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US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed to It’ in Wargames: Here’s a $24B Fix

55 points by pmastela 5y ago

aurizon 5y ago
The USA as well as the Western allies have a beurocracy 6 deep in old fossils who have optimised how to win the last war. The buying rules require enormous rules of procurement and parts verification that a chip resistor that costs 1/10th of a penny acquires a bought cost of many dollars - it has been tested and x-rayed and heat cycled etc. The net result is a procurement sysyem gone mad with rings of empires, each with go/nogo approval decisions that interfere with test/approval/production at every level. Then the old fossils of the general staff - also 5 deep in decisions. Why are we still building long range missile targets (which the general stall call a carrier attack group) We know China will toss 1000 missiles at them and when their magazines go empty after downing a few hundred - the 600+ left will sink them all. Then the USA will toss nukes at China. China shrugs - we have no voters to kill, so who cares and the communist party is in a safe hole. What the USA needs to do is revamp the whole thing top to bottom, get some gamer minds in there, buth students and experiences. Sweep out the guys that won the last war - we will not be fighting that again as this time it will lose - we do not want that. Get new missiles, get new radars - all designed my military colleg grad students. I could go on... What the war games reveal is what Churchill saw when WW2 started - dead wood, so he trimmed it. He had his flaws though.
- elevation 5y ago
  While an organization full of "the guys that won the last war" may not be optimal for the next conflict, having a few old salts to mentor the new "college grad" engineers makes a much more effective team overall. The kind of clean sweep that you advocate leaves green engineers to reinvent the wheel; they don't know how to google for what they don't know, and most colleges will not supply the industry-specific and even proprietary knowledge that a young engineer or engineering manager may need to avoid wasting many months of efforts. You may wish to eliminate the "last war" echo chamber but you'll pay for it if you lose their expertise entirely.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    There is validity in what you say, trim the dead wood, keep the good wood and build well.
- Closi 5y ago
  Get gamers in to define the strategy and use graduate engineers to build new radars? I can’t tell if this is satire or not.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Partly satirical - They need to invigorate the talent pool from the top down, new ideas and new management - and keep the good old techies and managers and weed out the bad ones and move them away from the fast creation track. The British system that started WW1 carried on to WW2. The Germans foresaw the Lightning War - Blitzkreig https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg Hitler was no warrior, or strategist, or general - he was a populist, a rabble rouser - didn't the USA just get rid of one of those? Had Hitler given his generals the keys and said win this war. They would have done so. They would have destroyed the RAF and airplane industry on the ground and invaded and taken the UK before the USA entered. Then they could have carved up Europe with Russia as well as the middle east and wire netted the Mediterranean against subs and ships and allow who they like. The UK fleet large as it was would have to flee to other ports or surrender. Then what would the USA do? They would see a fortress europe. Would stalin invade, or digest the meat hitler had given him while Hitler grabbed the middle east oil. At this time Russian oil was unknown. The generals would not let the Jews be killed - they are our best instrument makers and physicists, so no Holocaust. Even Hitlers own officers waned him killed. I am sure glad he ran their war into the ground with his bed strategies and diplomacy. I for one am glad he lost
    - loopz 5y ago
      Hitler sat in prison before they overthrew government.
    - Closi 5y ago
      It’s easy to find a way to win something in hindsight with perfect information, the trick is to make the correct decisions at the time with imperfect information. Saying “Hitler would have won if he did this” is a total bias of hindsight. It also ignores the fact that if Hitler was behaving differently, the allies would have responded differently.
- ArkanExplorer 5y ago
  Its an interesting take, but the Military's sole purpose isn't to fight China. Its to scare smaller nations into the USA sphere of influence, or to destabilise those firmly outside it. For example, the coup in Bolivia: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-morales-over-bolivia-s-lithium/2213267 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-moral... China might win the first battles with that rocket barrage, but it will also firmly cut itself off from world trade - ores, food, gas, oil. There's no winning move. There are large-scale dysgenic Demographic changes occurring in the West: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-... China needs merely wait a few generations (if it has the patience) and it will have a much easier time asserting itself. Alternatively, to just buy off Western politicians (as it is already doing) - which beats rockets for cost efficiency.
  - firebaze 5y ago
