I'll quote in full the following, which I think gets to the heart of the matter. If you have no push, you can't apply pressure to the point.
> The notion that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics is frequently discussed in military academies and war colleges, yet it is rarely reflected in the Army’s budget requests or modernization priorities. The outdated concept of the tooth-to-tail ratio, which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined. In modern warfare, the tail is the primary target. If the tail is severed, the teeth are rendered useless.
One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle.
It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.
You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card.
Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex.
Ukraine and Taiwan quietly cooperate in weapons development and production, especially drones.[1] They both have big, aggressive neighbors. Ukraine knows how to fight them, and Taiwan can make electronics in quantity. Ukraine is starting to get cooperation from Japan, too, but that's in an earlier stage.[2] With Taiwan, it's serious.
The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Ukraine is fighting.
China controls much of the integration and many of the low level components for super low cost electronics and motors. They aren't the ones controlling all the fabs for the circuits and integration can be done anywhere if you want to pay extra.
Thanks for linking this is interesting. It sounds like they are still unable to produce many of the base components though?
> most manufacturers of everything within Ukraine remain dependent on imported machining tools — traditionally Chinese, but increasingly Indian and, for those who can afford it, European.
But for the cheapest components, simple base-line products like transistors, circuit boards, wiring, or solar cells, nobody can yet step up to the scale of China’s mass production.
I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports?
this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply.
However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.
Reminds me of the Cambrian revolution: suddenly there were all kinds of weird animals. Many of these kinds rapidly disappeared, while a few more successful ones kept on. Or at least that's my reading.
Look at 1950s aircraft. That was the decade of really weird aircraft, as people figured out how jets were supposed to work. Supersonics. VTOL aircraft. The X-planes. Rocket-assisted takeoff. After that, more was known about what worked, and designs became more similar.
Wouldn't a fragmented, decentralized system also help make their supply chains more resilient? If they had a single large drone factory, it would be a sizable target.
During WW2 in the United States, you had all sorts of consumer goods companies reorganized to output a prodigious amount of military supplies. There were multiple companies making the same model of things, with fairly rigorous QA to ensure quality and uniformity.
For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers.
More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.
Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1]
The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs.
It's not a great comparison because Germany could not hit the US mainland. Even if there had been a single giant everything factory it wouldn't have mattered.
The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture that they do for a kill.
Tooth to tail is crappy PC/corporate-approved rename. The concept used to have a bunch of arrow and spear related names and a bunch of informal phallic counterparts all of which are better suited to the fundamental workflow of mechanized offensive operations.
It is kind of interesting seeing the ukraine war tiptoe from actually striking the tail in earnest. We see some attacks on moscow refineries in recent days, yes, but why not full scale targeting of total industrial collapse of the russian state? Similarly, why doesn't Kyiv look like Gaza?
I guess ukraine doesn't want to be slapped equally hard. We see this in the iran war too. Small scale, targeted attacks to some cherry pieces of infrastructure to make headlines and perhaps bring people to the negotiating table, while all the power and capability is there to wipe Iran back to the stone age if so inclined.
I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.
I think you're over-estimating the capability of both sides of the fight (absent nuclear weapons on the part of Russia). Both sides appear to be using drones and missiles as fast as they can manufacture them. One could argue Russia could be more selectively targeting industrial infrastructure - I don't know if their attacks on residential areas are an inability to target well or some kind of hope that demoralization will be effective - but Ukraine is, I believe, doing as much as they can to Russia's oil & defense sectors as they are able.
example: "CAR’s analysis, based on physical examinations of marks on the remnants, shows that the missile that struck Okhmatdyt hospital was produced at most three months before the attack. Or perhaps even eight days before. " [1]
Sanctions and limited parts availability are limiting Russia's ability to manufacture weapons [2]
Russia has been able to target Kyiv and destroy arbitrary apartment buildings the entire war. I've just spent a few mins searching through news articles over the years, there's a story of a destroyed Kyiv apartment in 2022 and one from 3 days ago now in 2026 of course. So why the stayed hand? Clearly Russia then and now is capable of reaching out and destroying Kyiv arbitrarily. I still believe they could have turned it into Gaza within mere days or weeks 4 years ago if they really wanted to. But clearly there are factors beyond their capabilities that prevent them from using their capabilities to the fullest extent. One might wonder what the US response would look like if Kyiv was actually destroyed and some 3 million were now refugees——american boots on the ground perhaps? Yugoslav war style joint coalition?
Moscow could only accomplish this with nukes, and only early in the war. By this point Ukraine has dug underground for most of its crucial war-sustaining industry.
Ukraine, well they don't have nukes but as I understand it, much of the USSR's nuclear arsenal was built in Ukraine. I suspect Ukraine could respond tit for tat.
Why can they not use firebombing and other conventional munitions? If they can deliver a nuke surely they can deliver a conventional warhead. That is enough to level an urban area as we see in Gaza.
It's always about logistics. The Three Kingdoms War was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. It was largely enabled by the invention of the wheelbarrow.
The US military knows full well the importance of logistics. TFA is somehow arguing for distributed distribution networks that are harder to track and attack. Why not advocate for improved defenses along the supply lines? Or is it down to percentages where just one good hit has large effect?
The main point of this paper is that rear area bases are too vulnerable now.
This paper is from West Point, and is the view from the Army side.
It's a big problem for air forces, too.
The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. Iran has been hitting US air bases. In the last day, they've hit US bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. That's just this round. There were previous hits a few months back. It's not publicized much, but it's no secret. It's hard to protect an air base against drones. Air bases are big, everyone knows where they are, airplanes are hard to hide from drones, and are vulnerable to small explosive charges. As Russia keeps finding out as Ukraine hits their air bases. There have been hits well inside Russia. Blast-resistant hangars in Crimea have been attacked. Don't leave a door open.
China is going in for airbase hardening in a big way.[1] This is sometimes called a "concrete sky" program. The USAF is way behind in the Pacific. Too many planes parked out in the open, or in weak hangars.
Active defenses against drones and missiles do work, but they just thin them out. Some get through.
If the attacker has enough manufacturing capacity, the defenses can be overwhelmed. Ukraine is currently building about 7 million drones a year.
Knowing logistics is important =/= able to adapt logistics to modern environment. Last 40-50 years US adversaries couldn't really contest/degrade US logistics at scale. Article is suggesting with new tech, they probably could, and hence may have to redo the entire system for distributed survivability / operate under chaos. Aka 60/70% of the force (the tail) is going to have to change the way they do things. It's hard to make 60/70% of org change, especially the boring bureaucratic/logistics part built around predictability, who are going to want to stay predictable and insist everything is fine with these minor changes, until its not.
They argue for both no? Increased armour for logistics, but also the notion that yes, if one good hit destroys your whole stockpile then you would need a 100% success rate defense mechanism which is impossible when you can be overwhelmed by the number of drones/missiles seen in modern warfare.
Ukraine is deploying AI enabled drones that require no fiber optic wires and no electronic tethering. They patrol autonomously and identify targets; a human authorizes the strike and they take out targets by themselves. This is the holy grail of modern warfare; destroy the enemy’s rear staging and logistics. If they don’t have fuel or ammo, they are a defenseless sitting target.
A human is not piloting the drone. It patrols even if it lost communication due to jamming. It does need communication to ask the human for authorization to strike.
The driving force of peacetime military procurement and organisation is bureaucracy. Hence we see the real developments in military doctrine from Ukraine, Iran etc.
I agree, or at least it feels insightful and right, though I can’t personally validate if it’s correct. But the big question I have is who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen? Is this to sway the public, to push politicians, to convince the Army internally to plan better, stop using contractors & no-bid contracts, or simply ask for more?
