So much of the military budget is just funneling money to contractors as opposed to actually getting results. The F-35 is a joke. The last time the US military was actually tested by a strong opponent was in Vietnam, and was now 50 years ago. And the US lost that one. I'm wondering, if there was a conventional, non-nuclear war with say China in a few more years, is it possible we'd see the shocking result of the US military getting absolutely embarrassed. I mean, it's obvious I think that the US wouldn't win that anyway, but I'm talking about like, the world realizing all the trillions spent on the vaunted US military didn't really mean much and other than the nukes, the US is actually militarily weak?
I have actually had the pleasure of doing a large-scale combat exercise against Americans, and anecdotally they seemed pretty incompetent. The soldiers could not for the life of them take cover behind a tree and were very easy to shoot. They would do these dumbass tactics, like driving an APC into a dense forest, and then not dismounting when they encountered us. I did get killed a lot by artillery, though.
The real answer is, no one actually knows. So much of any peer or near peer war will consist of electronics that haven't been combat tested that it's hard to actually predict any outcome.
Plus, the gamer mindset of "counting the weapons" has to be abandoned. The easy example is the DF-21, the anti ship ballistic missile, aka the "carrier killer". Sounds big and scary! But, how exactly does it target and hit a mobile carrier? 40 mph on a carrier doesn't sound fast, until you realize that's in a radius. That suddenly becomes a lot bigger area to search. So, you feel you have a targeting solution on a US carrier, and launch. The missile takes 15-20 minutes to arrive, still leaving plenty of ocean to search. The missile is blind during reentry, and maneuvering at the speed a ballistic missile goes is not easy, to put it mildly.
So you need updates from a targeting radar. But nothing painting a carrier battle group locally is going to survive, because it's well within the lethal range of air defenses. Well, then let's move to space, and we'll use radar satellites to pass targeting information. Except satellites are known quantities. If in geosynchronous orbit, you know roughly what area they can target. If orbiting, you know their orbit. And satellites can be destroyed, blinded, or jammed.
Of course, this all assumes the US systems are working correctly as well. So you wind up in a situation where there's definitely a threat, but until missiles start flying, no one actually knows what will happen. Will the Chinese kill chain function uninterrupted? Or will the Chinese decide to fire them as a bluff to encourage the carrier group into making a mistake, perhaps exposing themselves to a submarine or antiship missile battery lying in waiting?
There's oodles more that can be discussed - how good is Chinese ASW? How good is Chinese AAW? Will the Chinese fleet even bother leaving port? Like, if there's no need to set sail because they're confident that bombers and missiles will keep the USN at bay, why bother?
I know when a section of my reserve peers went to America for an exercise there was an exorbitant set for it, there was rigged explosives, rockets on lines, people reenacting their injuries they probably got on the job (which was probably the most fucked thing tbh), it was like a Hollywood movie. Our section was to be the bad guy against a few full battalions occupying what was basically a full town. By going one building at a time our section almost routed their forces. It was pretty funny, they ended the ex and our section commander was brought into basically a movie theatre filled with your officers and generals as they rewatched the scene and talked about what they did wrong and how one competent section managed to beat several battalions. This happens enough that I feel comfortable it won't DOX me but I will say when they ran the situation again they used their referee to cheat.
Thats my anecdotal experience with the American military. I still think my favourite effort post about it is this one, including the comments. There is a recently released sailor in the comments there who brings up some real interesting points I would reccomend giving a read.
That was our experience there basically lol. If they could call in airstrikes I imagine we wouldn't have done too well by nature of being a normal section with normal section level equipment. I imagine their opening gambit and long-term strategy would rely upon air support heavily if they ever had the gall to invade a country with a functional military. It would have to because the rest of their troops are so bad.
You can look at what was done to Iraq in 1991 to get an idea of the US military's idea of opening moves.
See also Korea and the crazy amount of bombs being dropped there. Same with Vietnam. The US is an air based military force.
Yeah I can relate to that. My experience with U.S armed forces is that a lot of the training, equipment, and mentality is geared towards fighting asymmetrical warfare with as little human contact as possible to limit u.s casualties, meaning heavy emphasis on mechanized combat, intra-arms communication between forward-observers and rear force multiplier support groups, and maintaining numeric superiority to increase operation success.
The U.S army as a whole does still practice fighting against near-peer armed forces, as we see from the numerous war games they hold on the borders of other "rogue" states, yet those are simply yearly dress rehearsals and not active combat-prep exercises. The majority of the training time a lot of the army battalions spend is spent on going over the lessons it's learned over the 20 years in the Iraq/Afghanistan occupations - which puts it at a strategic disadvantage when it comes to fighting near-peer or peer armed forces designed to specifically counter it.
the military is just as much a Keynesian jobs program as it is a way of maintaining empire imo. dont judge it based on the inefficiency of the f-35 project. the trillions of dollars of government spending keeps laborers at work and provides capitalists with overinflated valuations for their investments.
Im not one of those war nerds but wouldnt any military conflict between China and the US either be meaningless skirmishes or nuclear armageddon anyways. so idk how f-35s would ever be put to the test against a respectable enemy. they'll just be used to murder Muslim guerillas and civilians the same way all military hardware has been used the past 30 years.
The majority of "servicepeople" would be completely useless in a real war. The whole thing is just an excuse to keep employment numbers up.
It's essentially UBI but with the unfortunate side effect of murdering a lot of brown people.
Canada uses public sector, Japan uses construction, US uses the military. Well, they all use all of these, but with varying focus.
Keysian economics never went away really and I think essentially every state accpets that a somewhat large degree of manipulation of the economy through public spending is essentially a necessity.
I have a theory that restaurants also serve as a keynesian jobs program in the US
Bougie "gastro" food and craft beer and the like have been exploding in popularity even since we started overproducing college grads
AFAIK it's both powerful and incompetent. Bombs still explode. Bullets still kill. Usa has the most of those.
No matter how useless the Kyles are, those death robots are the real danger
How could you name a ship after John McCain and expect it not to crash?
It's good at logistics which is crucial to winning any war. However, that's been entirely in an environment where their logistics haven't been subject to attack.
Counterpoint: every military ever is a big scam to funnel money to your friends and maybe give someone a new rifle
In general, the US military is barely competent. From my time in the military, that is my official opinion.
If you're familiar with Warhammer Fantasy/AoS, you know how the Skaven are incompetent, cowardly, and are bad at group tactics because all Skaven just want to see themselves as the big hero, instead of just working within a group, and the way they win is relying entirely on their absurd numbers and firepower? The US military is basically the skaven.
So you're telling me that my skaven weapons team doomstack is not the world's greatest army....
I always got Dark elf vibes from them. An empire in North America built on raiding and looting by a bunch of slavers who project force from floating cities.
the days of invasion seem pretty much over. iraq was a fluke due to 911. they'll just focus on drone terrorism.
China has a modern airforce, radar, etc. If US drones started flying over Chinese airspace they could shoot them down.
The top brass isn't the top brass because they're good at tactics and running a military. They're just a bunch of rich kids.
