[HN Gopher] 300k airplanes in five years
___________________________________________________________________
300k airplanes in five years
Author : juliangamble
Score : 336 points
Date : 2024-05-23 12:58 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.construction-physics.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.construction-physics.com)
| melling wrote:
| Here's a video about how China out produces the United States in
| ship building.
|
| https://youtu.be/tRVVXDyg3RY?si=Yin_cVGx57IHavUr
| encoderer wrote:
| Germany grossly out-produced America -- until America actually
| started trying.
| jononomo wrote:
| What if China actually started trying? They have 3x the
| population that the US has.
| stanleykm wrote:
| I don't think you get it. It's actually impossible for
| other countries to beat the US at anything.
| cpursley wrote:
| Superman Syndrome
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| You must be making a sarcastic comment, right?
|
| Some people do honestly believe that because god is on
| 'our' side, the us and constitution were divinely
| motivated and everything in it was coming from god
| somehow. All the horrible justifications are still being
| made today about that stuff.
| Hayvok wrote:
| Population is a single, low-resolution parameter into a
| theoretical ship-building-capacity equation, which really
| needs a basket of parameters. Raw resource availability,
| fuel capabilities, naval training, coastline details, etc.
|
| Great Britain historically had a fraction of the population
| of France and other European powers, but consistently out-
| produced the rest in ships and projecting naval power.
| HPsquared wrote:
| China produces 12 times as much steel as the US, per
| year.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_steel_
| pro...
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| During a peacetime economy. Don't forget during war time,
| your factories are being bombed. You're pre-war numbers
| don't indicate what your war time numbers will be.
| China's manufacturing tends to be focused around the
| easter coast and it's rivers. The USAs is spread
| throughout the country. The USA is pretty good at setting
| up factories. My understanding is China is more into
| single large factories. The USA is a net exporter of oil
| (that greases the entire machine). China is an oil
| importer (not good when you country is being sieged
| during war).
| csomar wrote:
| You seem to be having a kind of a blind bias. You argue
| that during war time China will be less productive; and
| the opposite will be for the US: more productive. As if
| China can't target/hit back at the US. Both have massive
| geography and given that the US is likely the attacker,
| China only has to play defense.
|
| > The USA is a net exporter of oil (that greases the
| entire machine). China is an oil importer (not good when
| you country is being sieged during war).
|
| This seems to be their largest risk (if you are playing
| defense). They seem to be going crazy on solar though.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Again, China's production is centered in a specific area,
| along the coasts in the east and associated coastal
| waterways. American production is spread throughout the
| country. The USA has a distributed highway system for
| transportation. China has a strong focus on shipping
| lanes. The USA has a long record of projecting military
| power. China does not. The USA has a strong 'get shit
| started' track record. China has a mass produce track
| record. The American dynamic is better situated to
| recover production during war time than China.
|
| Solar is not going to fuel missiles, ships, and attack
| aircraft. It's not going to grease the machines in the
| factories.
| Hayvok wrote:
| I think the unspoken assumption here is that China is
| already producing at near-maximum capacity, while the
| United States is barely trying and has lots of headroom.
|
| Is the assumption correct?
|
| I haven't been able to find a study on America's plan for
| local naval production capacity given such a conflict,
| which is kind of stunning to me. Perhaps there are
| classified studies.
|
| This conflict (assuming it lasts multiple years) would
| play out across the Pacific, possibly offering replays of
| old Pacific battles from WW2. Large numbers of naval
| assets and expeditionary forces squaring off across
| millions of square miles of blue-water ocean. Lots of
| naval tonnage attrition.
|
| America is either guarding it's planned production
| capabilities close to the chest, or they anticipate
| winning such a conflict quickly without the tonnage
| attrition I just referenced.
|
| Or my searching skills are weak.
| nickff wrote:
| China had an even bigger advantage in population in 1930
| (~474:123MM). Population is one factor, but not a
| determinitive one.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| More like 4x, and closing in on 5x. And China has done a
| good job of tying many smaller nations, globally not just
| regionally, to themselves economically. That gives them an
| edge in terms of resource extraction where the US has been
| losing ground. It doesn't help that the US also sends many
| "waste" products to China like steel that could be
| processed and reused domestically.
|
| And then there's just the cluster fuck that is the US
| defense industry. Who could make aircraft for the US in
| mass numbers anymore? Boeing can't even figure out if they
| installed a few bolts, NG can't do basic maintenance
| without wrecking a plane, LM will get you your aircraft for
| 5x the initial estimate and a decade late.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > And China has done a good job of tying many smaller
| nations, globally not just regionally, to themselves
| economically. That gives them an edge in terms of
| resource extraction
|
| The US has the capacity, in the event of conflict, to
| nullify most if not all of the out-of-region advantage
| China has in resource extraction, unless China's build up
| pre-conflict is sufficient to nullify the global force
| projection capacities provided by the US Navy and the US
| Air Force to which China currently has no equivalent or
| counter beyond its region.
|
| (The US usually presents these capacities as being
| oriented to _protecting_ free resource flow in peacetime,
| but they can be directed at the opposite purpose equally
| well.)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Presently, yes. If China doesn't push too hard, though,
| they've got the right partnerships in place to start
| building out a global military presence under the same
| pretenses as the US within its partner nations' borders.
| Give it a decade (maybe less) of serious effort on their
| part and they could rival the US globally, not just
| regionally.
|
| If they decide to start a hot war (say by invading
| Taiwan) today, then it'd be catastrophic for them. Most
| of those partnerships would dry up (by being a good
| excuse to end a bad deal for the partner nations or by
| force from the US and other nations).
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Yeah, but if they do it 10 years from now, it could well
| be different. Thus the very interesting book, "2034: A
| Novel of the Next World War", 2022, by Elliot Ackerman
| (Author), Admiral James Stavridis USN (Author).
|
| The interesting thing was about how India had also
| advanced in those 10 years from now.
| kiba wrote:
| A hot war would massively disrupt trade, among that food.
| The US provide a significant proportion of food to China.
| I am not sure if China could survive on a smaller food
| supply but it would mean austerity if that was the case.
| Worst case scenario, they cannot use their manpower
| advantage because they need that for their farm.
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| Closing in? China's population fell in 2023, whereas the
| US is still growing.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Ok, 4.1somethingx and closing in on 4.1somethingx. Either
| way, substantially more than just 3x the US population.
| rsynnott wrote:
| I mean, if there's a WW3 where winning is predicated on
| "who can make the most planes", then, eh, maybe that might
| be a relevant question. But that doesn't seem particularly
| likely; even if there were to be a WW3, it would probably
| not be a Plane-Building Olympics.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Drones and missiles will be perhaps the most important.
| One day it will be military robots. And guess who can
| makes the mass quantities of drones and missiles.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The USA would fight a standoff siege war with China, not
| a close in war when drones come into play. As to
| missiles, that's why the USA has developed the (chinese
| siege weapon named) Rapid Dragon system. https://en.wikip
| edia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system)
| krisoft wrote:
| > not a close in war when drones come into play
|
| What do drones mean to you? It sounds like you think it
| means "quadrocopter" when it is also used to describe
| RQ-4 Global Hawks and similar aircraft.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I mean the discussion here is specifically referring to
| the drone China accells at (quadrocopter) versus the USA
| such as RQ-4s. So I am referring to what the discussion
| is talking about.
| krisoft wrote:
| > So I am referring to what the discussion is talking
| about.
|
| That is why I am asking. Because it definietly sounds
| like you think the discussion is about quadrocopters and
| not say China building many WZ-7 Soaring Dragons.
|
| Is it possible that when the others said that china will
| build many drones they meant the second kind and not some
| toy copters? Because that would make their comments make
| sense.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| That wouldn't make sense as China is seen as a uniquely
| strong powerhouse in the toy drones, but not uniquely
| stronger the larger unmanned drones such as Reapers.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| For a more modern example, one of my former employers had to
| ramp by a couple of orders of magnitude to build ventilators
| during Covid-19. One of my former coworkers told me the story
| of having to go to Detroit and build a factory there, and how
| they were able to go from 10-20 a day to hundreds a day by
| hard work and know-how.
|
| The point I'm trying to make here is that the will to do this
| still exists in the US today and I have no doubt that if we
| as a country decided to enter a world war like WWII we would
| very quickly ramp. We certainly still have the culture and
| the resources to do it were we to discover the will.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| This will happen again with drones. No doubt China is watching
| Russia closely and ramping up their production. What we're seeing
| now with FPV and bomber quadcopters is literally the equivalent
| of WWI biplanes tossing grenades and mortar shells, which only
| took a decade to become long range strategic bombers dropping
| thousands of pounds. Once the production is in place, autonomous
| swarms are an inevitability. And we will be forced to match.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| Great observation. I have this idea (apparently semi-obvious
| based on this discussion) that if there is a future war with
| China (sure hope we can avoid it), in terms of production and
| technology, the US is in Germany's position and China is in the
| place of the US in WW2 parlance.
|
| There are the obvious parallels where the US has great advanced
| technology, China can sure make things in mass quantities; also
| they have plenty of brilliant engineers and scientists and can
| figure out anything. Some obvous differences are the US has
| been where people from the world flee to, to get freedom and
| liberty; now we are in a serious period of retrenchment though,
| with certain (ahem) groups wanting to restrict the books in the
| library if they are idealogically unacceptable and also anti-
| science and anti-education etc going along with that. China is
| not the place you want to go to if you are going to introduce
| heterodoxical ideas.
|
| There are also all the echos of the '20s and '30s in our
| current times in the US and the world, groups of countries
| pushing different ideas and coming together in blocks. We have
| instant communication, nukes make everything even more serious
| than that time. The new ascendant anti-democratic countries
| want their shot at power and riches too.
| marcosdumay wrote:
| > Some obvous differences are the US has been where people
| from the world flee to, to get freedom and liberty
|
| This has always been much more important than dead capital.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I think so too, but it doesn't seem like most people
| remember this.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| One other factor that may help the U.S. is that America will
| have an easier time getting access to some resources as
| production ramps up than China given our excellent geographic
| position and China's lack of a blue water navy that can cut
| off American supply lines. However, while America's navy may
| get pushed back from the first island chain, there are
| several other chokepoints it can use to stop materials from
| coming in to China by sea (which is one of the only cost-
| effective ways to ship the amount of mass needed to produce
| war materiel at scale), and many of China's neighbors are not
| friendly to the CCP and not liable to support shipments of
| material to support a war through their territory even if it
| is economical to do so.
| Teever wrote:
| I'm terrified that America won't be able to match Chinese
| industrial capacity for killbot type drones.
|
| Does anyone know if anyone has stared the infrastructure to
| produce these things en masse in the US? If so, how can someone
| with heavy construction experience, CAD skills, and embedded
| experience become a part of that?
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than just production capacity of
| shitty quadcopters. The limiting factor with them isn't the
| airframe, you can make that out of literal tree branches and
| duct tape. The part that's important is the chips and US
| leadership seems very intent on fixing that, the question is
| if they're capable of doing so.
|
| We also don't know what form drones will take as the
| technology matures. Quadcopters are common right now because
| they require exactly zero aerodynamic knowledge to build or
| fly. Any tween with an AliExpress+YouTube account could
| design, build, and fly all of the systems we've seen to date.
| As the systems become more automated in the face of EWAR,
| lasers, shotguns, whatever, expect a reversion to high speed
| fixed wing systems that trade a little bit of CDF knowledge
| for order-of-magnitude performance improvement in basically
| all realms (payload, range, endurance, speed, survivability
| etc).
| surfingdino wrote:
| We are already working on unmanned autonomous drones the
| size of a fighter jet
| https://www.defensenews.com/air/2024/04/19/us-air-force-
| stag...
