I was thinking about that point that people bring up about military spending with the US and Im getting suspicious that the actual money spent on the US military is a mirage suggesting a capability that far far surpasses the capabilities of the next 10 near peers of the USA.
Something just doesnt add up.
The US has spent trillions on its military yet NATO and the US is having a tough time making the fight against Russia trivial.
If the money spent is any indication of capability; then it follows that besting Russia in Ukraine should be trivial. But that is not the case.
You see… I can understand designing weapons in order to kill and win wars which Im sure that is the principles of Russian and Chinese philosophy in warfare.
But what if the US is doing that… But also allowing the profit motive to have a say? Im starting to think that the USA is blowing money on overvalued systems that are AT BEST, MAYBE a tiny bit more effective than the oppositions’ weapons.
It aint like Ukraine was short of capable fighters with covert NATO training and backing.
For all the trillions spent on NATO; Ukraine should have settled this conflict months ago. Ukraine should have defeated the Donbas rebellion before it could even find its footing.
For real though. What the fuck? Is the west genuinely a paper tiger in the most real sense?
Consider also colonial projects like Isntreal. With all their backing from the US; they havent managed to just bulldoze Palestine into the phantom realm. They STILL have to put in effort.
It’s just very strange… The realities don’t match up with the money or the talk.
The only way it makes sense is if the west develops weapons for profit first and foremost, which doesnt always mean the highest quality.
Ever heard of the F-35 Lightning? Originally touted as America’s next generation jet fighter, a multirole monster decked out with the latest in cutting edge capabilities, the project to develop, manufacture and service this jet has massively underperformed and is still riddled with flaws, some of which are enormous. These jets have been known to simply fall out of the sky due to catastrophic engine failure, that’s just how big of a problem this plane has. This gargantuan fuck up of a project has cost the US taxpayer more than $1.5 trillion, much of which is simply because the Pentagon is saddled with an institutional form of the sunk cost fallacy; that so much of the Pentagon’s budget and other related expenses are now tied up in the F-35 that to bin off the project would have enormous ramifications for the military industrial complex in general. Lockheed Martin makes enormous bank off of their contracts with the military to develop this hopeless jet fighter. To me, the Lightning is emblematic of the issue with modern, “high-tech” warfare.
Most of these over-engineered monstrosities are either hopelessly overcomplicated and delicate pieces of machinery that are prone to failure, or else their complexity is such that refits and maintenance takes far too long and the extremely involved production processes necessary to produce them means that if the whole pre-war stockpile are knocked out of action the turn around on replacing them can be anywhere from a year to 2 years. Naturally, no army can realistically hope to wait that long for new tanks and jets. Its the same general principle of industrial warfare as the T-34 vs the Panther during WW2. By all accounts, the Panther was the superior tank. However, T-34s were far simpler to produce at scale, and consequently outnumbered the Panther on an enormous scale. The specs and operational efficiency of a given unit doesn’t mean much if you simply can’t produce enough units for your operational needs. It was a significant factor in the WW2 struggle between Fascism and Socialism, and it remains so now.
this actually a myth the T-34 was by far the most superior tank in WW2, similar to the propaganda about the Russians just hurling waves of barely armed soldiers at the Germans, the t-34 then became “oh they made alot of cheap crappy tanks and threw them at the germans”. Originally they used to say the American sherman was better because the british had no tanks and basically had to borrow all of theirs, but when american officers started to come out and say “hell no our tanks sucked” they changed the propaganda to just say the German panther was better, for such obscure reasons as “they had better training” and a “more spacious cabin”. However even the nazi generals at the time often remarked how the T-34 was hands down the best tank in the war and enjoyed vast superiority on the battle field. Not only did the soviets produce the T-34 because it was the best but they also stole everyone elses tank designs and made their own copies to practice against. If they wanted to build a panther they very easily could’ve.
same narratives that we aren’t capable of innovation