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The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

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Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#61

Post by JBiserkov »

jandrese wrote: post #31
malfist wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years 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.

The Trump administration forgot all of the lessons of Vietnam.

Maybe because they dogged it?

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#62

Post by abtinf »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #45
abtinf wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

War is not nearly the worst thing. Not even in the top 10.

Oh, really? I'd like to see your top 10.

Things that are worse than war, a wildly incomplete list, in no particular order:

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.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#63

Post by krapp »

xp84 wrote: post #51
paulluuk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".

There’s nothing peculiar about the US, every country or even tribe has fought many wars.

Not every country or tribe has been engaged in near continuous violence for over two centuries. That isn't simply "fighting many wars" it's being "existentially bound to warfare." The US is peculiar. It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder. It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war. It's the only nation to wage nuclear war, and did so primarily against civilians. It's (for the time being) the world's only superpower, with a military orders of magnitude larger than any other. It put the right to shoot people into its Constitution because its founders wanted a government that normalized regular revolutionary violence as a civic principle.

The US is weirdly attached to violence and war in ways you only tend to find in modern dictatorships or the empires of old.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#64

Post by maxglute »

phkahler wrote: post #47
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #2

A very insightful, and correct, piece. 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 conc…

The US military knows full well the importance of logistics. TFA is somehow arguing for distributed distribution networks that are harder to track and attack. Why not advocate for improved defenses along the supply lines? Or is it down to percentages where just one good hit has large effect?

Knowing logistics is important =/= able to adapt logistics to modern environment. Last 40-50 years US adversaries couldn't really contest/degrade US logistics at scale. Article is suggesting with new tech, they probably could, and hence may have to redo the entire system for distributed survivability / operate under chaos. Aka 60/70% of the force (the tail) is going to have to change the way they do things. It's hard to make 60/70% of org change, especially the boring bureaucratic/logistics part built around predictability, who are going to want to stay predictable and insist everything is fine with these minor changes, until its not.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#65

Post by anjel »

bad_haircut72 wrote: post #6

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.

History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#66

Post by cliglot »

anjel wrote: post #65
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #6

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.

History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

> History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

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.

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#67

Post by ApolloFortyNine »

malfist wrote: post #11
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #6

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.

> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years 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.

Well at this point the goal is for Iran to stop randomly blowing up innocent cargo ships. Or firing missiles at airports and cities in retaliation.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-says-iranian-...

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#68

Post by thrownawaysz »

>the difficulty of transporting extremely heavy 155-millimeter artillery shells and guided multiple-launch rocket system pods across contested oceans and degraded theater road networks

I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked

Re: The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

#70

Post by eth0up »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #21
paulluuk wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".

My point is that war is the worst thing that humans can engage in, and that the prevailing sentiment is that constant war is an immutable status-quo, and hence it's okay, there's nothing we can do except downvoting those fucking negativists.

I think the folks disagreeing with you maybe haven't spent much time in war. Almost certainly some in harsh skirmishes, but I reckon a few Nam, Korea and WWII vets would at least entertain your position on the subject. Pretty much every meta variation of terror has surfaced or has the potential to surface in war. Parts of Ukraine, I think, easily represent hell on Earth, for both sides.

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.

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