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I'm well aware, but that's not what the commenter was
| referring to.
| ramesh31 wrote:
| Quantity has a quality all its' own. A swarm of a thousand
| quadcopters negates any drawbacks you've mentioned, and
| would be cheaper than even a single Bayraktar or Reaper
| (not even including their 6 figure weapons payload). And
| we're already seeing drone carrying "motherships" that drop
| multiple quads and have RF repeaters to extend range to
| 50km+.
|
| It's a lot like the switch from battleships to aircraft
| carriers in the early 20th century. When a single squadron
| of cloth and wooden biplanes became capable of sinking a
| 50,000 ton armored warship that took 5 years to build, the
| writing was on the wall, and the countries who didn't adapt
| lost.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The USA isn't going to fight a trench warfare style war
| with China. We would fight a standoff/siege war and would
| overwhelm China's defenses and take out China's
| production capabilities. China's production is mainly in
| the east, whereas the USA's is spread out across the
| country. China imports it oil (making them susceptible to
| siege) while the USA is a net exporter.
|
| There is a reason we are developing Rapid Dragon (named
| after a Chinese siege weapon) https://en.wikipedia.org/wi
| ki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) . It quickly converts
| our 1500+ supply chain heavy aircraft fleet into stand-
| off attack platforms.
| rgmerk wrote:
| War in East Asia, were it to happen, will be nothing like
| war in Europe - as was the case in WWII.
| AnarchismIsCool wrote:
| I'm still talking about the tiny high quantity quads,
| they can't do anything if they don't have the range to
| get from the launch location to the target and stand off
| range is the oldest advantage in warfare.
|
| I guarantee the ones fielded in the next ~5 years will
| start to look like the new high speed bullet quads but
| with a blended wing between the rotors so they're not
| wasting energy plowing diagonally through the air. You
| may see configurations that can tail stand or enter a
| hover briefly and some that fly entirely conventionally,
| but the current paradigm of quads hovering near targets
| is going to be short lived as defenses ratchet up.
|
| As I said, the chips are going to be the issue. If you
| can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer and take
| down every drone within 500m, again, quantity doesn't do
| anything. They'll be moving toward relying on spread
| spectrum and variations of basic image recognition up
| through spicier algorithms for localization and
| targeting.
| onion2k wrote:
| I would be willing to bet a very large sum that China has
| the capability to drop 10,000 drones from a high altitude
| plane over US soil in one go, with the range to strike
| anywhere on the US mainland. I have no basis for this
| claim apart from the fact it's a _really_ obvious thing
| to do.
| Teever wrote:
| Yep. Imagine a near future with a mothership balloon
| carrying thousands of drones the size of a deck of cards
| or so with a 20g explosive, gps, facial recognition, and
| something to detect cellphone signals and a small solar
| panel.
|
| Drop a load over an area with the faces of targets
| preprogrammed into them and let them flit about looking
| for cell phone signal sources and if the face that's near
| the signal is a match explode on their neck.
|
| Imagine releasing that over an airbase. These things can
| either attack immediately or just fall down to the area
| around and lie in wait recharging with their panel.
|
| What's the counter to that?
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >they can't do anything if they don't have the range to
| get from the launch location to the target and stand off
| range is the oldest advantage in warfare.
|
| They can. Ukraine and Russia both have started using
| repeater drones for over-the-horizon capabilities with
| quadcopters. They can also be mesh linked, and combined
| with carrier drones to give you arbitrary standoff range
| for FPV attacks:
| https://x.com/wilendhornets/status/1772345701772513445
|
| >If you can deploy a $200 Wish dot com wifi/gps jammer
| and take down every drone within 500m, again, quantity
| doesn't do anything.
|
| But you can't. If you could, we wouldn't be seeing
| hundreds of these videos per week. The inverse square law
| applies no matter how advanced the jamming technology
| gets. You can protect fixed installations with huge high
| powered EW arrays, but the individual soldier on the
| battlefield is completely defenseless. The best they can
| hope for is a small bubble of protection from whoever in
| your unit is carrying the 30lbs of jamming gear and
| batteries, or the limited capabilities of a vehicle
| mounted system (that can easily be destroyed with
| artillery or ATGM).
| surfingdino wrote:
| I am not worried. History likes to rhyme and I think China
| will do a switcheroo on Russia and align itself with the West
| for the purpose of dismantling Russia's military and
| industry, just like the Soviet Union switched sides from
| being an ally of Germany in 1939 to working with the Western
| Allies on breaking Germany's neck. The West will make some
| concessions, but they will be seen as worth the price of
| breaking Russia up.
| ArnoVW wrote:
| Russia changed sides when Hitler invaded Russia. Not sure
| we can count on Putin making that mistake.
| surfingdino wrote:
| All he has to do is fire one nuke and China will gladly
| listen to the US' suggestion that we should take these
| toys away from Russia.
| dieortin wrote:
| Russia is still the country with the highest amount of
| nuclear warheads on the planet. How would anyone "take
| them away"?
| surfingdino wrote:
| In exchange for food or being able to sell limited
| amounts of their natural resources in exchange for small
| amounts of hard currency. They are amazing at not being
| able to feed their population when they start a big war.
| Teever wrote:
| Nope, because then the US will be all in on Europe and
| Taiwan will be ripe for the picking.
| CamperBob2 wrote:
| Agreed. If you look back at the Cold War era, you'll lose
| count of the number of times China and Russia embraced each
| other with lofty rhetoric, each proclaiming to be the
| other's BFF, only to end up butting heads again after a few
| years.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In 1969 the Unites States strongly hinted that they would
| retaliate with nuclear weapons if the Soviet Union used
| pre-emptive nuclear weapons on China (which it was
| rumored they were considering). We risked nuclear war
| against ourselves to prevent nuclear attacks on China.
| surfingdino wrote:
| China may see the US as an enemy, or at least a
| competitor, but it would not be able to project power or
| be recognised as a global player if it was not for the
| massive US investments in the country. In the end, when
| push comes to shove, China would rather align itself with
| the US rather than Russia so the scenario illustrated by
| Budanov's cake showing Russian Federation broken up into
| smaller pieces may not be that unrealistic:
|
| https://x.com/eeldenden/status/1610689686271397922
|
| The decision is in Putin's hands and if he plays stupid
| games, he will win all the stupid prizes.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| And the USA would rather be friends with China. We
| threatened nuclear war with Russia in order to protect
| China in 1969. We created special carvouts to help
| industrialize China. The USAs actions are not those of a
| country that wants to be adversaries with China. I
| friggen loved 2010's Shanghai and the people there
| (though I'm told it's nothing like that anymore).
| csomar wrote:
| > Soviet Union switched sides from being an ally of Germany
| in 1939 to working with the Western Allies on breaking
| Germany's neck.
|
| What are you smoking? Germany is the one that attacked the
| USSR. I can hardly see how they'll remain anything but
| allies after that. Actually Germany didn't just attack,
| they prepared and executed the largest invasion in human
| history.
|
| > I think China will do a switcheroo on Russia
|
| China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it
| wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and
| invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong to
| them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want
| Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
|
| China is never aligning with the West. They won after WWII
| and the West tried to break into them in two wars (Korean
| and Vietnamese) to no avail. They'll fight till the end.
| throwaway211 wrote:
| The USSR was on non-war terms with Germany until 1941, it
| was even exporting stuff like rubber to Germany until
| then.
|
| Those Russian lands don't 'belong' to China any more than
| China 'belongs' to Mongolia or the Jin dynasty 'belonged'
| to... well itself and just got appropriated as people
| then like people today and look at borders imagining
| things were always like that when they werent remotely
| the same.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > What are you smoking? Germany is the one that attacked
| the USSR. I can hardly see how they'll remain anything
| but allies after that. Actually Germany didn't just
| attack, they prepared and executed the largest invasion
| in human history.
|
| The Soviet Union helped Germany evade restrictions
| imposed on them after WWI. Specifically, they helped
| Germans develop mechanised forces, air forces, and gas
| warfare
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kama_tank_school
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lipetsk_fighter-
| pilot_school
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tomka_gas_test_site
|
| Then they signed this pact https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
| Molotov%E2%80%93Ribbentrop_Pac... dividing Poland (Soviet
| forced attacked Poland on 17 Sep 1939).
|
| The Soviets switched sides when Germans attacked them.
| Then the Germans lost, got divided, then were allowed to
| re-unite and ... ran straight to Moscow to sign deals
| that undermined security of Eastern Europe.
|
| Make no mistake, Russia and Germany fight and then can't
| wait to fall into each other's arms.
|
| > China is not going to do a switcheroo on Russia. If it
| wanted to, it'd wait until Russia is exhausted/broken and
| invade/recover the lands it used to historically belong
| to them (+resources that come along). Instead, they want
| Russia to remain as an annoyance to the West.
|
| They just told Putin to pound sand when he asked them to
| finance his Siberian gas pipeline during his recent visit
| to Bejing. They know Russia is weak.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| There is the "replicator initiative" within the DOD but I
| have no idea if it's moving quickly or not. The U.S. defense
| establishment still seems stuck in a pattern of buying big
| extravagant and expensive systems (e.g. aircraft carriers,
| million dollar missiles) which are vulnerable to asymmetric
| attacks from low cost drones or land to sea based missiles.
|
| https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF12611
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| The USA wouldn't fight an 'in the trenches war' where drones
| will come into play. We would fight a stand off siege type
| war. Hence why we are developing Rapid Dragon
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system),
| which would convert our entire logistics feel (something we
| excel at) into stand off bombers that would overwhelm Chinese
| defenses. We would effectively have an addition 1500 bombers
| in the form of C-130s, and 200+ C-17s.
|
| I'm guessing the system is named after an old Chinese siege
| weapon system to give China a message.
| jltsiren wrote:
| And that fleet of ad hoc bombers would exhaust the entire
| supply of missiles in the first strike, leaving the
| surviving aircraft with nothing to do. Today the production
| capacity for all AGM-158 variants is ~500 missiles/year,
| with plans to increase it to 1000 missiles/year. In an all-
| out war, the right scale would be more like 1000
| missiles/day.
| Teever wrote:
| For more on how dire this situation is with the American
| industrial capacity to produce missiles in a war with
| China check out this comprehensive report:
|
| https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-
| base-t...
| maxglute wrote:
| There's a reason LRIP for rapid dragon is molasses because
| planners recognize trying to move C130s and C17s in theatre
| is ridiculous. They all have to operate within 1IC to even
| be within standoff range to hit PRC MIC, well within
| operating ranges of J20 with PL17s specifically designed to
| pick off AWACs and other large targets like tankers... and
| rapid dragon. Like AGM158Bs with 1900km range (vs 1500km
| JASSMER for rapid dragon) is being made at... 5 per month.
| Until they pump that out to 100-1000s per month, it's token
| capability that's not being taken seriously. Not to mention
| US doesn't remotely have access to enough airfields in
| region or tanking capacity to deploy that much converted
| transport bomb trucks. US defense logistics is nice, but it
| pales to PRC mainland logistics designed to defeat the
| relative trickle of US standoff attacks airforce can
| actually deliver with basing US has access to, that itself
| is being targetted so US can't deliver any without
| hilariously inefficient/suboptimal tanking logistics from
| beyond 2 IC to the point it's likely not viable. Hence zerg
| rush to 100 B21 fleet.
