4 ms·

"Alexa, order a fire extinguisher."

silexia 5y ago
You mock, but in world war II America did not build its Navy, Air Force or Army until AFTER Pear Harbor was attacked. Then we built weapons that were customized to defeat the enemies we had.
- stirfish 5y ago
  That's a really great point, I hadn't considered that.
- nradov 5y ago
  That example no longer applies. Equipment is orders of magnitude more complex now. Entire supply chains have to be established which can take years regardless of how much funding you throw at the problem.
- thrower123 5y ago
  This has never been the doctrine of the Navy, because of the enormous capital expenditures and specialization, even going back to the days of sailing ships. It never worked out particularly well for the Army, either. Every war in US history before the establishment of a permanent standing army with NATO is a story of a hasty, disorganized clusterfuck for upwards of a year until a semi-professional organization was painfully established, and it's rarely until year two or three that a really effective force could ever be forged out of the tiny cadre of professionals and the mass influx of untrained volunteers or conscripts.
  - craftinator 5y ago
    > It never worked out particularly well for the Army, either. Which is funny, because as the original comment points out that until after we'd been attacked during WWII, we didn't have a significant standing army. After we were attacked, we started a large buildup, and ended up on the winning side. Every war the US engaged in since then, we've both already had a standing army, and we've LOST. So statistically at least, having a large standing army is more likely to lose us a war. To be fair, in all of those wars we've lost, there has been strategic ineptitude from the top down in each one. Vietnam was a bad idea, which is why the people of the US protested it so hard. Anything in the middle east has been a clusterf, and even the people choosing to go there knew it was stupid. I'll allow that Korea was somewhat sensible in terms of long-term defense, but even then it could've been handled better. But a standing army hasn't been winning us wars, that's for sure.

You mock, but in world war II America did not build its Navy, Air Force or Army until AFTER Pear Harbor was attacked. Then we built weapons that were customized to defeat the enemies we had.

stirfish 5y ago
That's a really great point, I hadn't considered that.
nradov 5y ago
That example no longer applies. Equipment is orders of magnitude more complex now. Entire supply chains have to be established which can take years regardless of how much funding you throw at the problem.
thrower123 5y ago
This has never been the doctrine of the Navy, because of the enormous capital expenditures and specialization, even going back to the days of sailing ships. It never worked out particularly well for the Army, either. Every war in US history before the establishment of a permanent standing army with NATO is a story of a hasty, disorganized clusterfuck for upwards of a year until a semi-professional organization was painfully established, and it's rarely until year two or three that a really effective force could ever be forged out of the tiny cadre of professionals and the mass influx of untrained volunteers or conscripts.
- craftinator 5y ago
  > It never worked out particularly well for the Army, either. Which is funny, because as the original comment points out that until after we'd been attacked during WWII, we didn't have a significant standing army. After we were attacked, we started a large buildup, and ended up on the winning side. Every war the US engaged in since then, we've both already had a standing army, and we've LOST. So statistically at least, having a large standing army is more likely to lose us a war. To be fair, in all of those wars we've lost, there has been strategic ineptitude from the top down in each one. Vietnam was a bad idea, which is why the people of the US protested it so hard. Anything in the middle east has been a clusterf, and even the people choosing to go there knew it was stupid. I'll allow that Korea was somewhat sensible in terms of long-term defense, but even then it could've been handled better. But a standing army hasn't been winning us wars, that's for sure.