Looks like military spending is currently ~20% of all Federal Revenue at somewhere close to $1T, and it exceeds the combined spending of China and Russia by maybe 2x. Are we wanting to go back to 1960’s 50% of Federal Revenue? Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?
>who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen
It's at wespoint.edu. The US military has a long and proud history of really good thinkers writing insightful and important pieces the government then ignores. My outsider impression has always been there was a freedom of ideas there. Don't get used to it though as Pete Hesgeth is fixing it fast as he can.
It was written by a major trying to convince both those in charge of military doctrine (army leadership) and military budget (civilian leadership). Both of which can be obstinate and counterproductive. Army brass sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else. Civilian leadership sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else.
Yes. I agree, although careerism in the military is maybe not that strong an influence; it is, for sure, but not that strong yet. Careerism in the political class is probably exactly as strong as you claim it is. However, I do hope there are sensible people within that group too, and they heed the underlying message.
Foreign military budget numbers are largely fake and can't be attempted to be believed. China's government spending isn't publicly released and can't be independently verified. A lot of what the US considers to be military spending falls into separate categories in China. At least on a purchasing power parity basis their actual spending is probably close to ours now, maybe even higher.
This is a good point that shows the weakness in a lot of these comparing military budgets. Imagine an example where one country spends $1000 per soldier and another spends $100k per soldier. IF they both field 100 soldiers. One budget is 100x the other, but by PPP they are equal.
A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
US Soldiers/Airmen/Sailors/Marines are incredibly expensive each.
> A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
Yeah, between military (active, dependents, retired, et c), elected officials who get government-paid healthcare (in any level of government), government workers (all levels, city, county, state, federal), and school workers (primary, secondary, public colleges and universities), and Medicare (old people), and Medicaid plus CHIP (poor people), and probably some others I’m forgetting, the US engages in as much government per-capita healthcare spending as some peer states do on their national healthcare schemes… but without covering everyone. However, the government does already cover a huge proportion of the population, including some of the most expensive (old people), at least partially. And that’s not counting government spending on contractors that take some of that money and pay for their workers’ healthcare with it.
It’s just split up across thousands of different budgets, instead of one.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.
People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen. Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine? Why not fire off a littany of missiles? Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest?
Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.
> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years
The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.
What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
Per the spec of the last 25 years, they will let it run until the party in control of the White House changes. The new party will be responsible for the exit & cleanup phase.
Once you've lost something (I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship) then even if you cant win, you also cant leave else its an admission of defeat - so it drags on and on and on.
Initially it's unclear what the goal was. But now the goal must be opening the strait of Hormuz ASAP. There's going to be serious economic fallout if that doesn't happen[0]. It remains to be seen how realistic that goal actually is. Iran has big advantages in their favor.
This is not a very charitable explanation, it takes politicians at their word during a war. (One should not do that, and you can refer to Putin’s language at 2022 as a parallel example to Trump’s)
The initial US goals clearly were:
1. Regime change
2. Denial is of nuclear weapons
It’s also clear these goals were not achieved. So the US changed tactics and goals. (Same as Russia no longer plans on capturing Kiev it seems)
Most likely the US is stalling for time due to oil markets and has the same intentions as before, limited only by current capability.
According to The Economist, the Iranian theocracy is no longer in power, the IRGC is. Still, not the regime change Trump was hoping for, that's for sure.
> Khamenei’s killing has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men. The irgc appears to wield power with few constraints. Clerics who challenged its influence—including former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani—were conspicuously absent from the [funeral] processions.
If that's the goal then the US and Israel are doing their best to stop it from happening. Iran is responding to provocations. Stop provoking them, no more blown up ships.
Iran has shown a willingness to do these things through proxies regardless of anyone else before.
Furthermore, if they want to deal with the US or Israel, then they should target American or Israeli assets. Not third party ships manned by citizens of neutral nations who just want to get to port and remit cash to their families back home.
As with Ukraine, it's a David and Goliath kind of conflict and in both conflicts, the temptation for Goliath to escalate by leveraging scale is predictable, tempting and frought.
Iran is not David in this case. They’ve shown that their drone warfare is just a little bit under what the US military can provide. Remember that they destroyed a quarter of a trillion dollars radar installation. And the US has spent billions on munitions. The US can’t actually keep going in this war.
I'm not sure anything is a distraction from the Epstein files. I don't think the administration cares about the Epstein files. What would be the fallout if they were all released? We already know that a lot of wealthy people were raping children. It's not like the US is going to prosecute.
1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent.
2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their infrastructure, possibly on the grounds of shared religion. Maybe they'll get tired of it.
3) Cause regime change in Iran. Not happening now. Might not happen in the foreseeable future.
It’s an odd declaration and maybe based on Rus/Ukraine. But Ukraine is doing better now than in the first week of the “Special Military Operation” due to having a lot of rich allies who have (in fits and starts) given them a lot of money and gear, and due to a Russia which has stretched its military and economy to the breaking point.
By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving.
Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
Have you taken a look at Iran's targeting capabilities and the assets they were able to destroy? More importantly, have you considered who facilitated those targeting capabilities?
> Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former.
“In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory”
According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years.
If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
I believe the assessment is based on the desire of the US to offer concessions (such as sanctions withdrawal) in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Which will be painful in the medium term, but less so in the long run as oil is diverted around it.
> Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former.
I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
I wonder when the use of 'culminate', v. "reach a climax or point of highest development" for "cease to be effective" became the standard in military-related writing when trying to sound smart. The original usage in the specific context of an army's advance or offensive coming to an end made some sense but it's now used as basically a wordy synonym for "stops" in any context.
Does the US have any initiatives to fix this? Like I keep hearing about reshoring manufacturing but is there actually a concerted effort? It seems like we get a major plant announcement every now and then for some behemoth but is there anything targeted for the SMB or startup space?
> If history provides the theory, the ongoing war in Ukraine offers a brutal contemporary lesson: Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics, not when they run out of weapons.
Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.
Napoleon planned his Russian campaign extensively: he had supply hubs set up all over the Duchy of Warsaw, with feeder routers from Prussia keeping them full.
What he didn't anticipate was how bad the roads in Russia would be and how long the Russian army would retreat along them. You can't resupply an army that is marching on a narrow dirt road through a forest because it's blocking its own supply lines.
These systems are antifragile. Just like what was exposed by the supply chain shock during covid. You optimize like crazy to squeeze every bit of efficiency (I know it's the military, so this is relative) out of a system when times are good / easy. Then the game changes a little and the entire thing comes apart. The US military has been operating in an uncontested space for far too long and there is major weakness in all the unprotected assets away from the front. Think about all the aircraft that are unprotected and near civilians. A project spiderweb in the US would be relatively easy and devastating. The US military needs to get their butt in gear and take action to close those vulnerabilities.
>the difficulty of transporting extremely heavy 155-millimeter artillery shells and guided multiple-launch rocket system pods across contested oceans and degraded theater road networks
I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked
> I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked
It can be, but it would be very, very difficult for anything short of lobbing ICBMs around. You'd have to have a fleet of ships that would be detected as soon as they set sail, and then protect that fleet for the entire voyage, which would also be extremely difficult for any adversary.
Getting boots on US soil would be even tougher.
Drones are an option, but cross-ocean ones are not an easy problem to solve.
I was puzzled by this: "...the Army must reinvest in up-armoring its logistical fleet. While adding armor reduces payload capacity and increases fuel consumption, violating the peacetime gospel of efficiency, it is a mandatory trade-off for survival." Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? I don't hear much about them, and I thought that was because drones can find the weaknesses in armor. Instead the emphasis now seems to be on rapidly moving logistical vehicles (and even, for the Russians, on hand-carried "stuff", which seems unlikely to be sustainable). Can someone who knows more than I do comment on this?
