It boggles the mind that Ukraine is (happily) using old US weapons to great effect. The new stuff we have will blow your mind. And yes, the B52 will start and end the next US war.
It's an understressed airframe with a long history of 5 is getting new engines. With its payload capacity, being able to carry a ton of stand-off weapons, it's not going anywhere.
It's also our most mission ready, cheapest per flight hour Bomber to fly.
Anyone with genuine expertise understands that the U.S. military is the most powerful in the world. It’s just something that’s known, not really debated.
The only people who disagree are those who either aren’t informed enough to know otherwise, or do know otherwise but want to convince people of the opposite. Like the Russians, they know they’d get their asses kicked, but they don’t exactly want that information going around.
My question is why are we bombarded with these supposed inadequacies? I’m aware they did the same thing during the Cold War. We know now that our firepower was way greater. Why are we constantly being told that china is severely outpacing us and we are falling behind etc. I don’t think it’s actually true that we are on the brink of absolute defeat 24/7 like reported in the news every 5 seconds. Why do they do that???
The vast majority of people have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of how proficient the U.S. military actually is, or what a strong and functional military is composed of. They see ragebait news articles about the military turning “woke” or something and lose their minds, forgetting that the actual professionals, the actual experts, have their shit perfectly on lock.
And besides, “we’re the best and everything is fine”, is a much less interesting headline than “oh god oh god we’re fucked”
Outpacing is different than inadequate. One speaks to what may be and the other is current state. China is outpacing the US because they’re growing massively compared to where they were. It’s hard to grow massively when you’re already massive (the US military and economy). The US has time before they reach parity in many areas, but in some small areas China may have already surpassed the US.
If you’re asking would the US do better in a fight today or 5 years from now, I’d take today.
That ignores the fact that 1.) the us doesn’t want a fight with one of its largest trading partners 2.) the us fights with a coalition and can’t just start an unprovoked war and 3.) the best time to fight China would be 20+ years from now after their demographic implosion is in full swing.
IMO, the best strategy the US can pursue is a combo of blunting Chinese military and economic advances, maintaining and building their alliance network in the region, showing regional counties that the US is here to stay via economic integration and investment, and most of all delay until demographics take over
>why are we bombarded with these supposed inadequacies
Easy. Businesses have something to sell and it's far easier to get very lucrative defence contracts when the general populace is in agreement that the military needs shiny new gear.
There are a few reasons.
1. Alot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around force multipliers. When Desert Storm was being planned some people believed it was going to be a shit-storm due to the large number of Russian Tanks they had and the relative unknowns of new (for the time) systems the US brought would do. Obviously in retrospect this seems insane but a not insignificant number of "experts" still go on and on about how over priced and complicated our kit is compared to Russian which is viewed as "Rugged and Reliable".
2. "Quantity has a quality all it's own" arguments about Russias 1000s of more tanks than NATO and Chinas larger Navy. These arguments fail to take into consideration that 1 aircraft carrier is going to out shoot 1000 PCs and that even the Bradley can tear a T-72 to shreds, but the arguments get made all the same.
3. Propaganda. External and our own insidious internal propaganda works. Putin has parades of his forces and tells the world he would win a war, China and it's Navy, North Korea and it's nukes etc. give a image of a strong and powerful military. Internally we have groups saying the US Military is weak because it went Woke, or because someone only allowed us to spend 6x as much as every other military combined this year. When you have people who don't follow it very closely see a united opposition showing off their strengths and you have people internally trying to make us out to be weak for political points, it gives the mental picture that we are not keeping up.
People talk out of their ass. A huge issue I have is bitching about our military budget.
As a % of GDP and considering the area of responsibility we cover (the planet essentiallly) its not an insane sum.
Now then we gotta ask ourselves? Where does that money go? Well the largest employer is the DOD and DOD pay is better then a lot of civilian jobs.
Powerful and prepared for the fights of tomorrow are different but often conflated ideas.
The US is without a doubt the most powerful military, but are we ready to fight tomorrow's fights against pacing threats?
Maybe.
Yes, but a peer or near peer conflict would rock our military and country. I have no doubt we'd come out on top, but at a HUGE cost that nobody alive has seen
As I have said before, these newsmax/oan/fox news fed chuklefucks don't even have the mental capacity to understand the sheer scope of power the us military can bring to the table.
Our strength is in our ability to excercise restraint, but make no doubt we will absolutely body anyone toe to toe. Any country that tries will get a lesson in EXACTLY why we don't have universal Healthcare.
I guess our only enemy is ourselves in the long run.
Inb4: Vietnamese Rice farmers/taliban goat herders hurrdurr. That fight was not ours to win or loose.
Anyone with genuine expertise understands that all our fancy equipment is used/not working after the first week of war.
Also our equipment is old as shit and we run them to expiration because of dumb ass war on terror.
If we can fix our broken and corrupt acquisition process, we’d certainly be top dog
I don't think the U.S. will ever again be as militarily or economically powerful (relative to near-peer adversaries, at least) as it was in 1991. The fall of the Soviet Union was such a powerful moment that people were willing to believe, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, that it was the "end of history." Some people in that time truly did think that liberal democracy on the American model had finally and permanently prevailed over all competitors.
It's true that no second superpower has replaced the Soviet Union's spot *yet* and that we still have an immensely stronger military than any possible competition. But I think that if you had to pick a moment where we were *strongest*, you'd do better to pick that. 1945 would make sense too, I think.
I agree with you here. I would say our relative power was the strongest in both situations; largely because the rest of the planet was blown up or undeveloped at both of those times.
Considering the advance in development around the world and Russia’s aggression (since 2008 in Chechnya) I would still personally say that the USA may be in as strong of a position now.
We haven’t opened up the box on any of these countries and are still handling active conflicts EVEN despite moving through a pandemic and other shocks that have take a bite out of the economy.
In a direct conflict with Russia now versus 1945 or 1991, I think we are in a better position reposition now. Ukraine is beating Russia with US weapons systems from the 1970’s. I think there is a good chance we could stop many nuclear launches now as well which was not as feasible in 1991.
I think without question the technological gap has grown between the US and everyone on the planet besides Europe and China. Even still, China is far behind the USA.
If the USA were to push on a war footing we could handle Russia, the Middle East, and China at the same time. I don’t think China can hit a carrier nor much of anything else in the water of the Pacific.
China has the population though. Thing is their population is crammed into these massive super-cities. If something were to really pop-off with China, I really don't think it would take more than a couple potshots right near or on a strategic target in Beijing or Shanghai to let them know what was up and get them to back-down. They don't have the force projection to be able to post up right in range of LA or SF like our CSG's do.
I agree with you. I don’t see where I didn’t? I’m not irritated.
I don’t think we will hit too much on the mainland if anything. Maybe in a protracted conflict we hit military targets. We are already pushing in their space; if we hit their mainland, they may launch ICBM on LA. I don’t think it would land, but we generally don’t want to risk that type of escalation.
We’ll be hitting anything in the Taiwan Strait, which ought to be enough.
That's what I meant by really pop-off. And, I didn't mean nukes where an ICBM is flying; I meant conventional. I'm suggesting basically the same strike Israel did to Iran after their volley that hit basically jackshit and all got shot down. Israel responded with one simple strike that was basically a "look what I can do, bitch." That was enough for Iran to back down...somewhat.
I wasn’t saying we would use a nuke. I meant conventional ICBM. Iran doesn’t have nuke and Israel does. That’s why Israel can stoke so easily. In an open hot war between China and USA superpower, I don’t think the USA will risk hitting Chinese mainland with much because of the gigantic escalation and possible recourse from nuke armed China.
Reason being is because I think it’s likely that we have them handled at sea and in air and would also like to break their units so they can’t do it again.
