“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.
> Now, the key is having the fundamental ability to control something your enemy literally can’t live without.
Tax money. When the currency inflation rate turns the exponential corner into hyperinflation, the tax system stops being able to transfer wealth. The Federal Reserve is secretly controlled by libertarians, as it’s going to make paying government employees impossible. Losing control of Hormuz was the last missing piece of the historical pattern of losing reserve currency status: 105 years, overspending on social causes, and a naval defeat.
Watching “conservatives” who are actually liberals and “libertarians” who are actually conservatives attempt to reverse this by talking will be fun.
It will be. And when it goes, it will go quickly.
The Articles of Confederation led by a slippery slope to the government we have today. No one has yet invented terracing for that slippery slope. If you want a government as small as the AoC, you are on the liberals’ team.
The system was made to be torn down and rebuilt. I didn’t want to wait until it was so far gone. 1900 would have been better.
Oddly, the U.S. controls advanced computer chips as well. There’s a quartz mine in Spruce Pine, NC that has the purest quartz in the world. You cannot make modern computer chips without a crucible from there. I have no idea if we’re taking any kind of strategic advantage from this.
Dunno. Easier to make quartz than oil, would be my bet.
“Portable star”. Heh. Good one. The 1945 Hiroshima and Nagasaki ATOMIC bombs got “as hot as the sun” thru fission (the splitting of uranium and plutonium atoms) so were technically not “portable stars” since stars aren’t powered by fission. Those would be (1952 to present) HYDROGEN or H-bombs (aka “thermonuclear”), which use fusion to combine hydrogen atoms into helium atoms and release energy- exactly like stars do.
Tho practically, if you stood beside either type them when they detonated, I’m pretty sure you would be unable to tell the difference.
Anyway, drones. We always thought nukes would be the trigger for World War III. Turns out it’s gonna be drones. They say necessity is the mother of invention, and since the mothers of Ukraine cannot turn out meatbag soldiers fast enough, Zelenskyy and his cohorts have birthed an incredible array and quantity of drones to bring the Russian army to a standstill, clobber the Russian nuclear strike force in Operation Spiderweb, and turn the Russian energy industry into ash – all while NATO cheers them on.
https://newsukraine.rbc.ua/news/new-russian-recruits-reportedly-survive-only-1782723171.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb
https://www.kyivpost.com/videos/78987
Folks, with half of Moscow’s petroleum capacity getting wiped out last week, it’s time to face up to the fact that we are now only at the Churchill-ian “end of the beginning” of World War III. Russia is gonna be forced to escalate – because of drones.
No random (but small, not chained) fusion events? That’s a lotta pressure and heat . . .
It is apparently “evolution of modern warfare” week in the dissident blogosphere.
Grillers have World Cup. Dissents have warfare/vigilante fantasies. Dopamine gonna dopamine. Monday morning they all meet at the watercolor and talk about the stock market. We are all in this together.
Hahahaha. Love it.
I know! I was already had my outline done when I saw yours. Great minds!
” … with more guns and banks and planes and bombs equaling victory” I’m thinking that “banks” should be “tanks”, but I guess “banks” works there too.
Since “the idea to war now is to deprive your enemy of something they can’t live without”, it seems like the target in the desert countries should be water desalination plants.
Yikes! Fixed, thank you!
Yes, that’s a critical hit for them.
Love the “…leaving Ohio to go to a professional football game…”
That’s incorrect. Both the Bungles & Brown Shirts won’t play Woody State.
Aren’t they their JV? Also, nowadays I think they have a lower payroll.
Love the “…leaving Ohio to go to a professional football game…”
That’s incorrect. Both the Bungles & Brown Shirts won’t play Woody State.
We have to stick with the old reliables million dollar missiles, billion dollar(s) ships and fighter planes or what do we do with all these leather Top Gun jackets?
-the Big 3
Ohhh, a floating merch store!
imho the first navy with drone launch capable submarines will run the world.
Already been tried.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400-class_submarine
The adage is “amateurs think tactics, professionals think logistics.”
What are the logistical consequences of driving industry offshore with regulation, running up an unpayable amount of national debt, and requiring hiring to not be done by merit? Does that mean big government supporters are professionals?
No consequences to all of that. None at all. We won World War II! Now back to teaching the H-1B guy your job.
Yes. And there are a lot of critical hits around the world.
The US is making/has made the same mistake the Germans did during WW2…over-engineering their weapons. True,one on one, a Tiger 2 tank can whip a Russian or US tank then into a pile of scrap, but both nations could make many more of theirs, they used the “Minimum viable product” model to fight. The Germans had the problem of limited resources, so tried to compensate with better weapons (1st Assault Rifle, 1st nightvision sight, 1st ballistic missile, 1st drone style rocket, 1st jet engine, 1st flying wing, 1st rocket powered fighter, etc. etc. you get the idea, they were Giga-Chads).
The US, however, had all the resources it could ask for, and I think that’s what did them in, no constraints to work against. Also the WW2 production miracle was basically a one time bonus, a day zero exploit on the Axis, post war, Industry got together and realized they could ride the gravy-est of gravy trains into the sunset by making the MIC. $15,000 Hammers, etc. “gotta get those Commies” turned into cost plus ask me no questions and I’ll tell you no lies industrial policy for the military, which ended up breaking the US, economically in the 70s w the gold window closing.
While the battle space has changed, the MIC will make sure a drone costs minimum several million dollars, they’re used to getting a handful of mil per PAC,SM, or THADD interceptor, so that’s gonna end up being the minimum price to play. Until some cheap ammo, or directed energy method of taking down large numbers of drones, missiles at scale and speed is developed, the gains for asymmetrical warfare/national defense will allow a level of parity that probable hasnt been seen since before the invention of the crossbow.
So the next few decades are a time the US is gonna have to step gingerly on the world stage, and if the BRICS nations were as smart as cunning, they’d see right now is a time to strike they won;t have for generations, lucky for the world they’re not very good at acting in a coordinated manner.
LOL the Germans mistake was to put 40% of their resources into the mass killing of Jews. But I bet you don’t believe that happened.
Scott-
The Germans captured a Jeep (in North Africa, I believe). Their mechanics laughed at its simplicity but figured out quickly why that was important. EZ for its crew to repair and durable. Seemingly an unlimited supply. Destroy one, and it was immediately replaced.
German vehicles were more complex and required specialized techs to repair. Fewer in number too.
All in flat packs, and I think it took one size of wrench and one type of screwdriver to assemble/work on.
I heard a story of a Luftwaffe pilot who was captured after he had shot up dozens of American planes on the ground near the airstrip. During the interrogation as the German was bragging about it, the G.I. took him outside to show that every single plane had already been replaced with a new one. The German sighed. “And that is why we are losing.”
They’e finally catching up to WWI technology. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kettering_Bug
Nice. Add GPS, and you’re there.
Old war games are fun like Beachhead with twin 50cal turret on beach.
It gets going so fast I LOL.
War is always attrition and bold strike first wins.
And concentrated power at a single point . . . but not so much anymore.
https://twitter.com/i/status/2071426765734781067
this may be a partial reason..you don’t win while in judgement
Bear spray and bb guns.