And despite Ukrainian strikes earlier, the Russian bridge over the Kerch strait remains standing and in use for some (not all) logistical supply from Russia to Crimea, and this is due in no small amount due to the amount of 'armoring' that is inherent to the design of a bridge that must cross a strait of that size.
It's a question of cost more than anything, the more expensive a transport means becomes to build, the more it makes sense to start including armor to force an attack on that transport to itself have to invest a lot more for success.
But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?
The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline makers vs actual large scale destruction.
The most common truck used by the US army has no armor. The author is saying they need to be up-armmored despite the additional weight and fuel consumption; that is the "A2".
What’s missing - the cost of armoring and weaponizing logistics. Maybe easier to invent a new “startup” logistics than replace the old - especially when he talks about a new autonomous delivery in kill zones.
I would not underestimate the power of a fully mobilized USA. If we really need to, we can do a lot of things that would die to bureaucracy in peacetime - see WWII.
I read there was actually significant war exhaustion among the public towards the end, contrary to the patriotism lens this time in history is frequently shown with. There was also a lot of effort to censor what was actually happening in the war from the public, both in terms of press coverage and in screening soldier letters to home. I'm not sure how long the american war machine can actually last. All the post WWII wars are characterized by significant public war exhaustion. And these days you are going to have the other side posting on social media POV videos of american soldiers getting decimated by drones.
Change is not going to happen until it's forced. The US military was born as a force required to rebuff existential threats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the gravitational center of the US military has been the profit margins of defense contractors. What creates the greatest profit? Centralization. Why have a dozen logistics centers when you can have one big one? A trillion dollar fighter program more efficiently absorbs tax dollars than half a dozen specialized vehicle programs from mid-sized companies. Why get congress to pay you to make cheap drones when you can get them to pay you to build $4M Patriot missiles? The MBAs have been riding the US military into the dirt for forty years and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon.
Isn’t the American military logistics the most decentralized supply chain in the world? Famously (perhaps apocryphal) _every congressional district_ has jobs in the military logistics supply chain.
It would be decentralized if the same things were being built in different places. The way US government manufacturing is set up is more like taking all your organs out, sticking each of them in a separate room, and piping the blood back and forth. Every item has a mile-long supply chain and attacking any part of it shuts the whole thing down.
I agree with your point but it's incredibly naive to identify "the MBAs" as scapegoat for this problem.
We're living in times where an evangelical POTUS dislikes the pope, oligarchs talk about the "antichrist", wars are started with reference to "armageddon" [1] to distract from old money power brokers such as Epstein who has esotheric Kaballah symbols on his office walls [2 @14min42sec].
The authoritarians are concluding the democratic experiment because they can't hide their heritage any longer. All hail the King.
Many complain on negativism in HN comments, but how in the world can a sane person express anything positive when there's a hell-bent will in conjunction with the "next war"?
Are you under the impression that humanity could reach a state where there is never another major war?
I don't know how one would reach that conclusion, least of all a Major at the nation's leading military educational institute. Nothing "hell-bent" about it.
People were starting to think that way at the "end of history" period between the Cold War and 9/11. At that time the major powers were not involved in wars, and it was believed that regional ones could be "solved" like Yugoslavia.
9/11 was a huge success for Bin Laden's goal of restarting a forever war, though.
I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".
Not every country or tribe has been engaged in near continuous violence for over two centuries. That isn't simply "fighting many wars" it's being "existentially bound to warfare." The US is peculiar. It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder. It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war. It's the only nation to wage nuclear war, and did so primarily against civilians. It's (for the time being) the world's only superpower, with a military orders of magnitude larger than any other. It put the right to shoot people into its Constitution because its founders wanted a government that normalized regular revolutionary violence as a civic principle.
The US is weirdly attached to violence and war in ways you only tend to find in modern dictatorships or the empires of old.
I appreciate this comment, and agree with it in some respects, but some of these specifics are demonstrably false.
> It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder
Hard to see how that description doesn't apply to most of the New World. Mexico and Peru were founded on bones of conquered and plundered empires. First Nations in Canada suffered much the same as their counterparts in the US.
> It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say this is literally false, but the implication that every other nation gave up slavery willingly and without violence certainly is (see Haiti, for a particularly bloody example)
My point is that war is the worst thing that humans can engage in, and that the prevailing sentiment is that constant war is an immutable status-quo, and hence it's okay, there's nothing we can do except downvoting those fucking negativists.
I think the folks disagreeing with you maybe haven't spent much time in war. Almost certainly some in harsh skirmishes, but I reckon a few Nam, Korea and WWII vets would at least entertain your position on the subject. Pretty much every meta variation of terror has surfaced or has the potential to surface in war. Parts of Ukraine, I think, easily represent hell on Earth, for both sides.
Edit: I will go a bit further..
I consider Military the greatest power on Earth. It's sacred, necessary. But those who abuse its power commit, in my view, the greatest of sins. I don't mean the soldiers who fight, but those making the decisions of who they fight. The soldiers do their job, often willingly. And they are the ones who face the consequences. To betray them by corruption is the ultimate betrayal. War is a power that, I think, should be reserved for situations with no other option. Mercenaries not considered.
Things that are worse than war, a wildly incomplete list, in no particular order:
Pogroms; slavery; totalitarian dictatorship; theocracy; intentional mass starvation; mass organ harvesting; mass forced relocation; anarchy; failing to respond to unprovoked violence; restricting freedom instead of defeating the adversary.
What do you think happens in war? Clean fighting from side to side?
You really think the massive amounts of death and destruction aren’t top ten? What do you think happens to the local population when an invading force arrives? You should go and read about the rape of Nanking. And just read about what happened in wars before the modern era.
Your concern is reasonable but misdirected. This article is a publication of the "Modern War Institute", a research organization at West Point, the US Army military academy; it is literally their job to anticipate and plan for the next war, whatever it may happen to be. Deciding whether those plans ought to be used is a completely different responsibility.
A limited view of the threat. All very well worrying about keeping your armored brigade combat team fueled up, but that won't be much use when the same weapons that threaten the logistics have destroyed all the Abrams and Bradleys that use the fuel.
The Army is still under the delusion that its possible to win a peer conflict, not having learnt the lesson of the cold war there will be no winners in this hypothetical fight.
The entire body of assumptions that the post-Cold War US military was built on is flawed. China didn't democratize, Russia's oligarchs didn't stop using NATO as their boogeyman, and the world isn't willing to turn dictatorships and ultraconservative theocracies into pariah states.
All of that was assumed to be true. The US would do small police actions here and there with highly-specialized forces. The rules-based system would more-or-less do the rest.
In the meantime we gutted not only the logistics but the manufacturing base needed to feed that system so that we could "cut costs"... which didn't really happen anyways.
This piece seems logical and correct. It also seems entirely AI-generated, but I suppose we've moved into a world where that's just the way content is now.
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. You gain nothing from pointing out every post that seems LLM generated. Read it or don't but we don't make the world better by accusing each other of using LLMs. The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration.
There is no "maybe", it is at least largely AI-generated though I'm sure there's a human involved in building the perspective. Run it through any checker you can find, the outcome is without doubt.
I don't think I've made a similar comment elsewhere on Hacker News, reddit, etc., (nor do I plan to make a habit of it) but this one stuck out to me. I know this because I did read it just as I've read previous posts such as these on West Point through the years. This just isn't how things used to be written. It's a little more ambiguous out in the wild on any given site/blog/etc.
> The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration
Mistrust of what? The human voice behind this thought? Yes, I think that mistrust is valid and earned. Nevertheless, I admit the topic seems pertinent and the argument has merit.
