Posted by baud147258 4 hours ago
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 The outdated concept of the tooth-to-tail ratio, which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined. In modern warfare, the tail is the primary target. If the tail is severed, the teeth are rendered useless.
I guess ukraine doesn't want to be slapped equally hard. We see this in the iran war too. Small scale, targeted attacks to some cherry pieces of infrastructure to make headlines and perhaps bring people to the negotiating table, while all the power and capability is there to wipe Iran back to the stone age if so inclined.
I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.
It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.
Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex.
That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Ukraine is fighting.
[1] https://dset.tw/en/research/000491-2/
[2] https://www.technology.org/2026/03/17/japan-might-sell-weapo...
China controls much of the integration and many of the low level components for super low cost electronics and motors. They aren't the ones controlling all the fabs for the circuits and integration can be done anywhere if you want to pay extra.
> most manufacturers of everything within Ukraine remain dependent on imported machining tools — traditionally Chinese, but increasingly Indian and, for those who can afford it, European.
But for the cheapest components, simple base-line products like transistors, circuit boards, wiring, or solar cells, nobody can yet step up to the scale of China’s mass production.
However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.
For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers.
More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.
Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1]
The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs.
[1] https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/vtproximityfuze.htm
Equipment was worth more than a capture.
Capture was worth more than a kill (get Intel, trade for Ukranian captives).
Kill was xyz points.
The more points, the more weapons, equipment, and support you got.
This was several years ago, I'm not sure its still in play.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-stee...
I think that’s an apt comparison because it was hard to keep an army fed (https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...)
I agree, or at least it feels insightful and right, though I can’t personally validate if it’s correct. But the big question I have is who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen? Is this to sway the public, to push politicians, to convince the Army internally to plan better, stop using contractors & no-bid contracts, or simply ask for more?
Looks like military spending is currently ~20% of all Federal Revenue at somewhere close to $1T, and it exceeds the combined spending of China and Russia by maybe 2x. Are we wanting to go back to 1960’s 50% of Federal Revenue? Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
It's at wespoint.edu. The US military has a long and proud history of really good thinkers writing insightful and important pieces the government then ignores. My outsider impression has always been there was a freedom of ideas there. Don't get used to it though as Pete Hesgeth is fixing it fast as he can.
A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
US Soldiers/Airmen/Sailors/Marines are incredibly expensive each.
Deeply entrenched corruption, obviously.
Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.
The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.
What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
To make certain people money by shorting the oil market. There is a reason why these "peace" deals are always announced on Fridays.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/business/iran-oil-trump-strai...
The initial US goals clearly were: 1. Regime change 2. Denial is of nuclear weapons
It’s also clear these goals were not achieved. So the US changed tactics and goals. (Same as Russia no longer plans on capturing Kiev it seems)
Most likely the US is stalling for time due to oil markets and has the same intentions as before, limited only by current capability.
> Khamenei’s killing has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men. The irgc appears to wield power with few constraints. Clerics who challenged its influence—including former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani—were conspicuously absent from the [funeral] processions.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/middle-east-and-africa...
kneecaping china by cutting off a huge source of its oil imports. Russia will not be able to make up the difference.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-says-iranian-...
The US and Iran agreed (Point 4 and 5) on, for the next 60 days, Iran is "chief of traffic" in the strait.
Iran say now, ships have to take the route close to Iran. But some ships like to take the route close to Oman. Iran is just shooting on these ships.
Furthermore, if they want to deal with the US or Israel, then they should target American or Israeli assets. Not third party ships manned by citizens of neutral nations who just want to get to port and remit cash to their families back home.
What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.
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.It varies. Which is the problem.
I can think of a few:
1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent.
2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their infrastructure, possibly on the grounds of shared religion. Maybe they'll get tired of it.
3) Cause regime change in Iran. Not happening now. Might not happen in the foreseeable future.
How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?
By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving.
Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
Can they? https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... says
“In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory”
According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years.
If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021)
You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.
Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.
Napoleon
What he didn't anticipate was how bad the roads in Russia would be and how long the Russian army would retreat along them. You can't resupply an army that is marching on a narrow dirt road through a forest because it's blocking its own supply lines.
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 soil would be even tougher.
Drones are an option, but cross-ocean ones are not an easy problem to solve.
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) logistical supply from Russia to Crimea, and this is due in no small amount due to the amount of 'armoring' that is inherent to the design of a bridge that must cross a strait of that size.
It's a question of cost more than anything, the more expensive a transport means becomes to build, the more it makes sense to start including armor to force an attack on that transport to itself have to invest a lot more for success.
https://oshkoshdefense.com/vehicles/medium-tactical-vehicles...