331–340 of 769 posts
Anyone have insight into the overlap of techies and armchair military experts? Every thread like this ends up overflowing with comments like "Let me explain to you what's really happening..."
It's not hard for me to understand why techies would be so interested.
>The U.S. Army has used up So not the US. There is also the Navy, Air Force etc Borderline clickbait
Doesn't make the points about this administration not having a real plan invalid though...
https://www.militarytimes.com/industry/techwatch/2026/08/04/...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
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.
Ukraine wasn't really wearing the war crown either and they managed to redefine the face of war to the point where countries with trillion dollar militaries are taking notes.
Your jab isn't totally unwarranted, China like most countries has no battle tested military. But your correct premise suggests a conclusion which just isn't there. If I say "China hasn't lost a war in decades, while the US is successfully losing to an enemy that's been strangled from all sides for decades" the premise is true but the conclusion is still up for being written.
"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…
> For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. This is a concerning statement, as it implies it'd be impossible for the United States to lose an engagement regardless of any and all evidence.
As much as I want to believe mainstream media, what is verifiable opinion vs state sponsored media and propaganda?
Or are we not supposed to think and assume all headlines are real?
"There's no such thing as public opinion, merely published opinion". While on the one hand we should never discount the impact of incompetence, gross negligence, or deliberate mismanagement there's a reason this story is circulating. For the most-dominant military power in the world to "whoopsy" run out of weapons because of a low-stakes engagement isn't readily believable. Suspicious me likens it to the supposed "wa…
Russia kept saying its the second most powerful military in the world and now it's the second most powerful military in Ukraine. You can't just keep saying words and then think they're true because you keep repeating them.
There's no secret US weapons factories hidden away somewhere, the inadequacy of the US industrial base to maintain production for long term war have been known for decades and were in some sense even an intentional shift after the end of the Cold War.
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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 in…
> 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…
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.
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Of course there can be - likely with a gentleman's understanding that neither would use them, and each side careful to not back the other into a corner where they'd have nothing left to lose. It's just going to be your typical meatgrinder and attrition warfare.
>"gentleman's understanding that neither would use them, and each side careful to not back the other into a corner where they'd have nothing left to lose." So we'll just grind each other into a halt? And what is the end state? What a BS.
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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,…
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 in…