|
| US fighting standoff war also throws allies / partners in
| region with security guarantee to the dogs. PRC going to
| start hitting US military infra in JP/SKR/PH to drag US
| into fighting in 1IC.
| mlsu wrote:
| For the civilians like me in the room:
|
| - LRIP: low-rate of initial production, the early phase
| of weapons development where kinks are being ironed out
| before mass-production begins
|
| - C-130, C-17: large, US-made cargo aircraft that we have
| a lot of
|
| - 1IC: first island chain -- Kuril islands, Japan,
| Taiwan, Phillippines, and Borneo
|
| - 2IC: second island chain -- Guam, Marianas, Bonin
| islands. 1IC and 2IC are also references to US defense
| policy in the pacific, namely to contain the USSR (and
| later, China) by projecting force westward in the
| pacific, using islands as stopovers for logistics, etc.
|
| - MIC: military industrial complex
|
| - J-20 fighters: a fighter jet, Chengdu J-20, China's
| counterpart to the F-22
|
| - PL-17 missiles: China-developed long range air-to-air
| missiles that are capable of hitting/taking down large
| cargo aircraft like C-130s
|
| - AWACS: airborne warning and control system, a type of
| radar system capable of detecting (and defend against)
| incoming missiles. these systems are large and mounted on
| purpose built aircraft, so I think the "system" part
| refers to having enough of such aircraft mixed in with
| your fleet to reliably detect incoming missiles over a
| large area
|
| - AGM-158B: US-made, a type of long-range air-launched
| cruise missile that is being adapted for the rapid dragon
|
| - zerg rush to 100 B21 fleet: refers to the US push to
| develop a long range strategic bomber, the B-21
| MaxPock wrote:
| Without using Chinese parts the US found that making their
| own small drones would cost $2,100. And those were just the
| observation drones for use by the Department of Interior.
|
| They were also only 20% as capable as Chinese drones.
|
| Read this and get terrified
|
| https://www.ft.com/content/dd2e936e-5934-49f1-8aa6-29dea9a41.
| ..
| hackerlight wrote:
| Anduril says they have a focus on industrial capacity and
| cost effectiveness
| ramesh31 wrote:
| >Anduril says they have a focus on industrial capacity and
| cost effectiveness
|
| US Military contractors have a very different conception of
| "cost effectiveness" than most of us.
|
| Anyone outside of Ukraine designing drones right now should
| simply stop what they are doing and watch and listen and
| learn from the innovators on the ground there. All of those
| pie in the sky ideas will probably be completely useless in
| the face of reality.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Anyone else feel like in today's world, China could do this
| better than the US?
| dzink wrote:
| They could, but China has to feed a Billion people through
| manufacturing and trade with foreign countries. To keep the
| peace, they dedicate a huge % of their military to internal
| policing. They have a soft influence policy vs the US hard, or
| their trade imbalance can turn violent.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| When I last visited China in 2002, the military was both a
| jobs program and involved in public works projects similar to
| the US Corps of Engineers but with higher priority.
| pie420 wrote:
| This is every military in the history of the world.
| vkou wrote:
| The US military does not do a lot of domestic work,
| because it would undermine the private sector.
|
| It could, though, and it could do a lot of good. But it
| doesn't.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Sorry, but you're not making any argument or refutation
| with any sort of nuance. The Chinese military civic works
| and infrastructure development Bechtel look like 2
| TaskRabbit helpers. USACE does a lot of good domestically
| and internationally, but it isn't even close.
|
| See also: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-tibet-
| xinjiang-border-indi...
| bojan wrote:
| That really depends on your definition of "better".
|
| In China the entities connected to the CCP are excepted from a
| lot of laws that slow down processes or make them more
| expensive.
|
| In the US is that way less the case.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I'm sure they lessened the rules, we have endless examples.
| Think about how dangerous your job is if your expected
| mission lifetime is extremely short, and it's a total all out
| war for survival, we are willing to risk it (willing to risk
| you).
|
| In 1943 the expected average life expectancy of a B-17 (crew
| and aircraft) was only to survive 11 missions! My Aunt's
| father was in one that was shotdown, he survived being a POW
| and came home after the war.
|
| https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/black-week-
| da....
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > In the US is that way less the case.
|
| Day-to-day, sure.
|
| In a national mobilization (even without additional action of
| Congress) when the President's emergency powers in law are
| deployed to enable production? Things change _radically_.
| HPsquared wrote:
| China makes 30 times more aluminium per year than the US.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_aluminium...
| foota wrote:
| While true, it looks like bauxite is mostly mined from
| Australia, with a long tail of other countries, many of which
| are within the US sphere of influence or far from China.
|
| The biggest exception seems to be Vietnam, with a very large
| reserve of bauxite (and obviously quite geographically close
| to China).
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Economic interdependency helps keep the relative cold war
| peace amongst frenemies, while tariffs and trade wars are
| likely to increase the risks of proxy wars and direct
| military conflict.
| foota wrote:
| I think this hypothetical is more about once a conflict
| is imminent.
|
| Also, general consensus seems to be that economic
| codependence has failed, with Russia invading Ukraine,
| humans rights abuses and authoritarianism in China, and
| China poised to attack Taiwan.
| HPsquared wrote:
| The world was also very interconnected prior to WW1.
| bluGill wrote:
| Vietnam has faught war with china more reciently than the
| us. They are also afraid that chian will attack again,
| while they are reasonable confident the us won't.
| foota wrote:
| Yes, but they do violate the part about being close to
| China (and hence easier to conquer in a hypothetical
| war).
|
| If the only supplies of bauxite were across an ocean or a
| whole continent it would be much easier to deny them
| supplies of bauxite in a conflict.
|
| Even if they could conquer the territory with it, they'd
| need to transport it back or move manufacturing to it.
| cpursley wrote:
| And already 3x more vehicles.
| duxup wrote:
| Authoritarian governments have a yin / yang superpower to get
| things done without bureaucracy, and at the same time very much
| not get things done very well at all.
| maxglute wrote:
| It's already obvious.
|
| 230x ship building advantage, more dry tonnage per year than
| entire 5 year US ship building program in WW2... US advangage
| over JP in WW2 aws charitably 20:1. That's just in one "mature"
| industry, PRC isn't just better in US, it's magnitude better
| than US ever was relative to peers. Another example is their
| revelation of _one_ gigafactory for 1k cruise missile
| components a day. JP is buying 400 tomahawks over next few
| years for 1.5B. PRC indicating they can do that in one shift.
| US has 4000 stockpiled, replacing at ~100 per year. Some of the
| production figures are very lopsidded. Meanwhile they're
| addding about as industrial robots/automation than RoW, and
| industry is going to get increasingly cheap renewable inputs.
| The advantages are snowballing.
|
| US still ahead in aviation due to committing to mature tech,
| but PRC knocking out their 5th J20 already 100+ per year.
| SpaceX is next as PRC pursues their mega constellation. I think
| people are prematurely jerking to SpaceX payload lead, they
| have a short term competitive advantage in doing high capacity
| launches on "small/medium scale", read: American scale with ~40
| resusable rocket fleet. It the economics justified it, no
| reason PRC wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s. The TLDR is once
| indigenize tech matures, PRC can pursue incredible economies of
| scale, and build up enough production capacity to exceed
| aggregate production of others in 5-10 years.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| I don't think you can just copy SpaceX's falcon 9 reusibility
| and landing just by wanting to do it. Even once you've got
| the basic system it takes years and years of iteration to
| make it better step by step. Only one company in the west has
| really done any of that, and if spacex wasn't around no one
| would believe it could be done.
|
| I'm sure it can be done eventually by China though, they are
| just as smart as anyone else. Can they organize their
| scientific and engineering forces as well? Knowing it can be
| done is a huge help.
| maxglute wrote:
| They've got a multiple PRC commercial companies with
| successfuly reusable tests. We'll know more in next few
| years. TLDR is state level "direction" to pursue reusable
| lauch + mega constellations only started last few years
| (probably saw value in UKR war). I think SpaceX tech is
| probably easier to copy vs military, once idea proven to
| work as you said, PRC pretty good at iterating and
| replicating, and scaling, provided there's reason for it,
| i.e. no idea how much payload demand outside of
| megaconstellations. US uniquely advantaged because they
| work with a lot of developed countries with their own
| launch needs that US provides. Some initial estimates for
| PRC mega constellation(s) is IIRC putting up 1500 before
| 2030, and 13000-26000 by 2035 to show the projected launch
| curve. Which TBF is like 30-40 rocket tier of demand.
| Question is if they find something to justify spamming
| magnitude more launch capabilities, and pertinent to this
| article, if they did, it's probably going to be
| weaponinizing space.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Some context for US/Japan WW II:
|
| In 1943, the US built more than half as many Fleet carriers
| as Japan fielded over the entire war (15 vs 28), while also
| producing an absurd number of escort carriers. In the last
| year of the war, the US built about as many F6F (Hellcat)
| fighters as Japan built A6M (Zeros) in the previous 5 years
| (the F6F is generally considered far superior to the A6M; the
| F4F is the older contemporary of the A6M).
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| The US must come to terms with ceding its monopoly on
| superpower status because other countries have caught up, but
| it also has correctable problems on multiple fronts due to:
|
| - Lack of infrastructure investment
|
| - Civic infighting
|
| - Political divisions, distractions, and corruption
|
| - Social regression
|
| - Gender disparity in undergraduate education
|
| - Declining standards of living
| surfingdino wrote:
| Power will be projected in the future through alliances
| with Australia, Japan, and Great Britain. The problems you
| listed are real, but they are solvable.
| jopsen wrote:
| Yeah, it's important to remember that the US has friends.
| - and the list of friends is very long!
|
| My favorite example of how good friends the US has is
| that the primary objective for Norway in Afghanistan was
| quote: "The first and most important
| objective throughout was the Alliance dimension:
| to support the US and safeguard NATO's continued
| relevance."
|
| source: https://www.regjeringen.no/contentassets/09faceca
| 099c4b8bac8...
|
| You have good friends if their primary war objective is
| to support you.
|
| I think that these days, a lot of Europeans are being
| reminded that the US is a friend. So long as US politics
| can avoid undermining NATO the US won't be short on
| friends.
| surfingdino wrote:
| "America has no permanent friends or enemies, only
| interests" -- Henry Kissinger.
|
| The same applies to other countries. Those who subscribe
| to the democratic principles, rule of law, and individual
| freedoms will typically align themselves with US
| interests, at least where it is beneficial to them.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| This is true, both cynically and literally. There have
| been many complete and partial defections recently as
| China swoops in with B&R foreign direct infrastructure
| and industrial investment.
|
| The US needs to adjust with more competitive foreign
| economic policies because tariffs aren't it. All of those
| trillions wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq for diesel power
| plants to nowhere could've been sprinkled around the
| Global South to advance economic development resulting in
| greater wealth elsewhere able to afford American goods
| and services, source raw materials, and develop
| manufacturing relationship in various countries in, say,
| Africa... like China is doing.
| surfingdino wrote:
| The US and Western Europe have to adjust their eyesight
| if we are to have peace and prosperity worldwide. The war
| in Ukraine, for example, is the result of Germany and the
| rest of the old West pandering to Russia and making deals
| over Eastern European heads whilst lecturing Eastern
| Europe on European ideals and the need for them to catch
| up with progressive Germany and France. Going forward,
| large players on the international scale have to work
| with smaller players. We also need to take a look at the
| basket cases of Austria and Germany and ask them to
| explain how their actions square with what they preach.
