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

mwi.westpoint.edu

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

#421

Post by shimman »

ericmay wrote: post #352
shimman wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the US should focus more on diplomacy and open collaboration rather than letting a few dozen psychopaths convince the country we need to support a war machine that has benefited no one outside of the defense industry.

What diplomatic means should the United States (why the US and not others) take to stop Russia in Ukraine, stop Iran in the Middle East, stop North Korea, and stop China and its support for Russia or insistence of attacking Taiwan? Certainly there is some room for negotiation and diplomacy and frankly I think we've tried that and tried it until it was clearly insane and then we still tried it. We (the west) tried to…

Conflating China with Russia is absolutely bonkers. No need to comment when you're already engorged on propaganda.

Also don't understand what point you're trying to make outside of the US being explicitly poor actors that ignore treaties, allies, and are willing to start wars to run cover for unpopular domestic leadership while causing the unnecessary deaths of millions of people across the world.

Also WTF does backstab even mean in this context? That China didn't bend over and allow US corporations to rat fuck their country dry? Who exactly benefits from enriching US corporations here? It's assuredly not US citizens.

Good grief.

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

#422

Post by oatmeal1 »

ericmay wrote: post #352
shimman wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the US should focus more on diplomacy and open collaboration rather than letting a few dozen psychopaths convince the country we need to support a war machine that has benefited no one outside of the defense industry.

What diplomatic means should the United States (why the US and not others) take to stop Russia in Ukraine, stop Iran in the Middle East, stop North Korea, and stop China and its support for Russia or insistence of attacking Taiwan? Certainly there is some room for negotiation and diplomacy and frankly I think we've tried that and tried it until it was clearly insane and then we still tried it. We (the west) tried to…

We pulled out of the JCPOA. It worked but we quit.

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

#423

Post by CamperBob2 »

bluGill wrote: post #292
chasd00 wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It does need communication to ask the human for authorization to strike. well.. about that. "A senior figure in the Ukrainian defence industry told New Scientist that a test took place two years ago involving fully autonomous drones set to destroy anything in a given area, with confirmed casualties" https://www.newscientist.com/article/2529849-fully-autonomou... this article says "one time test" but i, personally,…

You need human confirmation (for now) only when your side might be there. Tell your army not to go someplace and you can kill anything that is there.

I wonder about the feasibility of an IFF-like mechanism at the level of individual soldiers. The drone could be designed not to attack when a nearby transmitter is broadcasting a prearranged encrypted code that's dependent on elapsed mission time or some other hard-to-spoof factor. Any humans caught out in the open without the IFF signal present are fair game.

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

#424

Post by colechristensen »

dctoedt wrote: post #312
bad_haircut72 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Once you've lost something (I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship) then even if you cant win, you also cant leave else its an admission of defeat - so it drags on and on and on.

> I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship Sinking or even just seriously damaging a U.S. aircraft carrier — approx. 5K people in crew + airwing, billions of dollars in ship and aircraft — might trigger a Pearl-Harbor or 9/11 fury among the American public. No U.S. president could get away with even a "proportionate" response, let alone doing nothing. Think of the Tonkin Gulf incident in 19…

>It triggered a cascade of some of the stupidest and costliest government decisions in history.

Eh. WWI wasn't an accident, a series of unfortunate incidents, or something that just got out of hand.

Countries and people WANTED the war, war was still thought about as a general benefit to the country, almost sporting. Everybody was feeling powerful with the new capabilities industrialization gave them and they wanted to use that to gain influence. (of course not literally everybody, but this was a prevailing force)

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

#425

Post by 0x073 »

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.

If it's continue 5 years, the country connected to this war in this region will go fast downstairs and maybe even end in a broken state. I don't sympathies with any monarch country there, but no one wants more unstable countries, especially in the Arabic region.

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

#426

Post by [deleted] »

zemvpferreira wrote: post #356
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that, when PRC cuts off the parts, there are backstops for alternate sourcing most of them even if it means reopening mines to get the materials and subsidizing production.

I don't mean to belittle the American war machine but as someone involved in overseas manufacturing for a while, I just don't see how it's possible to source 90% of items now made in China without a solid decade or two of investment. There are no factories, no supply chains, no skilled workers. It seems like fantasy.

[deleted]

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

#427

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

ericmay wrote: post #352
shimman wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the US should focus more on diplomacy and open collaboration rather than letting a few dozen psychopaths convince the country we need to support a war machine that has benefited no one outside of the defense industry.

What diplomatic means should the United States (why the US and not others) take to stop Russia in Ukraine, stop Iran in the Middle East, stop North Korea, and stop China and its support for Russia or insistence of attacking Taiwan? Certainly there is some room for negotiation and diplomacy and frankly I think we've tried that and tried it until it was clearly insane and then we still tried it. We (the west) tried to…

russia makes sense to the extent that they're attacking other countries unprovoked, but what are you talking about stopping China, North Korea, and Iran, from actually doing? Being successful? Improving their country? Existing?

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

#428

Post by jillesvangurp »

haunter wrote: post #24

> If history provides the theory, the ongoing war in Ukraine offers a brutal contemporary lesson: Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics, not when they run out of weapons. Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.

If you know your military history, it's a lesson military planners learn with essentially every war that is then forgotten when the next generation of military planners and politicians come along.

Both Russia and the US learned expensive lessons in Afghanistan fairly recently. And yet here they are engaged in conflicts in Ukraine and Iran that don't seem to go as they planned.

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

#429

Post by decimalenough »

Animats wrote: post #146
lopsotronic wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card. 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.

Ukraine and Taiwan quietly cooperate in weapons development and production, especially drones.[1] They both have big, aggressive neighbors. Ukraine knows how to fight them, and Taiwan can make electronics in quantity. Ukraine is starting to get cooperation from Japan, too, but that's in an earlier stage.[2] With Taiwan, it's serious. The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Uk…

The paper has a lengthy section entitled "The Crucible of Ukraine: The Transparent Battlefield".

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

#430

Post by txoria »

Presumably, the article is intended for military officers. Do military officers have nothing better to do than strain their eyes, reading a light gray text on a white background? And the article gives advice on strain-proof logistics, no less.

Seems like Modern War Institute is more concerned with looking posh, than getting their message across - the message of endurance. That's ironic.

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