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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

#601

Post by bumby »

ceejayoz wrote: post #589
bumby wrote: post #579

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that misremembers or misrepresents history. The DC-X was program developed in the early 1990s expressly to prove the feasibility of orbital rocket vertical landings and rapid turn-around/reuse. It never made it to the full orbital regime because it was scrapped early, but it was considered successful in proving the proof-of-concept. It was also managed by the predecessors of ULA (McDonnel Douglas, which later…

https://x.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273 Tory Bruno saying "no one has come anywhere near close to demonstrating these economic sustainability goals". https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-critic-ula-ceo-reusable-roc... > “We have not really changed our assessment over the last couple of years because we have yet to see the other forms of reusability—flyback or propulsive return to Earth—demonstrate econom…

Economic viability is not the same goal. One is a business goal, one is a scientific/technological one. The goal from the DC-X 35+ years ago was the latter. Certainly, we'd expect the economics to improve since then.

The technological viability was shown with the proof of concept. If you meant strictly economic viability was unknown, I agree with you. This isn't meant to disparage SpaceX. They're doing great. I would say there is a risk that isn't often talked about which is the quality risk. Early on, SpaceX disregarded well-known quality control checks, presumably because they didn't think they were worth the time/cost. When that burned them, they integrated those checks. Do that enough times, the economic viability erodes.

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

#602

Post by iwontberude »

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 The outdated conc…

Given the defense budget recently doubled and they lose account of trillions of dollars, I guess I don’t see how they aren’t spending money on the tail.

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

#603

Post by mandevil »

sometimes_all wrote: post #590

What I am really impressed by is that experts and the army itself is open to criticism and commentary (I am sure there are limits, and censoring will be happening on the more important parts), but coming from a country where the government seems to think that any critique is "anti-national", such articles seem like a breath of fresh air. A more open space means better ideas with potential edge get shared, which is be…

The key is selecting officers for competence, not loyalty. This requires all the other stuff in your country to be set up so that the leaders aren't worried about coups from your own military, but the advantage to getting all of that is that you can have a much more effective military.

Why? Because any time junior officers just went through losing a war they are going to be pissed off that they were sent out there to do something that was impossible, and got a lot of their friends killed doing it. And if you let them, they are going to fix your military and make it more effective. My favorite example of this is the unpublished Ph.d thesis from Marshall Michel, The Revolt of the Majors (https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/595) about all of the junior pilots in the US Air Force who experienced, first hand, how terrible and useless the USAF was during Vietnam and over the course of the 1970's and 1980's built the totally different US Air Force that did Desert Storm.

If you are fortunate enough that you don't have the experience of recently losing a war, there will be a smaller number of junior officers who will be worried about losing the next one, and it will take more effort to identify those officers and put them into positions of power, but it is still possible to revolutionize your military without the bitter taste of a defeat. Defeat just makes it so that there are lot more junior officers committed to reform, and they will have the upper-hand over the more senior officers- so long as they are all selected for competence and not loyalty. If promotions are selected with loyalty as the primary factor, then you don't get reform, you get patronage.

Sometimes a patronage system can be effective, but it ends up being like the Czarist Russian fleet of 1905: Admiral Makarov was very very good, and everything directly under him was competent, but all of the other admirals varied between mediocre and terrible and the rest of the fleet was as well. After Makarov's ship the Petropavlovsk sank with almost of its officers and men (including him) the Russian Navy gave no further benefit to the state, it was just a sacrifice.

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

#604

Post by squidbeak »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #582
skolos wrote: post #574

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There was lots of discussion within Russian and Ukrainian war analytics that nukes (at least tactical) are useless in this war for the following reasons: - they would not change much on battlefield - there is no large concentrations that you can nuke - everything is dispersed - nuking urban centers again won't change much on battlefield but would alienate China - Russia's equipment is known to be not most reliable/ma…

Nuking all the major population centers would pretty much destroy the ability of Ukraine to manufacture weapons in any meaningful number and it would also deprive its army of any new soldiers, no reinforcements, no food supplies and so on. I think it will change the course of the war pretty fast and pretty drastically.

You're mistaken. A significant portion of Ukraine's manufacturing now happens abroad, out of Russia's reach. Meanwhile, a large part of its domestic production is decentralized and widely distributed. (You can easily find snobbish and pejorative comments by Rheinmetall's CEO about this.)

Nuclear weapon use would lead to no meaningful military success, but it would immediately alienate the superpower Russia depends on in almost every way. China will not tolerate any nation using nuclear weapons. With its extremely dense population, it can't afford a modern wartime precedent to be set for their use.