You can't reliably prove that something is written by an LLM. There are certainly tells but it could be a personal writing style as well. When reading everything with the suspicion that it might be written by an LLM you are at best finding LLM written content and at worst accuse people of using an LLM when they haven't. Nothing is gained by the accusation.
For me a better way is to find out if I want to read the text or not. Does is there something interesting being said? Is it presented in a way that is at least pleasant enough to read? Is it concise enough? If not I don't read it. Or I skim it.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't like the overuse LLM generated texts. I write my words on my own. Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors.
I'll admit it cannot be proven to the standard of criminal conviction, but I don't think it's beyond a person's or technology's ability to identify enough "tells" to make a solid conclusion. I can share the things that stick out to me if desired, not that it ultimately constitutes any "proof".
> Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors
Is there nothing? Nothing at all to be gained by resisting the loss of human-created written thought? It may be a futile effort, the tide may be too great, but I guess I'm not just quite so ready to accept the robotic creation of all written content without even a periodic passing comment. It's good for the soul, but I admit I am probably commenting in a community less likely to appreciate or share such a sentiment.
I don't think you gain anything. The article is written, it will not be rewritten or unwritten because you said it's written by an LLM. I don't see the author not using LLMs in the future if they did use them.
I don't see how you changed anything by pointing out that you assume that this is written by an LLM. What was gained? I don't really see anything. Do you think anyone is dissuaded from reading the article or from using an LLM the next they write something because you could maybe probably tell that it's probably written by an LLM?
I think we all lose more than we gain if we do this. We look at each other with mistrust over whether they used an LLM and we point fingers as soon as we see a sign of "wrongdoing". I see artists and writers frustrated about being accused of using ML tools. And the people who just use LLMs and image generation tools mostly just don't care.
The whole "AI" industry makes everything diffuse. We have to go by vibes if something is made by a human or not and the signs are ever more subtle. We have to be so incredibly careful not to accuse those who are on our side. People who create real human work.
For me the easiest solution for now is to stop accusing. Unless you know for certain that there was not a real human behind it don't point fingers.
> What was gained? I don't really see anything... I don't see how you changed anything...
From an outcome-orientation, no, nothing has changed. But then why write a letter to my representatives or leave public comments on legislation? That seems to do nothing. Why volunteer to remove amur honeysuckle from an American forest? It will just come back in a few years.
You are being outcome-oriented, I'm being value-oriented. I think the effort is worth it for the act alone. I believe I retained some dignity by still caring about the distinction between human-created content and machine created content, and for caring enough to still be able to tell the difference. To you it's worth nothing, fine, to me it's worth something. It's not like I'm blanketing comment sections across this or any other site.
> Unless you know for certain that there was not a real human behind it don't point fingers
I am telling you, definitively, this article is "penned" primarily if not exclusively by an LLM. You want to hang on to possibility that isn't true? That is your decisions to make!
I find it interesting that your reaction to my observation seems to make the observation more of a pejorative than my own comments have. You act like I'm accusing someone of a deplorable or shameful act. I don't feel that strongly, but I am nevertheless sad to see the loss of humanity in our writing.
A very insightful, and correct, piece.
I'll quote in full the following, which I think gets to the heart of the matter. If you have no push, you can't apply pressure to the point.
> The notion that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics is frequently discussed in military academies and war colleges, yet it is rarely reflected in the Army’s budget requests or modernization priorities. The outdated concept of the tooth-to-tail ratio, which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined. In modern warfare, the tail is the primary target. If the tail is severed, the teeth are rendered useless.
One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle.
It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.
You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card.
Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex.
That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.
Ukraine and Taiwan quietly cooperate in weapons development and production, especially drones.[1] They both have big, aggressive neighbors. Ukraine knows how to fight them, and Taiwan can make electronics in quantity. Ukraine is starting to get cooperation from Japan, too, but that's in an earlier stage.[2] With Taiwan, it's serious.
The paper doesn't mention Ukraine at all, yet it's all about the kind of war that Ukraine is fighting.
[1] https://dset.tw/en/research/000491-2/
[2] https://www.technology.org/2026/03/17/japan-might-sell-weapo...
Here is a 2024 article pointing out China doing exactly this and Ukraine making many of the blocked items at home. You might be 2 years to late with this comment. https://kyivindependent.com/as-china-weaponizes-the-drone-su...
China controls much of the integration and many of the low level components for super low cost electronics and motors. They aren't the ones controlling all the fabs for the circuits and integration can be done anywhere if you want to pay extra.
Thanks for linking this is interesting. It sounds like they are still unable to produce many of the base components though?
> most manufacturers of everything within Ukraine remain dependent on imported machining tools — traditionally Chinese, but increasingly Indian and, for those who can afford it, European.
But for the cheapest components, simple base-line products like transistors, circuit boards, wiring, or solar cells, nobody can yet step up to the scale of China’s mass production.
I am so curious about this. There are a lot of 3D printed drone startups now. But nobody really seems to be thinking about the electronics sourcing. Great you can print a drone shell wherever but what happens if China turns off exports?
this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply.
However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.
Reminds me of the Cambrian revolution: suddenly there were all kinds of weird animals. Many of these kinds rapidly disappeared, while a few more successful ones kept on. Or at least that's my reading.
Look at 1950s aircraft. That was the decade of really weird aircraft, as people figured out how jets were supposed to work. Supersonics. VTOL aircraft. The X-planes. Rocket-assisted takeoff. After that, more was known about what worked, and designs became more similar.
For more reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian_explosion
Wouldn't a fragmented, decentralized system also help make their supply chains more resilient? If they had a single large drone factory, it would be a sizable target.
During WW2 in the United States, you had all sorts of consumer goods companies reorganized to output a prodigious amount of military supplies. There were multiple companies making the same model of things, with fairly rigorous QA to ensure quality and uniformity.
For example, the BC-348 receiver, widely used in aircraft, was produced initially by RCA, and eventually "farmed out" to 3 other manufacturers.
More than 4 million M1903 Springfield Rifle were produced by the Smith-Corona typewriter company.
Here's a really good example, look at how the production of proximity fuzes, was distributed.[1]
The key thing is to have second sources for everything. Something the US military seems to have forgotten, or decided to ignore in their pursuit of gold-plated weapons systems that give the most kick-backs.
[1] https://usautoindustryworldwartwo.com/vtproximityfuze.htm
It's not a great comparison because Germany could not hit the US mainland. Even if there had been a single giant everything factory it wouldn't have mattered.
One design doesn't mean one factory. And it's not about one design anyway, just the thought of culling the less performing ones.
The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture that they do for a kill.
Procurement innovation wins the war.
I hadn't heard this before. Do you have a good article on it? I'd be curious to learn more
They might be referring to the e-Points system, where hitting targets awards points and you can trade the points in for drones, etc
They literally gamified it? Amazing.
From what I remember:
Equipment was worth more than a capture.
Capture was worth more than a kill (get Intel, trade for Ukranian captives).
Kill was xyz points.
The more points, the more weapons, equipment, and support you got.
This was several years ago, I'm not sure its still in play.
It is. Article from last month.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ukraine-e-points-system-stee...
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/over-181-000-drones-ug-vs-ew-syst...
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/updated-e-points-system-military-...
https://mod.gov.ua/en/news/the-military-can-exchange-e-point...
The first thought when moving people must be "where/how will they shit?" Only once this is solved can you ask "what will they eat?".
They should probably rename it from "tail" to "neck" and watch the attitudes shift immediately.
That should call it coccyx. That sounds like something Trump would support.