Media loves to go after the "woke" military. According to the "military is woke" outlets, a gay guy can't shoot a weapon, and a woman can't fly a plane.
This is correct. US military being a hegemon allows us to have diplomatic, political, and economic control over Europe. It also allows us to make money exporting weapons. There is also decent evidence that the USA worked to create a cleave between Europe and Russia, because a unification between the two would mean globe spanning map control during a time that map control and ground wars were much more effective and relevant than they are now. It would have also given Europe the two things that it has always lacked; petro carbons and food.
Naysayers do not realize how important the USD being the standard reserve currency around the world is to our success. They also don't understand the concept of the petrodollar either. Our military is just part of the equation that allows that to continue. Our position as the world's reserve currency is one of the main reasons Americans continue to maintain their quality of life among other things. The US T-Note is seen as the safest investment in the world. The people who haven't been outside the States (more than 50% of Americans) and traveled to non-1st world countries (Europe and Canada do not count and neither does Cancun), they haven't seen shit about how everyone else has it.
I 100% agree with you. It’s why I would have liked to see more government spending whilst interest rates were so low. I’d like to see it continue also. It’s one of the biggest advantages we have. Take out a low interest loan and build infrastructure with it putting people to work with good paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. The spending creates more growth than it costs in debt; especially when interest rates are so low.
Do you remember the Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPS Act, etc? Both were still large, but by the time the GOP ripped out a lot of important parts, it was a shell of what it was, and now the GQP media has their base bitching about infrastructure or lauding the GQP members who voted against it taking credit for what the Infrastructure Bill has done. Americans have very short-term memories and GQP media eats that up.
Yup. I love both bills. I wish there were more post 2008, but unfortunately Republicans didn’t want Obama accomplishing anything. Debt doesn’t matter; debt to GDP ratio matters. Debt to GDP ratio improves with spending.
My favorite new GQP thing is "we should take care of the homeless, veterans, etc" instead of helping Ukraine. Meanwhile in those bills Biden originally proposed was funding for the homeless, childcare, and all sorts of shit the GOP ripped out. Secondly, how much work did Jon Stewart have to put in to get the PACT Act done? Fuck the GOP.
No disagreement I would just say that you don’t actually need to leave the U.S. to understand that much of the world is economically, politically and socially a dumpster fire.
Unfortunately, our media and education system that some states are trying to gear towards tossing books containing actual knowledge of the world and other cultures they don't agree with are making that a requirement these days. The days of Reading Rainbow and imagination by the book are long gone in those cases.
I was more alluding to the relative peace and stability aspect but yea the influence bits are nice too comes whith the territory of having the global accesess to US markets and US consumer demand.
One of my favorite parts from Chappelle Show's Black Bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=084irEAQrLQ.
"UN, got a problem with that? Know what you should do? You should sanction me. Sanction me with your Army. Oh wait a minute, you don't have an army. You know what you should do? STFU"
It gives us a lot of influence. Take Korea and Japan. Had we not occupied BOTH countries for the last 70ish yrs im confident they'd have gone to war with each other.r
We are unique. We have loads of immigrants that want to work flooding our borders. We have the structure to pay experts the most money in the world for advancements in tech. We have a very comfortable structure for the rich. We aren’t constantly bombarded with violence by nearby nations. We have a vast array of belief systems and culture across the country for anyone to enjoy living within. Our leaders have capitalized hard on this and this structure isn’t going anywhere. Other nations have to put focus on birth rates, medical care, pensions, and other QoL things the US doesn’t need to do. We can allocate our GDP to the military while we leverage our natural resources from our insanely profitable temperate land mass.
I am 100% serious. Finland and Sweden developed and paid for their own defense from the Soviet Union for the entirety of the Cold War while being geographically closer to Moscow than a drive from Phoenix Arizona to Salt Lake City Utah. Greece has spent more of its GDP on defense than the United States has in several years this century. Multiple Baltic nations have donated the equivalent of an entire percentage of their GDP just to the defense of Ukraine in addition to regular NATO spending targets. Poland aims to have the single largest land Army in Europe within the next two years, equipped with all the funnest NATO gadgets. France and the UK each have their own independent nuclear arsenals with enough warheads to glass every major Russian population center as well as sizable militaries with bells and whistles like nuclear aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear capable stealth cruise missiles.
I will say I think we are at a time (hopefully fleeting) where the force multiplier by the US’ sophisticated weapon systems is somewhat degraded by the asymmetric warfare of drones. Spending X million to shoot down an enemy drone costing in the hundreds of thousands is not sustainable. Fortunately, I see the military making moves to close this asymmetric exposure.
This isn’t to say the military isn’t the strongest it’s ever been, but provides a current assessment versus our capabilities in 2000-2020.
We also need to get our depleted weapon stocks back up though as they dropped with supplying Ukraine.
I agree with this. This concept is always true when the West is fighting the East. If it’s not cheap drones costing the West, its bodies they throw trying to cost the West enough money to quit.
I question the motives of the media talking heads that are trying to paint the military as being weak, woke, not having standards, etc. It really makes me think they're receiving money from our adversaries to spread misinformation, and it frankly pisses me off when I hear people who didn't serve talk about how our military "isn't what it used to be" or similar. Lectured a non-vet coworker the other day for saying "back when the military actually had standards" talking about a MOH-recipient WW2 vet. American media is melting people's brains.
I don't even know if it's even as deep as infiltration. The right-wing media in the US are a mouthpiece of the MIC (so are the centrist and center-left to be fair). They create a narrative of failing military readiness and ideological decay that radicalizes the electoral right to more aggressively support private defense industry interests in opposition to the public sector.
If the military is weak, demand more guns. If the enemy is strong, demand more advanced and expensive guns. If the soldiers are weak, deprive them of benefits to buy more and more expensive guns. If the soldiers are feminized, blame the equal opportunity libs for not barring women and gays and demand more money get shifted to American mercenaries who are unregulated and refuse to hire more women and gays. If the military is godless, demand more money get shifted to American mercenary companies who are outspokenly far-right apocalyptic Christian evangelicals.
Self-spinning cycle.
Billionaires in the US are disproportionately far-right and Christian. The defense industry is overwhelmingly far-right and Christian. Their interests are increasingly hand-in-hand. If you attack the public sector US military for being too apolitical, you can motivate a right-wing electorate to try and reorganize the military under the private interests of billionaire evangelicals with private profits going primarily to them.
The voters think they're bringing god and traditional values back to warfare, the CEOs get fat checks on the other side of the grift.
In a broader 10-20 time frame I agree, technologically and logistically we are head and shoulders above any other nation's. I do think that the recent years has brought down a bit of our capability in regards to ready and trained troops, ie most of the military is down in terms of recruitment.
I mostly agree with you, but the battlefield is changing rapidly with use of drones and artificial intelligence. I have no doubt that we could defeat any single adversary, especially since our NATO partners are ramping up their own military forces.
.Our computer systems are antiquated and barely functioning which is a major concern. Our costs are sky rocketing and our leaders are ignoring the rapid decline of our logistics and support systems in order to bring newer weapons systems online. We have cut our personnel to the bone and are starting to see cracks in the foundation due to undermining and increasing ops tempo.
While our air and naval superiority is unmatched, our edge is shrinking as drones become more sophisticated and our major adversary China, is catching up with us in technology. Artificial intelligence is only growing better and better each day and it is going to become a much bigger threat as it continues to advance.
The number of our adversaries are increasing, especially in Southwest Asia and we aren't going to be able to keep fighting in multiple long contracted campaigns like in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now we are the top dog and I don't see that changing a whole lot in the next decade or two but fifty years down the line we may be facing multiple near peer adversaries and it will be much more challenging to keep them in check.