    China has made alliances with a lot of african nations. If the shit hits the fan I - at least - wouldn't exclude the possibility that china is better positioned in a semi-post-nuclear scenario than the US (russia, africa, china are the most relevant rare-resource exporters, to my knowledge) And I personally wouldn't count a bit on saudi arabian allegiance in a scenario like this. I wouldn't be surprised if they just follow the "strong wo:man" in the world, which right not still is the US.
    - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
      China faces a huge logistical challenge if it wants to rely on Africa for food and ore. Sending cargo ships from South West Africa to East Asia is a long and perilous journey. Africa itself is an unstable part of the world, the people are not friendly to China, and the population is growing rapidly. Its easy to see the local population turning on Chinese citizens or businesses in the event of some economic or food shortfall. By contrast the USA basically has all of the resources it needs inside its own country or nearby allies. Many of the 'rare' resources of the world are not particularly rare, they are just too expensive or too environmentally damaging to mine in the West at current prices. I'm surprised that China doesn't just offer to buy whole sections of Africa, and formally annex the land into its country, and move (voluntarily) the existing African populations as part of the payment terms. For example, the GDP of Mozambique is $16b - China has 200x this value just in USD reserves.
- firebaze 5y ago
  Don't know why this was heavily downvoted at the time of this posting. No sources, sure, but most of it is common knowledge with a few unsourced opinioned edges - fair enough to me, and I think an interesting viewpoint. Especially the part regarding china (or russia, or north korea, or iran, for that matter, in order of decreasing confidence) seems to be just true to me.
  - 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
    I work in defense and mostly agree with that they are saying. The GAO and DIB both agree that defense procurement is broken af.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Someone at HN is abusing his moderator's trusted role and acting in a childish and irritating manner.
- jcranmer 5y ago
  It is very easy to point out, with hindsight, what the seminal moments that change the nature of warfare are. It is not so easy to point them out when they are occurring right now. Furthermore, it's always going to be the case that people will promise that their shiny new technology will be the one that makes all existing battleplans obsolete and is unstoppable, etc., etc. Only rarely are they right, and in historiographical terms, we tend to only remember the people who were right and not those who were wrong. A good example of people betting wrongly on new technology is air power, or specifically, strategic bombing. Early air power theorists (we're talking the 1920s here) made the case that once you start lobbing some bombs at civilian targets, you'd so shatter the morale of the target country that it would collapse in a few weeks--a few months, tops. When WW2 came about, both sides indeed attempted to end the war via bombing the other side's civilians into oblivion. And both times, it failed miserably. Even the US Strategic Bombing Survey struggled to find examples where it came close to achieving its goals, hardly a ringing endorsement of the concept.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Yes, I was living in London when the blitz started(I was 2). The bombs were a random event, and you lived/died on that basis. It failed to defeat the British public - it made them angry. In addition to being useless strategically it also diverted Nazi efforts away from the RAF and allowed a higher degree of production dispersion to be implemented - the result was the UK won the air war and it was impossible to invade the UK with air superiority. Our house was bombed, but we had an estate in Wales and we went there when the blitz began. Insurance failed to pay under an 'acts of war' clause.
JPKab 5y ago
In the past, both my brother and I worked in military intelligence. Specifically, he spent a long time working for ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) doing war game simulations. He routinely would get shouted at by various Admirals, for fairly obvious reasons. Wars aren't won by the nation who is best prepared when they start, but by the nations which respond with the most honesty to their own failures after they start.
- DudeInBasement 5y ago
  The next cyber/eco war doesn't care about military. It can easily destabilize and let the country collapse.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Sadly, the pace of modern war will not give you the luxury of a re-start after a loss. The enemy will be taking over the best houses and issuing occupation scrip and the women will soon be mothering children of the occupiers while the men are in labor camps - if they are allowed to live at all.
  - vagrantJin 5y ago
    This isn't 1850. No one cares about your women. Less so as a military objective. If they shoot, they'll shoot everyone and the dog. If they don't, thank a war treaty.
    - aurizon 5y ago
      Human nature is what it is. Recall the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre War brings man to his primal base - as we can see in all the brushfire wars in the last 20 years - now we have killer drones - how soon before a killed drone take out a head of state?
      - vagrantJin 5y ago
