The man gave his informed opinion and assumption. He did not present it as fact. Take it for what it's worth, and don't project anything onto it that's not there.
Neat. My uncle worked on nuke stuff at Lawrence Livermore. He used to sleep talk incoherent phrases. I never made sense of anything but it was fun to guess. Stuff like "no, the crosstalk will ruin in" or "it's too close to the physics pack they will not approve".
I am a sleep talker, at least for me it would be very difficult to disclose classified information in my sleep because my sleep talking is mostly babbling, not words. The few times I have said actual words it's very simple sentences like "let's go."
Yeah, most people nowadays spend their time and energy on making serving html websites more and more complex.
Complex missile systems? That's nothing compared to my vm running kube, running docker, running nextjs react emulating x86 and running kube again. Layers of more software surrounding software is the next big thing. Also microservices and LLMs.
You know, I always thought a lot of the abstractions we add were just pure resume-driven nonsense too, but I guess it is better than having engineering minded people think up better ways to liquify other humans.
Hey. I'm fucking American and I worked defense and you're completely right.
The US is deploying an entire chain of military forces around china. Literally. From Japan all the way through taiwan to the Philippines we are boxing china in with massive amounts of deadly firepower.
Any equivalent action against the US would launch mass hysteria among the public. As much as I don't agree with certain things china does.. they are showing incredible restraint here. The US media is pulling off the most successful propaganda campaign I've ever seen... Literally characterizing this action as something that's self defense and necessary for world peace.
Self defense is a complete joke. it's 100 percent military aggression by the US. All in the name of economic and military power.
> As a result, the executive steering group and its supporting working groups spent extensive time on building a humanitarian assistance package for Iraq, but comparatively little time on the functions of a post-regime government outside of the oil ministry.
Surely with the focus on the oil ministry, post invasion operations were fully transparent and not at all suspicious!
[2]
> In October 2004, the audits conducted by IAMB and KPMG revealed the CPA's inadequate accounting system. IAMB failed its oversight process for several months because of procedural disputes and US manipulation. During this time illegal export of petroleum was conducted secretly from Iraq, and a large amount of funds for DFI were disbursed without accountability. According to the audits conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), US $8.8 billion of the US$23 billion of Iraqi money disbursed for DFI has not been accounted [for].
> Iraq's oil infrastructure was damaged when the CPA took over. The CPA effected selected repairs. But the IAMB found that the CPA had chosen not to repair the meters on the pipelines. The IAMB told the CPA that they were concerned that the lack of metering made auditing Iraq's oil exports unreliable – making it impossible to detect fraud, deception or smuggling. The minutes of the IAMB meeting make clear that the CPA had assured the IAMB that they were in the process of repairing the meters – in bad faith. The CPA's authority came to an end with the meters unrepaired. Estimates of how much oil revenue was siphoned off during the year of the CPA's administration go as high as $4 billion – comparable to the amount Saddam Hussein is suspected of stealing during the entire duration of the oil-for-food program.
Uhhhhh... Right, thanks for keeping us safe defense industry!
[1] - pg. 64, The US Army in the Iraq War, 2003-2006
I’ve no doubt that almost all weapons engineers the world over believe they are working for a noble cause (and many of them with neighbors far more belligerent than Mexico or Canada). I can’t help but suspect that some do take glee in it but know better than to advertise that.
Most people with clearance aren’t working missile systems. The breakdown of work is nearly identical. 99% drudge and 1% interesting technical challenges.
So with clearance, you’re still stuck working on a web framework, but it will help display and track classified documents. How exciting.
The question is, with the last decade of interest rate policy ending, will VC-backed SWE salaries ever come back? Similar to one not expecting to sub 3% mortgages to come back; it was a macro anomaly.
For sure, "make hay when the sun is shining". But the days of clearing $200k-$400k to build crud apps or other low value high comp engineering work might not be coming back. Conversely, this is an opportunity for higher value work to evangelize its value prop to high value talent (assuming the comp is commensurate with the work).