| Germany was given gren light to unify and generally rule
| the EU and the results aren't that great.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| Absolutely. I think the prime problem is large swaths of
| the American populace has lost hope, confidence, and
| resiliency. OTOH, people in China have a much more of a
| "can do" attitude buoyed by achievements and rapid
| progress. America needs younger politicians and leaders
| out there delivering projects and emanating positive
| vibes of hope and possibility.
| surfingdino wrote:
| > America needs younger politicians and leaders out there
|
| Not just America, the world needs younger politicians who
| don't want to send the whole world to hell when they die.
| We really have a shitty geriatric crew right now--Putin,
| Xi, Modi, Biden, Trump.
| hi-v-rocknroll wrote:
| And Orban, Erdogan, and more.
|
| The people are hurting but the establishment isn't
| listening, and so conspiracy theorists, cranks, racist
| nationalists lite, and brash jerks are seen as ways to
| lash out against a system that doesn't appear to be
| helping them.
|
| There are a holistic set of overlapping problems:
|
| - Failure of the mainstream left to empathize properly
| with both working people and small business owners while
| pushing back against unreasonable demands of the very
| rich
|
| - Failure to mentor young leaders in 4 domains: academia,
| industry, political parties, and community orgs
|
| There are no quick or easy solutions, but require
| sustained, organized, and collaborative efforts to nudge
| the needle over years. This is quite difficult when a
| large fraction of the demographic voting for absurd
| leaders either don't have free time to volunteer, are
| unable to prioritize civic participation for whatever
| reason(s), or don't see the value in it.
| surfingdino wrote:
| I'd add at least two points to your list:
|
| - Inability of the intellectual and political elites to
| define and enforce basic rules and norms for a coherent
| society. Diversity is great, but it ought to be paired
| with engagement with the country's history, culture. We
| have citizenry who are increasingly more detached from
| the society they live in and more connected to groups
| that transcend borders.
|
| - Rise of religion. We should be done with that thing by
| now, but its back and growing in strength, undermining
| democratic institutions. We are making concessions to
| religion on the grounds of religious freedom.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Yes, a missle gigafactory is impressive pre war. The USA will
| remove that single factory within the first weeks of any
| conflict. China better have large stockpiles if their
| strategy includes gigafactories.
| maxglute wrote:
| Of course they'll have stockpiles, they didn't build all
| these factories to sit idle and have capex depreciate
| pointlessly, just like they'll have stockpiles for prompt
| global strike to hit US plants/energy infra on CONUS. Then
| what? This isn't the 50s-90s anymore, advanced rocketry
| ended Fortress America, PRC developing conventional strike
| to hit CONUS strategic targets precisely to deter mainland
| strikes. This is also ignoring US stockpiles, i.e. 4000
| TLAMs... PRC installed ~300k industrial robots LAST YEAR.
| They have essentially accumulated near bottomless amount of
| industrial capex that can be redeployed/reconstituted to
| keep industrial base running, more than the US military was
| designed / currently designed to meaningfully degrade.
| There's a reason US military doctorine when from fighting 2
| major wars when all potential US adversaries were medium
| powers, to one major war + hold another war in place, to
| PRC now a major pacing peer power and US might not even be
| able to fight major IndoPac war. PRC isn't a 4000 tomahawk
| conflict, it's a 400,000 one if not more. PRC recognizes
| regional war with US+CO is at least a 1000 missile per day
| problem.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Anything going on with Chinese missile forces staff and
| corruption lately? Just asking :)
| maxglute wrote:
| Being efficiently punished, as they should be, unlike how
| fat leonard trials going -\\_(tsu)_/-. BTW corruption in
| PRC linked to getting more things built, the side effect
| is turbo procurement.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| I don't agree that China's government corruption is
| actually a show of strength but interesting analysis.
|
| Again I hope nothing happens. I am quite fond of China,
| the Chinese people, and historical Chinese culture. The
| USA made special carveouts to help China industrialize.
| The USA risked nuclear war with Russia in order to get
| them to back down against China in 1969. We don't want to
| be adversaries with China and have demonstrably shown so
| with fairly large policy choices.
| MaxPock wrote:
| This is mutual.Any attack on mainland China will invite
| immediate retaliation on American soil.
| ramblenode wrote:
| > The USA will remove that single factory within the first
| weeks of any conflict.
|
| I don't think it's clear that a war would necessarily
| escalate to attacking industrial targets because there is a
| kind of MAD at play.
|
| From America's point of view, the problem with escalating
| the war to industrial targets (which I am sure US military
| planners realize) is that the US has an Achilles' heel in
| it's reliance on petrol. Almost all US petrol comes from
| only 130 domestic plants. If those are disabled, most US
| supply chains will crumble, including food. No need to
| disable all the factories when there's no way to transport
| stuff and workers aren't fed. That weakness might be enough
| to deter the US from striking Chinese industry.
|
| EVs might be one of the bigger bulwarks the US could pursue
| toward greater national security.
| hollerith wrote:
| The Soviets had 40,000 nuclear warheads, which didn't enable
| them to achieve any kind of dominance over the US or Europe.
| maxglute wrote:
| Nukes aren't meant to used in conventional war unless
| things go dire, cruise missiles are. Advanced munitions are
| bread and butter in peer war. USSR had doctorine for tactic
| nukes but it never got to that and it certainly effected
| US/EU esclation strategies even now.
| chrobic743001 wrote:
| > fleet. It the economics justified it, no reason PRC
| wouldn't have 400 falcon 9s.
|
| The economics clearly justify mass production of widebody
| aircraft, yet China is unable to produce their own.
|
| And you expect China to mass produce Falcon 9 rockets? How
| about they start with a simple airplane first.
| maxglute wrote:
| Military Y20 reached 80+ now within a few years - they have
| indigenous tech to apply to domestic wide body, and can
| scale up production of large aircrafts if they want. But
| taking 929 slow because civilian aviation is _harder_ than
| space, more international requirements etc, why C919+929
| needs to use foreign components for easier certification.
| The global economics justify it, the regulation/geopolitics
| makes it hard but they're diligently pursing it.
|
| But economics also don't CLEARLY justify domestic wide body
| when they can focus on electrified HSR without fossil
| inputs, AND PRC pop density / geographic concentration
| limits future of civilian air due to air corridor
| congestion.
|
| I expect PRC to mass produce domestic F9 if the economics
| clearly justify it. LM5 already estimated at F9 $3000 per
| kg, so hard to say how much mass producing PRC F9 tier
| reusable can drive down cost + add capability. If it's
| there's clear significant demand for more than sustaining
| mega contestallations past 2035s, I'd expect them to spam
| F9 for domestic use, before civil wide body that's going to
| take longer due politics of international aviation.
| more_corn wrote:
| They're also about 5x faster bringing new weapon systems
| online. They have a drone aircraft carrier.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| China's current production capacity would be eliminated by USA
| standoff attack aircraft within a few weeks. Pre war production
| capacity has nothing to do with war time production capacity if
| you can't defend your factories. How many Chinese factories
| depend on advanced foreign machining machines (vertical mills,
| horizontal mills, etc)? Can China constantly replace their
| capacity of these during sustained foreign bombardment?
|
| China's manufacturing is mainly in the east, while the USAs is
| spread throughout the country. China's manufacturing is
| centered around coastal, river, and railway access. The USA has
| a distributed highway system for wartime
| variability/survivability.
|
| China is dependant on oil imports. The USA in a net oil
| exporter.
| maxglute wrote:
| US doesn't remotely have the fires to take out PRC MIC
| industry, they don't even have enough to scratch PRC coastal
| military installations, we're talking about potentially
| 1,000,000s of aim points to try to crack a lot of concrete,
| with a lot of ability to eat attrition / regenerate.
| Something US projection is not equipped to deal with
| especially with crippled delivery rates at standoff range.
| PRC has entire chain of advanced indigenous tooling inudstry.
| They also have massive capital stock. PRC capital stock have
| magnitude more installed robots than US has smart munitions.
|
| For reference 3 week Iraqi air campaign had favourable land
| basing, 5 carriers, doing uncontested runs. Napkin math
| extrapolate to PRC size and you're looking at 5 years if US
| can sustain unsustainable tempo and PRC barely shoots back.
| Double that if US has to operate at standoff range where most
| of sorties goes to tanking/defensive air. The scale of PRC is
| massive.
|
| PRC MIC industry is in the EAST far inland, specifically to
| account for US standoff range, i.e. rapid dragon with even
| JASSER would have to launch over mainland soil to hit. Can do
| even more extended AGM156Bs with 1900km range, but still has
| to be launched within PRC A2D2 1IC bubble, and they weight 5x
| more, i.e. can only fit lol10 in C17... all of a sudden you
| have a vunerable platform + missiles worth 400-500m trying to
| drop ordinances in area PL17 is designed to defeat. This is
| without mentioning PRC likely has / at least demonstrated to
| have capability to move MIC underground, see third front.
|
| PRC has enough domestic oil production 4+ million barrels to
| run military AND industry with transport rationing.
|
| But really what you're missing is if US starts hitting
| mainland targets, PRC will hit CONUS targets - they're
| pursuing conventional global strike. Their rocketforce
| platforms are increasingly dual use for reason. Reality is US
| is a net oil exporter in the same way Saudi is - i.e. it
| doesn't matter having resource autarky because extractive
| infra can be hit by Houthi drones. Era Fortress America is
| ending/over. PRC hitting 300 refineries and LNG plants
| cripples US homefront as much as much US trying to blockade
| PRC energy. And if we get to that point, then it's a matter
| of who has more distributed energy infra (i.e. renewables),
| and capital stock, excess construction capacity to survive
| the attrition game.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| 'pursuing conventional global strike' AKA they don't have
| it, I.E. what 'I'm really missing' doesn't exist.
|
| China is massive, but their 'strength' of mass production
| (what is being discussed here, converting a countries
| capabilities to war time production, and being claimed as
| uncounterable by the USA) is concentrated in the coastal
| areas and associated river shipping lanes. USA industry is
| spread throughout the country.
|
| Again you completely ignore what I said. It wouldn't be 5
| carriers of F-18s over five years, it would be our current
| fleet plus an additional 1500 stand off attack bombers,
| allowing those F-18s to focus solely on softening air
| defense sites, etc. China's installed robots have zero to
| do with any of this. They don't have automated factories
| 'spawning' units.
|
| China's oil production just hit a record lows even with
| them putting their 'limitless resources' into it. China's
| western oil fields and offshore oil fields (like their
| billion dollar oil platform) would be scrap.
|
| China's current MIC industry doesn't matter, it's
| converting domestic production to a war footing that is
| being discussed here. The claim is conversion of their
| current civilian capacity would overwhelm the USA. Again,
| China's civil capacity is concentrated in the coastal areas
| and associated waterways which make it not valuable as a
| war production capacity, while the USA is spread throughout
| the country. You don't need to take out every factory, just
| enough associated infra. But keep moving goal posts, change
| the subject to try and get a gotcha.
|
| Edit: I have to add I hope none of this happens. I love
| China. My dad was a communist hippie and our house was
| filled all kinds of books on China from historical to
| modern Chinese thinking. My ex was an acupuncturist so we
| often talked about ancient Chinese thoughts as well. While
| I understand it's completely different now, 2010's Shanghai
| was one of my favorite cities. I'm also old enough to have
| been friends with a lot of students stranded in the USA
| after the Tiananmen Square massacre so my heart breaks for
| the Chinese people and I understand that their government
| is not them and does not care about their interests.
| Qwertious wrote:
| It's because you know more about the USA's internal politics
| (and internal embarassments) than about China's. China has
| plenty of shitshows, but most of them don't reach international
| news.
| class3shock wrote:
| To what end though? I know Taiwan is the hot button issue at
| the moment but it's hard for me to think China wants to get
| into war with the US, let alone the whole "west", over it.
| Doesn't the war with Ukraine show that any large scale military
| conflict is incredibly costly and difficult to benefit from?
| rsynnott wrote:
| Huh. There were _800k_ aircraft built during the war. Hadn't
| realised it was anything close to that. That's easily over a
| million pilots - how on earth did they train them all?
