Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
>I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status.
We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.
Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.
We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.
Yep, the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have shown how weak our strategy is. Iran is beating us with balsa wood drones. Cheaper is better in this case. But we still like buying the best/most expensive/most over-engineered option available. We should be figuring out how to design a supply chain that can mass produce these in the event of a real conflict from local materials... not building the most high spec exotically sourced version... which is what we are currently doing.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial compl...
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
These morons wasted over 1000 Tomahawk missiles within a couple of months to achieve nothing in Iran. And that's not even the worst part. The wasted PAC-missiles for the Patriot anti-air systems are.
It would be that rocket with German or similar guidance components. They are in a bit of a hurry, hoping to start intercepting incoming ballistic missiles this year.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 30.4 ms ] threadhttps://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
>X-Bow is an emerging player in the solid rocket motor market, using 3D printing technology to produce motors and propellants
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
Iran got invaded. North Korea didn't and won't. Cuba might.
Guess what those 2 countries that are part of the world don't have that the 3rd does...
We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.
Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.
We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial compl...
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
which they are hoping to make into a Patriot alternative https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/a-ukrainian-patriot...
It would be that rocket with German or similar guidance components. They are in a bit of a hurry, hoping to start intercepting incoming ballistic missiles this year.
They currently use solid fuel motors cast in Ukraine but are opening a plant in Denmark https://militarnyi.com/en/news/fire-point-to-launch-rocket-f...