I don't have a crystal ball any more than anyone else, but people are still making those salaries. The layoffs barely got us back to 2019 employment levels.
It's the opposite for javascript. Too much money is thrown at creating more and more nonsense.
Pick your poison: too little money at dealing with nonsense, or too much money on simple shit such that you spend all your time creating more and more layers of nonsense.
Along with that the OPM had a huge data breach a few years ago that leaked all the private data about everyone who had gone through the security background investigation.
I'm not about to endure that anal exam again, which also demanded time from my friends and neighbors and former employers, just so that the government can divulge it all.
I'd consider doing classified work again but the cloak and dagger aspect of the hiring process has got to go. In this day and age all they need is my name and SSN to find out anything they need to know about me.
Oh c'mon. I worked at RMS in Tucson. We had tons of this. Hell, in one lab we found test procedures for the Phoenix missile for our HWIL, which hasn't had a Phoenix in there for decades.
I got a call literally last week Tuesday because one of the usual operators had left his position at one of the top 5 US aerospace and defense contractors (other than Raytheon), and they didn't know how to reset the sequence for the machine my employer had built for them less than 10 years ago.
Sure, any controls engineer worth their Ethernet cable would be able to read the PLC code and reverse-engineer it, but the user manual for that machine is about 8 pages of mostly boilerplate and would take an intern about 15 minutes to generate. It would take 50 times as many pages and 500 times as much effort to generate a proper user manual that would guarantee the next operator can read the manuals and fully understand what needs to happen to make good parts.
> I would assume a company like Raytheon has all their processes documented and can quickly spin up a new manufacturing line for a legacy product.
Do you assume that they had all of their processes documented 20 years ago, and that they have retained all of that documentation, and that the documentation is appropriate for a 2023 workforce and doesn't make assumptions about the audience that would be invalid today?
I've worked with engineering companies across Europe, and their documentation is always amazing, with full traceability of every component going back to the 80's. Everything from processes to weld inspections.
I'd assume that a company engineering weapons would be the same.
But documentation is only part of it. There's a culture (or tradition) that carries with it the context needed to interpret documentation. You can reduce some of the context, yes, but sola scriptura is wrong for a reason.
Otherwise, you're in the business of archeology, a field which itself requires extra-archaeological context to make sense of its own findings.
As I've written in a similar post, this attitude is a bit baffling. In IT we say, a backup ain't a backup until regularly validated to work, and most IT insurances/policies require regular testing for backups.
I'd expect the same standard for anything military/involving national security, alone for the fact that should war come, there will be a need to rapidly expand production, to rope in everyone able and willing - and that won't work without complete documentation.
Yup, and that is what should never have been allowed to happen in the first place. I can understand it for some backwater country struggling to feed its citizens, but NATO members? The United States? Come on that's ridiculous.
Come on, don't expect perfection, that ain't typical human trait. The chain is always as weak as its weakest link and this is not different.
I presume there are good reasons why this and exactly this is happening (and probably not only at this manufacturer), if for nothing else than reducing costs... not maintaining something is always cheaper than maintaining it.
So there's something you didn't consider - Documentation can be stolen and used against you far more readily than people.
In a sense you could consider each person who has knowledge to be an air gapped data bank with a limited lifespan. Theres some very clear issues with that system, but that's arguably the effective intention behind not documenting war related development until well after the useful lifespan of the development.
It's almost a certainty that all of the drawings, plans, and related engineering information for the Stinger missile still exists. In that sense, the backup is fine. It works. Raytheon has the plans for the Stinger missile and likely much, if not all, information on the design of the original production lines.
But that's probably where the issue lies. Those plans make certain assumptions based on the technology, tooling, and processes in use at the time. The bill of materials may reference off-the-shelf parts that were readily available back in the 70s and 80s but are now considered obsolete. Some of the raw materials specified may no longer in use due to new environmental regulations, changes in industry standards, limited availability nowadays for any number of reasons, etc. Machining processes may be documented in the context of machines, tools, and procedures common a the time that we simply no longer use. Similar challenges exist for every part of the process, from sourcing materials to quality control.