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Not all the aircraft built were used by the US: a sizable
| minority (18% according to one contemporary source [0]) were
| transferred (by sale or lend-lease) to other allies.
|
| [0] https://www.historians.org/about-aha-and-membership/aha-
| hist...
| wffurr wrote:
| Quickly and dangerously. There's an entire cemetery dedicated
| to RAF pilot cadets in Montgomery, Alabama killed during
| training at US airfields.
|
| * https://www.findagrave.com/virtual-cemetery/622200
|
| *
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Cemetery_(Montgomery,_...
| skullone wrote:
| That's sombering, words can't express the gravity of that war
| abadpoli wrote:
| Seems like an overstatement to say "an entire cemetery". Per
| the Wikipedia page, the cemetery is 120 acres with 200,000
| grave sites, but only 78 of the graves are RAF students
| (which still is a terrible amount of people to lose in
| training, of all things).
| RecycledEle wrote:
| Many military personnel die in training.
|
| If you are not losing a few people in training, you are not
| pushing things hard enough.
| OJFord wrote:
| I think it's fair enough if it was enough they thought to
| make that a specific section. You probably wouldn't be
| commenting about it if it so happened that the entire site
| was .1 acre and only the student pilots.
| Retric wrote:
| There was an analog flight stimulator used by over 500k pilots
| which helped, but this was war they accepted extremely high
| casualty rates and not just from enemy action.
|
| https://www.nasflmuseum.com/link-trainer.html
| pchristensen wrote:
| I recently read Masters of the Air, and it said that over
| 10,000 Americans from the 8th Air Force died over English
| soil, most from accidents during takeoff and assembling
| forces.
| Animats wrote:
| As late as the 1960s, the career death rate for US fighter
| pilots was about one in five, without any help from an enemy.
| There's a book, "The Making of an Ex-Astronaut", from someone
| who made it through astronaut training but then realized they
| didn't want to take the risk of pilot training in a T-38.
|
| The T-38 jet trainer, first flight in 1959, still in use:
| 1,189 built, 210 crashes and ejections.
| vkou wrote:
| > how on earth did they train them all?
|
| A few days of classroom instruction, 40-100 flight hours of
| practical training (Less in the Axis, due to oil shortages,
| less in the USSR at the start of the war, due to the all-hands-
| on-deck state of emergency), and then it's off to war with you.
|
| Axis pilots would fly until they were killed, seriously
| injured, or captured. Anglosphere bomber pilots would fly ~30
| combat missions, and if they survived, would be rotated out to
| work as instructors.
|
| The average combat survival rate for bomber pilots was ~10
| missions, but due to the infrequency of flights, most Anglo
| bomber crews survived the war, without ever hitting their
| rotation limit. Meanwhile, in the Pacific theater, the more
| missions bomber crews flew, the bigger the rotation limits grew
| (Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge
| figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more
| missions.) The air crews were, understandably, _not very
| pleased about this_.
|
| Fighter pilots had much higher quotas, before they could rotate
| out.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> Because survival rates improved, the generals in charge
| figured that it would be reasonable to ask crews to fly more
| missions
|
| Sounds like a Catch-22.
| Lanzaa wrote:
| Just in case you or other readers don't already know. The
| phrase Catch-22 is from the book "Catch-22". The plot of
| "Catch-22" is about a bomber pilot who is caught in that
| situation, "generals in charge ... ask crews to fly more
| missions".
| bogtog wrote:
| > Between 1939 and 1944, the value of aircraft produced annually
| in the U.S. increased by a factor of 70, and the total weight of
| aircraft produced (a common measure of aircraft industry output)
| increased by a factor of 64
|
| Something about evaluating production quantity by weight always
| puts a smile on my face
| marcosdumay wrote:
| Just like lines of code, it's a very useful metric.
|
| ... As long as you don't do something stupid with it, like
| using it to evaluate people.
| vkou wrote:
| Someone who successfully ran an organization that
| successfully delivered 70 4,000-tonne ships is probably more
| qualified to be put in charge of building an aircraft
| carrier, than someone who delivered 70 4,000-lb boats.
|
| When it comes to material goods that dramatically vary in
| size (ships, planes, bombs), tonnage is usually a good first
| metric.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| 4000 70lb boats?
| cowgoesmoo wrote:
| It's hard to abuse for aircraft - you can't just strap a
| bunch of lead to a plane because then it won't fly.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Was that a requirement in the contract? Mine says just need
| to produce a certain number of planes. There's nothing in
| there that says the plane must be able to fly. If that's
| what you wanted, you should have stipulated that during
| negotiations. Remember, you picked fast and cheap.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| I guess that's the upside of wartime and having many of
| the people in charge of these projects truly bought in --
| they're likely trying to deliver the best they can, not
| maximize profits.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Yeah, I'm so pessimistic about today's attitudes, I truly
| think we would _NOT_ be able to replicate that effort
| today. Boeing can 't make doors stay on their airplane,
| or a rocket capsule that can have working valves. We're
| at a point where a total sea change in attitudes would
| have to occur, so maybe an all out war effort might do
| that? I truly hope we never need to find out
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| In this specific case it's a cultural thing at Boeing not
| the culture at large. I worked at an aerospace company
| and we had an unwritten rule that made sure we kept the
| percentage of ex-Boeing employees below a pretty low
| threshold to ensure Boeing culture didn't work it's way
| in.
|
| On top of a poor personnel culture, Boeing cares more
| about splitting it's supply chain up around the world (in
| order to get contracts from different countries) than
| making airplanes. The scary part of a bad culture is you
| could fake it with past airplanes, but newer aircraft
| with lighter composite parts/less parts (which then make
| each part's integrity more important) there's less wiggle
| room. Plus with composite, you can't just do a final QA
| on things and ensure they are good. You have to QA each
| layer layup, glues, etc. An xray at the end can't really
| give you the whole picture. I remember friends talking
| about how a certain (not Boeing) company was
| experimenting moving composite layup to China and what a
| cluster that was going to be. They would find razor
| blades embedded inside and all kinds of FOB crap on the
| final xrays, and this was on the pre-production showcase
| pieces.
| lazide wrote:
| Uh, war profiteers were a thing.
|
| The general vibe was if you made a shitty product and it
| got your fellow countrymen killed, someone would track
| you down and make you pay for it though.
| pc86 wrote:
| I can think of worse systems, honestly.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| It seems reasonable if you're thinking about the amount of
| material that must be sourced, transported, processed, etc.
| also serves as a check that the newly produced planes weren't
| simply 70x smaller than before.
| lazide wrote:
| Aircraft are also designed to reduce weight as much as
| possible.
|
| Imagine measuring computer hardware output by weight.
| stale2002 wrote:
| That is an incorrect comparison.
|
| The key and important factor of computer hardware has
| little to do with weight.
|
| Whereas, weight _is_ an important factor for aircrafts. A
| plane produced today will have similar capabilities as a
| plane produced 30 years ago of the same weight.
|
| That is absolutely not the case for computer hardware.
| lazide wrote:
| Hardly, forged titanium bulkheads, dramatically improved
| engines, and composites. And before that, aluminum
| fuselages, improved aerodynamics, etc.
|
| Hell, compare the F111 vs the F22 on every available
| metric.
|
| Just like flops/gram has dramatically improved over time
| for computers.
| SR2Z wrote:
| I mean, aircraft usability scales with weight in a way that
| computers do the opposite of.
| navane wrote:
| As long as the metric is not used as a target, it keeps
| being a relevant metric. All that tonnage needed to be
| manufactured.
| more_corn wrote:
| The ussr tried to do this. You can still find lamps made of
| lead manufactured in that era.
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| > As late as 1941, the U.K. was building more planes per year
| than the U.S. But by 1942, the U.S. was building roughly as many
| aircraft as Germany, Japan, the U.K. and Italy combined.
|
| Wow. Unbelievable
| kgeist wrote:
| >It's no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of
| the U.S.'s enormous industrial output.
|
| The author ignores the USSR completely in their article, except
| for a brief mention in the graphs (where it's #2). 157k planes is
| impressive, too, considering that many of the factories had to
| evacuate to Siberia. 22k planes were also additionally leased by
| the US and the UK.
| NotSammyHagar wrote:
| That's true, the ussr did some impressive things, and the
| millions of deaths they suffered fighting the germans in ww2
| can't be forgotten, along with the impact of their weakening of
| the german forces over time.
| Koshkin wrote:
| A 1000-mile "weakening"
| TulliusCicero wrote:
| It definitely is, but the US' industrial output wasn't limited
| to just planes, and the USSR received a ton of supplies and
| equipment from the US to bolster its war machine.
| pie420 wrote:
| The vast majority of the USSR factories were funded by american
| cash. Without the US, Germany wins WW2 handily. Without the
| USSR, the united states drops nukes on berlin in 1946 and
| handily wins ww2 by 1947.
| jltsiren wrote:
| Those factories were paid with Soviet money, but many were
| built by Western companies in the 20s and 30s. Because
| apparently communism was not such a big deal after all, as
| long as you could benefit from it.
|
| Germany had already lost the war before Lend-Lease had a
| significant impact. The offensives of 1941 and 1942 failed
| before Western aid started arriving in significant
| quantities. The aid had much more impact on the Soviet
| offensive, particularly on the logistics side. It can be
| argued that Lend-Lease won Eastern Europe for the USSR.
|
| As far as I understand, there are two schools of thought on
| what would have happened without Lend-Lease. In one, the USSR
| would have won anyway, but the war would have lasted until
| 1946 or 1947 and it would have been even bloodier and more
| destructive. In another, the USSR would also have lost, and
| there would have been an uneasy peace between them and
| Germany. In both cases, I'd assume the US would not see the
| Continental Europe worth fighting for.
| martythemaniak wrote:
| Nope, the USSR's efforts were also the result of US's
| industrial and financial output. Here's an essay to get you
| started:
| https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1505247886908424195.html
| mizzao wrote:
| > Why Russia can't win against the West
|
| Is this still true in light of the recent Ukraine events?
| Russia certainly isn't losing if no one's going to stand up
| to it.
| afavour wrote:
| Sort of an interesting argument, I suppose. Militarily
| Russia is heavily outclassed by the West. But perhaps
| that's why they're engaging in information warfare: western
| populations are weary of war and with sufficient prodding
| Russia can keep the major western powers away from their
| conflict.
|
| I feel like I'm playing Civilization again.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > western populations are weary of war
|
| are they? for the most part, Americans haven't really
| noticed apart from family and friends of service members.
| There's been no rationing of goods, there's been no
| campaigns to buy war bonds, there's essentially been no
| burden on the citizens. In fact, we've had multiple tax
| cuts and gains in the financial markets. The sheep have
| been well fed.
| afavour wrote:
| I suppose I'm speaking theoretically here. But American
| populations tired of Afghanistan and Iraq. The war in
| Ukraine does not involve US boots on the ground and thus
| is a very different proposition.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I'm actually happy to hear that you claim people were
| tired of it, but I just had no direct experience with
| people discussing how they should end. It just was never
| discussed in any conversations this statistic of one
| person experienced. Now, something like current election
| campaign, it is discussed non-stop. It's not like there
| were protests like in Vietnam to end the war. So maybe my
| sensitivity settings were set to the extreme??
