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>I'm not sure if America actually cares about those types of war and military considerations any longer. Have you looked at ship construction times lately? it'

>I'm not sure if America actually cares about those types of war and military considerations any longer. Have you looked at ship construction times lately? it's kind of funny because the US won WWII by the ability to churn out huge volumes of decent quality goods but now our military seems to be adopting the German idea that small numbers of expensive wunderwaffen will turn the tide

stjohnswarts 3y ago
And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own", so soon we're likely to be the ones playing catch up despite our huge military budget and outlays.
- Qwertious 3y ago
  >And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own", They're moving away from that - they're becoming more similar to the US in prioritizing quality. China is racing to build a first-world economy before their demographics shut down their growth, so relying on cheap, plentiful troops makes less and less sense as the years go on.
sbierwagen 3y ago
Well, what will a future war look like? We're never going to fight WW2 again, because all the great powers have nuclear weapons now. The US army will never take the field in a straight up slugfest against Russia or China. So that leaves non-nuclear regional powers. But you simply don't need a whole-of-society mobilization to fight Iran. The phase of active combat against Iran will not take years-- it won't take months. If we really needed to, we could be building millions of Jeeps again. But we don't need to, and won't need to.
- tcbawo 3y ago
  My guess is that the future of war looks like Ukraine, where small, cheap automated drones will overwhelm expensive, low volume hardware, munitions, and defensive positions.
- araes 3y ago
  I find your lack of faith disturbing. Humans can totally figure out how to fight a ground war version of WWIII if they really want to. For perusal in the many ways humans have found to deploy nukes other than ICBMs. Note: SAMs, Artillery, RPGs, Mines, and Torpedoes. [1] Yields stretching from 0.02 KT at 50 kg [2] weight to 50,000 KT at 27,000 kg. [3][4] Sure, the high end stuff is world ending, yet the low end stuff is war enabling. And there's enough ways to knock missiles out of the air. Wargames computers are still calculating. Note the propensity of the wealthy to build bunker houses. Feel like they know something I don't know. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield

stjohnswarts 3y ago

And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own", so soon we're likely to be the ones playing catch up despite our huge military budget and outlays.

Qwertious 3y ago
>And Chinese military build out seems to be "perfect is the enemy of good enough" and "quantity has a quality all its own", They're moving away from that - they're becoming more similar to the US in prioritizing quality. China is racing to build a first-world economy before their demographics shut down their growth, so relying on cheap, plentiful troops makes less and less sense as the years go on.

sbierwagen 3y ago

Well, what will a future war look like? We're never going to fight WW2 again, because all the great powers have nuclear weapons now. The US army will never take the field in a straight up slugfest against Russia or China. So that leaves non-nuclear regional powers. But you simply don't need a whole-of-society mobilization to fight Iran. The phase of active combat against Iran will not take years-- it won't take months. If we really needed to, we could be building millions of Jeeps again. But we don't need to, and won't need to.

tcbawo 3y ago
My guess is that the future of war looks like Ukraine, where small, cheap automated drones will overwhelm expensive, low volume hardware, munitions, and defensive positions.
araes 3y ago
I find your lack of faith disturbing. Humans can totally figure out how to fight a ground war version of WWIII if they really want to. For perusal in the many ways humans have found to deploy nukes other than ICBMs. Note: SAMs, Artillery, RPGs, Mines, and Torpedoes. [1] Yields stretching from 0.02 KT at 50 kg [2] weight to 50,000 KT at 27,000 kg. [3][4] Sure, the high end stuff is world ending, yet the low end stuff is war enabling. And there's enough ways to knock missiles out of the air. Wargames computers are still calculating. Note the propensity of the wealthy to build bunker houses. Feel like they know something I don't know. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_weapons [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsar_Bomba [4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapon_yield