With a severe recruitment crisis and lackluster scores for readiness and capacity, all three major branches of the US armed forces are lagging behind Russia and China
I’m not sure about this as much as it shows that the American military industrial complex overall is not set up to fight a peer war. It’s been tooled for the last 70 years to fight against opponents that have virtually no choice in the pace of warfare. The high end weapons are fine, but there aren’t enough of them to support sustained, high intensity combat.
That’s true, but recall that at the start of the war in Ukraine the narrative very much was that US weapons are superior to Russian weapons, and every time they sent some new toy like HIMARS or Abrams they were sold as game changers. We now have concrete proof that US weapons aren’t better in any way.
Not game changers doesn’t mean ineffective, it just means they aren’t magic. An example of a weapons system being blown up doesn’t mean it isn’t effective - in a peer war, weapons systems should be looked at as consumables. I’ve no doubt about American perfidy about the capabilities of patriot systems viz a viz hypersonic for example, but flip it around - there have been a number of Russian alligator choppers shot down but they are nevertheless fearsome and effective. The myth of American weapons invincibility has been punctured to be sure but I think it is incorrect to believe that makes them ineffective.
I would argue that they are ineffective in a sense that they’re too complex, too expensive to produce, and too hard to maintain in the field. The inefficiency of these systems doesn’t matter when beating up on a much smaller opponent, but it becomes a huge problem when going up against a peer competitor.
I very much agree that weapons should be looked at as consumables in a peer conflict, and that’s precisely what makes US weapons inefficient. It’s more expensive and more time consuming to produce them, and they’re not as durable as Soviet style weapons Russia is using.
Incidentally, recent French military report notes that Western equipment is considered less efficient than Soviet due to maintenance issues and degraded mode capabilities…
As far a the propaganda war side of things, the effect of the weapons was that they MUST be game changers. And since they failed to single handedly turn back Russian troops on any front, that means the equipment was ineffective.
What you’re saying is true, but also they are advertising the Patriot missile system as having intercepted multiple hypersonics which lmfao no they haven’t.
Don’t ever forget that when the USA sends its surplus “wonder weapons” to another country these two things, 1) its never the newest stuff, it always older versions that have been sitting in storage yards and warehouses after being rotated out for the next generation or equipment of more recent manufacture and 2) a lot of “sensitive” (meaning “secret”) parts are removed or destroyed before being given to another country’s military.
Like, an example, So you might see SINGARS or ANCIP field radios, but there’s no guarantee that the “little black boxes whose name I have forgotten” used to load and synchronize the frequency hop and encryption protocols between the radios won’t be included. Meaning, OPFOR’s signals units will being able to listen to radio communications in plain text and have an easier time triangulating location.
Similar issues were happening with the HIMARS (or was it some other artillery pieces…) right? They were sent to Ukraine missing the “sensitive” equipment, which was the parts that aimed the weapon with precision.
I’m not sure about this as much as it shows that the American military industrial complex overall is not set up to fight a peer war. It’s been tooled for the last 70 years to fight against opponents that have virtually no choice in the pace of warfare. The high end weapons are fine, but there aren’t enough of them to support sustained, high intensity combat.
That’s true, but recall that at the start of the war in Ukraine the narrative very much was that US weapons are superior to Russian weapons, and every time they sent some new toy like HIMARS or Abrams they were sold as game changers. We now have concrete proof that US weapons aren’t better in any way.
Not game changers doesn’t mean ineffective, it just means they aren’t magic. An example of a weapons system being blown up doesn’t mean it isn’t effective - in a peer war, weapons systems should be looked at as consumables. I’ve no doubt about American perfidy about the capabilities of patriot systems viz a viz hypersonic for example, but flip it around - there have been a number of Russian alligator choppers shot down but they are nevertheless fearsome and effective. The myth of American weapons invincibility has been punctured to be sure but I think it is incorrect to believe that makes them ineffective.
I would argue that they are ineffective in a sense that they’re too complex, too expensive to produce, and too hard to maintain in the field. The inefficiency of these systems doesn’t matter when beating up on a much smaller opponent, but it becomes a huge problem when going up against a peer competitor.
I very much agree that weapons should be looked at as consumables in a peer conflict, and that’s precisely what makes US weapons inefficient. It’s more expensive and more time consuming to produce them, and they’re not as durable as Soviet style weapons Russia is using.
Incidentally, recent French military report notes that Western equipment is considered less efficient than Soviet due to maintenance issues and degraded mode capabilities…
As far a the propaganda war side of things, the effect of the weapons was that they MUST be game changers. And since they failed to single handedly turn back Russian troops on any front, that means the equipment was ineffective.
What you’re saying is true, but also they are advertising the Patriot missile system as having intercepted multiple hypersonics which lmfao no they haven’t.
Don’t ever forget that when the USA sends its surplus “wonder weapons” to another country these two things, 1) its never the newest stuff, it always older versions that have been sitting in storage yards and warehouses after being rotated out for the next generation or equipment of more recent manufacture and 2) a lot of “sensitive” (meaning “secret”) parts are removed or destroyed before being given to another country’s military.
Like, an example, So you might see SINGARS or ANCIP field radios, but there’s no guarantee that the “little black boxes whose name I have forgotten” used to load and synchronize the frequency hop and encryption protocols between the radios won’t be included. Meaning, OPFOR’s signals units will being able to listen to radio communications in plain text and have an easier time triangulating location.
Similar issues were happening with the HIMARS (or was it some other artillery pieces…) right? They were sent to Ukraine missing the “sensitive” equipment, which was the parts that aimed the weapon with precision.