A key interesting point that highlights how increased efficiency creates choking points and fragility:
>Shay Assad: We have nowhere else to go. For many of these weapons that are being sent over to Ukraine right now, there's only one supplier. And the companies know it.
>It wasn't always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants.
>Shay Assad: The landscape has totally changed. In the '80s, there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now.
They were probably not considering it under a frame of suppressing competition. If they have people spending a lot of time keeping track of various contractors (who can do what, what capacity is available from whom, etc.) then consolidating those contractors to just a handful might be a cost-cutting measure.
> is it any wonder we see mainstream media enthusiastically endorsing more and more weapons for Ukraine? this is your "textbook" demonstration of the military-industrial-complex
I love how people are so jaded when America is on the right side of a conflict for the first time in a long time. America is supplying aid to a country to defend itself from an imperialistic invader, it gets to get rid of its expiring weapon stocks by donating them to a country that is decimating their biggest military rival.
This arrangement is win win win for everyone involved.
> We were on the right side in Iraq, with the same voices giving it full throated support, that was until the fog of war lifted and pretty much everyone accepted it was a scam.
How do you think Ukraine is a scam?, I can show you hundred of videos of Ukrainians using western weapons to kill the imperialistic invaders that are trying to end their existence.
I can show you videos of the twin towers falling, that doesn't mean that it benefits the average citizen to go drone strike some weddings.
For one thing, I question the europeans and their lackluster response to what is occurring on their continent. Why is the US taxpayer so much more invested in this contrasted to a French or German taxpayer?
Personally looking at things at home we have higher priorities than this. Other nations seem to be making a similar choice given their lack of financial commitment.
They were by their own admission complacent, believing that trade and closer economic integration would remove the threat. They’ve changed their minds since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Germany has also been able to benefit from the overall NATO and European security umbrella and, unlike the US, UK, or France, has no alliances or foreign territories that require it to provide security or uphold security guarantees far from home. That meant a different force design and spending profile. For instance, Germany has no strategic need for carriers, which France, the UK, and US have, purely because it doesn’t need that level of global force projection.
According to this the US spends 8.23 percent of its budget on it's military, Germany spends 2.52 percent. Once Germany gets to say 8 percent we can start talking about US aid.
> I question the europeans and their lackluster response to what is occurring on their continent.
You need to look at Eastern Europe to see the opposite of a lacklustre response. Poland especially has been donating a lot of gear by themselves they are one of Ukraines biggest supplies of MTB's and aircraft.
Western Europes lacklustre response can be seen as a combination of thinking that Ukraine would fall quickly and not wanting to 'escalate' the conflict, likely borne at least partially from Russian intelligence efforts to stop western flows to Ukraine.
> Personally looking at things at home we have higher priorities than this. Other nations seem to be making a similar choice given their lack of financial commitment.
Tonnes of nations are contributing aide to Ukraine in differing amounts, a lot of other countries has militaries and supplies that are a lot smaller then American and cannot give as much.
> Why is the US taxpayer so much more invested in this contrasted to a French or German taxpayer?
I mean the US has made a choice in that rather then doing healthcare for all and other social programs to run a jobs program through the military industrial complex. Investing into Ukraine is investing into the US as expensive missiles and etc mean that American companies (and their workers) receive a lot of tax money which goes to benefit their local (American) communities.
Now you could argue that we should invest backwards into the US by building bridges to nowhere and other types of projects but my point is not that military investment is the best use way to support the economy just that is does support the economy.
This narrative does not jive with my memory. There were extremely vocal critics of the invasion of Iraq, long before troops were on the ground. Some of the U.S. closest allies refused to participate. Much of the international community was opposed to the invasion, even with the U.S. doing whatever it could to push for a coalition.
Comparing the invasion of Iraq with the current situation in Ukraine is like comparing apples with hand grenades.
The war went on for decades, during that time both Democrats and Republicans had control of the presidency and congress at various points, nobody saw fit to even bring a vote to end the war. They would go years without mentioning it, and now that they want to start another they "were always against it" all of the sudden.
That administration increased expenses by trillions and then cut tax revenue by trillions ( "starve the beast", "scorched earth") and now we're at shutdown showdown again without money for healthcare, infrastructure, or education.
We need to fund Q12 and K12CS education and update curricula to win the actual competition. Without funding due to defense offense spending without ROI, we cannot fund education and will thus also lose the real war: the War on Healthcare.