You can document everything with a great deal of detail at the time--likely the case here, by the nature of manufacturing complex products--but that doesn't mean it will be understood in exactly the same manner forty years later. No engineer can predict how processes and standards will change over that kind of time frame; the best they can do is document everything clearly enough that future engineers can work through what's left behind and adapt it as needed in the future.
Bringing in retirees likely expedites that process. They can almost certainly work through it, but if a few phone calls and meetings with retired staff can speed things along, there's no reason not to. It doesn't mean someone screwed the pooch in the past. In a military context, existing stockpiles are meant to give you sufficient time to restart production.
With a computer backup, you can monitor that the system is functioning and verify the recovery process. You can even confirm it directly, restoring backups to a separate system. You can't do that with a manufacturing line that hasn't manufactured anything in forty years. Either you keep it active, manufacturing items you neither need nor want, or you try to constantly update your plans every few years on the off-chance that you'll want to build more outdated Stingers in the future.
That would absurdly wasteful, and even if you catch some changes in procedure/systems/materials, you'll miss plenty of others unless you actually try to restart production. No matter what you do, there's going to have to be a certain degree of interpretation work that's needed.
This is mostly it. Plus you have to remember all the documentation lies in a 30 year old system. A new hire isn’t going to be easily able to piece together all the details quickly. Then there is all the stuff that is documented or not in procedures manuals and standard practices that they won’t know. Add in actual missing documentation like order of operations and special considerations that have down steam effects and i guarantee you would still come out ahead even if you are paying retirees 2x as much. The parts are no doubt expensive and any single screw up would likely be at least worth of salary expenses.
> I've worked with engineering companies across Europe
Europe isn't overflowing with gigantic tech companies nor defense contractors that would have what you're describing going back to the 1980s and 1990s. You can likely count them on one hand, given how few there are to begin with.
There's a very big difference between knowing how something was made decades ago via schematic & component lists, and having to restart very high-quality production from scratch, including the ancient components. Building things related to technology during their actual time + place, is considerably easier than trying to recreate that time + place decades into the future and at scale.
>Europe isn't overflowing with gigantic tech companies nor defense contractors that would have what you're describing going back to the 1980s and 1990s.
That is completely delusional.
>You can likely count them on one hand, given how few there are to begin with.
Giant (or just large) Technology/Defense companies, a random sample:
The companies who make the components may have merged, gone out of business, switched to manufacturing something else, etc. That's the real problem -- you can't source the same components you did, and in order to work around those problems you need people with a deep knowledge of the whole system who can figure out how to resolve that.
It's not just Raytheon, but all the subcontractors. Some may have gone out of business or shifted to different industries and lost the institutional knowledge of parts fabrication and assembly.
If the Vitebsk-25 defensive system works anywhere near as well as claimed, it would seem to be a really bad idea to resume production of this old technology.
The difference is training. Scores of operators on the ground are already trained and experienced on the Stinger platform and the development of complete already.
Backfilling a proven stock item is faster than infilling a new platform. Refer to the training cycles required for tanks provided by the UK. Those tanks have qualified operators ( with matching tactical-operational skills, but there are few personnel to back up their abilities. The Stinger is valuable because of the established user base compared to that.
The thing you are speculating on is answered in the very first sentence of the article: "Nations like the United States and other NATO allies have given Ukraine their Stingers, putting the venerable human-portable surface-to-air missile to use against Soviet-designed aircraft, as it was originally designed to do. "
They are mostly used to shoot down cruise missiles deep within Ukrainian territory, not planes (Russian planes don't fly over Ukraine controlled territory anyway, that would be suicide, and over frontline they have decent AAA).
