5 ms·

Two things. Outside of the excessive dev costs, and high price tags of these things, ongoing, year after year, institutional knowledge of "how to construct wea

Two things. Outside of the excessive dev costs, and high price tags of these things, ongoing, year after year, institutional knowledge of "how to construct weaponry", and "how to test / build" the same is absolutely vital. You absolutely cannot be in a position where no company and employees exist, which knows these things. The cannot be overstated. Imagine a war breaks out, and now you try to build ... missiles. You have no tooling, no factory, no employees which have ever done so, and no supply chains either. Nor even engineered, first step designs! Now, I agree things are not perfect, but something must be in place. Something ongoing. This same logic holds with the military too. You want to lose a war? Have a no standing military, or one which is never deployed. You need trained, experienced troops, which will train other troops if a massive war breaks out and your numbers swell. You need experienced persons to lead, which have not been trained in isolation. Canada tries to solve this, as much as possible by peacekeeping. It's not perfect though, blue hats don't often engage in large scale actions. Point in all this is, trying to pick just, humanitarian causes for troop deployment, and weaponry usage in the field, and to keep supply chains alive, is difficult, yet is literally essential if you want to have a real defense potential. Or should the US, the West, just degrade their military, and hope for the best? (Canada was in Afghanistan for more than a decade.)

sirtaj 5y ago
It really sounds like you've managed to reason into "we have a military, so it's best to use it for its own sake." If so, that's pretty frightening logic, particularly for anyone in the rest of the world.
FpUser 5y ago
All the fluff aside you just said that the US (or any other country for that matter) needs to mess with other countries in order to keep their military in proper shape. Sure it does make sense from that standpoint. Or maybe not and conducting military exercise is more than enough given your already very advanced state. The receiving end however might hold a different point of view.
trasz 5y ago
So it’s all about having to choose between murdering one million people and finding some cheaper ways to test new toys?
jessaustin 5y ago
"Standing army" used to be an epithet, a sign that a society had lost its way. The best military we've ever had was the one we built from scratch for WWII. They curbstomped two actual "evil empires". Everything we've had since has been a pale imitation, not fit to wear the same uniform. That's because in WWII we were trying to win, and ever since then we've been trying to spend money. If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to remobilize. (What, are the Nazis going to rise again?) But if we did, we could.
- tdfx 5y ago
  > If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to remobilize This is a very 1990s/2000s point of view. We have a real global competitor now. China's military spending is rising faster than their fast-rising GDP. Some recent war games exercises suggest that the US could already be in losing position in a conventional war with China [1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-us-war/594793/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-u...
  - jessaustin 5y ago
    That's a very 1950s point of view. Not even our generals are stupid enough to get in a war with China. (Our politicians probably are, but they're not in charge.) They'd probably take all of our Pacific Islands, and they would definitely sink all our carriers. It will take a few years for the Pentagon to forget the asskickings we've received recently. They're searching for nations smaller and weaker than Syria; China is off the list completely. Even though we spend far more on the military than they do. However, we don't have to get in a war with China. We owe them trillions of dollars. We're probably not going to start out by straight-up defaulting, but there are all sorts of things we could fiddle with to put the hurt on them. What are they going to do in response? Stop exporting us lots of crap? That would be good for American workers. Maybe they'll hack American firms' insecure shit more? Ditto. We would live happier, healthier, and more prosperous lives if we stopped viewing every challenge through a military lens. Especially since our military is incompetent to achieve any goal through military action.
watwut 5y ago
So basically, you think that destroying lives of millions people as a training exercise is a good idea and makes America somehow noble?
goodpoint 5y ago
It other countries did the same humanity would be in an endless state of global war until extinction. Besides, the idea that starting wars is an effective method to prevent losing wars is completely illogical.
dr_dshiv 5y ago
How does maintaining military readiness and being at war in Afghanistan relate? Isn't it reducing our military readiness and preparatory investment? Couldn't we have bought hundreds of aircraft carriers for the cost?
duckmysick 5y ago
How does China solve this?

sirtaj 5y ago

It really sounds like you've managed to reason into "we have a military, so it's best to use it for its own sake." If so, that's pretty frightening logic, particularly for anyone in the rest of the world.

FpUser 5y ago

All the fluff aside you just said that the US (or any other country for that matter) needs to mess with other countries in order to keep their military in proper shape. Sure it does make sense from that standpoint. Or maybe not and conducting military exercise is more than enough given your already very advanced state. The receiving end however might hold a different point of view.

trasz 5y ago

So it’s all about having to choose between murdering one million people and finding some cheaper ways to test new toys?

jessaustin 5y ago

"Standing army" used to be an epithet, a sign that a society had lost its way. The best military we've ever had was the one we built from scratch for WWII. They curbstomped two actual "evil empires". Everything we've had since has been a pale imitation, not fit to wear the same uniform. That's because in WWII we were trying to win, and ever since then we've been trying to spend money. If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to remobilize. (What, are the Nazis going to rise again?) But if we did, we could.

tdfx 5y ago
> If we demobilized, we'd probably never really need to remobilize This is a very 1990s/2000s point of view. We have a real global competitor now. China's military spending is rising faster than their fast-rising GDP. Some recent war games exercises suggest that the US could already be in losing position in a conventional war with China [1]. [1] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-us-war/594793/ https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2019/07/china-u...
- jessaustin 5y ago
  That's a very 1950s point of view. Not even our generals are stupid enough to get in a war with China. (Our politicians probably are, but they're not in charge.) They'd probably take all of our Pacific Islands, and they would definitely sink all our carriers. It will take a few years for the Pentagon to forget the asskickings we've received recently. They're searching for nations smaller and weaker than Syria; China is off the list completely. Even though we spend far more on the military than they do. However, we don't have to get in a war with China. We owe them trillions of dollars. We're probably not going to start out by straight-up defaulting, but there are all sorts of things we could fiddle with to put the hurt on them. What are they going to do in response? Stop exporting us lots of crap? That would be good for American workers. Maybe they'll hack American firms' insecure shit more? Ditto. We would live happier, healthier, and more prosperous lives if we stopped viewing every challenge through a military lens. Especially since our military is incompetent to achieve any goal through military action.

watwut 5y ago

So basically, you think that destroying lives of millions people as a training exercise is a good idea and makes America somehow noble?

goodpoint 5y ago

It other countries did the same humanity would be in an endless state of global war until extinction. Besides, the idea that starting wars is an effective method to prevent losing wars is completely illogical.

dr_dshiv 5y ago

How does maintaining military readiness and being at war in Afghanistan relate? Isn't it reducing our military readiness and preparatory investment? Couldn't we have bought hundreds of aircraft carriers for the cost?

duckmysick 5y ago

How does China solve this?