        Sure. Modern warfare is still war but Im saying no sane general and his chiefs are out here drafting documents on how best to take women prisoners. That nonsense can be pursued by militias is some backwater asscrack not a proper army. That's why I said as a military objective.
devoutsalsa 5y ago
When I was in the US Army, I wondered how anything got done at all. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that something can be inefficient and still work. And you don’t need to be a well oiled machine to achieve results; you just need to be less screwed up than everyone else.
- ISL 5y ago
  Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day, I watch this for a little while. https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/ https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/ It takes time to learn your way in a new environment. Sometimes the odd duck finds a way.
  - smbv 5y ago
    Thank you for this. I've been getting progressively more crazy cars and progressively better performing ones.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  That was the surprise for me after school as well. I wondered how schools could function on their seeming ambivalence to so many things. Then I found that was just the whole world.
yellow_lead 5y ago
This is from 2019. (2019) should be appended.
schimmy_changa 5y ago
This is asinine - why do we need to spend billions and billions of dollars for more missiles for theoretical hot wars with Russia and China? Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent? The tone of the article is "we've got a missile gap! but don't worry, only 24 billion dollars will fix it". Yet we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and don't seem to balance that against other things we could do with the money (pandemic preparations, anyone?).
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  > Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent? No a nuclear deterrence is supposed to stop a nuclear war. It doesn't help anything if you're both operating below the nuclear threshold.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Just tell everyone your nuclear threshold has changed to save $24B ;)
  - ASalazarMX 5y ago
    The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. USA already has that capability and more.
    - chrisseaton 5y ago
      > The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. I mean that literally doesn't even make sense as a sentence... the threshold for deciding to use nuclear weapons in a given situation... is being able to use them in a particular way? What?
- nielsbot 5y ago
  "roads and bridges", schools and teacher pay, health care, public arts, etc etc. I'd be way more interested in a solution that cuts $24B from the military budget. Hopefully more.
mytailorisrich 5y ago
To me the F-35 illustrates what happens when too much money is thrown at something, with too many vested interests serving themselves and spending the budget. It's a bit like a hot startup that raises a huge round, more that they actually know what to do with, and that spends the money on swanky offices, fancy benefits, and a hiring spree. The US already spend $700+ billion a year on the military, vastly more than any other country on Earth (although China's spending is increasing rapidly). Whatever problems they might have, I don't think that even more money is the solution.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  Excellent analogy.
- nickthemagicman 5y ago
  If US defense spending was a countrys GDP it would be number 18. The US spends over half the GDP of the entire country of Australia on defense. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
- mbrodersen 5y ago
  The US military is primarily a job creation program and corporate benefit scheme. Only secondarily a military force.
ars 5y ago
The US needs to learn about missile defense from Israel (after all, that type of sharing is why the US spends so much on aid). Israel's low tech neighbors spend most of their military power on rockets. Other countries will do exactly the same to the US. Israel responded with high tech missile defense, the technology exists, the US just needs to start implementing it in huge numbers. Instead US strategy is to promise to obliterate any country that messes with it. The trouble with that is that the enemy will hide amongst civilians.
- BobbyJo 5y ago
  Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US? Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US.
  - iamricks 5y ago
    I believe the Iron Dome was funded by the US, i agree the situation is different. The US is also positioned very far away from any country that would lob rockets at us.
    - ars 5y ago
      > I believe the Iron Dome was funded by the US Production was funded by the US, but Development was not, it was entirely in-house.
  - ars 5y ago
    > Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US? No, the Iron Dome was developed by Israel. US funding only came at the end of development, during production. > Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US. People always forget about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile)
    - 5y ago
LatteLazy 5y ago
This all works on the assumption the US armed forces exist to defend the US and allies. They don't. Partly they're a jobs program both for "jarheads" and engineers and scientists. Partly they're for bullying small nations that happen to get into political cross hairs (Iraqx2, Afghanistan, Iran soon). Partly they are an export industry that let's the US maintain trade balances with places like Saudi Arabia (and effectively charge them for protecting their regimes). That's why the US even has aircraft carriers: they've been useless against China or Russia for decades. But they create jobs and let you bomb nations with no real defenses. No one wants to give up 28bn from their part of the Knot of self service or risk 50 more casualties the next time we invade Iraq. So we keep prepping for that war.