There's nothing new in defence pods like Vitebsk-25 for aircraft, they existed for decades and even many civilian aircraft have them (like many Israeli passenger planes, knowing they can be subject to terrorist shootdowns).
Per the article, this production run is a stop gap. The next gen system they (US Army) want is not yet available. They're restocking to cover the interim.
The stinger works great against drones and cruise missiles. Whilst Vitebsk-25 may be on choppers and fixed wing aircraft, It won't be on Iranian drones. And having stringers take down the small stuff makes using the Patriot System most cost effective against bigger targets.
It's not hard to find people using MANPADS like the Stinger after they start shooting. The first one might suprise you but after that they're going to locate you and then figure out everyone you've ever talked to and bust your cell wide open in a matter of hours.
You could fly $300 drones around an airport and that would pose a significant enough safety hazard that would likely shutdown all traffic. Or shine those high powered laser pointers at the planes.
Disrupting society is remarkably easy if you draw outside the lines.
Afaik no one has yet caught the “jetpack/drone” that would occasionally fly around lax. Pretty busy airport loaded with defense contractors nearby, should be hard to walk away from something like that but it happens.
This happened in the United Kingdom, a prankster flying a drone managed to halt flights at Gatwick, then not so long later managed to also halt departures from Heathrow.
I think the US is a bit idiosyncratic in that it uses trucks more than most other countries. The saying amongst teamsters/truckers (often attributed to Jimmy Hoffa) would be, "if you got it, a truck brought it". We also use rail for a lot of heavy goods. Another weird quirk of the US is that the constitution should probably allow private ownership of such weapons according to modern interpretation.
People get so fixated on the wrong points of the second amendment. “Right to bear arms” then the mind closes. Where’s my well regulated militia that was deemed necessary to defend the Free State on the other hand?
The stinger discussion seems a sub-issue to the longer-term process of hollowing out US industrial production described in the foreign affairs article cited in the HN post
im thinking its doctrine, there simply havent been a need, us marines dont go in without air superiority, what good is a stinger if there are no targets?
The issue is, American army did not see them anymore entering a war where American infantry needs to take out aerial threats. The army assumed future wars would be killing goat herders carrying AK-47s with drone strikes.
The idea was nobody would. E insane enough in the interconnected global economy to start to "real" war. And thus weapons production focused on anti-terrorism etc.
not exactly. near peer doctrine called for aerial dominance. only recently (last few years) has the US bought back SHORAD. manpads are seen as unnecessary because there’s bigger and better weapons systems for them
MANPADs have pretty low ranges. You're mostly shooting helicopters and very low flying planes. Wikipedia claims a maximum range of 11000 feet, but the hot probability at that height is likely quite low.
Different doctrine. Stinger is useful for LSCO (large scale combat operations) doctrine, but NATO thought it would be COIN doctrine (counter insurgency like in Afghanistan)
turns out things like Stingers/TOW/Javelin are extremely useful in proxy wars, where NATO doesn't want to put boots/planes in the area of operations.
if NATO is so loss averse and doesnt want to risk own soldiers' lives, then NATO/US doctrine should plan for proxy wars - and not blindly assume they will have air superiority everywhere
They DO have air superiority - just not currently used for shorter range weapons, because they're as high in the sky as they possibly can be without being seen or hit by RUS.
this is very cynical view and skips the US foreign policy failure of Obama in the middle east, and is part of the reason why Trump got elected in the first place.
not even talking about millions of killed/displaced refugees that are now in Europe and all over the middle east, and all the humanitarian disaster that was caused by strategic miscalculation and doctrine mismatch
NATO does not have air superiority in Ukraine. The skies are contested in many areas. Recently Ukraine lost a number of Bradley’s and when a Ka-52 ambushed them in Zaporizhzhia.
If you’re making the point that America and NATO could join the fight sure, but that’s a hypothetical and the reality now is that the skies in Ukraine are contested.
Ukraine is holding territory. They are not fighting like an insurgency.
