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> We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs. That's what the U

by ndiddy 2mo ago

> We should have plenty of precision missiles left today because they should have been used only to clear the way for runs with "dumb" bombs. That's what the US tried to do. The problem is that they were unable to degrade the Iranian missile systems enough that they could drop gravity bombs with impunity. This also means that they had to pull the aircraft that they would use to do bombing runs back to bases in Jordan and Israel because anything on the tarmac in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE is very vulnerable to Iranian drone and missile strikes. All of this means that they're forcing the US to choose between pulling out of the region or accepting losses of personnel and airframes (that likely cannot be replaced in a timely manner) at a level that the post-Vietnam US military has never had to face. I suspect an all-out war between the US and China would go the same way as this one, if not worse. The US military in its modern form has focused on procuring very complex, advanced, and featureful weapons in tiny numbers. The problem is that this means that the US is incapable of fighting a sustained campaign against an adversary that can withstand attacks from American weapons and has a higher production capacity.

SR2Z 2mo ago
The problem is production capacity. The US has gutted the lower-value parts of its supply chains, closed refineries and foundries left and right, and is thoroughly unequipped to even produce cheap weapons at the rate required to support a war. The number of airplanes built in the US during WWII is greater than all the airplanes NOT in that category. Obviously we can't maintain that level of industry during peacetime, but we've fallen so far below that level and are so low on weapons that if another major war starts we won't even be able to rapidly scale up.
- estearum 2mo ago
  No, the problem is that nobody actually gives a fuck about this war. The reason we don't have industrial capacity dedicated to this war is because everyone knows we're fighting it for no reason, there's no plan, it stops and starts every 4 days, so on. Simple consequences of having actual stupid people leading our government. If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap into action at incredible speed.
  - SR2Z 2mo ago
    > If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap into action at incredible speed. I'm gonna push back on "nobody cares." The United States is somewhat unique in that our doctrine calls for wars to be fought on distant shores, and that the main role of our military is to ensure that our ideology (liberal democracy) is protected across the world. That's why we entered WWII, it's why we keep carrier groups around the world, and it's why Iran/Ukraine/Taiwan are so critical. The threat of an American response and the visible follow-through is a significant factor in deterring anyone who's even considering a war. Yes, Trump is unspeakably stupid, he's managed to make the worst possible decision at every step of this nightmare, but the truth is that a conflict like this has only been getting more likely since the GOP killed the nuclear deal. We need weapons for Ukraine. We need weapons for Iran. And, God forbid, but we need weapons for Taiwan.
    - sarchertech 2mo ago
      > That's why we entered WWII The US entered World War II in the pacific after Pearl Harbor and in Europe after Germany declared war. Before those 2 events, there was still a strong isolationist contingent in the US.
      - SR2Z 2mo ago
        For years leading up to that point Congress was passing "neutral" bills that allowed the country to sell weapons to the Allies but not the Axis. Since we're discussing weapons production, yes, the US joined the war effort on the side of the Allies well before formally declaring war. Yes, there were isolationists, but there weren't enough to change the fact that fascist/communist victories in Europe would be bad for America. The neoliberal thing where we support liberal democracies is an evolution of the Monroe doctrine, because we've recognized for a long time that the best path forward for America is free trade and interdependency with other like-minded countries.
        sarchertech 2mo ago
        That wasn’t the US supporting liberal democracies. A full 20% of Lend-Lease went to the Soviet Union, and the US provided plenty of support to Nationalist (and very authoritarian) China. We had friendly relations and supported many counties that weren’t liberal democracies before the war. We were friendly with Japan before they started expanding and threatening free trade/access to Asia.
- jimbokun 2mo ago
  And we still manage to spend more than the next six countries combined on our military!
  - brazzy 2mo ago
    That's because the primary goal of the spending is not to produce a capable military. It's an expensive, inefficient jobs program, but one that you can get conservatives to support
  - O3marchnative 2mo ago
    This argument usually depends on how you quantify defense spending, no? [0] In terms of PPP, the U.S. is falling behind. To be perfectly clear, that doesn't somehow absolve the size of U.S. defense spending. If anything, it's damning of all these wunderwaffe projects defense contractors take on and the taxpayer funds. [0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/05/11/by-one-measure-americas-allies-now-outspend-it-on-defence https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/05/11/by-one-m... (no paywall: https://archive.ph/X9zzc https://archive.ph/X9zzc)
- FuriouslyAdrift 2mo ago
  Ship production is in much worse shape.
WarmWash 2mo ago
China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.
- estearum 2mo ago
  NATO exercises and, ya know, the war in Iran, seem to suggest there's limited applicability of the US's experience.
  - ericmay 2mo ago
    Dropping bombs and evading live anti-aircraft fire is of limited applicability? Are you sure you're not confusing combined arms exercises that the US has, and continues to engage in (Venezuela comes to mind recently) with your personal opinion on the validity of the war in Iran?
    - mplewis 2mo ago
      brother, how do you think this is going for us
      - ericmay 2mo ago
        I think that's a separate question from the validity of real-life combat experience that American (and other) forces are gaining that Chinese forces lack, with respect to the OP.
        estearum 2mo ago
        The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. Nothing to do with "validity." Your lived experience (or whoever's you're defending) is valid.
close04 2mo ago
> they had to pull the aircraft that they would use to do bombing runs back to bases in Jordan and Israel because anything on the tarmac in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE is very vulnerable to Iranian drone and missile strikes. Looks a lot like the US went into this war assuming it's a rerun of the Iraq war where they could build a mountain of supplies in Saudi Arabia where they were effectively unreachable for the enemy, and take advantage or the friendly skies just across Iraq's border to support their air superiority, and keep the long and lengthening logistics lines protected. It wasn't a rerun. They can't stock up and just stay beyond Iran's border to be safe, now everything they care about has to stay far, far away, out of drone or missile reach. Any supply lines can be hit far behind the front line so they were non-existent.
KaiserPro 2mo ago
> That's what the US tried to do. Yes but with the caveat that they wanted the lowest risk to US service members during the bombing. This means using up the fire and forget stuff rather than the guided munitions attached to planes. They have good air superiority, but poor logistical options to do that. The traditional way to do this is to park two carrier groups within 500 miles of the target and convey tonnes of cheap munitions to the targets (as in iraq, Libya & kosovo) the problem for the US is that it means parking a carrier within drone range. You'd then establish a land base and move forward. Again all of the logistics of doing that are vulnerable to drone. So this is the route they chose. Until the US have something to counter drones cheaply, then they'll get stuck like this.
- _heimdall 2mo ago
  I would love to know the honest opinions of our top brass. They had to know sitting out of (most) drone range and leaning almost entirely on long range surface-to-surfsce missiles wouldn't even come close to clearing the way for more standard bombing runs. They would have known going into this war the plan was fundamentally flawed before we even committed to firing a single munition.
- nixon_why69 2mo ago
  An undersold embarrassment of this fiasco is the Marine Corps has 10 (ten!) amphibious assault carriers that are more capable than most nations' flagships and we didn't see one of them even talked about. Why have we been floating these things for decades?
  - _heimdall 2mo ago
    How would you propose we use them here? It seemed for a while like our military was at least prepping for a land invasion. Maybe they could have been part of the landing but I'm sure as hell glad they didn't follow through with an invasion. The geography, supply line issues, and drone warfare would have been an absolute nightmare.
    - nixon_why69 2mo ago

