Ukraine exposing critical problems in American weapons

A trillion dollars a year for… this?

Small & proxy wars often are used to test weapons & doctrine. See: Spanish Civil War... and Ukraine…

Here is what we’ve learned in Ukraine:

• Our $20-$30M full-lifecycle-cost tanks suck (or, at best, are obsolete weapons systems) and are wiped-out by $1K drones

• We can’t build munitions at a rate to sustain industrial warfare fires in even small wars

• Our “most advanced” tactical missiles - ATACMS - suck.

Maybe we oughta pull-in our horns.

These failures of what we have convinced ourselves were superweapons from our no-longer “arsenal of democracy” that are swatted-down like bluebottle flies, absolutely are informing adversaries from Persia to China to Russia to North Korea… that our bark is far worse than our bite. The demonstration of failure in our “advanced systems” - magnified by the huge delays & cost-overruns of the F35 - our most advanced strike aircraft - are significant intel to adversaries.

Perhaps rather than spending billions on a new strategic bomber of absolutely no use in the small proxy wars our moronic leaders demand to fight (and refuse to win, making the entire effort - force and wars - Potemkin), but that will look cool in a flyover at a college football game, we ought to ensure we match our defense budget to the wars we fight: tactical missiles, artillery & drones… and doctrine to use them effectively.

Not even to mention that our nuclear deterrent is 50 years old … Will those 1970-era Minuteman III ICBMs work? Will their MIRV payloads reach their targets? Will the nukes .. nuke? Or our Navy’s inability to build ships or not steer them into each other, and not burn them to the waterline … in port … and our complete lack of a hypersonic missile capability… another “super weapon” that looks good in PowerPoint…?

Plus our top-line aerospace company can’t even make a space capsule, while a rich guy in a garage is cycling reusable rockets & spacecraft like flipping pancakes. Is this important to warfare? The ultimate “high ground” is the moon, and China is certainly giving us a run for the money in getting there… so, yeah… it’s not just important… it’s critical.

Sure, F35s scare Neolithic Houthi, but scaring illiterate tribesmen is orders of magnitude different from being a concern to a peer foe. Real adversaries have to be (certainly ought to be) assuming failure in air-to-air and air-to-ground combat by the F35, just as by ATACMS & M1A1. A few hundred F35 will not be a match for hundreds more SU57 or (and?) J20… as is said, quantity has a quality all its own…

And help me understand the need for air-to-air. WW2 is over, any intercontinental peer battle will be fought with hypersonics, SLBMs & ICBMs, the “nuclear triad” is obsolete, and both manned bombers and fighter aircraft relics of the last war, continued only by the glory-days dreams of the top of the USAF chain of command, the same guys retiring the most-effective CAS aircraft in history (A10) so they can build the F35, both lacking the infantry support capability of the A10 and at a cost way too high to risk down in the dirt where the battle is taking place.)

We’ve been believing our own pub and feeding the MIC monster and it’s now proving to be a paper tiger where the munitions meet the enemy.

Maybe it’s time for a re-think…?

If we keep initiating stupid wars and proving we neither want to nor can win, we’re going to completely bankrupt our country and leave our egos only one course of action, and that will be to go nuclear.

Our leaders are certifiably insane.