Had they floated "we're going to start multi-trillion-dollar war and cut then cut taxes" in the election, I doubt they would've won Florida by a hanging chad in 1999.
.
(The full cost of war calculations should include lifetime medical for now-disabled veterans, whose families also need healthcare.)
I think you should pay the bills for your war now.
FWIW the initial requested outlay to relieve them of apparently over-spec mortar tubes / new wmd production was ~$80b in 2003.
Real costs of war included fuel surcharges on groceries, which increased CPI (Consumer Price Inflation) and stressed families' budgets leading into to The Great Recession; then the worst recession since the great depression (1929-1939) prior to WWII (1939-1945).
The actual impact on the (OPEC-specified) production rate (not price) of oil due to tbh relatively minimal Iraqi production capabilities having been offline due to US invasion in order to world police save the day does not at all explain the action in the oil commodity market through those years; costs of war calculations - after deaths and orphans and missed school person/years - do not include what we paid for gas at the pump.
So you're saying that you based your stance on the Iraq War from what the mainstream media told you? That's the problem right there!
I was against the Iraq War from the start. Concretely, I was at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... , so my recollection isn't just post-rationalization. It was an uphill battle against the US mainstream media for sure. The anti-war stance only turned out to be more and more vindicated as time went on.
Meanwhile when I saw what happened to Ukraine in 2022, I couldn't see anything besides a justified war of self defense and self determination. I had been relativizing what had been happening in Ukraine previously, along with other global US involvements, as the US military industrial complex doing its thing. But the 2022 invasion was a clear cut attempt to conquer and subjugate the country - with Russia as the aggressor just as the US had been in Iraq.
I've always been abstractly pro-self-defense, but it's been a weird feeling supporting a specific war, especially in agreement with the mainstream. I reflect on it often, but my conclusions are stable.
I also lament the US political capital that was wasted on Iraq, that allows Russia to successfully propagandize western support for Ukraine as being from the same vein, despite Russia being the clear aggressor.
I agree with all your points. I don't see how it is a problem for a US citizen. Russia isn't a serious threat to the US, nor are they even really much of a threat to Europe if military spending is any indication.
If funds were unlimited, sure but right now we have other problems and can't afford it.
Whether it is in our national interest to materially support Ukraine is a different question than whether doing so puts us on the right side.
I would say the answer to that is also yes. The US is essentially the leader of a nominally consentual economic federation [0], which is what allows USD to remain the world reserve currency while creating more of it. If the US does not support a country that is trying to economically integrate with us, it's a strong data point that perhaps developing a relationship with the US isn't so valuable. This would facilitate the diminishing of US dominance that China is salivating over.
Furthermore, it's not like the big dollar amounts for Ukraine are being sent over there, or even being spent today. Rather it is the value of supplies that have already been manufactured and were sitting around. But rather than sitting on a huge military stockpile and considering the problem solved, we're better off rotating through stock and making sure that manufacturing supply chains still work. (I hate this reason because it was also a justification for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other assorted military actions. But it's true)
And lastly, solving domestic problems at home is not due to a lack of funds/resources, but rather a lack of political will because entrenched interests benefit from the status quo, and shamelessly buy politicians to maintain it.
[0] of course many times those giving consent are elites of a society, at the expense of the rest of the citizens. But that is still progress from "surprise, there's a foreign army marching through your streets!"
Isn't this basically what the defence production act was made for? Unfortunately, it would take a president that doesn't care about their opponents getting a huge campaign finance windfall to use that capability to restore competitive bidding.
And with the current Supreme Court, I expect that opening the designs for competitive bidding would be considered a "taking", so it would be a matter of time before the changes get reversed or weakened.
Exactly it's way easier for the socialists to take over when there are only a couple of monopolies to take over instead of a bunch of smaller businesses.
Looking at what the US has sent to Ukraine, though, nearly all of it has been second tier equipment that was nearing retirement/replacement due to either being close to time expiring or because it was nearing obsolescence. The same is true for other countries. Even the F-16s being mentioned at the moment will be recently retired ones, not aircraft drawn from front line fleets. Javelins are one of the only front line systems, and not that much of a profit maker for the military industrial complex given the relatively low per unit price and according to reports it was the oldest in the inventory that were sent.
The Raytheons and Boeings of the world would much rather the US be buying big ticket items like ships, fighter aircraft, and AMRAAMs than lower margin items like Javelins and 155mm artillery ammunition.