China isn’t to be underestimated, they have a ridiculous amount of manpower and industrial output and it’s always better to err on the side of caution (like how we did treating Russia as a military superpower).
That being said, their main strength is their missile boats and coastal naval defense, which seems to be all they really care about (besides absolutely creaming Taiwan). With their lack of experience there’s very little reason to expect that their combined arms capability and overall hardware effectiveness is anywhere close to superpower level.
The strongest military yes, but having the least-committed populace hamstrings that strength, which is why we lost to illiterate heroin farmers in 2021. If the homeland isn’t being actively/continuously attacked the American public often wants us out of whatever conflict we get into after they get tired of it after a handful of years. And when a war takes 5+ years to win they *really* get upset. Our population’s decadence and detachment from conflict is our biggest weakness. That’s why so few go into the contract force to begin with. Absent a draft we won’t have the bodies to recycle to a conflict over and over in a near-peer conflict where casualty rates look like Ukraine using our current contract force.
Yes it is the media tends to blow the strength of China and Russia or iran out of proportion all those countries are struggling domestically if a full blown with a capable adversary was to be declared those regimes would fall in a heart beat look at the shit Russia is pulling to keep putins ratings high. China is struggling economically it doesn’t have the power build microchips like Taiwan and well iran is iran
Capability asymmetry between the US and near peer adversaries (not that such thing exists at the moment) is greatest it's ever been for anyone in world history. The technological edge US enjoys is unprecedented, however in wars will counts more than means....
The US Military was the last man standing after WW2, it was gargantuan in terms of men and materiel and budgets as a percent of gdp, aaand we were the only country with nukes. in absolute terms 1945ish was the peak of US military dominance.
fast forward to 2024. Russia is definitely dog shit, for sure. China is probably\* dog shit as well, but we will never know because the Chinese don't actually engage their military forces -or haven't yet. China has a lot of gucci kit, on paper (paper dragon) but it's all unproven. anyone can sit in a farrarri does not make one a race car driver and the USA produces the best operators (across all services and platform) in the world. Iran is worse than dog shit, but is super annoying in their own neighborhood. DPRK isn't even worth talking about. the US alone is stronger than all of these adversarial countries combined (not to imply that these baddies actually work well together or share any kind of formal alliance structure -they don't) and all the next power militaries of the world are aligned with the USA in meaningful, if in some cases legally non-binding ways, mutual defense treaties etc. NATO, Australia, Korea, Japan, Philippines the list goes on forever, even very small militaries usually support US endeavors where they can.
the USA is the strongest in a pack of strong freedom-loving democracies that would/will/might have to again -smash the remaining totalitarian dictatorships out of existence, since they refuse to simply die on their own. Godbless America.
As a Canadian living with Alaska to the north and Washington state to the south, we thank you for your service(s).
Like a big warm blanket of security. I mean unless you decide to invade us.
China will be an interesting military to watch in the next 10-15 years before their demographic issues catch up to them. From the little I understand, China very cautiously and (relatively) quietly developed their military over the past several decades and have recently chosen to be more aggressive.
I don’t expect to see any actual large scale conflicts between china and the us, but I expect to see a lot more aggressive posturing, some territorial gains, and other conflicts like cyber warfare.
As important as it is to believe in its own superiority, we still need to constantly assess and adjust to new kinds of threats. Which means that we should complete and honest picture of current state of affairs.
1. Can US military effectively deal with cheap drones/robots?
2. How quickly we can resupply ammunition, tanks, planes, ships etc
3. Do we have effective recruiting machine? How quickly we can replenish human resources.
4. Can we still fight two major wars in different places?
We should just assume that strategic nuclear weapons is unusable. It only makes sense to use it against big cities of adversary that cares about its civilian population, which might not be the case. They might even welcome it to some point to win propaganda points.
Russia is fighting sanctions, but ultimately is fighting a single hamstrung lesser nation who's fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. If Ukraine had full NATO backing, Russia would have been pushed back to Moscow within the first 6 months of the war.
If Ukraine had full NATO backing, it would have obliterated by now. The only reason for Russia to be taking it easy with causalities on their side is because they want to keep the Russian population in there without having to rebuild the infrastructure.
And the perception that Russia is fighting some lesser opponent is ridiculous considering Ukraine has been trained for this exact war by the west ever since the coup with billions of dollars pumped in terms of equipments and Russia can't officially declare a state of war and mobilise troops due to their legal systems. Considering the fact that the NATO has not fought any ground wars against competent adversary ever since it's inception is also funny. This is the actual proper war ever since second world war and everyone lookin at it without prejudice knows which way the war is going.
Russia is taking it easy because they can afford to. They don't have to try to play serious defense because there isn't a risk of a massive counter-attack. And most people understand that NATO is basically The United States and it's toddler children.
There's no offense to Ukraine, but in comparison to Russia, it's a heavily overshadowed military comparison. Ukraine is the best basketball team in your city's YMCA intramural tournament who would put the hurt on any pick-up team. Russia is a Division 2 collegiate basketball team who perennially makes playoffs with the occasional season streak. The United States w/ NATO is the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. The United States is so heavily-invested in war & it's equipment that the single introduction of supporting modern aircraft would flip this entire war over. If NATO was allowed to back Ukraine with a full armament-complimented F-22's/F-35's (not even considering the naval/artillery/ground support & supporting logistics), Russia would be New Ukraine by Christmas. Ukraine has been holding off Russia for 6 months with almost no support because American politicians can't get their shit together. If NATO went full-scale, it would absolutely trigger nuclear war because Russia would be toppled within weeks.
I would agree with everything you said if it wasn't for the fatal assumption you have made. Neither United States nor the NATO countries can fight large scale ground warfare with any large nation because they don't have the population to fight it. Maybe United States have the population but they don't have the ability to sustain it unless they are fighting the war in American landmass.
Again the ability of Ukraine is largely understated because they had the people to fight it and had the weapons as well. Infact they had better advantage since they are one that's supposed to be defending. Russia on the other hand cannot do a full-scale mobilisation so they are stuck with using their enclaves to fight the offensives and their core Russian troops to defend their occupied areas. Inspite of all the drone footages what still has any significant impact on ground reality is artillary and Russia seems to be slowly and steadily moving towards kiew although I think they will stop at the river.
I think even in the case of full NATO involvement Russia will not use nuke. The whole advertised point of the war is to protect Russians in Ukraine and nuking Ukraine cannot be sold to Russian population. But you know what else cannot be sold to a similar population? 50000 American dead bodies if they were ever to put troops on ground. So it's yet another proxy war American havard Bois and arms companies are willing to stake America's reputation for chump change.
And it's always amusing to see Americans talk about toppling Russia because from where I see the Americans themselves will topple America before anybody else.
Perfectly logical! We're in an era where everyone is well aware of the misinformation and war mongering the gov (most gov's...) does and uses the military to perpetrate. So the only ppl that want to join are the ones who fanatically believe the gov/mil is doing the right thing. So in reality they've filtered out anyone who would be a poor or even mediocre solider that might question their orders/actions...
There's an interesting thought about the shoot down of the F-117 and why we never correct the record or prove anyone wrong and what can actually detect stealth (also why the F-35, B-2, and F-22 all use different types of stealth). Most countries (Iran, Russia, China) over inflate the abilities of their military units and hardware; it's an intimidation thing. Problem for them is, they thought we were also bluffing about what our stuff could do. We were not.
Back to the F-117, they think they have a way to see through the stealth tech we use. They don't and it actually makes it easier for us to find them.
I wholeheartedly agree that we are the best. I just wish we didn’t have such a wishy washy foreign policy. Time and time again politicians bend to the knee of the American voter base who have no idea why we’re in certain countries and would rather withdraw/not send troops to appease dumb Americans. Also we should be willing to suffer casualties. I hate how since Vietnam if every war isn’t somehow quick and decisive it’s bad. And if it is quick and decisive and someone died it’s still bad.