Tooth to tail is crappy PC/corporate-approved rename. The concept used to have a bunch of arrow and spear related names and a bunch of informal phallic counterparts all of which are better suited to the fundamental workflow of mechanized offensive operations.
For curiosity’s sake, what were these things referred to historically and informally?
Or maybe "dentures"?
That will certainly resonate with the generals (≧▽≦)
It is kind of interesting seeing the ukraine war tiptoe from actually striking the tail in earnest. We see some attacks on moscow refineries in recent days, yes, but why not full scale targeting of total industrial collapse of the russian state? Similarly, why doesn't Kyiv look like Gaza?
I guess ukraine doesn't want to be slapped equally hard. We see this in the iran war too. Small scale, targeted attacks to some cherry pieces of infrastructure to make headlines and perhaps bring people to the negotiating table, while all the power and capability is there to wipe Iran back to the stone age if so inclined.
I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.
I think you're over-estimating the capability of both sides of the fight (absent nuclear weapons on the part of Russia). Both sides appear to be using drones and missiles as fast as they can manufacture them. One could argue Russia could be more selectively targeting industrial infrastructure - I don't know if their attacks on residential areas are an inability to target well or some kind of hope that demoralization will be effective - but Ukraine is, I believe, doing as much as they can to Russia's oil & defense sectors as they are able.
example: "CAR’s analysis, based on physical examinations of marks on the remnants, shows that the missile that struck Okhmatdyt hospital was produced at most three months before the attack. Or perhaps even eight days before. " [1]
Sanctions and limited parts availability are limiting Russia's ability to manufacture weapons [2]
[1] https://global.espreso.tv/russia-ukraine-war-car-researchers...
[2] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/assets/kcl-fasi-paper31-win...
Russia has been able to target Kyiv and destroy arbitrary apartment buildings the entire war. I've just spent a few mins searching through news articles over the years, there's a story of a destroyed Kyiv apartment in 2022 and one from 3 days ago now in 2026 of course. So why the stayed hand? Clearly Russia then and now is capable of reaching out and destroying Kyiv arbitrarily. I still believe they could have turned it into Gaza within mere days or weeks 4 years ago if they really wanted to. But clearly there are factors beyond their capabilities that prevent them from using their capabilities to the fullest extent. One might wonder what the US response would look like if Kyiv was actually destroyed and some 3 million were now refugees——american boots on the ground perhaps? Yugoslav war style joint coalition?
Moscow could only accomplish this with nukes, and only early in the war. By this point Ukraine has dug underground for most of its crucial war-sustaining industry.
Ukraine, well they don't have nukes but as I understand it, much of the USSR's nuclear arsenal was built in Ukraine. I suspect Ukraine could respond tit for tat.
Why can they not use firebombing and other conventional munitions? If they can deliver a nuke surely they can deliver a conventional warhead. That is enough to level an urban area as we see in Gaza.
It's always about logistics. The Three Kingdoms War was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. It was largely enabled by the invention of the wheelbarrow.
Do you have any more information about this?
Probably talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooden_ox. This page suggests this may be a bit of a myth
Historically, that was phrased as “an army marches on its stomach”
I think that’s an apt comparison because it was hard to keep an army fed (https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...)
Almost like a Prince Rupert's drop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert's_drop)
I guess you're just supposed to read Clausewitz not actually understand it.
The US military knows full well the importance of logistics. TFA is somehow arguing for distributed distribution networks that are harder to track and attack. Why not advocate for improved defenses along the supply lines? Or is it down to percentages where just one good hit has large effect?
The main point of this paper is that rear area bases are too vulnerable now. This paper is from West Point, and is the view from the Army side. It's a big problem for air forces, too.
The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. Iran has been hitting US air bases. In the last day, they've hit US bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. That's just this round. There were previous hits a few months back. It's not publicized much, but it's no secret. It's hard to protect an air base against drones. Air bases are big, everyone knows where they are, airplanes are hard to hide from drones, and are vulnerable to small explosive charges. As Russia keeps finding out as Ukraine hits their air bases. There have been hits well inside Russia. Blast-resistant hangars in Crimea have been attacked. Don't leave a door open.
China is going in for airbase hardening in a big way.[1] This is sometimes called a "concrete sky" program. The USAF is way behind in the Pacific. Too many planes parked out in the open, or in weak hangars.
Active defenses against drones and missiles do work, but they just thin them out. Some get through. If the attacker has enough manufacturing capacity, the defenses can be overwhelmed. Ukraine is currently building about 7 million drones a year.
[1] https://www.hudson.org/arms-control-nonproliferation/concret...
Knowing logistics is important =/= able to adapt logistics to modern environment. Last 40-50 years US adversaries couldn't really contest/degrade US logistics at scale. Article is suggesting with new tech, they probably could, and hence may have to redo the entire system for distributed survivability / operate under chaos. Aka 60/70% of the force (the tail) is going to have to change the way they do things. It's hard to make 60/70% of org change, especially the boring bureaucratic/logistics part built around predictability, who are going to want to stay predictable and insist everything is fine with these minor changes, until its not.
They argue for both no? Increased armour for logistics, but also the notion that yes, if one good hit destroys your whole stockpile then you would need a 100% success rate defense mechanism which is impossible when you can be overwhelmed by the number of drones/missiles seen in modern warfare.
Ukraine is deploying AI enabled drones that require no fiber optic wires and no electronic tethering. They patrol autonomously and identify targets; a human authorizes the strike and they take out targets by themselves. This is the holy grail of modern warfare; destroy the enemy’s rear staging and logistics. If they don’t have fuel or ammo, they are a defenseless sitting target.
huh? how does one keep a human in the loop for decision making it there is not an 'electronic tether'?
A human is not piloting the drone. It patrols even if it lost communication due to jamming. It does need communication to ask the human for authorization to strike.
The driving force of peacetime military procurement and organisation is bureaucracy. Hence we see the real developments in military doctrine from Ukraine, Iran etc.
> A very insightful, and correct, piece.
I agree, or at least it feels insightful and right, though I can’t personally validate if it’s correct. But the big question I have is who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen? Is this to sway the public, to push politicians, to convince the Army internally to plan better, stop using contractors & no-bid contracts, or simply ask for more?
Looks like military spending is currently ~20% of all Federal Revenue at somewhere close to $1T, and it exceeds the combined spending of China and Russia by maybe 2x. Are we wanting to go back to 1960’s 50% of Federal Revenue? Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...
>who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen
It's at wespoint.edu. The US military has a long and proud history of really good thinkers writing insightful and important pieces the government then ignores. My outsider impression has always been there was a freedom of ideas there. Don't get used to it though as Pete Hesgeth is fixing it fast as he can.
It was written by a major trying to convince both those in charge of military doctrine (army leadership) and military budget (civilian leadership). Both of which can be obstinate and counterproductive. Army brass sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else. Civilian leadership sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else.
Yes. I agree, although careerism in the military is maybe not that strong an influence; it is, for sure, but not that strong yet. Careerism in the political class is probably exactly as strong as you claim it is. However, I do hope there are sensible people within that group too, and they heed the underlying message.
The military is still fairly results focused compared to the political class so that at least sort of pushes back on the most flagrant careerism.
Foreign military budget numbers are largely fake and can't be attempted to be believed. China's government spending isn't publicly released and can't be independently verified. A lot of what the US considers to be military spending falls into separate categories in China. At least on a purchasing power parity basis their actual spending is probably close to ours now, maybe even higher.
This is a good point that shows the weakness in a lot of these comparing military budgets. Imagine an example where one country spends $1000 per soldier and another spends $100k per soldier. IF they both field 100 soldiers. One budget is 100x the other, but by PPP they are equal.