Military systems go through a constant cycle of acquisition, usage, upgrades, retirement, and replacement. Some systems, like big aircraft with relatively undemanding flight and usage profiles, can be kept operational and upgraded for a long time. Others, like missiles, have shorter lifetimes and are less worth refurbishing and upgrading after a point. A certain proportion of what the US has donated was going to have to be retired, disposed of, and replaced in the next few years anyway.
Fed.gov asks you to ramp up production from 100 military widgets a month to 500.
You are running your assembly line 6 hours a day to make 100 a month, with maintenance after hours.
You put on 2 more shifts, and run 3 different 8-hour shifts. An MBA would say you are better utilizing your capital investment in your assembly line, and are better utilizing your fixed overhead (e.g., rent on the manufacturing plant.) The guy who fixes the drill press is worried about the lack of maintenance and that burning smell from the drill press' drive belt. So you buy another drill press on credit, with no guarantee that this whole Ukraine thing will not be over tomorrow. You can not just buy another drill press. Your contract says you get partial reimbursement if it's "Made in America." You could get a deal if you could wait for delivery, but you need it tonight, so you send a gopher to Elliot's Hardware with your debit card and instructions to do his best, but to come back with a big bad drill press no matter what.
Your HR people spent the money to recruit a bunch of FNGs (F#$@% New Guys) and are now trying to get every competent employee to change shifts and to train FNGs. This means extra pay to the competent people who can train someone. Adding more people to a late project makes it later, for a while.
Your production slows and you are burning cash. QA has scrapping most of what you produce. As you increase your orders from your suppliers, they are going a something similar ramp-up, and know you have no choice, so they are raising their prices.
You know people are dying, and are spending cash to make this work. You think of that Ukrainian girl in your kid's class at school. She has the meanest face you've ever seen on a kid that age. You literally just bet your company's future on the orders continuing for a minimum of 2 more months, with tears in your eyes. People are dying. In the past, Fed.gov sometimes came through and paid for your effort, and sometimes they screwed you. It's way too common for Fed.gov to cancel orders and expect that since they cancelled the order before it was delivered that they should not pay anything.
Then the lamestream noise media at 60 minutes runs a story accusing you of price gouging.
I've been there, I've done that, and I'm pretty sure I've been blamed for selling some $600 hammers. If you need it now and lives are on the line, I can spend money to get it sooner, but that is going to be expensive. The alternative is January, 1942 when American kids were training with brooms because they did not have enough rifles.
We need to be mass producing missile frigates, oil-tanker-conversions as escort carriers, 1,000s of F35s, 1,000s of F22s, renovating every single plane in the Bone Yard that can be turned into a drone, and sending $1 Billion a month to SpaceX to get the StarShip operational for the High Frontier. It's not going to happen.
> We need to be mass producing missile frigates, oil-tanker-conversions as escort carriers, 1,000s of F35s, 1,000s of F22s, renovating every single plane in the Bone Yard that can be turned into a drone, and sending $1 Billion a month to SpaceX to get the StarShip operational for the High Frontier.
Why? This isn't all-out war nor do we need to militarize space.
43 comments
[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 95.9 ms ] thread>Shay Assad: We have nowhere else to go. For many of these weapons that are being sent over to Ukraine right now, there's only one supplier. And the companies know it.
>It wasn't always like this. The roots of the problem can be traced to 1993, when the Pentagon, looking to cut costs, urged defense companies to merge. Fifty one major contractors consolidated to five giants.
>Shay Assad: The landscape has totally changed. In the '80s, there was intense competition amongst a number of companies. And so the government had choices. They had leverage. We have limited leverage now.
I love how people are so jaded when America is on the right side of a conflict for the first time in a long time. America is supplying aid to a country to defend itself from an imperialistic invader, it gets to get rid of its expiring weapon stocks by donating them to a country that is decimating their biggest military rival.
This arrangement is win win win for everyone involved.
How do you think Ukraine is a scam?, I can show you hundred of videos of Ukrainians using western weapons to kill the imperialistic invaders that are trying to end their existence.
For one thing, I question the europeans and their lackluster response to what is occurring on their continent. Why is the US taxpayer so much more invested in this contrasted to a French or German taxpayer?
Personally looking at things at home we have higher priorities than this. Other nations seem to be making a similar choice given their lack of financial commitment.
https://www.statista.com/chart/27278/military-aid-to-ukraine...
