I'll quote in full the following, which I think gets to the heart of the matter. If you have no push, you can't apply pressure to the point.
> The notion that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics is frequently discussed in military academies and war colleges, yet it is rarely reflected in the Army’s budget requests or modernization priorities. The outdated concept of the tooth-to-tail ratio, which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined. In modern warfare, the tail is the primary target. If the tail is severed, the teeth are rendered useless.
It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.
Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex.
That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.
For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers.
More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.
Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1]
The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs.
[1] https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/vtproximityfuze.htm
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-...
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-point...
Equipment was worth more than a capture.
Capture was worth more than a kill (get Intel, trade for Ukranian captives).
Kill was xyz points.
The more points, the more weapons, equipment, and support you got.
This was several years ago, I'm not sure its still in play.
I think that’s an apt comparison because it was hard to keep an army fed (https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...)
I agree, or at least it feels insightful and right, though I can’t personally validate if it’s correct. But the big question I have is who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen? Is this to sway the public, to push politicians, to convince the Army internally to plan better, stop using contractors & no-bid contracts, or simply ask for more?
Looks like military spending is currently ~20% of all Federal Revenue at somewhere close to $1T, and it exceeds the combined spending of China and Russia by maybe 2x. Are we wanting to go back to 1960’s 50% of Federal Revenue? Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
It's at wespoint.edu. The US military has a long and proud history of really good thinkers writing insightful and important pieces the government then ignores. My outsider impression has always been there was a freedom of ideas there. Don't get used to it though as Pete Hesgeth is fixing it fast as he can.
Deeply entrenched corruption, obviously.
A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
US Soldiers/Airmen/Sailors/Marines are incredibly expensive each.
The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.
What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
To make certain people money by shorting the oil market. There is a reason why these "peace" deals are always announced on Fridays.
kneecaping china by cutting off a huge source of its oil imports. Russia will not be able to make up the difference.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/business/iran-oil-trump-strai...
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-says-iranian-...
Furthermore, if they want to deal with the US or Israel, then they should target American or Israeli assets. Not third party ships manned by citizens of neutral nations who just want to get to port and remit cash to their families back home.
The initial US goals clearly were: 1. Regime change 2. Denial is of nuclear weapons
It’s also clear these goals were not achieved. So the US changed tactics and goals. (Same as Russia no longer plans on capturing Kiev it seems)
Most likely the US is stalling for time due to oil markets and has the same intentions as before, limited only by current capability.
Distract from the Epstein files. If you think anything else you:
1 - Haven't been paying attention since 2008.
2 - Are giving the administration way too much undeserved credit.What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.
It varies. Which is the problem.
I can think of a few:
1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent.
2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their infrastructure, possibly on the grounds of shared religion. Maybe they'll get tired of it.
3) Cause regime change in Iran. Not happening now. Might not happen in the foreseeable future.
How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?
By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving.
Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
Can they? https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... says
“In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory”
According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years.
If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021)
You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.
Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.
Napoleon
What he didn't anticipate was how bad the roads in Russia would be and how long the Russian army would retreat along them. You can't resupply an army that is marching on a narrow dirt road through a forest because it's blocking its own supply lines.
I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked
It can be, but it would be very, very difficult for anything short of lobbing ICBMs around. You'd have to have a fleet of ships that would be detected as soon as they set sail, and then protect that fleet for the entire voyage, which would also be extremely difficult for any adversary.
Getting boots on US soil would be even tougher.
Drones are an option, but cross-ocean ones are not an easy problem to solve.
A more appropriate question might be, where are the armored vehicles now in Russia?
And as it turns out, they have indeed started adding armor to transport craft, including trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_armoured_train_Yenisei
And despite Ukrainian strikes earlier, the Russian bridge over the Kerch strait remains standing and in use for some (not all) logistical supply from Russia to Crimea, and this is due in no small amount due to the amount of 'armoring' that is inherent to the design of a bridge that must cross a strait of that size.
It's a question of cost more than anything, the more expensive a transport means becomes to build, the more it makes sense to start including armor to force an attack on that transport to itself have to invest a lot more for success.
https://oshkoshdefense.com/vehicles/medium-tactical-vehicles...
