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Speaking for myself (American, but an AFG veteran). Your description of how you view war is hopelessly naïve (no offense). Take out the whole “war” aspect to t

Speaking for myself (American, but an AFG veteran). Your description of how you view war is hopelessly naïve (no offense). Take out the whole “war” aspect to this and just think about it in terms of raw technology. “Why would we improve X? It works just fine with Y right now.” My guess is your aversion to continuous improvement in defense tech is really related to an aversion to war, which is all well and good, but irrelevant. The enemy also gets a say, and adversaries tend to invest in technologies that exploit your weaknesses - something Russia and China have assuredly done. So all this stuff you seem to think makes the US invulnerable may not actually work as well, because we have a bunch of new technologies out there for the first time. > The truth is, if we wanted to light up some country or other, we could totally do it - the reasons we don't are ethical/economical/politcal, it's not because our war planes are not advanced enough. There are new missiles that may, in fact, mean our bombers are not advanced enough. So, no.

epups 4y ago
I think you and many others here are picking on the "easy" part of that reply. Of course we need to keep investing in any field if we want it to improve. Surely there are diminishing returns though. When you overspend your competitors so wildly, at some point it can be counterproductive. The US has the best army but it is far from the most cost-efficient, and the lack of investment in other parts of its society is clearly apparent. In a political scenario where lobbying, not actual strategy is the reason why so much money is spent on defense, it is your comment that sounds naive, not the parent.
- remarkEon 4y ago
  Yes yes, I am a dumb US Army infantryman so I do struggle with "strategy" and so on and so forth. /s I can steelman your argument to be something like "without lobbying, DoD procurement would be much more efficient and the savings would be spent on social programs" ... which is just absurd. If you think that "lobbying" is the only reason that the US has a very very large defense budget that's on you, since the internet is widely available. Ad minimum, USN is responsible for policing the entire planet to allow trade to continue. The point of overspending your competitor (in the defense realm) is that you reach a point where they just can't catch up, or they realize it would take a decade (or many) to catch up and suddenly war makes zero sense ... unless there is a new technology that resets the gameclock. This has happened. And so, here we are, continuing to invest in new technology.
  - epups 4y ago
    Sure, the US strategic goal is to dominate the world militarily. It could achieve that with half its military spending, arguably even a third. And yes, lobbying can heavily skew what ends up being prioritized, to the point of inefficiency. This is not to say there are not other sources of inefficiency too - the items in which the US spent the most money in the past 20 years have been completely pointless wars that dragged on forever and ultimately achieved nothing. Feeding more money to this largely inefficient (and harmful) machine cannot be justified solely on the basis of increased competition from other countries. Lobbying also works against efficiency by prioritizing older companies over newer, more innovative ones. Look at the progress of SpaceX vs the the ULA. Following your premise that heavy investment can create a scenario where competition will suddenly cease to exist, this type of thing should not be possible. Heck, until World War II the US was not even among the highest military spenders in the planet. It was the heavily militarized Europe that started a conflict and shot its advantages on the foot. So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen.
    - remarkEon 4y ago
      >Sure, the US strategic goal is to dominate the world militarily. It could achieve that with half its military spending, arguably even a third Major citation needed on that one. There's inefficiencies in any large organization, sure, but this has nothing to do with a need to prepare a deterrent strategy for the actual wars that matter. Agreed that playing COIN in the desert for 20 years was stupid, and we should all be upset at the politicians and media apparatus that encouraged that stupidity. That doesn't have anything to do with the current situation. I can't parse what your second paragraph is getting at, other than SpaceX is cheaper than ULA, which I'd consider to be irrelevant given their different mission profiles. >So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen. I never said this.
  - gretch 4y ago
    In President Eisenhower's farewell speech, he warned us against the establishment of a military-industrial complex. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... I'm largely just heeding his warning/advice. What is your take on those words? Was he wrong? Are 'not there yet'? And as a concrete example, what's your take on this 2015 event where congress purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in tanks even at the direct protest of the pentagon itself? https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell...

epups 4y ago

I think you and many others here are picking on the "easy" part of that reply. Of course we need to keep investing in any field if we want it to improve. Surely there are diminishing returns though. When you overspend your competitors so wildly, at some point it can be counterproductive. The US has the best army but it is far from the most cost-efficient, and the lack of investment in other parts of its society is clearly apparent. In a political scenario where lobbying, not actual strategy is the reason why so much money is spent on defense, it is your comment that sounds naive, not the parent.

remarkEon 4y ago
Yes yes, I am a dumb US Army infantryman so I do struggle with "strategy" and so on and so forth. /s I can steelman your argument to be something like "without lobbying, DoD procurement would be much more efficient and the savings would be spent on social programs" ... which is just absurd. If you think that "lobbying" is the only reason that the US has a very very large defense budget that's on you, since the internet is widely available. Ad minimum, USN is responsible for policing the entire planet to allow trade to continue. The point of overspending your competitor (in the defense realm) is that you reach a point where they just can't catch up, or they realize it would take a decade (or many) to catch up and suddenly war makes zero sense ... unless there is a new technology that resets the gameclock. This has happened. And so, here we are, continuing to invest in new technology.
- epups 4y ago
  Sure, the US strategic goal is to dominate the world militarily. It could achieve that with half its military spending, arguably even a third. And yes, lobbying can heavily skew what ends up being prioritized, to the point of inefficiency. This is not to say there are not other sources of inefficiency too - the items in which the US spent the most money in the past 20 years have been completely pointless wars that dragged on forever and ultimately achieved nothing. Feeding more money to this largely inefficient (and harmful) machine cannot be justified solely on the basis of increased competition from other countries. Lobbying also works against efficiency by prioritizing older companies over newer, more innovative ones. Look at the progress of SpaceX vs the the ULA. Following your premise that heavy investment can create a scenario where competition will suddenly cease to exist, this type of thing should not be possible. Heck, until World War II the US was not even among the highest military spenders in the planet. It was the heavily militarized Europe that started a conflict and shot its advantages on the foot. So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen.
  - remarkEon 4y ago
    >Sure, the US strategic goal is to dominate the world militarily. It could achieve that with half its military spending, arguably even a third Major citation needed on that one. There's inefficiencies in any large organization, sure, but this has nothing to do with a need to prepare a deterrent strategy for the actual wars that matter. Agreed that playing COIN in the desert for 20 years was stupid, and we should all be upset at the politicians and media apparatus that encouraged that stupidity. That doesn't have anything to do with the current situation. I can't parse what your second paragraph is getting at, other than SpaceX is cheaper than ULA, which I'd consider to be irrelevant given their different mission profiles. >So, your premise that you can just overspend your way into invincibility is not sound either, if anything the opposite might happen. I never said this.
- gretch 4y ago
  In President Eisenhower's farewell speech, he warned us against the establishment of a military-industrial complex. https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwigh... I'm largely just heeding his warning/advice. What is your take on those words? Was he wrong? Are 'not there yet'? And as a concrete example, what's your take on this 2015 event where congress purchased hundreds of millions of dollars in tanks even at the direct protest of the pentagon itself? https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tells-congress-to-stop-buying-equipment-it-doesnt-need.html https://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/28/pentagon-tell...