“You led us into a war zone with no way out?” – Inception
Also, when cats rebel in the Navy, is that mewtiny?
“Get there first with the most men,” is a quote that is attributed to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. This was translated by the New York Times® in 1917 as “Git thar fustest with the most mostest” because, well, because of course they did.
This reached its zenith during World War II. Defeating Germany and Japan wasn’t so much of a military operation but was rather an economic operation. It was the economy that could produce the mostest fustest.
One example is the aircraft carrier. The United States entered World War II with eight aircraft carriers, of which seven were “fleet carriers” and the other one was a small “escort” carrier.
It ended with 28 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers, and over 70 escort carriers, making (best guess) 101 operational carriers on in August, 1945 when Japan surrendered after we dropped two portable stars on their island. This worked. We could afford to build the planes, atomic bombs, and the ships while still having enough money left over to afford to get a couple of nice ribeyes.
We didn’t just outproduce the Axis, we outproduced them so thoroughly that by the end of the war we had more aircraft carriers than most countries have paved roads.
When the Navy recruiter asked if I could swim, I asked him, “Why? Have we run out of ships?”
World War II and the following Cold War were economic wars. How much capital could the United States and the Soviet Union throw into weapons programs to get there fustest with the mostest? Well, trillions. Ultimately, the sheer cost of Soviet weapons programs combined with their crappy commie economy caused the whole thing to fall over.
The United States had perfected Modern Warfare, which was really just having the economy produce millions of tons of weapons that we hoped never to use, and occasionally smashing a country with a few missiles or invading Iraq and Afghanistan a couple of times. Our technology was amazing. Our previous capital investments allowed us to win any sort of World War II battle we might run into. You know, if Rommel and the Bockauge Korps appears from a parallel universe and decides to invade Ohio.
Yay! I knew we could do it!
There’s a city in Ohio called Engagement. It’s between Dayton and Marion.
But things change, and technology changes.
The biggest change to the world has been the cheap drone. It’s not cheap when the military does it, since the military procurement process makes things stupidly expensive. On Amazon®, there is a drone available that will carry a 30-kilogram payload. An M107 155mm projectile carries about 7kg of explosive. I have no idea what Comp B costs, but the drone is $15,000 retail, so a nation can buy those in bulk and air drop the equivalent of an M107 shell with ease and with precision for less than $20,000 a trip, and, say, less than $2,000 if you reuse the drone.
An M777 155mm howitzer costs over $4million. To be fair, the Pentagon could turn that $15,000 drone into a $2million program if allowed to, complete with a 47 page PowerPoint© about diversity, equity, and inclusion plus the requirement that it have a non-gendered toilet. This is our military’s true superpower.
I hear that in California they have a beach covered in frozen waffles: Sandy Eggo®.
The capital model of build more stuff that gets there quickly that the Soviets Russians relied on when they invaded Ukraine broke down because it’s now changed. A $4million tank can be taken out easily by the cheap drone. In fact, I’d imagine you could get more than 300 of the drones for the price of one tank, and if you re-use them just twice, that’s 600 to 1200 shots perfectly on target, which isn’t warfare, it’s Prime Day© for explosions.
Sure, they’ve had to move to fiber-optics because of jamming.
The bigger problem has been the cheap drone plane, which are currently chewing up Russian refineries. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using them to attack each other. They’re cost is somewhere between $10,000 to $40,000 per unit, as a guess. These are cheaply made fixed wing planes that carry 100-pound warheads. Who needs a bomber? Who needs a pilot?
Now, for $40,000, one of these planes can easily cause $10,000,000 damage to an oil refinery.
Which brings us to the Strait of Hormuz.
The initial attacks on the vessels shipping sweet, sweet oil out to the world was done using $200,000-ish anti-ship missiles. That’s expensive, so recently they’ve swapped out and are using Shahed® fixed-wing drones that the Russian fixed-wing drones are based on. Again, cost is probably about $10,000 to $40,000 per unit.
The cost of the drones is probably about $750,000 to $5,000,000.
Total.
And what did that cost the economies of the world?
$1.5-$3 trillion.
That’s a 300,000 to 1 return at the low end.
If that works, it’ll be a crude awakening.
The previous models required men to be moved, and the more of them the better, with more guns and tanks and planes and bombs equaling victory. Victory was about who had the most capital, and who could bring the most people to the front and build the most bombers and have enough pilots to keep flying them.
In the new models, a base within missile or drone range isn’t an asset, it’s a target. The 11 supercarriers are now . . . targets.
They are very large, very expensive targets that need to be kept so far from the actual fighting that they’re mostly useful for looking impressive in press releases and photo ops. At $13 billion a ship with 6,000 personnel on board, we’ve somehow created a weapon so valuable we can’t afford to use it. It’s less of a warship than a very large, very slow hostage with its own zip code.
The final result of the “war is a capital competition” has produced a hostage with a flight deck that needs to stay a continent away from the fight and replaced thousands of men and billions of dollars with a guy, a laptop, and decent wifi.
And you don’t want to see the planned “Special Forces”.
War in an interconnected world has ceased to look anything like war from 1943. Like in the book Dune, the idea to war now is to deprive your enemy of something they can’t live without: “He who can destroy a thing, controls it.”
The Strait of Hormuz proves this, but it’s not the only inflection point where physical resources or the world’s economy is constrained.
Taiwan, for instance, produces 65% of the world’s computer chips. Taiwan also produces more than 90% of the most advanced chips.
China is vulnerable, too. The Strait of Malacca moves 80% of China’s oil. There are others. In a global, interconnected world getting there first with the most men is less important, or a navy that has to hide in a corner like my cat when I turn on the vacuum.
I never trust five star reviews on them, it’s really hard to get a perfect vacuum.
Now, the key is having the fundamental ability to control something your enemy literally can’t live without.
I’ll translate for the New York Times©: Take thet stauff they gots to hav.