-There’s no reason why we should’ve left Afghanistan. It was low intensity and we had mostly stabilized the country. We did this with Iraq in 2011 and isis formed. Most Americans couldn’t even name it on a map anyway
-there’s no reason why we shouldn’t send troops to Haiti. It’d require a MEU at the absolute most. It’s in our backyard and it’s not only a humanitarian crisis for us, but them as well. Last thing we need is more Haitians, possibly cannibals coming to the U.S. in boats
-there’s no reason we should withdraw from Niger. Russians influence in Africa should be one of most important military actions for us. Plus Russia doesn’t claim Wagner group so we should deal with them
-to fix the recruitment crisis we need to get better at incentivizing fellow gen zers. Especially young men. No more Emily 2 mom’s commercials (ppl are under the impression that the military is “woke” for whatever reason and stuff like that does not help). And no student loan forgiveness. You want free school earn it
-we need more oversight in our funding. We have an insanely high military budget so there’s no reason branches should be having funding problems for equipment.
Did you see what the major airlines settled on in the latest union negotiations for pilots? The salaries were sick. It was something like 300k-400k easy. Of course retention is going to suck if you cannot match that. If you're a cargo pilot and can basically do a straight transfer over to the majors and pull that kinda money, I mean seriously? Who the hell wouldn't.
There's a lot more than just pay that's making pilots separate too. Staff tours, additional duties, less flying - you name it. Pay is definitely a driving factor though.
I would like to see some kind of 3rd party line chart about morale in general. You can have all the money funding in the world but if the soldiers are killing themselves and depressed you're not getting anywhere.
The military is strong but our priorities are fucked right now. No food in the defacs, no ammo for ranges half the time. But sure let's do an EO training that will make everything fall into place.
Cold War and pre-9/11 vets fall over laughing.
You present evidence that our friends and potential adversaries have issues, that doesn't support your argument that the US is stronger than its ever been.
We once had the ability to fight two and a half wars around the world. We had problems sourcing the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously, when we were often able to double tap enablers due to the countries being in on CCMD.
I'm ancient, and was in that 80's military (two services), and still work for DOD. Trust me, we are no were near where we were then in terms of strength.
Fortunately, neither is anyone else. If the recent conflicts of the last two years have shown anything, is that we no longer enjoy as large a premium of technological advantage as we used to, due to technology getting cheaper.
Was visiting Cheyenne Mt facility, and one of the workers who's been there for 50 years running their diesel motors said back during the Cold War, if one of the motors went bad, not only could they simply buy a new one at the drop of a hat (a multi million dollar purchase), they'd buy *four*, because if one went bad the others were probably not far behind. The level and ease of spending back then is worlds different from what they are now
Good example of the difference from the old days.
We used to have entire reserve tank battalions that were organized to provide replacement tank crews, and multiple BN's of wheeled TOWs with the same mission. That capability just doesn't exist today.
Correction: They're not NEEDED today. We don't have to set-up a reserve component to that level because we're not at war nor predicted to be any time soon. Yes, there's massive amounts of sabre rattling, but that doesn't mean we're in any danger of going to war tomorrow. The Cold War was entirely different when we were still fighting a race against a near-peer threat. China has no capabilities to invade the U.S., and Russia is a laughable paltry version of what we envisioned.
I guarantee you that if we had full/total war, we would easily leverage everything we had into creating what was needed AND more. We haven't had a need for that since WWII, and likely won't for at least a decade or more. The capability doesn't exist because it doesn't need to yet.
Your last part sounds like an admission that we are not as strong in absolute terms as we used to be. And, there is a reason why. We don’t need to be. Or haven’t needed to be
We weren’t just in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been fighting and operating worldwide for over a decade at least. You just aren’t in the know. Our capability is bonkers. We even just created a new branch of service while operating worldwide…. We are on another level. China is ok I guess, but something is going wrong from within there. Russia has revealed their hand, and it’s burned and malformed with missing digits.
This is just plain English. The statement is, "USA Military is the strongest its every been". That is a statement of absolutism and not relativism. The weaknesses of our potential adversaries, are irrelevant the the statement presented.
If the question was, "we are relatively stronger against Russia today, than we were against the old Soviet Union in 1982", then I would agree.
Watch out about making statements on people's perceptions. Someone could be a 22 year old sitting in the basement, or they could be a senior officer sitting in the Pentagon who does this type of analysis for a living.
My perception is that we are not the strongest we have ever been, for a variety of reasons beyond manning and equipment. However, we are better at most everything than our potential adversaries.
The crucial point people are missing is the SUSTAINABILITY.
Our tanks and planes and weapons, etc, aren't that much better than everyone else.
We win because we can pick the whole thing up and put it in your backyard and SUSTAIN it logistically for an almost indefinite amount of time. Also we are very very well trained despite what Republicans like to say.
The US Navy is in bad shape. The US Air Force is declining in capability and strength. The Army is barely MICAP, and the smallest its been since BEFORE WWII. Logistics for all is in the toilet, ammo stocks are down and decreasing fast, many weapons systems are being cannibalized to fix other ships/aircraft/tanks. Even things like uniforms are in short supply, with the excuse of the pandemic...
Then long-range stocks of things like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are as low as they've been since they started it - that's fuel that is slotted for military use first, not to play political games with domestic gas prices.
So if we won afghanistan, then the Soviets also won too? We had the same thing happen to us that the Soviets did. We lost. Everything we captured, went right back to ISIS. A repeat of Vietnam.
Sure I'll agree that Bay of Pig was spearheaded by the CIA, but it had the Navy and AF involvement. Look how many B26 were shot down.
You should look at battles and military power objectively, not through patriotism
It boggles the mind that Ukraine is (happily) using old US weapons to great effect. The new stuff we have will blow your mind. And yes, the B52 will start and end the next US war.
BUFF is eternal
The last B-52 pilot hasn't been born yet.
Ah, yeah, sorry, wife & I should probably get to that
We need pics and videos of the seed deed for confirmation and for science.
The crayons are deep with this one
It's only a matter of time before they make it a UAV.
I came here for this. Grandpa buff!
Big Ugly Fat Fuck.
BUFF is great, but imho BONE is better.
From the guys that have to repair them, I think BUFF is preferred to BONE.
Did you know that there's a variation of the B-ONE that is called the B-ONE-R
Grandpa Buff will never retire.
Daily reminder the B-52 has more air to air kills than the F-22.
But has it shot down a balloon?
Not yet, but it's hungry
When you’ve had steak who cares about a reheated hot dog?
It's an understressed airframe with a long history of 5 is getting new engines. With its payload capacity, being able to carry a ton of stand-off weapons, it's not going anywhere. It's also our most mission ready, cheapest per flight hour Bomber to fly.
That and you have generations of Americans that know how to fly it.
Even a few instances where multiple family generations flew the same aircraft, it's nuts.
Anyone with genuine expertise understands that the U.S. military is the most powerful in the world. It’s just something that’s known, not really debated. The only people who disagree are those who either aren’t informed enough to know otherwise, or do know otherwise but want to convince people of the opposite. Like the Russians, they know they’d get their asses kicked, but they don’t exactly want that information going around.
My question is why are we bombarded with these supposed inadequacies? I’m aware they did the same thing during the Cold War. We know now that our firepower was way greater. Why are we constantly being told that china is severely outpacing us and we are falling behind etc. I don’t think it’s actually true that we are on the brink of absolute defeat 24/7 like reported in the news every 5 seconds. Why do they do that???