- rossdavidh 5y ago
  You have a decent point, but IMHO you're overstating it. The US armed forces exist for all the reasons you state...AND they also exist to defend the US and allies. Life is complicated.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Thanks for the reply. I guess this comes back to the age old question about such wars: how would anyone fight one and not have it turn nuclear?
noja 5y ago
Any Americans here know the reason why the military is excluded from the usual argument for small government?
- websites420 5y ago
  Small government means not making laws which otherwise interfere in the citizens' ability to make their own choices about how to live. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the military, whose missions are mostly abroad to protect trade routes anyway.
- redis_mlc 5y ago
  The only institution that can field an army is the government - it's not something that happens organically or can be trusted to private companies. Same with the State Department, FEMA, regulations, etc. Having said that, neither Republicans or Democrats want small government. But the Biden administration is like a crack addict when it comes to deficits - they're destabilizing our currency.
- Meekro 5y ago
  The Constitution gives the federal government a very short list of enumerated powers, and maintaining a military is one of them. Small government libertarians want the federal government to return to its traditional (pre-New Deal) Constitutional role.
- lumost 5y ago
  Prior to the Cold War the US maintained a minimal standing military during peace time. The military has steadily reduced its share of the budget from its 1950s peacetime peak via budget freezes, but active budget cuts mean base closures and lost jobs.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- Semiapies 5y ago
  Because the usual people making "small government" arguments are insincere about them. Personally, I'd be happy to massively decrease the size of the US military. What prevents that is that neither party wants to abandon the vast scope of uses that such a huge military lends itself to.
servercobra 5y ago
Article should have a "2019" tag.
whoisjuan 5y ago
Well, for what it's worth the US is already 'getting its ass handed to it’ in real modern warfare. The US has been playing defense with the misinformation campaigns and fake narratives created by adversary totalitarian states that salivate over the idea of dethroning the US from its implicit world leader status. Sometimes it really feels like we are doing exactly what they want. To create a self-inflicted societal fracture and to blame it on America's favorite scape goat, Big Tech. Like if that was our real problem. The very same thing that is giving the US an edge right now (technology) is the very same thing that gets attacked by right and left politicians alike. How convenient for Russia and China, isn't it?
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  "You will salivate in vain, adversary totalitarian states! This implicit world leader will not step down from his throne!" Loud USA's anthem starts
- sschueller 5y ago
  Don't exclude the large number Americans whom also start and fuel miss information campaigns. A lot has to do with general mistrust of government and industry because there is a lot shady stuff going on. The system is broken and industry takes advantage of it from dumping chemicals and getting away with it or knowingly selling toxic products for decades only to receive a slap on the wrist. It becomes very difficult to figure out who you can trust.
  - loopz 5y ago
    Rollback of environmental protections https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...
remarkEon 5y ago
>Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems, Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. Those are hardly easy goals, Work said, but they’re also doable with technology now in development. I don't know, this seems like the wrong thing to do. I mean, it seems worth considering but it also sounds like "if we don't sink N+1 battleships we lose the war", which doesn't seem any more right today than it was in the 20th century. IMO a smarter, and probably cheaper, approach would be to force things to operate in a more decentralized fashion. Maybe at scale lots of smaller, distributed infantry and fire/air support units would be just as expensive but it seems more survivable for a longer term grind. My bias though is that, yeah, I was an infantryman and most of us (at least in my circles) expect the next one to be a long grind like WWI than a flash pan mass-extinction event like a lot of planners do today. >The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.” Okay, then maybe "whoever can figure out how to continue operations during an extended comms blackout gets the most money." I know field craft isn't as "cool" anymore as the newest gadget, but maybe teach the boys how to make those Vietnam era claymore-wire antennas again (half joking). Cutting some massive check for another decades long R&D project is suspect to me.
moltar 5y ago
I’ve heard on JRE podcast recently that war games are always rigged to be lost so that generals can work harder at winning next time. Also probably to get more budgets.