Germany has also been able to benefit from the overall NATO and European security umbrella and, unlike the US, UK, or France, has no alliances or foreign territories that require it to provide security or uphold security guarantees far from home. That meant a different force design and spending profile. For instance, Germany has no strategic need for carriers, which France, the UK, and US have, purely because it doesn’t need that level of global force projection.
You need to look at Eastern Europe to see the opposite of a lacklustre response. Poland especially has been donating a lot of gear by themselves they are one of Ukraines biggest supplies of MTB's and aircraft.
Western Europes lacklustre response can be seen as a combination of thinking that Ukraine would fall quickly and not wanting to 'escalate' the conflict, likely borne at least partially from Russian intelligence efforts to stop western flows to Ukraine.
> Personally looking at things at home we have higher priorities than this. Other nations seem to be making a similar choice given their lack of financial commitment.
Tonnes of nations are contributing aide to Ukraine in differing amounts, a lot of other countries has militaries and supplies that are a lot smaller then American and cannot give as much.
I mean the US has made a choice in that rather then doing healthcare for all and other social programs to run a jobs program through the military industrial complex. Investing into Ukraine is investing into the US as expensive missiles and etc mean that American companies (and their workers) receive a lot of tax money which goes to benefit their local (American) communities.
Now you could argue that we should invest backwards into the US by building bridges to nowhere and other types of projects but my point is not that military investment is the best use way to support the economy just that is does support the economy.
Any reason that Russia cannot just leave Ukraine?, it would be the best way for them to maintain there forces.
Comparing the invasion of Iraq with the current situation in Ukraine is like comparing apples with hand grenades.
In the years since, lots of people came out and said "they were always against the war" likely creating false memories. Here is one example, it's very common: https://www.factcheck.org/2019/09/bidens-record-on-iraq-war/
The war went on for decades, during that time both Democrats and Republicans had control of the presidency and congress at various points, nobody saw fit to even bring a vote to end the war. They would go years without mentioning it, and now that they want to start another they "were always against it" all of the sudden.
Of course, it went from a high of 2/3 for to now 2/3 against so the 1/3 flip-flopers will also be a lot of people.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_opinion_in_the_United_S...
That administration increased expenses by trillions and then cut tax revenue by trillions ( "starve the beast", "scorched earth") and now we're at shutdown showdown again without money for healthcare, infrastructure, or education.
We need to fund Q12 and K12CS education and update curricula to win the actual competition. Without funding due to defense offense spending without ROI, we cannot fund education and will thus also lose the real war: the War on Healthcare.
Repeal of the 2002 AUMF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repeal_of_the_2002_AUMF
Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senate_Report_on_Iraqi_WMD_Int...
Had they floated "we're going to start multi-trillion-dollar war and cut then cut taxes" in the election, I doubt they would've won Florida by a hanging chad in 1999. .
(The full cost of war calculations should include lifetime medical for now-disabled veterans, whose families also need healthcare.)
I think you should pay the bills for your war now.
Real costs of war included fuel surcharges on groceries, which increased CPI (Consumer Price Inflation) and stressed families' budgets leading into to The Great Recession; then the worst recession since the great depression (1929-1939) prior to WWII (1939-1945).
The actual impact on the (OPEC-specified) production rate (not price) of oil due to tbh relatively minimal Iraqi production capabilities having been offline due to US invasion in order to world police save the day does not at all explain the action in the oil commodity market through those years; costs of war calculations - after deaths and orphans and missed school person/years - do not include what we paid for gas at the pump.
The Great Recession: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession
World oil market chronology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_oil_market_chronology_fr... ; from $30/barrel in 2000 to $140/barrel in 2008 (and DoD is the largest institutional consumer of oil in the world, especially when at war)
So you're saying that you based your stance on the Iraq War from what the mainstream media told you? That's the problem right there!
I was against the Iraq War from the start. Concretely, I was at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/15_February_2003_anti-war_prot... , so my recollection isn't just post-rationalization. It was an uphill battle against the US mainstream media for sure. The anti-war stance only turned out to be more and more vindicated as time went on.
Meanwhile when I saw what happened to Ukraine in 2022, I couldn't see anything besides a justified war of self defense and self determination. I had been relativizing what had been happening in Ukraine previously, along with other global US involvements, as the US military industrial complex doing its thing. But the 2022 invasion was a clear cut attempt to conquer and subjugate the country - with Russia as the aggressor just as the US had been in Iraq.
I've always been abstractly pro-self-defense, but it's been a weird feeling supporting a specific war, especially in agreement with the mainstream. I reflect on it often, but my conclusions are stable.