Stringers are absolutely useful in LSCO. Soviet doctrine made heavy use of MANPADS (man portable air defense systems, of which Stinger counts) when they were planning for LSCO. Basically every army besides the US army (and its allies) makes heavy use of them, and the US army is different because they plan for the US Air Force to be able to clear the skies for them. Soviet doctrine embedded air defence at all levels of their army, from MANPADS to Pantsirs, Buks, and S-300s etc. This goes from man carrier to short/middle/long range.
Well Poles took Igla, removed soviet electronics, put there new modern electronics and started making Grom, which then got a birth to Piorun. I would assume that Stingers need to go through similar development as electronics from 1970s/1980s will be hard to get or very expensive.
In a semi related point, this is a problem with off shoring mamufacting. Once your supply chain and labour base forgets hours to do something, it's incredibly difficult to relearn it.
Those skills and that value add opportunity is gone.
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[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 168 ms ] threadI would assume a company like Raytheon has all their processes documented and can quickly spin up a new manufacturing line for a legacy product.
Yes, they're having problems with getting cleared people. It isn't the top-paying gig it used to be.
Complex missile systems? That's nothing compared to my vm running kube, running docker, running nextjs react emulating x86 and running kube again. Layers of more software surrounding software is the next big thing. Also microservices and LLMs.
Yeah all that brain power is deployed to create technology that is barely used ever. It's just there to scare other people away.
That's the current state of technology right now. On one hand in defense you have people cooking up technology that will never be used.
On the other hand you have the entire IT industry cooking up technology to make simple things 1000000x more complex.
It's like humanity has run out of shit to do and the money is being directed towards useless busy work.
If you're arguing against defense work in general, please consider the consequences of unilaterally disarming ourselves.
I want world peace. Unfortunately others seem to prefer expansion / exploitation of other nations.
The US is deploying an entire chain of military forces around china. Literally. From Japan all the way through taiwan to the Philippines we are boxing china in with massive amounts of deadly firepower.
Any equivalent action against the US would launch mass hysteria among the public. As much as I don't agree with certain things china does.. they are showing incredible restraint here. The US media is pulling off the most successful propaganda campaign I've ever seen... Literally characterizing this action as something that's self defense and necessary for world peace.
Self defense is a complete joke. it's 100 percent military aggression by the US. All in the name of economic and military power.
I'd like to respond, but it's not clear if you're up for a serious discussion.
[1]
> As a result, the executive steering group and its supporting working groups spent extensive time on building a humanitarian assistance package for Iraq, but comparatively little time on the functions of a post-regime government outside of the oil ministry.
Surely with the focus on the oil ministry, post invasion operations were fully transparent and not at all suspicious!
[2]
> In October 2004, the audits conducted by IAMB and KPMG revealed the CPA's inadequate accounting system. IAMB failed its oversight process for several months because of procedural disputes and US manipulation. During this time illegal export of petroleum was conducted secretly from Iraq, and a large amount of funds for DFI were disbursed without accountability. According to the audits conducted by the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), US $8.8 billion of the US$23 billion of Iraqi money disbursed for DFI has not been accounted [for].
> Iraq's oil infrastructure was damaged when the CPA took over. The CPA effected selected repairs. But the IAMB found that the CPA had chosen not to repair the meters on the pipelines. The IAMB told the CPA that they were concerned that the lack of metering made auditing Iraq's oil exports unreliable – making it impossible to detect fraud, deception or smuggling. The minutes of the IAMB meeting make clear that the CPA had assured the IAMB that they were in the process of repairing the meters – in bad faith. The CPA's authority came to an end with the meters unrepaired. Estimates of how much oil revenue was siphoned off during the year of the CPA's administration go as high as $4 billion – comparable to the amount Saddam Hussein is suspected of stealing during the entire duration of the oil-for-food program.
Uhhhhh... Right, thanks for keeping us safe defense industry!