A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
US Soldiers/Airmen/Sailors/Marines are incredibly expensive each.
> A practical example is health care. US Gov gives free healthcare to service members. This is in the military budget. A different gov which already gives free health care to everyone, would have this in a different budget even if its effectively still supporting the military for each service member.
Yeah, between military (active, dependents, retired, et c), elected officials who get government-paid healthcare (in any level of government), government workers (all levels, city, county, state, federal), and school workers (primary, secondary, public colleges and universities), and Medicare (old people), and Medicaid plus CHIP (poor people), and probably some others I’m forgetting, the US engages in as much government per-capita healthcare spending as some peer states do on their national healthcare schemes… but without covering everyone. However, the government does already cover a huge proportion of the population, including some of the most expensive (old people), at least partially. And that’s not counting government spending on contractors that take some of that money and pay for their workers’ healthcare with it.
It’s just split up across thousands of different budgets, instead of one.
> Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?
Deeply entrenched corruption, obviously.
When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.
People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen. Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine? Why not fire off a littany of missiles? Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest?
Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.
> Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years
The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.
What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?
To make certain people money by shorting the oil market. There is a reason why these "peace" deals are always announced on Fridays.
That’s exactly why it could continue indefinitely. A war with no goal can’t be won. Nor can it be abandoned without bruising powerful egos.
Per the spec of the last 25 years, they will let it run until the party in control of the White House changes. The new party will be responsible for the exit & cleanup phase.
the goal of the war in iran is to produce a regime change that will prevent them from having nukes targeting israel
islamic iran with nukes makes israel untennable and the us puppets in the gulf too
the us will be forced to physically invade now that the first strike failed
the us in its current form will not tolerate an existential threat to israel
The US had the power to start the war. The US doesn't have the power to stop the war.
Once you've lost something (I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship) then even if you cant win, you also cant leave else its an admission of defeat - so it drags on and on and on.
There hasn't been a clear goal for an American war since the first Gulf War.
The goals for intervention in the Serbia/Bosnia conflict were clear and noble, IMO.
Initially it's unclear what the goal was. But now the goal must be opening the strait of Hormuz ASAP. There's going to be serious economic fallout if that doesn't happen[0]. It remains to be seen how realistic that goal actually is. Iran has big advantages in their favor.
[0] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/business/iran-oil-trump-strai...
Can we agree on "the strait was open before the war" so it can't be a goal for the war.
This is not a very charitable explanation, it takes politicians at their word during a war. (One should not do that, and you can refer to Putin’s language at 2022 as a parallel example to Trump’s)
The initial US goals clearly were: 1. Regime change 2. Denial is of nuclear weapons
It’s also clear these goals were not achieved. So the US changed tactics and goals. (Same as Russia no longer plans on capturing Kiev it seems)
Most likely the US is stalling for time due to oil markets and has the same intentions as before, limited only by current capability.
According to The Economist, the Iranian theocracy is no longer in power, the IRGC is. Still, not the regime change Trump was hoping for, that's for sure.
> Khamenei’s killing has accelerated Iran’s transition from a theocracy to an ambitious nationalistic state dominated by military men. The irgc appears to wield power with few constraints. Clerics who challenged its influence—including former Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani—were conspicuously absent from the [funeral] processions.
https://www.economist.com/interactive/middle-east-and-africa...
I think regime change is likely to happen within two years. Just not in Iran.
Write off depreciation on military hardware?
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?
kneecaping china by cutting off a huge source of its oil imports. Russia will not be able to make up the difference.
Well at this point the goal is for Iran to stop randomly blowing up innocent cargo ships. Or firing missiles at airports and cities in retaliation.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-says-iranian-...
The don't blow randomly ships.
The US and Iran agreed (Point 4 and 5) on, for the next 60 days, Iran is "chief of traffic" in the strait.
Iran say now, ships have to take the route close to Iran. But some ships like to take the route close to Oman. Iran is just shooting on these ships.
That sounds like it would be a return to the status quo.
If that's the goal then the US and Israel are doing their best to stop it from happening. Iran is responding to provocations. Stop provoking them, no more blown up ships.
Iran has shown a willingness to do these things through proxies regardless of anyone else before.
Furthermore, if they want to deal with the US or Israel, then they should target American or Israeli assets. Not third party ships manned by citizens of neutral nations who just want to get to port and remit cash to their families back home.
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?
What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.
As with Ukraine, it's a David and Goliath kind of conflict and in both conflicts, the temptation for Goliath to escalate by leveraging scale is predictable, tempting and frought.
Iran is not David in this case. They’ve shown that their drone warfare is just a little bit under what the US military can provide. Remember that they destroyed a quarter of a trillion dollars radar installation. And the US has spent billions on munitions. The US can’t actually keep going in this war.
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?
Distract from the Epstein files. If you think anything else you:
I'm not sure anything is a distraction from the Epstein files. I don't think the administration cares about the Epstein files. What would be the fallout if they were all released? We already know that a lot of wealthy people were raping children. It's not like the US is going to prosecute.
Depends on who's in it.
> What's the goal of the US/Iran war?
It varies. Which is the problem.
I can think of a few:
1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent.
2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their infrastructure, possibly on the grounds of shared religion. Maybe they'll get tired of it.
3) Cause regime change in Iran. Not happening now. Might not happen in the foreseeable future.
The Trump administration forgot all of the lessons of Vietnam.
If it weren't for those bone spurs maybe that war wouldn't be so forgotten
Maybe because they dogged it?
The goal is a very simple one: make Trump look good. It wouldn't be the first war in history to be driven by pure vanity of an absolute ruler.
It's to distract from the Epstein files.
> Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking
How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?
It’s an odd declaration and maybe based on Rus/Ukraine. But Ukraine is doing better now than in the first week of the “Special Military Operation” due to having a lot of rich allies who have (in fits and starts) given them a lot of money and gear, and due to a Russia which has stretched its military and economy to the breaking point.
By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving.
Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)
Have you taken a look at Iran's targeting capabilities and the assets they were able to destroy? More importantly, have you considered who facilitated those targeting capabilities?
https://www.hudson.org/national-security-defense/war-above-w...
> Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former.
Can they? https://www.csis.org/analysis/last-rounds-status-key-munitio... says
“In the 39 days of the air and missile campaign before the ceasefire, U.S. forces heavily used the seven munitions in Table 1. For four of them, the United States may have expended more than half of the prewar inventory”
According to that article, they expended ballpark a third of their inventory of expensive weapons systems such as Patriots or Tomahawk missiles, each with a production lead time of at least 3 years.
If so, they would run out of those expensive weapons in three more months.
It's sarcasm, a bit, because the last published deal revealed the USA was going to pay Iran 300 billion to end the shooting war that Israel and the USA started. https://www.npr.org/2026/06/23/nx-s1-5866577/iran-trump-deal...
I believe the assessment is based on the desire of the US to offer concessions (such as sanctions withdrawal) in order to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Which will be painful in the medium term, but less so in the long run as oil is diverted around it.
> Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former.
I disagree. The huge problem here is that USAF is showing how they are doing things over and over again. For China it is a treasure trove of data and ideal place for testing of their gear to detect and later shoot down US stealth aircraft which USA is constantly threating to use against China.
They'll be getting the Hormuz toll money.
lol, no. no comparison between those wars
It's hard to imagine them in a better place; they seem to have us by the balls already.
History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.
> History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021)
You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.
Is this some kind of subtle gag?
I wonder when the use of 'culminate', v. "reach a climax or point of highest development" for "cease to be effective" became the standard in military-related writing when trying to sound smart. The original usage in the specific context of an army's advance or offensive coming to an end made some sense but it's now used as basically a wordy synonym for "stops" in any context.