by ndiddy 2mo ago

SR2Z 2mo ago

The problem is production capacity. The US has gutted the lower-value parts of its supply chains, closed refineries and foundries left and right, and is thoroughly unequipped to even produce cheap weapons at the rate required to support a war. The number of airplanes built in the US during WWII is greater than all the airplanes NOT in that category. Obviously we can't maintain that level of industry during peacetime, but we've fallen so far below that level and are so low on weapons that if another major war starts we won't even be able to rapidly scale up.

estearum 2mo ago
No, the problem is that nobody actually gives a fuck about this war. The reason we don't have industrial capacity dedicated to this war is because everyone knows we're fighting it for no reason, there's no plan, it stops and starts every 4 days, so on. Simple consequences of having actual stupid people leading our government. If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap into action at incredible speed.
- SR2Z 2mo ago
  > If the US got into a war that anyone actually cared about, it would almost certainly snap into action at incredible speed. I'm gonna push back on "nobody cares." The United States is somewhat unique in that our doctrine calls for wars to be fought on distant shores, and that the main role of our military is to ensure that our ideology (liberal democracy) is protected across the world. That's why we entered WWII, it's why we keep carrier groups around the world, and it's why Iran/Ukraine/Taiwan are so critical. The threat of an American response and the visible follow-through is a significant factor in deterring anyone who's even considering a war. Yes, Trump is unspeakably stupid, he's managed to make the worst possible decision at every step of this nightmare, but the truth is that a conflict like this has only been getting more likely since the GOP killed the nuclear deal. We need weapons for Ukraine. We need weapons for Iran. And, God forbid, but we need weapons for Taiwan.
  - sarchertech 2mo ago
    > That's why we entered WWII The US entered World War II in the pacific after Pearl Harbor and in Europe after Germany declared war. Before those 2 events, there was still a strong isolationist contingent in the US.
    - SR2Z 2mo ago
      For years leading up to that point Congress was passing "neutral" bills that allowed the country to sell weapons to the Allies but not the Axis. Since we're discussing weapons production, yes, the US joined the war effort on the side of the Allies well before formally declaring war. Yes, there were isolationists, but there weren't enough to change the fact that fascist/communist victories in Europe would be bad for America. The neoliberal thing where we support liberal democracies is an evolution of the Monroe doctrine, because we've recognized for a long time that the best path forward for America is free trade and interdependency with other like-minded countries.
      - sarchertech 2mo ago
        That wasn’t the US supporting liberal democracies. A full 20% of Lend-Lease went to the Soviet Union, and the US provided plenty of support to Nationalist (and very authoritarian) China. We had friendly relations and supported many counties that weren’t liberal democracies before the war. We were friendly with Japan before they started expanding and threatening free trade/access to Asia.
jimbokun 2mo ago
And we still manage to spend more than the next six countries combined on our military!
- brazzy 2mo ago
  That's because the primary goal of the spending is not to produce a capable military. It's an expensive, inefficient jobs program, but one that you can get conservatives to support
- O3marchnative 2mo ago
  This argument usually depends on how you quantify defense spending, no? [0] In terms of PPP, the U.S. is falling behind. To be perfectly clear, that doesn't somehow absolve the size of U.S. defense spending. If anything, it's damning of all these wunderwaffe projects defense contractors take on and the taxpayer funds. [0] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/05/11/by-one-measure-americas-allies-now-outspend-it-on-defence https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2026/05/11/by-one-m... (no paywall: https://archive.ph/X9zzc https://archive.ph/X9zzc)
FuriouslyAdrift 2mo ago
Ship production is in much worse shape.

