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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

#211

Post by lostlogin »

asdff wrote: post #169
siriusastrebe wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moscow could only accomplish this with nukes, and only early in the war. By this point Ukraine has dug underground for most of its crucial war-sustaining industry. Ukraine, well they don't have nukes but as I understand it, much of the USSR's nuclear arsenal was built in Ukraine. I suspect Ukraine could respond tit for tat.

Why can they not use firebombing and other conventional munitions? If they can deliver a nuke surely they can deliver a conventional warhead. That is enough to level an urban area as we see in Gaza.

Israel levelled Gaza after capturing the area, with artillery and with air strikes.

Russia hasn’t captured Kiev, their artillery can’t reach that far and they don’t have air superiority - Russia hardly has an airforce anymore.

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

#212

Post by greedo »

asdff wrote: post #188
KittenInABox wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Russia's "full throttle" isn't actually as strong as they had posed...

It has to be stronger than Israel just from scale, and that seems plenty strong enough to level a modern city in a few days or weeks.

Scale doesn't really matter with an air force. The IAF is much, much stronger and more competent than the Russian Air Force. Plus, the Israelis are bombing defenseless cities (in Lebanon), and getting a lot of help from the US (in Iran).

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

#213

Post by shimman »

Animats wrote: post #171
phkahler wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The main point of this paper is that rear area bases are too vulnerable now. This paper is from West Point, and is the view from the Army side. It's a big problem for air forces, too. The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. Iran has been hitting US air bases. In the last day, they've hit US bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait…

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.

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

#214

Post by siriusastrebe »

AlexCoventry wrote: post #174
LinuxAmbulance wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 soi…

According to Zelensky, there will be drones capable of traversing tens of thousands of kilometers within a couple of years. The US mainland is definitely at risk of drone attack in the near-medium term, IMO. > One, two, three years — drones will strike ten, twenty thousand kilometers. With reactive engines, they will be very cheap -- Zelensky https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2042105223989035429

I did some digging, reaction engines are jet engines that can transition into a rocket propelled mode. It could enable a single stage to orbit plane.

Within the atmosphere the jet engine will burn atmospheric oxygen which would theoretically reduce the amount of fuel needed to reach a certain delta-V. Once outside of the atmosphere the engine switches to a rocket propelled mode, usually by injecting stored oxygen into the engine in addition to jet fuel.

So far there hasn't been a working prototype of a reaction engine. A British company SABRE closed down due to lack of funding but it did prove several pieces of the reactive engine design could work independently.

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

#215

Post by Varelion »

post-it wrote: post #116
Varelion wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the goal of the US/Iran war? 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.

I'm not sure anything is a distraction from the Epstein files. I don't think the administration cares about the Epstein files. What would be the fallout if they were all released? We already know that a lot of wealthy people were raping children. It's not like the US is going to prosecute.

Someone's name appears on it more than the word "God" does on the bible, according to the press. I think a tangible confirmation of that, and the deeds that occurred, and the fact Epstein was a Mossad agent with Russian ties would send a lot of things crumbling.

Did Bondi not say on camera that if the list was released "the system would collapse"?

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

#216

Post by shimman »

cucumber3732842 wrote: post #130
kayo_20211030 wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes. I agree, although careerism in the military is maybe not that strong an influence; it is, for sure, but not that strong yet. Careerism in the political class is probably exactly as strong as you claim it is. However, I do hope there are sensible people within that group too, and they heed the underlying message.

The military is still fairly results focused compared to the political class so that at least sort of pushes back on the most flagrant careerism.

How can you make this comment when the US military has literally created an entire industry that has served no single purpose outside of flagrant careerism? Like the military industry complex is a real thing and is almost 100 years old at this point, all it's done is make the world drastically unsafe while doing an immense amount of harm across the planet.

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

#217

Post by ElevenLathe »

asdff wrote: post #159
mpyne wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? 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) lo…

But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls? The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline ma…

> But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?

This is a spitball, but there are several hundred thousand ethnic Ukrainians in Crimea (along with many more ethnic non-Ukrainians who were previously Ukrainian citizens and have been more-or-less forced to take on Russian citizenship since 2014). Even if the Ukrainian war machine wanted to commit war crimes and/or genocide by completely starving out a city of 2.5 million (unclear if this is true or not, at least to me), they would be -- at least partially -- commiting them against their own people.

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

#218

Post by creato »

asdff wrote: post #188
KittenInABox wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding is that Russia's "full throttle" isn't actually as strong as they had posed...

It has to be stronger than Israel just from scale, and that seems plenty strong enough to level a modern city in a few days or weeks.

Israel can fly aircraft over their adversaries at will. Russia can't.

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

#219

Post by throw-the-towel »

mpyne wrote: post #113
mcswell wrote: post #72

I was puzzled by this: "...the Army must reinvest in up-armoring its logistical fleet. While adding armor reduces payload capacity and increases fuel consumption, violating the peacetime gospel of efficiency, it is a mandatory trade-off for survival." Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? I don't hear much about them, and I thought that was because drones can find the weaknesses in armor. Instead the emphasi…

> Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? 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) lo…

Holy cow, they've reinvented the armoured trains from the Civil War (late 1910s to early 1920s). In ten years, everything changes, yet in 100 years, nothing does.

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

#220

Post by shimman »

marcusverus wrote: post #205
greekrich92 wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure if you've noticed, but none of that SpaceX stuff is going to happen

L̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶d̶e̶d̶ ̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶ ̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶e̶c̶o̶n̶o̶m̶i̶c̶a̶l̶.̶ ̶ ̶M̶e̶g̶a̶c̶o̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶L̶E̶O̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶i̶p̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶e̶a̶m̶.̶ ̶ ̶S̶t̶a̶r̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶l̶y̶.̶ ̶ Starfall will never happen!

No serious really argued that; what they argued is that a Mars colony is impractical, interplanetary travel as a fantasy, and data centers in space as delusional.
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