We're living in times where an evangelical POTUS dislikes the pope, oligarchs talk about the "antichrist", wars are started with reference to "armageddon" [1] to distract from old money power brokers such as Epstein who has esotheric Kaballah symbols on his office walls [2 @14min42sec].
The authoritarians are concluding the democratic experiment because they can't hide their heritage any longer. All hail the King.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/troops-being-told-to-prepare-...
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/never-seen-video-shows-eps...
Depends how the war starts. Russia? USA somehow attacks? Easily 6 months of buildup in Europe.
China? Again USA somehow attacks? Again buildup in Australia, Japan, Korea.
Also US air power is absolutely supreme. I don’t see how they will be fighting in actually contested skies even only 2 months in.
All of that was assumed to be true. The US would do small police actions here and there with highly-specialized forces. The rules-based system would more-or-less do the rest.
In the meantime we gutted not only the logistics but the manufacturing base needed to feed that system so that we could "cut costs"... which didn't really happen anyways.
We should be throwing people in prison over this.
I don't know how one would reach that conclusion, least of all a Major at the nation's leading military educational institute. Nothing "hell-bent" about it.
9/11 was a huge success for Bin Laden's goal of restarting a forever war, though.
The US is weirdly attached to violence and war in ways you only tend to find in modern dictatorships or the empires of old.
Edit: I will go a bit further..
I consider Military the greatest power on Earth. It's sacred, necessary. But those who abuse its power commit, in my view, the greatest of sins. I don't mean the soldiers who fight, but those making the decisions of who they fight. The soldiers do their job, often willingly. And they are the ones who face the consequences. To betray them by corruption is the ultimate betrayal. War is a power that, I think, should be reserved for situations with no other option. Mercenaries not considered.
Pogroms; slavery; totalitarian dictatorship; theocracy; intentional mass starvation; mass organ harvesting; mass forced relocation; anarchy; failing to respond to unprovoked violence; restricting freedom instead of defeating the adversary.
You really think the massive amounts of death and destruction aren’t top ten? What do you think happens to the local population when an invading force arrives? You should go and read about the rape of Nanking. And just read about what happened in wars before the modern era.
I don't think I've made a similar comment elsewhere on Hacker News, reddit, etc., (nor do I plan to make a habit of it) but this one stuck out to me. I know this because I did read it just as I've read previous posts such as these on West Point through the years. This just isn't how things used to be written. It's a little more ambiguous out in the wild on any given site/blog/etc.
> The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration
Mistrust of what? The human voice behind this thought? Yes, I think that mistrust is valid and earned. Nevertheless, I admit the topic seems pertinent and the argument has merit.
For me a better way is to find out if I want to read the text or not. Does is there something interesting being said? Is it presented in a way that is at least pleasant enough to read? Is it concise enough? If not I don't read it. Or I skim it.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't like the overuse LLM generated texts. I write my words on my own. Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors.
> Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors
Is there nothing? Nothing at all to be gained by resisting the loss of human-created written thought? It may be a futile effort, the tide may be too great, but I guess I'm not just quite so ready to accept the robotic creation of all written content without even a periodic passing comment. It's good for the soul, but I admit I am probably commenting in a community less likely to appreciate or share such a sentiment.
I don't see how you changed anything by pointing out that you assume that this is written by an LLM. What was gained? I don't really see anything. Do you think anyone is dissuaded from reading the article or from using an LLM the next they write something because you could maybe probably tell that it's probably written by an LLM?
I think we all lose more than we gain if we do this. We look at each other with mistrust over whether they used an LLM and we point fingers as soon as we see a sign of "wrongdoing". I see artists and writers frustrated about being accused of using ML tools. And the people who just use LLMs and image generation tools mostly just don't care.
The whole "AI" industry makes everything diffuse. We have to go by vibes if something is made by a human or not and the signs are ever more subtle. We have to be so incredibly careful not to accuse those who are on our side. People who create real human work.
For me the easiest solution for now is to stop accusing. Unless you know for certain that there was not a real human behind it don't point fingers.