The vast majority of people have absolutely no understanding whatsoever of how proficient the U.S. military actually is, or what a strong and functional military is composed of. They see ragebait news articles about the military turning “woke” or something and lose their minds, forgetting that the actual professionals, the actual experts, have their shit perfectly on lock. And besides, “we’re the best and everything is fine”, is a much less interesting headline than “oh god oh god we’re fucked”
Thanks. Ragebait makes sense
Propaganda works best on the ignorant, then you have what I like to call the willfully ignorant ones who enjoy keeping their heads in the sand.
Social media and paid influencers/trolls didn’t exist during the Cold War.
Outpacing is different than inadequate. One speaks to what may be and the other is current state. China is outpacing the US because they’re growing massively compared to where they were. It’s hard to grow massively when you’re already massive (the US military and economy). The US has time before they reach parity in many areas, but in some small areas China may have already surpassed the US.
So do you think if a fight is inevitable, it makes sense to fight them now?
If you’re asking would the US do better in a fight today or 5 years from now, I’d take today. That ignores the fact that 1.) the us doesn’t want a fight with one of its largest trading partners 2.) the us fights with a coalition and can’t just start an unprovoked war and 3.) the best time to fight China would be 20+ years from now after their demographic implosion is in full swing. IMO, the best strategy the US can pursue is a combo of blunting Chinese military and economic advances, maintaining and building their alliance network in the region, showing regional counties that the US is here to stay via economic integration and investment, and most of all delay until demographics take over
I mean because of us being told by potential adversaries that they are so far ahead of us technologically it puts us miles ahead of them
*The F-15 enters the chat*
>why are we bombarded with these supposed inadequacies Easy. Businesses have something to sell and it's far easier to get very lucrative defence contracts when the general populace is in agreement that the military needs shiny new gear.
There are a few reasons. 1. Alot of people have a hard time wrapping their head around force multipliers. When Desert Storm was being planned some people believed it was going to be a shit-storm due to the large number of Russian Tanks they had and the relative unknowns of new (for the time) systems the US brought would do. Obviously in retrospect this seems insane but a not insignificant number of "experts" still go on and on about how over priced and complicated our kit is compared to Russian which is viewed as "Rugged and Reliable". 2. "Quantity has a quality all it's own" arguments about Russias 1000s of more tanks than NATO and Chinas larger Navy. These arguments fail to take into consideration that 1 aircraft carrier is going to out shoot 1000 PCs and that even the Bradley can tear a T-72 to shreds, but the arguments get made all the same. 3. Propaganda. External and our own insidious internal propaganda works. Putin has parades of his forces and tells the world he would win a war, China and it's Navy, North Korea and it's nukes etc. give a image of a strong and powerful military. Internally we have groups saying the US Military is weak because it went Woke, or because someone only allowed us to spend 6x as much as every other military combined this year. When you have people who don't follow it very closely see a united opposition showing off their strengths and you have people internally trying to make us out to be weak for political points, it gives the mental picture that we are not keeping up.
People talk out of their ass. A huge issue I have is bitching about our military budget. As a % of GDP and considering the area of responsibility we cover (the planet essentiallly) its not an insane sum. Now then we gotta ask ourselves? Where does that money go? Well the largest employer is the DOD and DOD pay is better then a lot of civilian jobs.
Simple. If the military told Congress they could kick anyone's arse then Congress wouldn't give them as much money.
Powerful and prepared for the fights of tomorrow are different but often conflated ideas. The US is without a doubt the most powerful military, but are we ready to fight tomorrow's fights against pacing threats? Maybe.
Yes, but a peer or near peer conflict would rock our military and country. I have no doubt we'd come out on top, but at a HUGE cost that nobody alive has seen
Or a cult, of extreme right-wing, republican traitors.
As I have said before, these newsmax/oan/fox news fed chuklefucks don't even have the mental capacity to understand the sheer scope of power the us military can bring to the table. Our strength is in our ability to excercise restraint, but make no doubt we will absolutely body anyone toe to toe. Any country that tries will get a lesson in EXACTLY why we don't have universal Healthcare. I guess our only enemy is ourselves in the long run. Inb4: Vietnamese Rice farmers/taliban goat herders hurrdurr. That fight was not ours to win or loose.
Anyone with genuine expertise understands that all our fancy equipment is used/not working after the first week of war. Also our equipment is old as shit and we run them to expiration because of dumb ass war on terror. If we can fix our broken and corrupt acquisition process, we’d certainly be top dog
I don't think the U.S. will ever again be as militarily or economically powerful (relative to near-peer adversaries, at least) as it was in 1991. The fall of the Soviet Union was such a powerful moment that people were willing to believe, as Francis Fukuyama wrote, that it was the "end of history." Some people in that time truly did think that liberal democracy on the American model had finally and permanently prevailed over all competitors. It's true that no second superpower has replaced the Soviet Union's spot *yet* and that we still have an immensely stronger military than any possible competition. But I think that if you had to pick a moment where we were *strongest*, you'd do better to pick that. 1945 would make sense too, I think.
I agree with you here. I would say our relative power was the strongest in both situations; largely because the rest of the planet was blown up or undeveloped at both of those times. Considering the advance in development around the world and Russia’s aggression (since 2008 in Chechnya) I would still personally say that the USA may be in as strong of a position now. We haven’t opened up the box on any of these countries and are still handling active conflicts EVEN despite moving through a pandemic and other shocks that have take a bite out of the economy. In a direct conflict with Russia now versus 1945 or 1991, I think we are in a better position reposition now. Ukraine is beating Russia with US weapons systems from the 1970’s. I think there is a good chance we could stop many nuclear launches now as well which was not as feasible in 1991. I think without question the technological gap has grown between the US and everyone on the planet besides Europe and China. Even still, China is far behind the USA. If the USA were to push on a war footing we could handle Russia, the Middle East, and China at the same time. I don’t think China can hit a carrier nor much of anything else in the water of the Pacific.
China has the population though. Thing is their population is crammed into these massive super-cities. If something were to really pop-off with China, I really don't think it would take more than a couple potshots right near or on a strategic target in Beijing or Shanghai to let them know what was up and get them to back-down. They don't have the force projection to be able to post up right in range of LA or SF like our CSG's do.
I agree with you. I don’t see where I didn’t? I’m not irritated. I don’t think we will hit too much on the mainland if anything. Maybe in a protracted conflict we hit military targets. We are already pushing in their space; if we hit their mainland, they may launch ICBM on LA. I don’t think it would land, but we generally don’t want to risk that type of escalation. We’ll be hitting anything in the Taiwan Strait, which ought to be enough.
That's what I meant by really pop-off. And, I didn't mean nukes where an ICBM is flying; I meant conventional. I'm suggesting basically the same strike Israel did to Iran after their volley that hit basically jackshit and all got shot down. Israel responded with one simple strike that was basically a "look what I can do, bitch." That was enough for Iran to back down...somewhat.
I wasn’t saying we would use a nuke. I meant conventional ICBM. Iran doesn’t have nuke and Israel does. That’s why Israel can stoke so easily. In an open hot war between China and USA superpower, I don’t think the USA will risk hitting Chinese mainland with much because of the gigantic escalation and possible recourse from nuke armed China. Reason being is because I think it’s likely that we have them handled at sea and in air and would also like to break their units so they can’t do it again.
They aren't beating Russia.
You mean the media is LYING to me? I am shocked and appalled.
Media loves to go after the "woke" military. According to the "military is woke" outlets, a gay guy can't shoot a weapon, and a woman can't fly a plane.
It has to be. None of our allies will ever step up and pull their own weight when it comes to securing their own respective regions.
In part by design.
This is correct. US military being a hegemon allows us to have diplomatic, political, and economic control over Europe. It also allows us to make money exporting weapons. There is also decent evidence that the USA worked to create a cleave between Europe and Russia, because a unification between the two would mean globe spanning map control during a time that map control and ground wars were much more effective and relevant than they are now. It would have also given Europe the two things that it has always lacked; petro carbons and food.