55 points by pmastela 5y ago

The USA as well as the Western allies have a beurocracy 6 deep in old fossils who have optimised how to win the last war. The buying rules require enormous rules of procurement and parts verification that a chip resistor that costs 1/10th of a penny acquires a bought cost of many dollars - it has been tested and x-rayed and heat cycled etc. The net result is a procurement sysyem gone mad with rings of empires, each with go/nogo approval decisions that interfere with test/approval/production at every level. Then the old fossils of the general staff - also 5 deep in decisions. Why are we still building long range missile targets (which the general stall call a carrier attack group) We know China will toss 1000 missiles at them and when their magazines go empty after downing a few hundred - the 600+ left will sink them all. Then the USA will toss nukes at China. China shrugs - we have no voters to kill, so who cares and the communist party is in a safe hole. What the USA needs to do is revamp the whole thing top to bottom, get some gamer minds in there, buth students and experiences. Sweep out the guys that won the last war - we will not be fighting that again as this time it will lose - we do not want that. Get new missiles, get new radars - all designed my military colleg grad students. I could go on... What the war games reveal is what Churchill saw when WW2 started - dead wood, so he trimmed it. He had his flaws though.

elevation 5y ago
While an organization full of "the guys that won the last war" may not be optimal for the next conflict, having a few old salts to mentor the new "college grad" engineers makes a much more effective team overall. The kind of clean sweep that you advocate leaves green engineers to reinvent the wheel; they don't know how to google for what they don't know, and most colleges will not supply the industry-specific and even proprietary knowledge that a young engineer or engineering manager may need to avoid wasting many months of efforts. You may wish to eliminate the "last war" echo chamber but you'll pay for it if you lose their expertise entirely.
- aurizon 5y ago
  There is validity in what you say, trim the dead wood, keep the good wood and build well.
Closi 5y ago
Get gamers in to define the strategy and use graduate engineers to build new radars? I can’t tell if this is satire or not.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Partly satirical - They need to invigorate the talent pool from the top down, new ideas and new management - and keep the good old techies and managers and weed out the bad ones and move them away from the fast creation track. The British system that started WW1 carried on to WW2. The Germans foresaw the Lightning War - Blitzkreig https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg Hitler was no warrior, or strategist, or general - he was a populist, a rabble rouser - didn't the USA just get rid of one of those? Had Hitler given his generals the keys and said win this war. They would have done so. They would have destroyed the RAF and airplane industry on the ground and invaded and taken the UK before the USA entered. Then they could have carved up Europe with Russia as well as the middle east and wire netted the Mediterranean against subs and ships and allow who they like. The UK fleet large as it was would have to flee to other ports or surrender. Then what would the USA do? They would see a fortress europe. Would stalin invade, or digest the meat hitler had given him while Hitler grabbed the middle east oil. At this time Russian oil was unknown. The generals would not let the Jews be killed - they are our best instrument makers and physicists, so no Holocaust. Even Hitlers own officers waned him killed. I am sure glad he ran their war into the ground with his bed strategies and diplomacy. I for one am glad he lost
  - loopz 5y ago
    Hitler sat in prison before they overthrew government.
  - Closi 5y ago
    It’s easy to find a way to win something in hindsight with perfect information, the trick is to make the correct decisions at the time with imperfect information. Saying “Hitler would have won if he did this” is a total bias of hindsight. It also ignores the fact that if Hitler was behaving differently, the allies would have responded differently.
ArkanExplorer 5y ago
Its an interesting take, but the Military's sole purpose isn't to fight China. Its to scare smaller nations into the USA sphere of influence, or to destabilise those firmly outside it. For example, the coup in Bolivia: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-morales-over-bolivia-s-lithium/2213267 https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-moral... China might win the first battles with that rocket barrage, but it will also firmly cut itself off from world trade - ores, food, gas, oil. There's no winning move. There are large-scale dysgenic Demographic changes occurring in the West: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-many-developed-countries-doesn-t-bode-ncna1008576 https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-... China needs merely wait a few generations (if it has the patience) and it will have a much easier time asserting itself. Alternatively, to just buy off Western politicians (as it is already doing) - which beats rockets for cost efficiency.
- firebaze 5y ago
  China has made alliances with a lot of african nations. If the shit hits the fan I - at least - wouldn't exclude the possibility that china is better positioned in a semi-post-nuclear scenario than the US (russia, africa, china are the most relevant rare-resource exporters, to my knowledge) And I personally wouldn't count a bit on saudi arabian allegiance in a scenario like this. I wouldn't be surprised if they just follow the "strong wo:man" in the world, which right not still is the US.