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >there's essentially been no burden on the citizens.
|
| Unless you watch Fox News, in which case we are "wasting"
| hundreds of billions on Ukraine while Americans
| starve!!!! What's that? A bill to feed starving
| Americans? Why that's socialism, which is communism!
|
| 70 million Americans voted for Trump in 2020. It doesn't
| matter that some of them don't live in the same reality
| as the rest of us, because they have isolated themselves
| so aggressively that they will never be snapped out of
| it, and millions of other people are enabling their
| insanity for political gain.
|
| Check out Ryan McBeth on youtube for someone with
| experience refuting and examining Russian disinfo
| campaigns, and weep in fear as statements that could be
| trivially debunked with a look at a single wikipedia
| page, or like, a book of what different weapons systems
| look like, and realize in horror that the millions of
| people falling for this shit aren't just "media
| illiterate", but rather are so deep in the kool-aid that
| they explicitly trust information MORE if it has been
| labeled as "fake news".
|
| It's insane. We aren't handling it. The truth is
| literally a less effective propaganda weapon than people
| silo'ing themselves so thoroughly that they have CHOSEN
| to watch Russian propaganda outlets like RT as "news"
| arandomusername wrote:
| Their problem is using their tax money for a foreign
| country, instead of a: lowering taxes b: using it for US
| citizens. Your framing is disingenous.
|
| If you believe that 70 million Americans live in a
| different reality and have isolated themselves, well,
| perhaps it is you who fails to emphasize why one may have
| different political standing than you?
|
| The reality is, that people have different priorities
| when voting.
|
| If you want to talk about propaganda weapon, the
| strongest in the US is the Israeli one. Both candidates
| take huge amounts of $$$ from Israeli donors. Both
| candidates simp for Israel.
| Beijinger wrote:
| Is it? The Russian jam GPS that it is useless, but their
| own (much newer) system can't be jammed easily. I just
| read an article about it. Europe has nearly no military
| equipment left. Russia is loosing more tanks and
| artillery in a month than some big countries in the EU
| have.
|
| The S400 is considered superior to the Patriot system.
| They have hypersonic missiles. And now a battle hardened
| army. Don't forget, western systems are heavily
| overpriced. I think we pay 10 times the amount for a
| shell than Russia does. It will take years, possibly
| decades, to build up military industrial capacity.
| Germany has ammunition for 1 day of war. Trick question:
| With what will they fight on the second day?
|
| Also, dont forget:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Superiority_(short_story)
|
| Germany had the best tanks in WW2. But Russia hat many
| T34. In insane numbers.
| tim333 wrote:
| Russia is having quite a struggle against Ukraine with
| like a quarter of its population and mostly old western
| weapons that were on the way out. NATO with stealth
| fighters and the like would be quite different game.
|
| I remember the US military vs Iraq with mostly Russian
| gear was almost embarrassingly one sided.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| All the air defense and much of the artillery aid has
| been state of the art. Ukraine benefits from the massive
| surveillance and targeting capabilities from air and
| space - also state of the art. The long range missiles
| given have been current generation.
|
| Not to mention that cutting-edge drone based warfare has
| quickly become Ukraine's most effective staple.
|
| Sure, some of the tanks and IFVs are older, but overall
| it's not really fair to say Ukraine is mostly using old
| weapons or that it's fighting Russia alone. The total
| financial value of external aid to Ukraine per year has
| been rivaling Russia's total annual defense budget.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| The ATACMS missiles that Ukraine is getting are soon to
| be expired because they are reaching their end of life
| (of course they are still in production but it shows
| these are not the current generation)
|
| The current generation missiles "PrSMs" have not been
| given to Ukraine
|
| The M777 howitzers are from 40 years ago
|
| The stinger missiles have been used in the Afghanistan
| war
|
| Even the F-16 planes are from 30 years ago
|
| And Patriot air defense systems are several decades old
|
| So it is fair to say that Ukraine has been using mostly
| older weapons
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| You're referencing a small fraction of cherry-picked
| American weapons Ukraine is receiving. Other nations are
| giving other weapons, many of which are current
| generation. Patriots are current generation, and are
| continuously updated with new missiles and software. If
| you consider any weapon system that was not initially
| designed a few years ago to be old, then almost every
| weapon system the US and Europe is currently fielding
| would be "old".
|
| To name a few current generation systems given to
| Ukraine: IRIS-T AA missile systems, StormShadow / SCALP
| cruise missiles, AGM-88 HARM missiles, AIM-120 AMRAAM
| missiles, NLAW anti-tank missiles, Martlet missiles,
| Starstreak AA missiles, Aster AA missiles, Krab artillery
| systems, CEASAR artillery systems, Excalibur guided
| artillery, ECV90 IFVs, and on and on the list goes.
| waciki wrote:
| > To name a few current generation systems given to
| Ukraine
|
| Just checked 3 of your list:
|
| * AIM-120 AMRAAM was fist used in 1991
|
| * AGM-88 HARM 1985
|
| * CAESAR system 2008
|
| All look pretty old.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| The one caveat here is that the Patriot missile system
| was _originally_ made in the 80s. Like most of the US
| arsenal, it has seen significant improvement since then.
| Ukraine got fairly modern and capable Patriot systems and
| missiles.
|
| The M777 also included fairly modern fire control
| hardware and counter battery radar.
|
| Everything else has been purposely downgraded to ancient
| specs, like removing armor from the Abrams, and sending
| ancient F-16s. The stingers we sent Ukraine have been out
| of production for decades, and the US has not fielded
| them in mentionable capacity since the early 90s.
|
| The table scraps of the US desert storm military is
| providing Russia a stalemate in Ukraine vs an army barely
| trained to use their new equipment, that had several high
| level traitors in it during the invasion.
|
| Meanwhile, ignore that Russia cannot keep tiny kit-built
| aircraft out of it's airspace, which has always been a
| problem for Russia despite supposedly being the Premier
| anti-air missile system maker since the 50s. One of these
| kit built cruise missiles killed several important people
| in a Naval Command post in Crimea, despite immense
| investment in S400s to protect it.
|
| The Russian Navy has been shown to be not just non-
| threatening, but jaw droppingly incompetent. I'm sure
| they blame whoever runs Russian air defense systems, but
| the flagship of the black sea fleet was sunk by the same
| intensity of threat as the damn Houthis taking pot shots
| at tankers. This wasn't a "occasionally the missile gets
| through" situation either. The Moskva had multiple
| redundant and cooperating missile defense systems that on
| paper, and even in foreign military knowledge, would have
| defeated a couple incoming missiles. Either they weren't
| turned on, in which case why not, or worse, they are
| inoperable or ineffective, in which case WHY
|
| There are notable unfortunate outcomes however. The small
| diameter bomb, as I understand, did not perform well.
| Russia's GPS jamming is powerful and effective, though
| this isn't as dire as it seems. In a GPS denied
| warfighting environment, the US still builds
| significantly better ordinance guidance systems than
| Russia. The Krasnopol laser guided artillery shell is
| pretty good, and gets you the outcome of an Excalibur
| shell for significantly less money, and is harder to
| defeat electronically. The Lancet is way more cost-
| effective and useful than anything the Switchblade
| company has shat out, and we should be copying it as hard
| as possible _cough_ Anduril _cough_. Russia now has a
| production quantity JDAM style system, which is
| effective.
| tim333 wrote:
| Well fair enough it was a simplification. But two and a
| half years on they are yet to receive a single western
| jet. ATACMS were only supplied very grudgingly with
| instructions not to hit the Russian bases that are daily
| bombing and firing missiles at Ukraine as they are in
| Russia and doing that might upset the Russians. And were
| given partly because some of the ATACMS were scheduled to
| be destroyed due to old age and it would have looked
| embarrassing in America to be doin that while the
| Ukrainians were dying fighting. The Crimea bridge could
| have been taken down by Taurus but that might have
| annoyed Russia etc.
| Beijinger wrote:
| "Russia is having quite a struggle"
|
| Does she? How many people has she lost in the war? She
| lost nearly a 1000 in the second world war. Per hour. So
| in 2-3 days she sustained the losses that the US had in
| Vietnam in a 10 years war.
| tim333 wrote:
| Well, since March 2022 when the Russians occupied 24.4%
| of Ukrainian territory, the Ukrainians have now pushed
| them back to about 16% in return for about 400k Russian
| casualties. It doesn't seem a spectacular success.
|
| Although I'll give you Putin doesn't seem bothered by
| Russian casualties so I guess from that point of view
| all's good.
| Brybry wrote:
| Patriots have intercepted the hypersonic missiles
| (Kinzhal) before [1][2]. The S-400 is not as invincible
| as was touted -- there's plenty of evidence of successful
| drone and missile strikes against Russia by Ukraine. And
| Ukraine is still flying aircraft.
|
| Russia's production isn't almighty either. They purchased
| millions of artillery rounds from North Korea for a
| reason [3].
|
| And I think a big thing to remember is that NATO has tons
| of weapons, they just don't have tons of the weapons that
| are being used in the Ukraine war. The U.S. only fired
| ~34,000 155MM artillery rounds during the Iraq War
| (Second Persian Gulf War). [4]
|
| And yet at the time the US had millions of cluster bombs
| in stockpiles [5]
|
| The Ukraine war definitely seems to be a wakeup call on
| western munition production rates and how mass artillery
| is still important to modern warfare but I don't think
| that means Russia would really stand a chance against
| NATO.
|
| The real reason the conflict (hopefully) will never
| happen is nuclear bombs.
|
| [1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/air-defence-
| systems-rep...
|
| [2] https://www.nytimes.com/live/2023/05/16/world/russia-
| ukraine...
|
| [3] https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/2/28/n-korea-
| sent-russia...
|
| [4] https://www.marinecorpstimes.com/news/your-marine-
| corps/2018...
|
| [5] https://www.hrw.org/legacy/backgrounder/arms/cluster0
| 705/2.h...
| martythemaniak wrote:
| What's funny is that right as you were typing out your
| bullshit, an ATACMS strike took out a S400 battery in
| Donetsk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikgDkf4ATEo
|
| This is the Block I ATACMS which stopped production in
| 1996 and is considered too old to be usable by the US
| Army itself. Mean while the Patriots have no issues
| taking out multiple "hypersonic" missiles, which are
| mostly just marketing bullshit.
| Beijinger wrote:
| The posted article gives quite an impressive Soviet plane
| production. 50% of that of the US.
|
| It was Russia that won the war. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-
| RioU?t=205
|
| And regarding the Ukraine war. Russia's industrial might is
| underestimated. And while it can not match that of the West,
| as a word of caution: China has more industrial capacity than
| the EU and US combined.
|
| Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...
| phatfish wrote:
| > Wars have the nasty habit of taking unexpected turns...
|
| Indeed, after the slaughter of WW2 you would expect
| Russians to be wary of starting wars by invading their
| neighbours.