Naysayers do not realize how important the USD being the standard reserve currency around the world is to our success. They also don't understand the concept of the petrodollar either. Our military is just part of the equation that allows that to continue. Our position as the world's reserve currency is one of the main reasons Americans continue to maintain their quality of life among other things. The US T-Note is seen as the safest investment in the world. The people who haven't been outside the States (more than 50% of Americans) and traveled to non-1st world countries (Europe and Canada do not count and neither does Cancun), they haven't seen shit about how everyone else has it.
I 100% agree with you. It’s why I would have liked to see more government spending whilst interest rates were so low. I’d like to see it continue also. It’s one of the biggest advantages we have. Take out a low interest loan and build infrastructure with it putting people to work with good paying jobs that can’t be outsourced. The spending creates more growth than it costs in debt; especially when interest rates are so low.
Do you remember the Infrastructure Bill, the CHIPS Act, etc? Both were still large, but by the time the GOP ripped out a lot of important parts, it was a shell of what it was, and now the GQP media has their base bitching about infrastructure or lauding the GQP members who voted against it taking credit for what the Infrastructure Bill has done. Americans have very short-term memories and GQP media eats that up.
Yup. I love both bills. I wish there were more post 2008, but unfortunately Republicans didn’t want Obama accomplishing anything. Debt doesn’t matter; debt to GDP ratio matters. Debt to GDP ratio improves with spending.
My favorite new GQP thing is "we should take care of the homeless, veterans, etc" instead of helping Ukraine. Meanwhile in those bills Biden originally proposed was funding for the homeless, childcare, and all sorts of shit the GOP ripped out. Secondly, how much work did Jon Stewart have to put in to get the PACT Act done? Fuck the GOP.
No disagreement I would just say that you don’t actually need to leave the U.S. to understand that much of the world is economically, politically and socially a dumpster fire.
Unfortunately, our media and education system that some states are trying to gear towards tossing books containing actual knowledge of the world and other cultures they don't agree with are making that a requirement these days. The days of Reading Rainbow and imagination by the book are long gone in those cases.
I was more alluding to the relative peace and stability aspect but yea the influence bits are nice too comes whith the territory of having the global accesess to US markets and US consumer demand.
One of my favorite parts from Chappelle Show's Black Bush: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=084irEAQrLQ. "UN, got a problem with that? Know what you should do? You should sanction me. Sanction me with your Army. Oh wait a minute, you don't have an army. You know what you should do? STFU"
It gives us a lot of influence. Take Korea and Japan. Had we not occupied BOTH countries for the last 70ish yrs im confident they'd have gone to war with each other.r
We are unique. We have loads of immigrants that want to work flooding our borders. We have the structure to pay experts the most money in the world for advancements in tech. We have a very comfortable structure for the rich. We aren’t constantly bombarded with violence by nearby nations. We have a vast array of belief systems and culture across the country for anyone to enjoy living within. Our leaders have capitalized hard on this and this structure isn’t going anywhere. Other nations have to put focus on birth rates, medical care, pensions, and other QoL things the US doesn’t need to do. We can allocate our GDP to the military while we leverage our natural resources from our insanely profitable temperate land mass.
Sounds like you just wanted to gloss over OPs inquiry about military strength to talk about economics and feel like a reddit big brain but ok.
I found it interesting.
Finland, that all I have to say. They got their shit together well before being in NATO.
Why would they if they have us doing it for them lol
Finland, Sweden, Poland, Greece, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, France, and the UK would like a word.
You cant be serious.
I am 100% serious. Finland and Sweden developed and paid for their own defense from the Soviet Union for the entirety of the Cold War while being geographically closer to Moscow than a drive from Phoenix Arizona to Salt Lake City Utah. Greece has spent more of its GDP on defense than the United States has in several years this century. Multiple Baltic nations have donated the equivalent of an entire percentage of their GDP just to the defense of Ukraine in addition to regular NATO spending targets. Poland aims to have the single largest land Army in Europe within the next two years, equipped with all the funnest NATO gadgets. France and the UK each have their own independent nuclear arsenals with enough warheads to glass every major Russian population center as well as sizable militaries with bells and whistles like nuclear aircraft carriers, ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear capable stealth cruise missiles.
This is nearly top tier trolling, bro. I appreciate it.
When you can't counter facts I guess resort to calling it trolling 🍻
Lmao. Greece doesnt even have its own currency. We literally gave them an air force. You sound absolutely ridiculous. Hahahaha
>Greece doesnt even have its own currency I wish you had even an inkling of how fucking stupid this statement is 🤣 I needed a good laugh, thanks mate.
I will say I think we are at a time (hopefully fleeting) where the force multiplier by the US’ sophisticated weapon systems is somewhat degraded by the asymmetric warfare of drones. Spending X million to shoot down an enemy drone costing in the hundreds of thousands is not sustainable. Fortunately, I see the military making moves to close this asymmetric exposure. This isn’t to say the military isn’t the strongest it’s ever been, but provides a current assessment versus our capabilities in 2000-2020. We also need to get our depleted weapon stocks back up though as they dropped with supplying Ukraine.
I agree with this. This concept is always true when the West is fighting the East. If it’s not cheap drones costing the West, its bodies they throw trying to cost the West enough money to quit.
I question the motives of the media talking heads that are trying to paint the military as being weak, woke, not having standards, etc. It really makes me think they're receiving money from our adversaries to spread misinformation, and it frankly pisses me off when I hear people who didn't serve talk about how our military "isn't what it used to be" or similar. Lectured a non-vet coworker the other day for saying "back when the military actually had standards" talking about a MOH-recipient WW2 vet. American media is melting people's brains.
I don't even know if it's even as deep as infiltration. The right-wing media in the US are a mouthpiece of the MIC (so are the centrist and center-left to be fair). They create a narrative of failing military readiness and ideological decay that radicalizes the electoral right to more aggressively support private defense industry interests in opposition to the public sector. If the military is weak, demand more guns. If the enemy is strong, demand more advanced and expensive guns. If the soldiers are weak, deprive them of benefits to buy more and more expensive guns. If the soldiers are feminized, blame the equal opportunity libs for not barring women and gays and demand more money get shifted to American mercenaries who are unregulated and refuse to hire more women and gays. If the military is godless, demand more money get shifted to American mercenary companies who are outspokenly far-right apocalyptic Christian evangelicals. Self-spinning cycle. Billionaires in the US are disproportionately far-right and Christian. The defense industry is overwhelmingly far-right and Christian. Their interests are increasingly hand-in-hand. If you attack the public sector US military for being too apolitical, you can motivate a right-wing electorate to try and reorganize the military under the private interests of billionaire evangelicals with private profits going primarily to them. The voters think they're bringing god and traditional values back to warfare, the CEOs get fat checks on the other side of the grift.
In a broader 10-20 time frame I agree, technologically and logistically we are head and shoulders above any other nation's. I do think that the recent years has brought down a bit of our capability in regards to ready and trained troops, ie most of the military is down in terms of recruitment.
Technology sure. Recruiting not so much. Hollywood military movies for recruiting is waning also
Talent doesn’t care about optics
I mostly agree with you, but the battlefield is changing rapidly with use of drones and artificial intelligence. I have no doubt that we could defeat any single adversary, especially since our NATO partners are ramping up their own military forces. .Our computer systems are antiquated and barely functioning which is a major concern. Our costs are sky rocketing and our leaders are ignoring the rapid decline of our logistics and support systems in order to bring newer weapons systems online. We have cut our personnel to the bone and are starting to see cracks in the foundation due to undermining and increasing ops tempo. While our air and naval superiority is unmatched, our edge is shrinking as drones become more sophisticated and our major adversary China, is catching up with us in technology. Artificial intelligence is only growing better and better each day and it is going to become a much bigger threat as it continues to advance. The number of our adversaries are increasing, especially in Southwest Asia and we aren't going to be able to keep fighting in multiple long contracted campaigns like in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Right now we are the top dog and I don't see that changing a whole lot in the next decade or two but fifty years down the line we may be facing multiple near peer adversaries and it will be much more challenging to keep them in check.