  - ArkanExplorer 5y ago
    China faces a huge logistical challenge if it wants to rely on Africa for food and ore. Sending cargo ships from South West Africa to East Asia is a long and perilous journey. Africa itself is an unstable part of the world, the people are not friendly to China, and the population is growing rapidly. Its easy to see the local population turning on Chinese citizens or businesses in the event of some economic or food shortfall. By contrast the USA basically has all of the resources it needs inside its own country or nearby allies. Many of the 'rare' resources of the world are not particularly rare, they are just too expensive or too environmentally damaging to mine in the West at current prices. I'm surprised that China doesn't just offer to buy whole sections of Africa, and formally annex the land into its country, and move (voluntarily) the existing African populations as part of the payment terms. For example, the GDP of Mozambique is $16b - China has 200x this value just in USD reserves.
firebaze 5y ago
Don't know why this was heavily downvoted at the time of this posting. No sources, sure, but most of it is common knowledge with a few unsourced opinioned edges - fair enough to me, and I think an interesting viewpoint. Especially the part regarding china (or russia, or north korea, or iran, for that matter, in order of decreasing confidence) seems to be just true to me.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 5y ago
  I work in defense and mostly agree with that they are saying. The GAO and DIB both agree that defense procurement is broken af.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Someone at HN is abusing his moderator's trusted role and acting in a childish and irritating manner.
jcranmer 5y ago
It is very easy to point out, with hindsight, what the seminal moments that change the nature of warfare are. It is not so easy to point them out when they are occurring right now. Furthermore, it's always going to be the case that people will promise that their shiny new technology will be the one that makes all existing battleplans obsolete and is unstoppable, etc., etc. Only rarely are they right, and in historiographical terms, we tend to only remember the people who were right and not those who were wrong. A good example of people betting wrongly on new technology is air power, or specifically, strategic bombing. Early air power theorists (we're talking the 1920s here) made the case that once you start lobbing some bombs at civilian targets, you'd so shatter the morale of the target country that it would collapse in a few weeks--a few months, tops. When WW2 came about, both sides indeed attempted to end the war via bombing the other side's civilians into oblivion. And both times, it failed miserably. Even the US Strategic Bombing Survey struggled to find examples where it came close to achieving its goals, hardly a ringing endorsement of the concept.
- aurizon 5y ago
  Yes, I was living in London when the blitz started(I was 2). The bombs were a random event, and you lived/died on that basis. It failed to defeat the British public - it made them angry. In addition to being useless strategically it also diverted Nazi efforts away from the RAF and allowed a higher degree of production dispersion to be implemented - the result was the UK won the air war and it was impossible to invade the UK with air superiority. Our house was bombed, but we had an estate in Wales and we went there when the blitz began. Insurance failed to pay under an 'acts of war' clause.

JPKab 5y ago

In the past, both my brother and I worked in military intelligence. Specifically, he spent a long time working for ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) doing war game simulations. He routinely would get shouted at by various Admirals, for fairly obvious reasons. Wars aren't won by the nation who is best prepared when they start, but by the nations which respond with the most honesty to their own failures after they start.

DudeInBasement 5y ago
The next cyber/eco war doesn't care about military. It can easily destabilize and let the country collapse.
aurizon 5y ago
Sadly, the pace of modern war will not give you the luxury of a re-start after a loss. The enemy will be taking over the best houses and issuing occupation scrip and the women will soon be mothering children of the occupiers while the men are in labor camps - if they are allowed to live at all.
- vagrantJin 5y ago
  This isn't 1850. No one cares about your women. Less so as a military objective. If they shoot, they'll shoot everyone and the dog. If they don't, thank a war treaty.
  - aurizon 5y ago
    Human nature is what it is. Recall the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanjing_Massacre War brings man to his primal base - as we can see in all the brushfire wars in the last 20 years - now we have killer drones - how soon before a killed drone take out a head of state?
    - vagrantJin 5y ago
      Sure. Modern warfare is still war but Im saying no sane general and his chiefs are out here drafting documents on how best to take women prisoners. That nonsense can be pursued by militias is some backwater asscrack not a proper army. That's why I said as a military objective.

devoutsalsa 5y ago

When I was in the US Army, I wondered how anything got done at all. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that something can be inefficient and still work. And you don’t need to be a well oiled machine to achieve results; you just need to be less screwed up than everyone else.