Does the US have any initiatives to fix this? Like I keep hearing about reshoring manufacturing but is there actually a concerted effort? It seems like we get a major plant announcement every now and then for some behemoth but is there anything targeted for the SMB or startup space?
We had a bill for that, the build back better bill, but it's been gutted.
Tariffs and import controls. Why do you think that BYD is banned from the US?
> If history provides the theory, the ongoing war in Ukraine offers a brutal contemporary lesson: Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics, not when they run out of weapons.
Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.
That was discussed in the article.
"Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics"
Napoleon
He learnt the hard way (as did all those who followed him into Russia)
Napoleon planned his Russian campaign extensively: he had supply hubs set up all over the Duchy of Warsaw, with feeder routers from Prussia keeping them full.
What he didn't anticipate was how bad the roads in Russia would be and how long the Russian army would retreat along them. You can't resupply an army that is marching on a narrow dirt road through a forest because it's blocking its own supply lines.
These systems are antifragile. Just like what was exposed by the supply chain shock during covid. You optimize like crazy to squeeze every bit of efficiency (I know it's the military, so this is relative) out of a system when times are good / easy. Then the game changes a little and the entire thing comes apart. The US military has been operating in an uncontested space for far too long and there is major weakness in all the unprotected assets away from the front. Think about all the aircraft that are unprotected and near civilians. A project spiderweb in the US would be relatively easy and devastating. The US military needs to get their butt in gear and take action to close those vulnerabilities.
>the difficulty of transporting extremely heavy 155-millimeter artillery shells and guided multiple-launch rocket system pods across contested oceans and degraded theater road networks
I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked
> I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked
It can be, but it would be very, very difficult for anything short of lobbing ICBMs around. You'd have to have a fleet of ships that would be detected as soon as they set sail, and then protect that fleet for the entire voyage, which would also be extremely difficult for any adversary.
Getting boots on US soil would be even tougher.
Drones are an option, but cross-ocean ones are not an easy problem to solve.
For better and for worse our country is armed to the teeth with civilians who would take great offense to a foreign military invasion
I was puzzled by this: "...the Army must reinvest in up-armoring its logistical fleet. While adding armor reduces payload capacity and increases fuel consumption, violating the peacetime gospel of efficiency, it is a mandatory trade-off for survival." Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? I don't hear much about them, and I thought that was because drones can find the weaknesses in armor. Instead the emphasis now seems to be on rapidly moving logistical vehicles (and even, for the Russians, on hand-carried "stuff", which seems unlikely to be sustainable). Can someone who knows more than I do comment on this?
> Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine?
A more appropriate question might be, where are the armored vehicles now in Russia?
And as it turns out, they have indeed started adding armor to transport craft, including trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_armoured_train_Yenisei
And despite Ukrainian strikes earlier, the Russian bridge over the Kerch strait remains standing and in use for some (not all) logistical supply from Russia to Crimea, and this is due in no small amount due to the amount of 'armoring' that is inherent to the design of a bridge that must cross a strait of that size.
It's a question of cost more than anything, the more expensive a transport means becomes to build, the more it makes sense to start including armor to force an attack on that transport to itself have to invest a lot more for success.
But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?
The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline makers vs actual large scale destruction.
The most common truck used by the US army has no armor. The author is saying they need to be up-armmored despite the additional weight and fuel consumption; that is the "A2".
https://oshkoshdefense.com/vehicles/medium-tactical-vehicles...
What’s missing - the cost of armoring and weaponizing logistics. Maybe easier to invent a new “startup” logistics than replace the old - especially when he talks about a new autonomous delivery in kill zones.
I would not underestimate the power of a fully mobilized USA. If we really need to, we can do a lot of things that would die to bureaucracy in peacetime - see WWII.
I read there was actually significant war exhaustion among the public towards the end, contrary to the patriotism lens this time in history is frequently shown with. There was also a lot of effort to censor what was actually happening in the war from the public, both in terms of press coverage and in screening soldier letters to home. I'm not sure how long the american war machine can actually last. All the post WWII wars are characterized by significant public war exhaustion. And these days you are going to have the other side posting on social media POV videos of american soldiers getting decimated by drones.
Change is not going to happen until it's forced. The US military was born as a force required to rebuff existential threats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the gravitational center of the US military has been the profit margins of defense contractors. What creates the greatest profit? Centralization. Why have a dozen logistics centers when you can have one big one? A trillion dollar fighter program more efficiently absorbs tax dollars than half a dozen specialized vehicle programs from mid-sized companies. Why get congress to pay you to make cheap drones when you can get them to pay you to build $4M Patriot missiles? The MBAs have been riding the US military into the dirt for forty years and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon.
Isn’t the American military logistics the most decentralized supply chain in the world? Famously (perhaps apocryphal) _every congressional district_ has jobs in the military logistics supply chain.
It would be decentralized if the same things were being built in different places. The way US government manufacturing is set up is more like taking all your organs out, sticking each of them in a separate room, and piping the blood back and forth. Every item has a mile-long supply chain and attacking any part of it shuts the whole thing down.
Decentralization doesn't matter at all if you still have single points of failure everywhere.
sorry, but the European defence is more decentralised.
Why are defense contractors not better investments, then?
https://youtu.be/C2gIId1dpDs
They are largely congressional jobs programs, not traditional business investments
I agree with your point but it's incredibly naive to identify "the MBAs" as scapegoat for this problem.
We're living in times where an evangelical POTUS dislikes the pope, oligarchs talk about the "antichrist", wars are started with reference to "armageddon" [1] to distract from old money power brokers such as Epstein who has esotheric Kaballah symbols on his office walls [2 @14min42sec].
The authoritarians are concluding the democratic experiment because they can't hide their heritage any longer. All hail the King.
[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/troops-being-told-to-prepare-...
[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/never-seen-video-shows-eps...
Many complain on negativism in HN comments, but how in the world can a sane person express anything positive when there's a hell-bent will in conjunction with the "next war"?
Are you under the impression that humanity could reach a state where there is never another major war?
I don't know how one would reach that conclusion, least of all a Major at the nation's leading military educational institute. Nothing "hell-bent" about it.
People were starting to think that way at the "end of history" period between the Cold War and 9/11. At that time the major powers were not involved in wars, and it was believed that regional ones could be "solved" like Yugoslavia.
9/11 was a huge success for Bin Laden's goal of restarting a forever war, though.
Yes, I am. That requires a total reassesment of who the real enemy is, though (hint: psychopaths at power).
I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".
There’s nothing peculiar about the US, every country or even tribe has fought many wars.
Not every country or tribe has been engaged in near continuous violence for over two centuries. That isn't simply "fighting many wars" it's being "existentially bound to warfare." The US is peculiar. It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder. It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war. It's the only nation to wage nuclear war, and did so primarily against civilians. It's (for the time being) the world's only superpower, with a military orders of magnitude larger than any other. It put the right to shoot people into its Constitution because its founders wanted a government that normalized regular revolutionary violence as a civic principle.
The US is weirdly attached to violence and war in ways you only tend to find in modern dictatorships or the empires of old.
I appreciate this comment, and agree with it in some respects, but some of these specifics are demonstrably false.
> It's the nation born of a continent-wide campaign of genocide and plunder
Hard to see how that description doesn't apply to most of the New World. Mexico and Peru were founded on bones of conquered and plundered empires. First Nations in Canada suffered much the same as their counterparts in the US.
> It's the only Western nation that couldn't give up slavery without a civil war.
I'm not knowledgeable enough to say this is literally false, but the implication that every other nation gave up slavery willingly and without violence certainly is (see Haiti, for a particularly bloody example)
My point is that war is the worst thing that humans can engage in, and that the prevailing sentiment is that constant war is an immutable status-quo, and hence it's okay, there's nothing we can do except downvoting those fucking negativists.