I also lament the US political capital that was wasted on Iraq, that allows Russia to successfully propagandize western support for Ukraine as being from the same vein, despite Russia being the clear aggressor.
If funds were unlimited, sure but right now we have other problems and can't afford it.
I would say the answer to that is also yes. The US is essentially the leader of a nominally consentual economic federation [0], which is what allows USD to remain the world reserve currency while creating more of it. If the US does not support a country that is trying to economically integrate with us, it's a strong data point that perhaps developing a relationship with the US isn't so valuable. This would facilitate the diminishing of US dominance that China is salivating over.
Furthermore, it's not like the big dollar amounts for Ukraine are being sent over there, or even being spent today. Rather it is the value of supplies that have already been manufactured and were sitting around. But rather than sitting on a huge military stockpile and considering the problem solved, we're better off rotating through stock and making sure that manufacturing supply chains still work. (I hate this reason because it was also a justification for Iraq, Afghanistan, and other assorted military actions. But it's true)
And lastly, solving domestic problems at home is not due to a lack of funds/resources, but rather a lack of political will because entrenched interests benefit from the status quo, and shamelessly buy politicians to maintain it.
[0] of course many times those giving consent are elites of a society, at the expense of the rest of the citizens. But that is still progress from "surprise, there's a foreign army marching through your streets!"
And with the current Supreme Court, I expect that opening the designs for competitive bidding would be considered a "taking", so it would be a matter of time before the changes get reversed or weakened.
The Raytheons and Boeings of the world would much rather the US be buying big ticket items like ships, fighter aircraft, and AMRAAMs than lower margin items like Javelins and 155mm artillery ammunition.
Military systems go through a constant cycle of acquisition, usage, upgrades, retirement, and replacement. Some systems, like big aircraft with relatively undemanding flight and usage profiles, can be kept operational and upgraded for a long time. Others, like missiles, have shorter lifetimes and are less worth refurbishing and upgrading after a point. A certain proportion of what the US has donated was going to have to be retired, disposed of, and replaced in the next few years anyway.
Fed.gov asks you to ramp up production from 100 military widgets a month to 500.
You are running your assembly line 6 hours a day to make 100 a month, with maintenance after hours.
You put on 2 more shifts, and run 3 different 8-hour shifts. An MBA would say you are better utilizing your capital investment in your assembly line, and are better utilizing your fixed overhead (e.g., rent on the manufacturing plant.) The guy who fixes the drill press is worried about the lack of maintenance and that burning smell from the drill press' drive belt. So you buy another drill press on credit, with no guarantee that this whole Ukraine thing will not be over tomorrow. You can not just buy another drill press. Your contract says you get partial reimbursement if it's "Made in America." You could get a deal if you could wait for delivery, but you need it tonight, so you send a gopher to Elliot's Hardware with your debit card and instructions to do his best, but to come back with a big bad drill press no matter what.
Your HR people spent the money to recruit a bunch of FNGs (F#$@% New Guys) and are now trying to get every competent employee to change shifts and to train FNGs. This means extra pay to the competent people who can train someone. Adding more people to a late project makes it later, for a while.
Your production slows and you are burning cash. QA has scrapping most of what you produce. As you increase your orders from your suppliers, they are going a something similar ramp-up, and know you have no choice, so they are raising their prices.
You know people are dying, and are spending cash to make this work. You think of that Ukrainian girl in your kid's class at school. She has the meanest face you've ever seen on a kid that age. You literally just bet your company's future on the orders continuing for a minimum of 2 more months, with tears in your eyes. People are dying. In the past, Fed.gov sometimes came through and paid for your effort, and sometimes they screwed you. It's way too common for Fed.gov to cancel orders and expect that since they cancelled the order before it was delivered that they should not pay anything.
Then the lamestream noise media at 60 minutes runs a story accusing you of price gouging.
I've been there, I've done that, and I'm pretty sure I've been blamed for selling some $600 hammers. If you need it now and lives are on the line, I can spend money to get it sooner, but that is going to be expensive. The alternative is January, 1942 when American kids were training with brooms because they did not have enough rifles.
We need to be mass producing missile frigates, oil-tanker-conversions as escort carriers, 1,000s of F35s, 1,000s of F22s, renovating every single plane in the Bone Yard that can be turned into a drone, and sending $1 Billion a month to SpaceX to get the StarShip operational for the High Frontier. It's not going to happen.
/rant
Why? This isn't all-out war nor do we need to militarize space.