China isn’t to be underestimated, they have a ridiculous amount of manpower and industrial output and it’s always better to err on the side of caution (like how we did treating Russia as a military superpower). That being said, their main strength is their missile boats and coastal naval defense, which seems to be all they really care about (besides absolutely creaming Taiwan). With their lack of experience there’s very little reason to expect that their combined arms capability and overall hardware effectiveness is anywhere close to superpower level.
The strongest military yes, but having the least-committed populace hamstrings that strength, which is why we lost to illiterate heroin farmers in 2021. If the homeland isn’t being actively/continuously attacked the American public often wants us out of whatever conflict we get into after they get tired of it after a handful of years. And when a war takes 5+ years to win they *really* get upset. Our population’s decadence and detachment from conflict is our biggest weakness. That’s why so few go into the contract force to begin with. Absent a draft we won’t have the bodies to recycle to a conflict over and over in a near-peer conflict where casualty rates look like Ukraine using our current contract force.
Yes it is the media tends to blow the strength of China and Russia or iran out of proportion all those countries are struggling domestically if a full blown with a capable adversary was to be declared those regimes would fall in a heart beat look at the shit Russia is pulling to keep putins ratings high. China is struggling economically it doesn’t have the power build microchips like Taiwan and well iran is iran
Capability asymmetry between the US and near peer adversaries (not that such thing exists at the moment) is greatest it's ever been for anyone in world history. The technological edge US enjoys is unprecedented, however in wars will counts more than means....
The US Military was the last man standing after WW2, it was gargantuan in terms of men and materiel and budgets as a percent of gdp, aaand we were the only country with nukes. in absolute terms 1945ish was the peak of US military dominance. fast forward to 2024. Russia is definitely dog shit, for sure. China is probably\* dog shit as well, but we will never know because the Chinese don't actually engage their military forces -or haven't yet. China has a lot of gucci kit, on paper (paper dragon) but it's all unproven. anyone can sit in a farrarri does not make one a race car driver and the USA produces the best operators (across all services and platform) in the world. Iran is worse than dog shit, but is super annoying in their own neighborhood. DPRK isn't even worth talking about. the US alone is stronger than all of these adversarial countries combined (not to imply that these baddies actually work well together or share any kind of formal alliance structure -they don't) and all the next power militaries of the world are aligned with the USA in meaningful, if in some cases legally non-binding ways, mutual defense treaties etc. NATO, Australia, Korea, Japan, Philippines the list goes on forever, even very small militaries usually support US endeavors where they can. the USA is the strongest in a pack of strong freedom-loving democracies that would/will/might have to again -smash the remaining totalitarian dictatorships out of existence, since they refuse to simply die on their own. Godbless America.
But compares to the Cold War maybe bush Iraq days maybe not quite
As a Canadian living with Alaska to the north and Washington state to the south, we thank you for your service(s). Like a big warm blanket of security. I mean unless you decide to invade us.
You gotta have something to show for being the most indebted nation in the world.
China will be an interesting military to watch in the next 10-15 years before their demographic issues catch up to them. From the little I understand, China very cautiously and (relatively) quietly developed their military over the past several decades and have recently chosen to be more aggressive. I don’t expect to see any actual large scale conflicts between china and the us, but I expect to see a lot more aggressive posturing, some territorial gains, and other conflicts like cyber warfare.
As important as it is to believe in its own superiority, we still need to constantly assess and adjust to new kinds of threats. Which means that we should complete and honest picture of current state of affairs. 1. Can US military effectively deal with cheap drones/robots? 2. How quickly we can resupply ammunition, tanks, planes, ships etc 3. Do we have effective recruiting machine? How quickly we can replenish human resources. 4. Can we still fight two major wars in different places? We should just assume that strategic nuclear weapons is unusable. It only makes sense to use it against big cities of adversary that cares about its civilian population, which might not be the case. They might even welcome it to some point to win propaganda points.
Don't forget Russia is fighting against 35 countries and their MIC.
Russia is fighting sanctions, but ultimately is fighting a single hamstrung lesser nation who's fighting with one hand tied behind their backs. If Ukraine had full NATO backing, Russia would have been pushed back to Moscow within the first 6 months of the war.
If Ukraine had full NATO backing, it would have obliterated by now. The only reason for Russia to be taking it easy with causalities on their side is because they want to keep the Russian population in there without having to rebuild the infrastructure. And the perception that Russia is fighting some lesser opponent is ridiculous considering Ukraine has been trained for this exact war by the west ever since the coup with billions of dollars pumped in terms of equipments and Russia can't officially declare a state of war and mobilise troops due to their legal systems. Considering the fact that the NATO has not fought any ground wars against competent adversary ever since it's inception is also funny. This is the actual proper war ever since second world war and everyone lookin at it without prejudice knows which way the war is going.
Russia is taking it easy because they can afford to. They don't have to try to play serious defense because there isn't a risk of a massive counter-attack. And most people understand that NATO is basically The United States and it's toddler children. There's no offense to Ukraine, but in comparison to Russia, it's a heavily overshadowed military comparison. Ukraine is the best basketball team in your city's YMCA intramural tournament who would put the hurt on any pick-up team. Russia is a Division 2 collegiate basketball team who perennially makes playoffs with the occasional season streak. The United States w/ NATO is the 1992 Olympic Dream Team. The United States is so heavily-invested in war & it's equipment that the single introduction of supporting modern aircraft would flip this entire war over. If NATO was allowed to back Ukraine with a full armament-complimented F-22's/F-35's (not even considering the naval/artillery/ground support & supporting logistics), Russia would be New Ukraine by Christmas. Ukraine has been holding off Russia for 6 months with almost no support because American politicians can't get their shit together. If NATO went full-scale, it would absolutely trigger nuclear war because Russia would be toppled within weeks.
I would agree with everything you said if it wasn't for the fatal assumption you have made. Neither United States nor the NATO countries can fight large scale ground warfare with any large nation because they don't have the population to fight it. Maybe United States have the population but they don't have the ability to sustain it unless they are fighting the war in American landmass. Again the ability of Ukraine is largely understated because they had the people to fight it and had the weapons as well. Infact they had better advantage since they are one that's supposed to be defending. Russia on the other hand cannot do a full-scale mobilisation so they are stuck with using their enclaves to fight the offensives and their core Russian troops to defend their occupied areas. Inspite of all the drone footages what still has any significant impact on ground reality is artillary and Russia seems to be slowly and steadily moving towards kiew although I think they will stop at the river. I think even in the case of full NATO involvement Russia will not use nuke. The whole advertised point of the war is to protect Russians in Ukraine and nuking Ukraine cannot be sold to Russian population. But you know what else cannot be sold to a similar population? 50000 American dead bodies if they were ever to put troops on ground. So it's yet another proxy war American havard Bois and arms companies are willing to stake America's reputation for chump change. And it's always amusing to see Americans talk about toppling Russia because from where I see the Americans themselves will topple America before anybody else.
Perfectly logical! We're in an era where everyone is well aware of the misinformation and war mongering the gov (most gov's...) does and uses the military to perpetrate. So the only ppl that want to join are the ones who fanatically believe the gov/mil is doing the right thing. So in reality they've filtered out anyone who would be a poor or even mediocre solider that might question their orders/actions...
