Now that Mr Hegseth is our Secretary of Defense I imagine that one of the very first things he wants to do is to sit down with some of the permanent 06s in each of the services and ask them what shape their branch of the military is truly in. I think for a couple of the services he can ask very simply if, "they can fight their way out of wet paper bag" and get some reluctance to share with him that the bag might win.
The true state of the US Military and Navy is not that hard to assess. Each of the Services does individual assessments all the time on each unit especially as each unit works up for the deployment cycle. The goal though is to have that one unit reach peak readiness at the moment it deploys and there is really very little care or attention given to post deployment and non-deploying units. That is kind of where we are at now because when you ask the Flag and General Officers of the Services where their Service stands now on readiness I think every single one of them defaults to assuring one and all that we are enjoying excellent readiness because those units tapped for deployment next week are in good shape material and training-wise.
Of course, that's not how any country fights a War. I suspect Mr. Hegseth might pitch his question a bit differently and ask:
How many of our submarines are deployable as fully mission capable submarines on 72 hours notice?
How many of Aircraft Carriers and Air Wings are FMC on 72 hours notice?
How many Large Deck Amphibious Assault ships are FMC " "?
How many of our Destroyers are FMC in 72 hours?
He can then either ask about an extended timeline or ask when the warfighting force would be FMC and what the numbers look like for partially mission capable units and what, by the way, do our ammo stocks look like for a war longer than 3 months?
He can do the same thing with the Army and the Air Force but the one is really contingent on the good behavior and condition of the others. Simply put, the Army's divisions, brigades, battalions and companies can all be maxed out on personnel, training and readiness with all their equipment FMC but they kind of need to have long lost things that once belonged to organizations like Transportation Command such as railcars to carry an Armored Division from Fort Hood to the given seaport of embarkation. They need to have ships to embark on and they need to have cargo handling teams that know how to load and unload things like tanks and vehicles which are very different loads from shipping containers which is how 99% of things move nowadays.
It would be fascinating to be a fly on the wall as that goes down and a thoroughly angry man learns that what everyone has actually been working their asses off for the last 30 years was to hide the facts from the People of the United States who think there is something really shiny and dangerous hidden away out there with our name on it. Of course, it's nothing that every Intel service on the planet doesn't know already, it's just Joe Friday and the rest of America who seem to think that the total disaster in Afghanistan was just a fluke.
10 comments:
scary. As a Navy Brat this floors me.
The Air Force A-10 and F-22 have been hovering around 30% FMC for the past 3 years. It is primarily a supply chain problem.
If Trump thinks young men and women will be rushing to the recruiting office just because he showed up, he can guess again.
Since WW2 patriotic American young people have enlisted to serve their country only to be sent to fight and die in shit hole countries that have no role in either the protection, defense or the security of the United States.
In too many cases, repeated over and over again, the so called "friendly nation" had zero interest in the rights or freedom of its own people, and was nothing more than a propped up puppet of the deep state who reverted back to despotism as soon as US forces left.
And to make matters worse, many of those same people, and their extended families, who our young people went to fight and die for are now living here, free of charge courtesy of the US government and American tax payers.
Those who did serve came home damaged physically or mentally and were abandoned by their country once they hung up their uniform left the service. Meanwhile the US has imported those same foreigners who are given free homes and health care while openly demonstrating in our cities screaming 'death to America'.
You can stand up as many ships, tanks and jets as you want. The industrial military complex is more than happy to suck more tax dollars out of other programs American families desperately need. But as 'tsquared' correctly pointed out, when you depend on foreign countries for the computer chips and various parts that make all these systems work, how exactly does Trump expect to keep what we have working?
And is removing DEI going to suddenly make the military more masculine and intelligent? Recruiters are not so much worried about recruits gender identity as they are about the fact most young people are physically and mentally unfit to serve as even a basic infantryman.
The social contract with the American people, specifically our schools, have been an absolute disaster for decades. They have dumbed down our children and indoctrinated them to the point they are barely capable of holding a job at McDonalds, let alone repairing an F-22 or servicing a nuclear power plant on a nuclear submarine.
We were crossdecking things like anti ship missiles between ships getting ready for deployment 40 years ago and it went rapidly downhill from there.
And yet this is the peacetime availability rate so the wartime rate would be close to zero in one or two weeks of commencing round the clock combat ops against a peer enemy.
The "social contract" is broken, null, and void.
When Soldiers, Marines, and the rest of the vets are considered "possible domestic terrorists" by the DHS, a fraudulent commander in chief was installed by a collection of beaurocrats and monied people who's families shadows haven't darkened the door of a recruiter in decades, , and the full force of government tried (and failed) to push an experimental medicine on the people, they broke the previously mentioned "social contract", if it ever did infact exist.
A system that behaves like that is simply not worth fighting for.
Build all the toys you want, I will work hard to keep my family from dying for nothing.
And sadly the number one response from these people when asked will be "we need more money". No matter how much money the defense department is given somehow it's never enough to insure they can actually do their job.
I think that President Trump and JD Vance and Pete Hegseth would agree with you and I don't really think any of them are the slightest bit interested in growing the national security State or increasing the size and scope of the military. We are headed into a time of the Condottieri and won't see anything like the Levee en masse or the large standing professional armies on the field again. Persistent ISR and instant kill loops spell the deathknell for large battle formations and the blitzkrieg. Unfortunately the people running the Pentagon won't accept this and it has to be imposed.
Our own answer to a wave of a thousand drones flying right at us is to die. We need to assess how we mean to go forward, if at all. There is very little left for us to fight for anymore because as you say, much of what was worth saving has already been lost forever.
I'll throw out an anchor, no potential enemy of the USA would dream of striking at the Pentagon now which makes it one of the safest places to work in America. The enemy will follow the old advice to let your enemies keep making the same mistake forever and the officers and contractors in the Pentagon are all welded to mistake.
The conflict in Ukraine was a major game changer with significant success using cheap drones which work equally well against soft and hard targets. It proved that with a little innovation and determination one can turn high tech, multi million dollars tanks, missile launchers and field pieces in to scrap easily and cheaply.
You don't need a $100k TOW missile as long as you can order a $1,000 drone off Amazon, strap a grenade or mortar round to it with equal, if not better results.
Of course these tactic flies in the face of the brilliant minds in the Pentagon who are pushing to continue funding massive numbers of billion dollar weapon systems to ensure employment after retirement with their favorite defense contractor.
Post a Comment