I think the folks disagreeing with you maybe haven't spent much time in war. Almost certainly some in harsh skirmishes, but I reckon a few Nam, Korea and WWII vets would at least entertain your position on the subject. Pretty much every meta variation of terror has surfaced or has the potential to surface in war. Parts of Ukraine, I think, easily represent hell on Earth, for both sides.
Edit: I will go a bit further..
I consider Military the greatest power on Earth. It's sacred, necessary. But those who abuse its power commit, in my view, the greatest of sins. I don't mean the soldiers who fight, but those making the decisions of who they fight. The soldiers do their job, often willingly. And they are the ones who face the consequences. To betray them by corruption is the ultimate betrayal. War is a power that, I think, should be reserved for situations with no other option. Mercenaries not considered.
War is not nearly the worst thing. Not even in the top 10.
Oh, really? I'd like to see your top 10.
Things that are worse than war, a wildly incomplete list, in no particular order:
Pogroms; slavery; totalitarian dictatorship; theocracy; intentional mass starvation; mass organ harvesting; mass forced relocation; anarchy; failing to respond to unprovoked violence; restricting freedom instead of defeating the adversary.
What do you think happens in war? Clean fighting from side to side?
You really think the massive amounts of death and destruction aren’t top ten? What do you think happens to the local population when an invading force arrives? You should go and read about the rape of Nanking. And just read about what happened in wars before the modern era.
Are you suggesting that the country being invaded should roll over instead of fight? Or is it ok with you for them to prosecute a war?
Your concern is reasonable but misdirected. This article is a publication of the "Modern War Institute", a research organization at West Point, the US Army military academy; it is literally their job to anticipate and plan for the next war, whatever it may happen to be. Deciding whether those plans ought to be used is a completely different responsibility.
Comparing the negativity of HN to the inevitability IRL warfare is absolutely hilarious, but I take your point
Ukraine didn't want to go to war, but someone else made that choice for them.
A limited view of the threat. All very well worrying about keeping your armored brigade combat team fueled up, but that won't be much use when the same weapons that threaten the logistics have destroyed all the Abrams and Bradleys that use the fuel. The Army is still under the delusion that its possible to win a peer conflict, not having learnt the lesson of the cold war there will be no winners in this hypothetical fight.
“ In a future peer conflict, the US Army will not be granted a six-month, uncontested build-up phase, nor will it operate under friendly skies.”
Depends how the war starts. Russia? USA somehow attacks? Easily 6 months of buildup in Europe.
China? Again USA somehow attacks? Again buildup in Australia, Japan, Korea.
Also US air power is absolutely supreme. I don’t see how they will be fighting in actually contested skies even only 2 months in.
The entire body of assumptions that the post-Cold War US military was built on is flawed. China didn't democratize, Russia's oligarchs didn't stop using NATO as their boogeyman, and the world isn't willing to turn dictatorships and ultraconservative theocracies into pariah states.
All of that was assumed to be true. The US would do small police actions here and there with highly-specialized forces. The rules-based system would more-or-less do the rest.
In the meantime we gutted not only the logistics but the manufacturing base needed to feed that system so that we could "cut costs"... which didn't really happen anyways.
We should be throwing people in prison over this.
We usually wait for people to break laws and be convicted before we do that.
I'm sure we could find one. It's the military-industrial complex. It exists to facilitate corruption.
So many armchair quarterbacks
The “game” has been reinvented recently, there aren’t any non-armchair quarterbacks. Thankfully.
This piece seems logical and correct. It also seems entirely AI-generated, but I suppose we've moved into a world where that's just the way content is now.
Nah that's just the way defense essays have sounded for the past 20 years or so
Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. You gain nothing from pointing out every post that seems LLM generated. Read it or don't but we don't make the world better by accusing each other of using LLMs. The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration.
There is no "maybe", it is at least largely AI-generated though I'm sure there's a human involved in building the perspective. Run it through any checker you can find, the outcome is without doubt.
I don't think I've made a similar comment elsewhere on Hacker News, reddit, etc., (nor do I plan to make a habit of it) but this one stuck out to me. I know this because I did read it just as I've read previous posts such as these on West Point through the years. This just isn't how things used to be written. It's a little more ambiguous out in the wild on any given site/blog/etc.
> The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration
Mistrust of what? The human voice behind this thought? Yes, I think that mistrust is valid and earned. Nevertheless, I admit the topic seems pertinent and the argument has merit.
You can't reliably prove that something is written by an LLM. There are certainly tells but it could be a personal writing style as well. When reading everything with the suspicion that it might be written by an LLM you are at best finding LLM written content and at worst accuse people of using an LLM when they haven't. Nothing is gained by the accusation.
For me a better way is to find out if I want to read the text or not. Does is there something interesting being said? Is it presented in a way that is at least pleasant enough to read? Is it concise enough? If not I don't read it. Or I skim it.
Don't misunderstand me. I don't like the overuse LLM generated texts. I write my words on my own. Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors.
I'll admit it cannot be proven to the standard of criminal conviction, but I don't think it's beyond a person's or technology's ability to identify enough "tells" to make a solid conclusion. I can share the things that stick out to me if desired, not that it ultimately constitutes any "proof".
> Still there is nothing to be gained from distrusting and calling out authors
Is there nothing? Nothing at all to be gained by resisting the loss of human-created written thought? It may be a futile effort, the tide may be too great, but I guess I'm not just quite so ready to accept the robotic creation of all written content without even a periodic passing comment. It's good for the soul, but I admit I am probably commenting in a community less likely to appreciate or share such a sentiment.
I don't think you gain anything. The article is written, it will not be rewritten or unwritten because you said it's written by an LLM. I don't see the author not using LLMs in the future if they did use them.
I don't see how you changed anything by pointing out that you assume that this is written by an LLM. What was gained? I don't really see anything. Do you think anyone is dissuaded from reading the article or from using an LLM the next they write something because you could maybe probably tell that it's probably written by an LLM?
I think we all lose more than we gain if we do this. We look at each other with mistrust over whether they used an LLM and we point fingers as soon as we see a sign of "wrongdoing". I see artists and writers frustrated about being accused of using ML tools. And the people who just use LLMs and image generation tools mostly just don't care.
The whole "AI" industry makes everything diffuse. We have to go by vibes if something is made by a human or not and the signs are ever more subtle. We have to be so incredibly careful not to accuse those who are on our side. People who create real human work.
For me the easiest solution for now is to stop accusing. Unless you know for certain that there was not a real human behind it don't point fingers.
> What was gained? I don't really see anything... I don't see how you changed anything...
From an outcome-orientation, no, nothing has changed. But then why write a letter to my representatives or leave public comments on legislation? That seems to do nothing. Why volunteer to remove amur honeysuckle from an American forest? It will just come back in a few years.
You are being outcome-oriented, I'm being value-oriented. I think the effort is worth it for the act alone. I believe I retained some dignity by still caring about the distinction between human-created content and machine created content, and for caring enough to still be able to tell the difference. To you it's worth nothing, fine, to me it's worth something. It's not like I'm blanketing comment sections across this or any other site.
> Unless you know for certain that there was not a real human behind it don't point fingers
I am telling you, definitively, this article is "penned" primarily if not exclusively by an LLM. You want to hang on to possibility that isn't true? That is your decisions to make!
I find it interesting that your reaction to my observation seems to make the observation more of a pejorative than my own comments have. You act like I'm accusing someone of a deplorable or shameful act. I don't feel that strongly, but I am nevertheless sad to see the loss of humanity in our writing.
What is the false positive rate on the checkers?