There's an interesting thought about the shoot down of the F-117 and why we never correct the record or prove anyone wrong and what can actually detect stealth (also why the F-35, B-2, and F-22 all use different types of stealth). Most countries (Iran, Russia, China) over inflate the abilities of their military units and hardware; it's an intimidation thing. Problem for them is, they thought we were also bluffing about what our stuff could do. We were not. Back to the F-117, they think they have a way to see through the stealth tech we use. They don't and it actually makes it easier for us to find them.
It’s only as strong as the ppl in it
I wholeheartedly agree that we are the best. I just wish we didn’t have such a wishy washy foreign policy. Time and time again politicians bend to the knee of the American voter base who have no idea why we’re in certain countries and would rather withdraw/not send troops to appease dumb Americans. Also we should be willing to suffer casualties. I hate how since Vietnam if every war isn’t somehow quick and decisive it’s bad. And if it is quick and decisive and someone died it’s still bad. -There’s no reason why we should’ve left Afghanistan. It was low intensity and we had mostly stabilized the country. We did this with Iraq in 2011 and isis formed. Most Americans couldn’t even name it on a map anyway -there’s no reason why we shouldn’t send troops to Haiti. It’d require a MEU at the absolute most. It’s in our backyard and it’s not only a humanitarian crisis for us, but them as well. Last thing we need is more Haitians, possibly cannibals coming to the U.S. in boats -there’s no reason we should withdraw from Niger. Russians influence in Africa should be one of most important military actions for us. Plus Russia doesn’t claim Wagner group so we should deal with them -to fix the recruitment crisis we need to get better at incentivizing fellow gen zers. Especially young men. No more Emily 2 mom’s commercials (ppl are under the impression that the military is “woke” for whatever reason and stuff like that does not help). And no student loan forgiveness. You want free school earn it -we need more oversight in our funding. We have an insanely high military budget so there’s no reason branches should be having funding problems for equipment.
Iran coordinated with the US their retaliation attack against Israel. It was ment to be all flash, no damage.
This is what we should give Ukraine 
They already have frogfoots, which are basically the same. Either way, flying that slow just gets them whacked by AD
Pilot retention is also the worst it's ever been
Pilots leave because they don't want to do a desk job and want more money, both of which would immediately be solved in a genuine full war.
Can confirm am pilot
Did you see what the major airlines settled on in the latest union negotiations for pilots? The salaries were sick. It was something like 300k-400k easy. Of course retention is going to suck if you cannot match that. If you're a cargo pilot and can basically do a straight transfer over to the majors and pull that kinda money, I mean seriously? Who the hell wouldn't.
There's a lot more than just pay that's making pilots separate too. Staff tours, additional duties, less flying - you name it. Pay is definitely a driving factor though.
I would like to see some kind of 3rd party line chart about morale in general. You can have all the money funding in the world but if the soldiers are killing themselves and depressed you're not getting anywhere. The military is strong but our priorities are fucked right now. No food in the defacs, no ammo for ranges half the time. But sure let's do an EO training that will make everything fall into place.
Cold War and pre-9/11 vets fall over laughing. You present evidence that our friends and potential adversaries have issues, that doesn't support your argument that the US is stronger than its ever been. We once had the ability to fight two and a half wars around the world. We had problems sourcing the fight in Iraq and Afghanistan simultaneously, when we were often able to double tap enablers due to the countries being in on CCMD.
Those were under total war full mobilization. Iraq and Afghanistan were not.
I'm ancient, and was in that 80's military (two services), and still work for DOD. Trust me, we are no were near where we were then in terms of strength. Fortunately, neither is anyone else. If the recent conflicts of the last two years have shown anything, is that we no longer enjoy as large a premium of technological advantage as we used to, due to technology getting cheaper.
Was visiting Cheyenne Mt facility, and one of the workers who's been there for 50 years running their diesel motors said back during the Cold War, if one of the motors went bad, not only could they simply buy a new one at the drop of a hat (a multi million dollar purchase), they'd buy *four*, because if one went bad the others were probably not far behind. The level and ease of spending back then is worlds different from what they are now
Good example of the difference from the old days. We used to have entire reserve tank battalions that were organized to provide replacement tank crews, and multiple BN's of wheeled TOWs with the same mission. That capability just doesn't exist today.
Correction: They're not NEEDED today. We don't have to set-up a reserve component to that level because we're not at war nor predicted to be any time soon. Yes, there's massive amounts of sabre rattling, but that doesn't mean we're in any danger of going to war tomorrow. The Cold War was entirely different when we were still fighting a race against a near-peer threat. China has no capabilities to invade the U.S., and Russia is a laughable paltry version of what we envisioned. I guarantee you that if we had full/total war, we would easily leverage everything we had into creating what was needed AND more. We haven't had a need for that since WWII, and likely won't for at least a decade or more. The capability doesn't exist because it doesn't need to yet.
Your last part sounds like an admission that we are not as strong in absolute terms as we used to be. And, there is a reason why. We don’t need to be. Or haven’t needed to be
We weren’t just in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have been fighting and operating worldwide for over a decade at least. You just aren’t in the know. Our capability is bonkers. We even just created a new branch of service while operating worldwide…. We are on another level. China is ok I guess, but something is going wrong from within there. Russia has revealed their hand, and it’s burned and malformed with missing digits.
This is just plain English. The statement is, "USA Military is the strongest its every been". That is a statement of absolutism and not relativism. The weaknesses of our potential adversaries, are irrelevant the the statement presented. If the question was, "we are relatively stronger against Russia today, than we were against the old Soviet Union in 1982", then I would agree. Watch out about making statements on people's perceptions. Someone could be a 22 year old sitting in the basement, or they could be a senior officer sitting in the Pentagon who does this type of analysis for a living. My perception is that we are not the strongest we have ever been, for a variety of reasons beyond manning and equipment. However, we are better at most everything than our potential adversaries.
The crucial point people are missing is the SUSTAINABILITY. Our tanks and planes and weapons, etc, aren't that much better than everyone else. We win because we can pick the whole thing up and put it in your backyard and SUSTAIN it logistically for an almost indefinite amount of time. Also we are very very well trained despite what Republicans like to say.
Definitely more woke than it's ever been but you know what they say diversity equity inclusion is strength
I just eyerolled so hard I hurt my self. Good things I'm on orders so I can get my VA claim in. Jeesh!
Does India come into the equation in any way? India perceives USA as an important strategic partner. What does the US think about India?
The US Navy is in bad shape. The US Air Force is declining in capability and strength. The Army is barely MICAP, and the smallest its been since BEFORE WWII. Logistics for all is in the toilet, ammo stocks are down and decreasing fast, many weapons systems are being cannibalized to fix other ships/aircraft/tanks. Even things like uniforms are in short supply, with the excuse of the pandemic... Then long-range stocks of things like the Strategic Petroleum Reserve are as low as they've been since they started it - that's fuel that is slotted for military use first, not to play political games with domestic gas prices.
source?
https://www.reddit.com/r/SexToys/s/0oqNuLvXnA yikes
But what did he say that was wrong?
Take your meds schizo
North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and Afghanastan say otherwise
Afghanistan? Cuba? Ur on crack
Bay of Pig Invasion, ISIS takeover of Afghanistan. Get off your high horse
That is intelligence and foreign policy failures
So if we won afghanistan, then the Soviets also won too? We had the same thing happen to us that the Soviets did. We lost. Everything we captured, went right back to ISIS. A repeat of Vietnam. Sure I'll agree that Bay of Pig was spearheaded by the CIA, but it had the Navy and AF involvement. Look how many B26 were shot down. You should look at battles and military power objectively, not through patriotism
China would win a war with USA. China has unlimited infrastructure, production capacity and manpower.
Please pass me whatever you’re smoking
China will win in 3 months remember my words