worked fairly well in civilian applications - at least pre COVID) (globalization, just-in-time supply chains, etc.) that are showing them selves to be quite limiting over a two year war. Current Raytheon US production of Patriot missiles for example they are struggling to increase from ~550 units a year to 650 units a year.

The Navy is in even worse shape and is now looking at farming out their maintenance to India and other foreign nations since the redundancy we once had in Navy and commercial shipyards (and the industries that support them) got carved away through globalization and BRAC efficiencies.

https://www.defensenews.com/naval/2024/02/06/south-korea-us-explore-joint-ship-weapons-maintenance-opportunities/

https://www.thedefensepost.com/2024/04/08/indian-shipyard-us-navy/

I think what the author is saying is that the military needs to pay more attention to readiness for long term combat, not that he's giving Russia any particular credit, and he certainly is no "Russian fanboy" based on his other writings.

rickair7777

I agree that peer/near contingency opens up the prospect for an extended conflict.

But my sense (acquired via osmosis and even participation in the room) is that philosophically our leaders' intent is to wrap things up relatively quickly, ie shock-and-awe. Take away their toys, then they can either settle up, or be contained while they continue to make token lashing-out gestures over a longer period.

And while it's certainly prudent to consider peer conflicts, I don't see any real prospect of any likely adversary reaching peer status relative to us in the near-term...

RU: No commentary needed. They are protected by their nukes, but they obviously cannot actually project power in any meaningful way.

PRC: Quantity doesn't automatically trump quality. I'll just leave this here without any elaboration (do your own research): submarines. Although PRC may set themselves up to hide behind a strategic nuke aresenal, and appear to be attempting to do so. That might keep other nations from interfering in a Taiwan scenario. It sort of worked for RU, no overt NATO boots on ground in UA.

Excargodog

Intent is one thing. Ability is another. Here was our intent in Afghanistan:

https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/issues/defense/afghanistan#:~:text=To%20accomplish%20this%2C%20he %20said,lead%20responsibility%20for%20Afghanistan' s%20future.
Hard to say we accomplished much of that.


Enough to take us on in CONUS? Of course not. But enough to engage us locally in our job as world policeman - yeah, they could. Heck, they have.


Which makes our NATO allies claims that they must be stopped (mostly by us) in Ukraine or they will roll over all of Europe what? Just another attempt to get us continuing to pay for their defense? Because you are right, their ability to project power militarily isn't that great. They lost a war in Afghanistan too, despite the lesser logistics burden it imposed on them.

We certainly have advantages in the metallurgical field with submarines in what? Two shipyards? And we are conserving that advantage (and others) by continuing low rate production probably even excess to our requirements. But that's sort of an isolated example. A German Panzer was superior to a Sherman tank in WWII also, but not to two or three of them. And other nations have their quality systems as well. For that matter after they shut down Space Shuttle flights the US was importing rocket engines from Russia. And the real heavy equipment exported from China today (and their overall shipyard capacity) greatly exceeds our own and there are some things almost everyone buys from China because we no longer have the infrastructure to competitively produce it.

https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local...china/2411897/

https://www.npr.org/2024/02/21/12329...ecurity-threat

So I find myself in at least partial agreement with Col Vershinin's RUSI article. I think for a prolonged war the industrial base and logistics becomes a larger factor and one that high tech doesn't completely offset, especially once the shooting actually starts. A "force multiplier" concept becomes a loss multiplier when the casualties start to pile up. I'm not against high tech weapons certainly, but affordable high tech or even affordable medium tech might actually be preferable in a serious (non nuclear) fight. The Zumwalt might well be the finest destroyer ever built but the entire class is only going to be three ships because they cost $4.4 billion each even after you write off the R&D costs
which were another $10 billion.

rickair7777

Apples to Oranges. We don't have the capacity or intent to invade, take over, and rebuild any near-peer adversaries. The shock and awe part went just fine.

This isn't all-out world war that we're talking about, more like pre-20th century great power conflicts.



They can't engage us in CONUS or really anywhere but their own back yard. That's what we're planning for, and building coalitions for (the locals are getting on board these days).


Yes the euros need to pony up. That's a tactical detail, the alliance strategy has worked fine so far.


I wasn't talking about long-term industrial base issues, just the Fight Tonight situation. PRC cannot compete in the submarine realm, and that's not changing much this decade.

Definitely something that needs to be addressed long term, but it doesn't matter at the moment.

Our submarine capabilities amount to near-supremacy, even a moderate imbalance in quantity won't matter. Undersea dominance is huge... negates their undersea capabilities and also exposes their surface capabilities, including the sitting-duck amphibs needs to cross the strait.


I would agree that DoD (and whole of government) needs a plan to spool up the industrial base *if* we get into a big, long-term conflict.

But I don't see that happening, when you're marching armies through other people's cities they take it personally and become very, very motivated. But that's not what any reasonably plausible conflict will look like, it will be a short naval and air engagement followed by either low-intensity stalemate or a settlement on terms favorable to the victor. Possible exception in Korea, but we'll do the shock and awe and then let the Koreans clean up the mess.

The big difference we'll see with a near-peer things is that we will lose airplanes and *some* ships. The US public hasn't seen the latter in a long time, and it will be eye opening.

Historically the public has rallied when that sort of thing happens. It's the long, drawn out infantry slug-fests which they tend to tire of.

Excargodog

...money to Ukraine. Is it anything BUT rhetoric? This article asserts that it isn't.

https://www.politico.eu/article/lond...war-sanctions/

An excerpt:

Excargodog

https://www.defensenews.com/global/e...ot-bottleneck/

Sliceback

Mike Tyson - "Everyone has a plan until they get punched."

"No plan survives after the first contact with the enemy." (various different versions and authors).


We've had 3 presidents since we went into Iraq and Afghanistan. Did any of their visions work out as planned?

Excargodog

Nope, indicating one would think that their visions were unrealistic. The scary thing is that those unrealistic visions flowed from pretty much the same dogma that still governs many of our current foreign policy decisions.

Although there is no real shame in not winning in Afghanistan. We are hardly the first to find out the hard way that the juice ain't worth the squeeze.

rickair7777

There never was any "Juice" for the US. It was just a "you break it, you bought it" outlook, and a slight incentive to not allow a "homeland" for AQ, et al.

The latter I think has been accomplished, the Taliban learned their lesson in 2001, and won't be too eager to export terror or tolerate it for a while.