[1] - pg. 64, The US Army in the Iraq War, 2003-2006
[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_Fund_for_Iraq
So with clearance, you’re still stuck working on a web framework, but it will help display and track classified documents. How exciting.
But sure, go off about JavaScript or whatever.
Good luck finding a SCIF that's as pleasant as a home office.
But yeah, salary is a big issue. Defense work (whether as a civil servant or a contractor) just doesn't pay as well as VC-backed software development.
Although in the current job market, I have to say that the median pay gap seems to be smaller.
For sure, "make hay when the sun is shining". But the days of clearing $200k-$400k to build crud apps or other low value high comp engineering work might not be coming back. Conversely, this is an opportunity for higher value work to evangelize its value prop to high value talent (assuming the comp is commensurate with the work).
Pick your poison: too little money at dealing with nonsense, or too much money on simple shit such that you spend all your time creating more and more layers of nonsense.
I'm not about to endure that anal exam again, which also demanded time from my friends and neighbors and former employers, just so that the government can divulge it all.
I'd consider doing classified work again but the cloak and dagger aspect of the hiring process has got to go. In this day and age all they need is my name and SSN to find out anything they need to know about me.
As someone who has worked in this field, I almost spewed coffee out my nose. Thanks for the chuckles.
Also, if the government isn't paying for it anymore, there's no reason to put overhead money towards keeping those manufacturing lines open anymore.
I got a call literally last week Tuesday because one of the usual operators had left his position at one of the top 5 US aerospace and defense contractors (other than Raytheon), and they didn't know how to reset the sequence for the machine my employer had built for them less than 10 years ago.
Sure, any controls engineer worth their Ethernet cable would be able to read the PLC code and reverse-engineer it, but the user manual for that machine is about 8 pages of mostly boilerplate and would take an intern about 15 minutes to generate. It would take 50 times as many pages and 500 times as much effort to generate a proper user manual that would guarantee the next operator can read the manuals and fully understand what needs to happen to make good parts.
Do you assume that they had all of their processes documented 20 years ago, and that they have retained all of that documentation, and that the documentation is appropriate for a 2023 workforce and doesn't make assumptions about the audience that would be invalid today?
Because I would bet that that isn’t all true.
I've worked with engineering companies across Europe, and their documentation is always amazing, with full traceability of every component going back to the 80's. Everything from processes to weld inspections.
I'd assume that a company engineering weapons would be the same.
Otherwise, you're in the business of archeology, a field which itself requires extra-archaeological context to make sense of its own findings.
I'd expect the same standard for anything military/involving national security, alone for the fact that should war come, there will be a need to rapidly expand production, to rope in everyone able and willing - and that won't work without complete documentation.
I presume there are good reasons why this and exactly this is happening (and probably not only at this manufacturer), if for nothing else than reducing costs... not maintaining something is always cheaper than maintaining it.
In a sense you could consider each person who has knowledge to be an air gapped data bank with a limited lifespan. Theres some very clear issues with that system, but that's arguably the effective intention behind not documenting war related development until well after the useful lifespan of the development.
But that's probably where the issue lies. Those plans make certain assumptions based on the technology, tooling, and processes in use at the time. The bill of materials may reference off-the-shelf parts that were readily available back in the 70s and 80s but are now considered obsolete. Some of the raw materials specified may no longer in use due to new environmental regulations, changes in industry standards, limited availability nowadays for any number of reasons, etc. Machining processes may be documented in the context of machines, tools, and procedures common a the time that we simply no longer use. Similar challenges exist for every part of the process, from sourcing materials to quality control.
You can document everything with a great deal of detail at the time--likely the case here, by the nature of manufacturing complex products--but that doesn't mean it will be understood in exactly the same manner forty years later. No engineer can predict how processes and standards will change over that kind of time frame; the best they can do is document everything clearly enough that future engineers can work through what's left behind and adapt it as needed in the future.