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

#605

Post by 0x457 »

ExoticPearTree wrote: post #479
Animats wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Poland and the Baltics know they're next on Putin's list. So they're glad to help Ukraine. Better than fighting the Russians on home territory. Taiwan and Japan, though, aren't in Russia's line of fire. The cooperation with Ukraine is because Ukraine figured out how to stop Russia. Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one.

> Taiwan has a real threat, and if they can build defenses that mean China faces a years-long war, there probably won't be one. China could just bomb Taiwan into submission if it chooses to. I don't think it is a problem for China to build 20-30k ballistic missile and launch them at Taiwan. Or send a million drones over there just to be sure nothing survives them. Taiwan is, unfortunately, in a very precarious situat…

I'd assume China wants to keep as much manufacturing capabilities of Taiwan intact. If it was just about unification, then it would have happened long time ago.

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

#606

Post by ceejayoz »

bumby wrote: post #601
ceejayoz wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://x.com/thesheetztweetz/status/1251155738421899273 Tory Bruno saying "no one has come anywhere near close to demonstrating these economic sustainability goals". https://www.teslarati.com/spacex-critic-ula-ceo-reusable-roc... > “We have not really changed our assessment over the last couple of years because we have yet to see the other forms of reusability—flyback or propulsive return to Earth—demonstrate econom…

Economic viability is not the same goal. One is a business goal, one is a scientific/technological one. The goal from the DC-X 35+ years ago was the latter. Certainly, we'd expect the economics to improve since then. The technological viability was shown with the proof of concept. If you meant strictly economic viability was unknown, I agree with you. This isn't meant to disparage SpaceX. They're doing great. I would…

> Economic viability is not the same goal.

They're close enough, functionally.

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

#607

Post by [deleted] »

edg5000 wrote: post #547
helsinkiandrew wrote: post #475

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Units can also collect e-points to purchase more equipment: > The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, Business Insider reported that destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve…

Wow, very interesting fact. If a unit is performing badly due to lack of equipment, they won't get the points to get the equipment they need. I wonder if that's a problem in practice. I'll read up on it, very interesting stuff.

[deleted]

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

#608

Post by ImPostingOnHN »

ericmay wrote: post #576
ImPostingOnHN wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All countries don’t have equal rights It's even simpler than that: all countries do have equal rights. The fact that russia or israel or the USA feel differently, and violate those rights, is immaterial. But if you want to argue that it's legally and morally okay for any country to attack and invade whomever they want, for whatever reason they want, go for it. It kind of cuts against your point though. > The closes…

> It's even simpler than that: all countries do have equal rights. The fact that russia or israel or the USA feel differently, and violate those rights, is immaterial. You forgot some countries (Venezuela, Iran, &c.) but this very fact proves my point. Those rights are just fictions which are mostly backed by American military power. > What does the United Nations say about israel's actions in Lebanon and Palestine?…

> What does that have to do with Iran? And why would the bad actions of one country excuse the bad actions of another?

If israel's nuclear program isn't a "bad action", then Iran's nuclear program isn't a "bad action", either. If there is no bad action there, then there's nothing to excuse, and we're left with unjustified israeli attacks on Iran (along with Palestine and Lebanon to boot).

> I’m talking about Iran’s nuclear weapon proliferation. There are rules, you think all countries should be beholden to those rules. Why are you excusing Iran breaking the rules?

Why are you excusing israel breaking those rules? Iran has been an NPT member for decades, israel refuses to even sign it, much less abide by the restrictions and safeguards around nuclear nonproliferation. Clearly they are the real proliferation threat here.

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

#609

Post by 4gotunameagain »

szopa wrote: post #542
pheaded_while9 wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gameification of war is the literal worst thing I ever heard. Lords of War, eat your heart out.

Note that capturing a live Russian soldier is worth 10 times more than killing one. Think about how that affects the incentives of Ukrainian soldiers. Avoid committing war crimes, get better gear for your team.

[flagged]

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

#610

Post by Edman274 »

RealityVoid wrote: post #489
fragmede wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not for long. Software copies easily. Hardware's more difficult.

You need hardware for these things. High speed image processing and high precision control and global shutter cameras. You can't just slap a raspi on it with any run of the mill camera and call it a day.

So what? A Google Pixel 9 Pro costs only about 4 times what a bare RPi 5 with a run of the mill camera costs, yet with its NPU it can perform 45 trillion operations per second with a camera that can reach 240 frames per second at a resolution of 2 megapixels. Do you think that's insufficient to autonomously pilot a drone moving at highway speeds towards a target that it identified as a fighter jet? In addition, it has an onboard battery, GPS, cellular and WiFi connectivity, pressure sensor, accelerometer, and USB connectivity. A phone by itself could replace practically all of the brains of a single use drone and they sell phones literally in the millions. The hardware is terrifyingly easy to source.
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