WarmWash 2mo ago

China, in it's modern incarnation, and every living member of it's military, has never seen a single real battle. Nothing. No one has any rank that has bearing on any kind of combat. Just decades of self-congratulatory war games. China has tons of weapons and resources. But it would remain to be seen if they can actually fight when every single person along the entire chain is a total day one rookie.

estearum 2mo ago
NATO exercises and, ya know, the war in Iran, seem to suggest there's limited applicability of the US's experience.
- ericmay 2mo ago
  Dropping bombs and evading live anti-aircraft fire is of limited applicability? Are you sure you're not confusing combined arms exercises that the US has, and continues to engage in (Venezuela comes to mind recently) with your personal opinion on the validity of the war in Iran?
  - mplewis 2mo ago
    brother, how do you think this is going for us
    - ericmay 2mo ago
      I think that's a separate question from the validity of real-life combat experience that American (and other) forces are gaining that Chinese forces lack, with respect to the OP.
      - estearum 2mo ago
        The claim above is that neither side has experience that's all that relevant to the type of conflict we'd expect in a China/US conflict. Nothing to do with "validity." Your lived experience (or whoever's you're defending) is valid.

close04 2mo ago

> they had to pull the aircraft that they would use to do bombing runs back to bases in Jordan and Israel because anything on the tarmac in Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE is very vulnerable to Iranian drone and missile strikes. Looks a lot like the US went into this war assuming it's a rerun of the Iraq war where they could build a mountain of supplies in Saudi Arabia where they were effectively unreachable for the enemy, and take advantage or the friendly skies just across Iraq's border to support their air superiority, and keep the long and lengthening logistics lines protected. It wasn't a rerun. They can't stock up and just stay beyond Iran's border to be safe, now everything they care about has to stay far, far away, out of drone or missile reach. Any supply lines can be hit far behind the front line so they were non-existent.

KaiserPro 2mo ago

> That's what the US tried to do. Yes but with the caveat that they wanted the lowest risk to US service members during the bombing. This means using up the fire and forget stuff rather than the guided munitions attached to planes. They have good air superiority, but poor logistical options to do that. The traditional way to do this is to park two carrier groups within 500 miles of the target and convey tonnes of cheap munitions to the targets (as in iraq, Libya & kosovo) the problem for the US is that it means parking a carrier within drone range. You'd then establish a land base and move forward. Again all of the logistics of doing that are vulnerable to drone. So this is the route they chose. Until the US have something to counter drones cheaply, then they'll get stuck like this.

_heimdall 2mo ago
I would love to know the honest opinions of our top brass. They had to know sitting out of (most) drone range and leaning almost entirely on long range surface-to-surfsce missiles wouldn't even come close to clearing the way for more standard bombing runs. They would have known going into this war the plan was fundamentally flawed before we even committed to firing a single munition.
nixon_why69 2mo ago
An undersold embarrassment of this fiasco is the Marine Corps has 10 (ten!) amphibious assault carriers that are more capable than most nations' flagships and we didn't see one of them even talked about. Why have we been floating these things for decades?
- _heimdall 2mo ago
  How would you propose we use them here? It seemed for a while like our military was at least prepping for a land invasion. Maybe they could have been part of the landing but I'm sure as hell glad they didn't follow through with an invasion. The geography, supply line issues, and drone warfare would have been an absolute nightmare.
  - nixon_why69 2mo ago