Bringing in retirees likely expedites that process. They can almost certainly work through it, but if a few phone calls and meetings with retired staff can speed things along, there's no reason not to. It doesn't mean someone screwed the pooch in the past. In a military context, existing stockpiles are meant to give you sufficient time to restart production.
With a computer backup, you can monitor that the system is functioning and verify the recovery process. You can even confirm it directly, restoring backups to a separate system. You can't do that with a manufacturing line that hasn't manufactured anything in forty years. Either you keep it active, manufacturing items you neither need nor want, or you try to constantly update your plans every few years on the off-chance that you'll want to build more outdated Stingers in the future.
That would absurdly wasteful, and even if you catch some changes in procedure/systems/materials, you'll miss plenty of others unless you actually try to restart production. No matter what you do, there's going to have to be a certain degree of interpretation work that's needed.
Europe isn't overflowing with gigantic tech companies nor defense contractors that would have what you're describing going back to the 1980s and 1990s. You can likely count them on one hand, given how few there are to begin with.
There's a very big difference between knowing how something was made decades ago via schematic & component lists, and having to restart very high-quality production from scratch, including the ancient components. Building things related to technology during their actual time + place, is considerably easier than trying to recreate that time + place decades into the future and at scale.
That is completely delusional.
>You can likely count them on one hand, given how few there are to begin with.
Giant (or just large) Technology/Defense companies, a random sample:
Siemens,Bosch,Phillips,Renaut,Airbus,VW,Thales,Thyssen Krupp,Rheinmetall,Saab,Dassault,Zeiss,ASML,NXP,BMW,Mercedes,Liebherr,MBDA,...
Even if this is true, a map is not the terrain, and there’s no substitute for experience.
Backfilling a proven stock item is faster than infilling a new platform. Refer to the training cycles required for tanks provided by the UK. Those tanks have qualified operators ( with matching tactical-operational skills, but there are few personnel to back up their abilities. The Stinger is valuable because of the established user base compared to that.
There are US soldiers and contractors fighting and dying right now: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases...
Disrupting society is remarkably easy if you draw outside the lines.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gatwick_Airport_drone_incident
The stinger discussion seems a sub-issue to the longer-term process of hollowing out US industrial production described in the foreign affairs article cited in the HN post
I don't understand why they would not secure the production of that missile, or even replace it with something new.
It's not like they don't have enough money to cover all possible sorts of weapons that can exist.
The idea was nobody would. E insane enough in the interconnected global economy to start to "real" war. And thus weapons production focused on anti-terrorism etc.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Counterinsurgency
I get the sense Ukraine us using them as the insurgency rather than the counter-insurgency
if NATO is so loss averse and doesnt want to risk own soldiers' lives, then NATO/US doctrine should plan for proxy wars - and not blindly assume they will have air superiority everywhere
Should the next proxy war happen in LATAM/Africa/ME - I am not sure US would rush to deploy air assets.
For example - Iran/China - would US create no fly zone over these countries?
How they choose to exercise that is an exercise for you, the reader, whoever would like - not this comment.
for different factions of rebels backed by Pentagon/CIA/etc/etc
Seems like it went great.
not even talking about millions of killed/displaced refugees that are now in Europe and all over the middle east, and all the humanitarian disaster that was caused by strategic miscalculation and doctrine mismatch
Their claimed goals and incentives are rarely complete, sometimes not even true!
If you’re making the point that America and NATO could join the fight sure, but that’s a hypothetical and the reality now is that the skies in Ukraine are contested.
Stringers are absolutely useful in LSCO. Soviet doctrine made heavy use of MANPADS (man portable air defense systems, of which Stinger counts) when they were planning for LSCO. Basically every army besides the US army (and its allies) makes heavy use of them, and the US army is different because they plan for the US Air Force to be able to clear the skies for them. Soviet doctrine embedded air defence at all levels of their army, from MANPADS to Pantsirs, Buks, and S-300s etc. This goes from man carrier to short/middle/long range.
Those skills and that value add opportunity is gone.