| mitthrowaway2 wrote:
| I suspect that due to the scale of destruction, WW2 left
| a deep psychological scar on the psyche of soviet
| countries, much deeper than anywhere else. And maybe
| that's why Russia has had such a militaristic and
| aggressively paranoid posture ever since.
| mopsi wrote:
| Over time, the scar transformed into a state religion in
| the USSR: obsessive celebration of all kinds of
| anniversaries, children tortured in schools with made up
| stories of heroism, huge monuments everywhere, TV and
| cinemas filled with endless stream of most inane morally
| black-and-white WWII movies like the worst cowboy flicks.
| Instead of Sunday church, I had to sit in school
| listening to senile veterans who had never seen frontline
| action (but had their chest full of anniversary medals)
| tell fairy tales how they single-handedly destroyed 50
| Tiger tanks and 100 planes and then threw themselves in
| front of a machine gun nest to save their comrades, but
| stepped on a mine while doing so and lost both legs and
| crawled for a week back to their unit, successfully
| avoiding German patrols.
|
| By the 1970s, the WWII mythology (of which a lot was
| entirely made up) had formed the core of the identity of
| "Soviet people" and an excuse for everything. The
| narrative of "Soviet people as the victors of the WWII"
| acted as a God-given right to stomp over other nations,
| because after all, only a fascist would resist the
| glorious Soviet people. The way we see Zelenskyy, a
| Jewish comedian, branded as a Nazi, and the war against
| Ukraine propagandized as a "holy war against Nazism like
| our grandfathers fought", is an echo of that. Doesn't
| make any sense unless you are familiar with the warped
| Soviet WWII mythology.
|
| Aggressive militarism is common in post-war generations
| that grew up with the simplistic brainwashing. There was
| very little militarism in the generation that actually
| saw the war, because the Eastern front was morally an
| ambiguous place. One of my older relatives fought in the
| battle of Velikiye Luki. He always suspected that his
| unit had been placed on purpose into a very poor position
| to wipe them out with German hands for earlier
| insubordination. The unit got hit hard, he got wounded
| and was taken prisoner by Germans. Weeks or months later
| Soviets overran German positions and he was reunited.
|
| As a punishment for being taken prisoner, he was moved to
| a penal battalion, because not fighting until your death
| was officially declared treason. Penal battalion was a
| lighter punishment. Those who had panicked were executed.
| Penal battalions were "dumb meat" used to dig or
| dismantle fortifications under enemy fire, and attack in
| first waves to identify machine gun nests and minefields.
| If they didn't attack with enough enthusiasm, then the
| barrier troops placed behind them would open fire. (This
| practice lives on, as can be seen in Ukraine.) By some
| miracle, he survived it all. Most didn't. You can imagine
| how keen he was to put on his uniform, parade around on
| the V-E day celebrations and listen to speeches how "the
| Soviet people fought united like one man against Nazi
| invaders".
|
| But those who were born much later have no issues acting
| like this:
| https://www.bigstockphoto.com/image-129051800/stock-
| photo-or...
|
| And not only do they cosplay in wartime uniforms, but
| they also the adopt the language of propagandized version
| of history that they've only witnessed from movies, and
| go around yelling how Russia is fighting Nazis again and
| "we won't stop before Berlin".
|
| In a way, that's even understandable. Pre-USSR history is
| beyond living memory, and USSR put a lot of effort into
| creating a cultural disconnect with pre-1917 Russia.
| Older history offers no strong identity, it's just too
| far away to be relevant, it's hard for modern urban
| population to identify with either the imperial nobility
| or with peasantry. Modern Russia offers no identity
| either beyond "superyacht for me and poverty for thee".
| So what's left? Only the militaristic propagandized USSR
| victory narrative that so many cling to, otherwise they'd
| have no identity at all, because that's the only
| meaningful thing in the past century of Russian history.
| lazide wrote:
| Russia has been that way since at least the Mongols. It's
| a property of their location - difficult to defend
| central plains, on the path of many invaders and with
| harsh unyielding winters.
| vkou wrote:
| The experience of WW2 left a deep psychological scar in
| Soviet, and later Russian statesmen, in that the lesson
| they took away from it was "We need to be surrounded by
| buffer and satellite states, so that in a war, they will
| bleed, instead of us." It's why they had absolutely zero
| patience for Georgia and Ukraine turning West-wards.
|
| The scar it left on the population at large was "They
| attacked us, and we suffered a _lot_ , but then we
| _really_ showed them. "
| Beijinger wrote:
| Russia is a country with fluid borders and could not
| allow NATO troops and Rockets in Ukraine in the same way,
| as we could not accept rockets in Cuba.
|
| The war has gone bad for the West now. The EU has very
| little equipment left. Russia loses more tanks in a month
| than many big EU countries have. Germany had ammunition
| for two days of war. After giving a lot to Ukraine, they
| have ammunition for one day of war left.
|
| https://www.thearticle.com/defeat-of-the-west-emmanuel-
| todd-...
|
| Graham's meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr
| Zelenskiy in Kyiv on May 26 "and the Russians are dying
| ...the best money we've ever spent."
|
| Before you downvote you may look up who Emmanuel Todd is.
| When he was a 25y old PhD student in 1976 he predicted
| the collapse of the Soviet Union. This is not a person to
| be taken lightly.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> Russia is a country with fluid borders_
|
| Weird how that fluid always seems to spill outward, and
| never inward, innit?
| hollerith wrote:
| The borders underwent a large inward contraction in 1991.
| kibwen wrote:
| This is still conflating the USSR and Russia. The Russian
| SFSR, AFAICT, had exactly the same borders as Russia did
| before it started biting off pieces of its neighbors.
| hollerith wrote:
| Well, sure, with enough motivated cognition, it is
| possible to fit the facts to your preferred narrative.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| In that case the borders never moved and you can't say
| they only spill outward.
| reisse wrote:
| No, you're wrong here. Russian SFSR initally included the
| whole Central Asia, Caucasus countries, Crimea and
| eastern parts of Ukrainian SSR. Russian SFSR border you
| talking about is from circa 1956.
| racional wrote:
| Except there were no NATO troops or rockets in Ukraine
| when Russia invaded. Nor were there plans to station any.
| mellow-lake-day wrote:
| Soviet Union*
|
| Which is more than just Russia
|
| Ukraine, Belarus, etc are significant contributors and bore
| some of the heavy causalities
|
| Another part of the reason why invading Ukraine was dumb,
| Russia forgot what Ukraine was capable of. Attributing all
| of its success to itself but discounting its partners.
| dylan604 wrote:
| After the wall came down, it turned out that a lot of the
| output of the Soviet military industry wasn't actually
| usable. Lots of shells of tanks, but no motors. Similar to
| China's empty buildings. They put so much emphasis on
| appearances to try to cover up their weaknesses.
| cherryteastain wrote:
| Except you can see China's output on your local
| supermarket's shelves. Soviet Union had practically 0
| exports of any manufactured goods to non Warsaw Pact
| countries.
|
| China may be cooking the books to make their
| GDP/industrial output look a little bit better to hit
| party goals every year, but the ubiquitiy of Chinese
| goods in low to mid value added manufacturing is
| indisputable.
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| Even higher value added manufacturing these days. My
| understanding is that Chinese EVs/batteries and some
| telecoms equipment are highly competitive or better than
| Western equivalents (yes, they got there partially due to
| IP theft and state subsidies but still)
| inglor_cz wrote:
| An anecdote from the former Eastern bloc.
|
| Russian industrial production was usually shit, and
| consumer goods made in USSR were nigh useless. Buying a
| Russian car etc. was folly, and the usual flow of goods
| went in the other direction: East German, Czechoslovak,
| Hungarian industrial and consumer products went to the
| east, while cheap raw materials flowed from the USSR to
| Central Europe.
|
| Chinese industrial production _started_ shit as well, but
| they have been improving by leaps, much like the Japanese
| once did. (Odd to think that both Made in Germany and
| Made in Japan were once intended as warnings, not
| endorsements.) This is what the Russians never achieved.
|
| Aside from vodka and caviar, finding a Russian product in
| a standard European supermarket was a detective task. I
| am sitting now in a fully furnished house and I am almost
| certain that nothing here is made in Russia. While plenty
| of things are made in China.
| kibwen wrote:
| _> The posted article gives quite an impressive Soviet
| plane production. 50% of that of the US._
|
| _" From October 1, 1941, to May 31, 1945, the United
| States delivered to the Soviet Union 427,284 trucks, 13,303
| combat vehicles, 35,170 motorcycles, 2,328 ordnance service
| vehicles, 2,670,371 tons of petroleum products (gasoline
| and oil) or 57.8 percent of the aviation fuel including
| nearly 90 percent of high-octane fuel used,[36] 4,478,116
| tons of foodstuffs (canned meats, sugar, flour, salt,
| etc.), 1,911 steam locomotives, 66 diesel locomotives,
| 9,920 flat cars, 1,000 dump cars, 120 tank cars, and 35
| heavy machinery cars."_
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
|
| Good luck flying those planes without fuel.
| _DeadFred_ wrote:
| Why are you conflating Russia with the Soviet Union?
|
| American production is spread throughout the country.
| China's is pretty much located in the east. Peace time
| production capabilities <> war time production. There is a
| reason the United States is developing Rapid Dragon (https:
| //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid_Dragon_(missile_system) ). In
| a large scale war, the USA's ENTIRE logistics fleet can be
| turned into stand off attack aircraft which will overwhelm
| any local defenses and remove 'peace time' production from
| the board. I wonder why the USA chose to name the system
| after an old Chinese siege weapon?
| FredPret wrote:
| The West rendered massive aid to the USSR in WW2. Lend-lease
| was not only a US-Britain thing.
|
| Tousands of planes and tanks were sent as well as raw materials
| to keep their factories pumping.
|
| This after they were initially on Hitler's side.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease
| cpursley wrote:
| Exactly. And the USSR built more tanks than all the other
| allies combined, while under bombardment.
| kibwen wrote:
| Conveniently forgetting that without the fuel sent by the US,
| those tanks would have been pretty paperweights.
|
| Y'all, it's true historically that the US has oversold its
| personnel contributions to the European theater, but
| overcorrecting with this weird nonsense about the USSR
| single-handedly winning WWII is just beyond bizarre.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I recall Zhukov didn't think they could have won without
| the Wests help in supplying things like Steel, regardless
| of machismo from later USSR leaders who claimed they always
| had it all under control. FDRs death was gravely mourned in
| the Soviet Union. Stalin praised the allies for distracting
| them with the invasion of Italy.
|
| The USSR did the most in that war but they were not in fact
| capable of winning by themselves.
| MaxPock wrote:
| They would have won but it would have taken a little bit
| longer.Lend lease was only 10 % of Soviet materiel
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The Americans had some resources the soviets were in
| short supply of so their impact was greater than them
| just contributing 10% of materiel. Also again, Hitler had
| a lot of resources tied up in the west because of the
| allies.
|
| Germany got pretty close to Moscow. A little different of
| a tactical situation would have been a big deal in that
| theatre of the war.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| > only 10%
|
| That does not mean anything. A car's engine contains only
| 10% of the parts in that car.
| blackoil wrote:
| The difference is mainland US was not at war. They don't
| have to worry about bombing and siege and maintain
| production.
| Koshkin wrote:
| But it was the shipping that was the bitch.
| hollerith wrote:
| And the US sent industrial engineers to help the USSR design
| and improve their factories.