ISL 5y ago
Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day, I watch this for a little while. https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/ https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/ It takes time to learn your way in a new environment. Sometimes the odd duck finds a way.
- smbv 5y ago
  Thank you for this. I've been getting progressively more crazy cars and progressively better performing ones.
MattGaiser 5y ago
That was the surprise for me after school as well. I wondered how schools could function on their seeming ambivalence to so many things. Then I found that was just the whole world.

yellow_lead 5y ago

This is from 2019. (2019) should be appended.

schimmy_changa 5y ago

This is asinine - why do we need to spend billions and billions of dollars for more missiles for theoretical hot wars with Russia and China? Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent? The tone of the article is "we've got a missile gap! but don't worry, only 24 billion dollars will fix it". Yet we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and don't seem to balance that against other things we could do with the money (pandemic preparations, anyone?).

chrisseaton 5y ago
> Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent? No a nuclear deterrence is supposed to stop a nuclear war. It doesn't help anything if you're both operating below the nuclear threshold.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Just tell everyone your nuclear threshold has changed to save $24B ;)
- ASalazarMX 5y ago
  The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. USA already has that capability and more.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    > The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. I mean that literally doesn't even make sense as a sentence... the threshold for deciding to use nuclear weapons in a given situation... is being able to use them in a particular way? What?
nielsbot 5y ago
"roads and bridges", schools and teacher pay, health care, public arts, etc etc. I'd be way more interested in a solution that cuts $24B from the military budget. Hopefully more.

mytailorisrich 5y ago

To me the F-35 illustrates what happens when too much money is thrown at something, with too many vested interests serving themselves and spending the budget. It's a bit like a hot startup that raises a huge round, more that they actually know what to do with, and that spends the money on swanky offices, fancy benefits, and a hiring spree. The US already spend $700+ billion a year on the military, vastly more than any other country on Earth (although China's spending is increasing rapidly). Whatever problems they might have, I don't think that even more money is the solution.

rossdavidh 5y ago
Excellent analogy.
nickthemagicman 5y ago
If US defense spending was a countrys GDP it would be number 18. The US spends over half the GDP of the entire country of Australia on defense. https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/ https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/
mbrodersen 5y ago
The US military is primarily a job creation program and corporate benefit scheme. Only secondarily a military force.

ars 5y ago

The US needs to learn about missile defense from Israel (after all, that type of sharing is why the US spends so much on aid). Israel's low tech neighbors spend most of their military power on rockets. Other countries will do exactly the same to the US. Israel responded with high tech missile defense, the technology exists, the US just needs to start implementing it in huge numbers. Instead US strategy is to promise to obliterate any country that messes with it. The trouble with that is that the enemy will hide amongst civilians.

BobbyJo 5y ago
Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US? Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US.
- iamricks 5y ago
  I believe the Iron Dome was funded by the US, i agree the situation is different. The US is also positioned very far away from any country that would lob rockets at us.
  - ars 5y ago
    > I believe the Iron Dome was funded by the US Production was funded by the US, but Development was not, it was entirely in-house.
- ars 5y ago
  > Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US? No, the Iron Dome was developed by Israel. US funding only came at the end of development, during production. > Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US. People always forget about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile)
  - 5y ago

LatteLazy 5y ago

This all works on the assumption the US armed forces exist to defend the US and allies. They don't. Partly they're a jobs program both for "jarheads" and engineers and scientists. Partly they're for bullying small nations that happen to get into political cross hairs (Iraqx2, Afghanistan, Iran soon). Partly they are an export industry that let's the US maintain trade balances with places like Saudi Arabia (and effectively charge them for protecting their regimes). That's why the US even has aircraft carriers: they've been useless against China or Russia for decades. But they create jobs and let you bomb nations with no real defenses. No one wants to give up 28bn from their part of the Knot of self service or risk 50 more casualties the next time we invade Iraq. So we keep prepping for that war.

