Can the West still provide the arsenal of democracy?
Jokes and SLS aside, interesting and insightful article on modern industrial war and capabilities in Russia and the West.
TLDR: To wage large scale industrial war you need a massive industrial and manufacturing base to supply your population and army. The West outsourced those capabilities. Oops.
In short, US annual artillery production would at best only last for 10 days to two weeks of combat in Ukraine. If the initial estimate of Russian shells fired is over by 50%, it would only extend the artillery supplied for three weeks.
In a recent war game involving US, UK and French forces, UK forces exhausted national stockpiles of critical ammunition after eight days.
Lockheed Martin produces about 2,100 [Javelin] missiles a year, though this number might ramp up to 4,000 in a few years. Ukraine claims to use 500 Javelin missiles every day.
The Russians have fired between 1,100 and 2,100 missiles. The US currently purchases 110 PRISM, 500 JASSM and 60 Tomahawk cruise missiles annually
How fucking crazy is it the Russians can do this with like 1/10 the military budget?
Turns out a multibillion $ streaming service bloats your GDP, but doesn’t produce anything materially needed in case of war. Also turns out capitalism creates the conditions for its own undoing.
And we’ve been saying this shit from day fucking one.
The US defense budget is an inefficient nightmare. There is so much bloat, cash being pocketed, contract steering, useless R&D that will yield nothing, and general price gouging by the contractors that our budget probably doesn’t get us much more if anything more than the Russian budget. In 2016 the boston globe found 80% of generals took posts in defense contracting and consulting after retirement. This means that literally every contract they signed off on while an officer they were at least considering going to work for the firms afterward. My father who worked with the military said that it was more like 90% and that the ones who don’t directly go to work for contractors end up working on wall street or in think tanks designed to fuel the defense industry. 20% of the defense budget goes to five firms…
The biggest issue my father flagged for me was culture. We have a military culture that is increasingly un-meritocratic and generally speaking leads to GROSS incompetence, mistrust, and misbehavior. Furthermore, the officer corps is (1) arrogant as all fuck, and/or (2) stupid. The same discontent we see among civilians is present among the enlisted men and women, just even more to the right unfortunately.
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The US defense budget is an inefficient nightmare. There is so much bloat, cash being pocketed, contract steering, useless R&D that will yield nothing, and general price gouging by the contractors that our budget probably doesn’t get us much more if anything more than the Russian budget. In 2016 the boston globe found 80% of generals took posts in defense contracting and consulting after retirement. This means that literally every contract they signed off on while an officer they were at least considering going to work for the firms afterward. My father who worked with the military said that it was more like 90% and that the ones who don’t directly go to work for contractors end up working on wall street or in think tanks designed to fuel the defense industry. 20% of the defense budget goes to five firms…
The biggest issue my father flagged for me was culture. We have a military culture that is increasingly un-meritocratic and generally speaking leads to GROSS incompetence, mistrust, and misbehavior. Furthermore, the officer corps is (1) arrogant as all fuck, and/or (2) stupid. The same discontent we see among civilians is present among the enlisted men and women, just even more to the right unfortunately.