rossdavidh 5y ago
You have a decent point, but IMHO you're overstating it. The US armed forces exist for all the reasons you state...AND they also exist to defend the US and allies. Life is complicated.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Thanks for the reply. I guess this comes back to the age old question about such wars: how would anyone fight one and not have it turn nuclear?

noja 5y ago

Any Americans here know the reason why the military is excluded from the usual argument for small government?

websites420 5y ago
Small government means not making laws which otherwise interfere in the citizens' ability to make their own choices about how to live. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the military, whose missions are mostly abroad to protect trade routes anyway.
redis_mlc 5y ago
The only institution that can field an army is the government - it's not something that happens organically or can be trusted to private companies. Same with the State Department, FEMA, regulations, etc. Having said that, neither Republicans or Democrats want small government. But the Biden administration is like a crack addict when it comes to deficits - they're destabilizing our currency.
Meekro 5y ago
The Constitution gives the federal government a very short list of enumerated powers, and maintaining a military is one of them. Small government libertarians want the federal government to return to its traditional (pre-New Deal) Constitutional role.
lumost 5y ago
Prior to the Cold War the US maintained a minimal standing military during peace time. The military has steadily reduced its share of the budget from its 1950s peacetime peak via budget freezes, but active budget cuts mean base closures and lost jobs.
deleted 5y ago
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Semiapies 5y ago
Because the usual people making "small government" arguments are insincere about them. Personally, I'd be happy to massively decrease the size of the US military. What prevents that is that neither party wants to abandon the vast scope of uses that such a huge military lends itself to.

servercobra 5y ago

Article should have a "2019" tag.

whoisjuan 5y ago

Well, for what it's worth the US is already 'getting its ass handed to it’ in real modern warfare. The US has been playing defense with the misinformation campaigns and fake narratives created by adversary totalitarian states that salivate over the idea of dethroning the US from its implicit world leader status. Sometimes it really feels like we are doing exactly what they want. To create a self-inflicted societal fracture and to blame it on America's favorite scape goat, Big Tech. Like if that was our real problem. The very same thing that is giving the US an edge right now (technology) is the very same thing that gets attacked by right and left politicians alike. How convenient for Russia and China, isn't it?

ASalazarMX 5y ago
"You will salivate in vain, adversary totalitarian states! This implicit world leader will not step down from his throne!" Loud USA's anthem starts
sschueller 5y ago
Don't exclude the large number Americans whom also start and fuel miss information campaigns. A lot has to do with general mistrust of government and industry because there is a lot shady stuff going on. The system is broken and industry takes advantage of it from dumping chemicals and getting away with it or knowingly selling toxic products for decades only to receive a slap on the wrist. It becomes very difficult to figure out who you can trust.
- loopz 5y ago
  Rollback of environmental protections https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-environment-rollbacks-list.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...

remarkEon 5y ago

>Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems, Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. Those are hardly easy goals, Work said, but they’re also doable with technology now in development. I don't know, this seems like the wrong thing to do. I mean, it seems worth considering but it also sounds like "if we don't sink N+1 battleships we lose the war", which doesn't seem any more right today than it was in the 20th century. IMO a smarter, and probably cheaper, approach would be to force things to operate in a more decentralized fashion. Maybe at scale lots of smaller, distributed infantry and fire/air support units would be just as expensive but it seems more survivable for a longer term grind. My bias though is that, yeah, I was an infantryman and most of us (at least in my circles) expect the next one to be a long grind like WWI than a flash pan mass-extinction event like a lot of planners do today. >The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.” Okay, then maybe "whoever can figure out how to continue operations during an extended comms blackout gets the most money." I know field craft isn't as "cool" anymore as the newest gadget, but maybe teach the boys how to make those Vietnam era claymore-wire antennas again (half joking). Cutting some massive check for another decades long R&D project is suspect to me.

moltar 5y ago

I’ve heard on JRE podcast recently that war games are always rigged to be lost so that generals can work harder at winning next time. Also probably to get more budgets.