| ranger207 wrote:
| The USSR probably couldn't have won without the US, and the US
| probably couldn't have won without the USSR
| bee_rider wrote:
| Any two of the big 3 (US, SU, UK+commonwealth), plus all the
| partisans and smaller allies could have done it. It was a
| dumb hopeless war that the Nazis picked because their
| ideology was incompatible with accurately evaluating their
| opponents.
|
| But, it is good that all of the allies decided to band
| together and get it down a little bit faster. Every moment
| that Europe spent occupied was just another mountain of human
| suffering. Plus, getting that theater done before nukes
| really became available probably saved some historical German
| cities.
| photochemsyn wrote:
| This is a nice write-up, although it focuses solely on the US
| industrial output, which is indeed impressive, going from ~2,100
| aircraft to ~50,000 in six years. However, that first table
| raises some questions - the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in
| 1939, and the Germans at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?
|
| One major influence is that American industrialists were busy
| expanding global markets and happily supplied their technology
| and manufacturing processes to the two major buyers, Nazi Germany
| and Communist Russia, in the 1930s, with Ford being one of the
| major actors, perhaps more active in Germany:
|
| In Germany:
|
| > "Ford and the Fuhrer: A History of Ford Motor Company's
| Involvement in Nazi Germany" by Paul Ingrassia and Joseph B.
| White: This work delves into Ford's business activities in
| Germany, documenting the introduction of assembly-line
| manufacturing and the company's interactions with the Nazi
| regime."
|
| > "The American Axis: Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, and the Rise
| of the Third Reich" by Max Wallace: This book explores the
| relationship between American industrialists like Henry Ford and
| the Nazi regime, including detailed accounts of Ford's
| manufacturing contributions."
|
| In Soviet Union:
|
| > "Gorky Automobile Plant (GAZ): Built with the technical
| assistance of Ford, the Gorky Automobile Plant began producing
| vehicles using American-style assembly lines. Ford provided
| machinery, blueprints, and training to Soviet engineers and
| workers. Soviet engineers and technicians received training in
| Ford's American factories, learning about assembly line
| production and modern manufacturing techniques."
|
| I don't know if there's a particular moral to this story, other
| than that in search of short-term profit major American
| industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers.
| fransje26 wrote:
| > other than that in search of short-term profit major American
| industrialists were happy to get in bed with any and all buyers
|
| And that has changed since then..?
| vkou wrote:
| > the Soviets were already at ~10,300 in 1939, and the Germans
| at ~8,200. How were they able to do it?
|
| The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy, and
| was not investing in armaments.
|
| The USSR had, between 1917, and 1939:
|
| * Spent six years fighting an incredibly brutal and bloody
| civil war.
|
| * Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.
|
| * Spent another decade putting down various secession
| movements, mostly in central Asia.
|
| * Had multiple minor conflicts with China and Japan.
|
| * Was heavily involved in the Spanish Civil War.
|
| * Also needed a strong, standing army to put down any further
| internal resistance.
|
| * Could smell which way the wind was blowing, and was ready to
| capitalize on German's ambitions in Europe, by taking its chunk
| of Poland (And later invading Finland).
|
| Given all that, it was functioning on a war economy pretty much
| from ~1917 to 1941. (At which point it transitioned to a _total
| war economy_.)
|
| This was all in the context of a strong central push for mass
| industrialization. Steel production alone increased ~5x between
| 1930 and 1940. Up until the Nazis took power, the USSR worked
| very closely on both industrialization, and military armament
| with Weimar Germany. Krupp was building factories in the Don,
| and future Luftwaffe pilots were being trained in Lipetsk.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| >> The US was pursuing a largely isolationist foreign policy
|
| Some people in the US were. FDR was not.
| stoltzmann wrote:
| >* Was attacked by Poland in ~1920.
|
| That's a fun way of saying that the USSR started a war of
| conquest against Poland.
| vkou wrote:
| You're significantly oversimplifying the absolute
| clusterfuck of ethnic and ideological and territorial wars
| that sprung up in the immediate collapse of the Austro-
| Hungarian and Russian empires.
|
| Both of those states fought with the goal of expanding
| their borders to a pre-partition status - the USSR aimed to
| reclaim territories lost in Brest-Litovsk, Poland to
| something resembling the pre-partition commonwealth. Poland
| won the war, and made significant territorial gains, in
| exchange for recognition of Soviet Ukraine... And then 1939
| happened.
| racional wrote:
| _Both of those states fought with the goal of expanding
| their borders to a pre-partition status - the USSR aimed
| to reclaim territories lost in Brest-Litovsk, Poland to
| something resembling the pre-partition commonwealth._
|
| This is actually gets a bit closer to a fair reading of
| the basic cause of the war. But it also glaringly
| contradicts what you just said previously ("Poland
| attacked the USSR in 1920, and that's it"1). If you knew
| this was a gross (and misleading) oversimplification --
| then why did you open with it? And in what year did the
| USSR come into being, again?
|
| Anyway, we're far removed from the topic of the original
| thread. If the two of you want to hash this out amongst
| yourselves, perhaps one of you can start a new top-level
| post on the topic, and see if you can get people to join
| you there.
|
| 1 In the sense of <<Vkusno - i tochka>>
| vkou wrote:
| You are correct.
|
| What I should have said (and couldn't find a way to put
| in a sentence) was that at some point in the
| Polish/Soviet war, Poland was fighting a successful
| offensive in the USSR, won the war, and made territorial
| gains.
|
| I suppose I should have said, well, that.
| racional wrote:
| "In areas that would later become part of the USSR".
|
| Anyway -- much better, thanks for clarifying.
| simplicio wrote:
| Sort of interesting to compare the US experience in WWI, where a
| program to deliver 20k planes by the summer of July 1918 managed
| to get a whopping 196 planes into service before the war ended
| that November.
|
| http://www.worldwar1.com/tgws/relairprod.htm
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| The US was a place of hardworking, talented folks with natural
| geographical safety and a lot of resources. The only thing we
| need to do is stop anti competitive practices, break up
| monopolies, basically keep pure capitalism going.
| akira2501 wrote:
| What this article misses is that the US "private planes" were
| being sold directly to Japan and then being converted into
| military aircraft. What we didn't sell we licensed the designs
| directly to them.
|
| This went on well into the late 1930s. It was recognized as a
| potential problem by some but the profits were large enough that
| these were ignored.
|
| I encourage everyone to read the book "Human Smoke." It is a
| collection of headlines and newspaper excerpts from the period
| surrounding WW2. It's a fascinating read and wonderfully exposes
| all the propaganda driven half truths and complete fabrications
| we've sold ourselves about the conflict ever since it ended.
| Optimal_Persona wrote:
| In "Critical Path", Buckminster Fuller said that US scrap metal
| companies were furiously selling scrap to Germany & Japan in
| 1939 to capitalize on all-time high prices...
| dctoedt wrote:
| > _US scrap metal companies were furiously selling scrap to
| Germany & Japan in 1939_
|
| In Herman Wouk's novel _The Winds of War_ , an admiral,
| aboard an aircraft carrier near Pearl Harbor in 1940 or -41,
| groused to his officers that (paraphrasing from memory)
| "sooner or later the [Japanese] are going to come steaming
| over the horizon, burning Texaco oil and shooting pieces of
| old Buicks at us."
| pjmorris wrote:
| I asked my friend to recommend his favorite historical
| novels, and they were 'The Winds of War' and 'War and
| Remembrance.' It's amazing how much history is embedded in
| them, well worth the time to read.
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| Ukraine to this day still gets most of its gas and oil
| imports from Russia and also continues to transit Russian gas
| through pipelines to Europe.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Weird, but there's probably good reasons. For one, EU
| countries that depend on Russian gas via Ukraine would stop
| their support of Ukraine if they were to stop the flow.
| Robelius wrote:
| Thanks for the rec. I'm going to check out "Human Smoke". Now I
| want to recommend "Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His
| Son"[1] which is a collection of letters that a man, who made
| his wealth through the Chicago meat industry, to his son who
| went to college. It gave a warming perspective of a parent who
| would express his love in one letter, and frustration towards
| his son for showing up to work late in another. It beautifully
| illustrates a "modern" parent-child relationship in a time
| period I often imagine as cold and distant.
|
| [1]https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/21959
| credit_guy wrote:
| Here's an underappreciated fact of history: in WW1 the US was so
| ill prepared that it had to borrow rifles from France.
|
| People now take for granted that "the sleeping giant" was going
| to awake after being attacked. But in WW1 the US was also the
| largest economy in the world, and it did not transform overnight
| in a weapons manufacturing behemoth, like it did in WW2.
|
| If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all
| predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than its
| WW1 experience.
| treme wrote:
| https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-outpacing-us-defense-ind...
|
| China is heavily investing in munitions and acquiring high-end
| weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than the
| United States. China is also the world's largest shipbuilder
| and has a shipbuilding capacity that is roughly 230 times
| larger than the United States. One of China's large shipyards,
| such as Jiangnan Shipyard, has more capacity than all U.S.
| shipyards combined.
|
| "U.S. Defense Industrial Base Is Not Prepared for a Possible
| Conflict with China"
|
| https://features.csis.org/preparing-the-US-industrial-base-t...
| atleastoptimal wrote:
| I don't understand why the US voluntarily gave up its
| significant advantage in manufacturing. Is it just because it
| would be impossible to have an industrial base in a world
| where Asia exists and can produce everything that could be
| built in the US for 1/5 the cost? In every universe where the
| US dollar is significantly stronger than the next greatest
| probable superpower, will that next greatest probable
| superpower always be in a perfect position to exploit this
| disparity and become the de facto world leader in heavy
| industry?
| lazide wrote:
| It's very profitable having someone else make it for 1/5th
| the cost, and as long as it isn't literally artillery and
| stuff, why not?
|
| Or are you saying people wouldn't do something short
| sighted if it made them super rich in the meantime?
| avidiax wrote:
| Turns out that manufacturing toys, consumer electronics,
| semiconductors, etc. is very important for future wars
| that use cheap drones instead of $2,000 155mm artillery
| shells.
|
| It's not clear that we predicted that shift, so it's a
| good reason to maintain some manufacturing capability in
| pretty much all areas, comparative advantage be damned.
| lazide wrote:
| Sounds like a good way to not get your quarterly bonus!
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Wall St. read "the End of History" and assumed China would
| be more invested in friendly relations with their nearest
| neighbors, so to save costs they punished any western
| company that didn't outsource. (Also the politicians
| weren't smart enough to stop this.)
|
| I.e. greed will be the downfall.
| tyre wrote:
| Because capitalism has weaknesses and this is one of them.
| Markets will drift towards efficiency without considering
| externalities. Markets will not drift towards strategic
| manufacturing capacity at a higher cost per unit produced
| without government intervention (subsidies, tariffs.)
|
| So corporations and consumers outsourced because quantity
| at price beat quality and strategic concerns.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| What we have is more corporatism than capitalism - the
| markets are busy working with governments and setting up
| rackets to extract monopolistic rents. I don't have much
| experience with China but from my vantage point it does
| appear that there is quite a lot of competition between
| companies that does not seem to exist in the US to the
| same extent.
| cyberax wrote:
| Uhm. Monopolism is the ultimate fate of unrestricted
| capitalism in established markets.
| panick21_ wrote:
| A claim made by socialist 200 years ago and yet it hasn't
| actually happened. And the minor amount of 'anti-
| monopoly' action taken by governments is hard to credit
| for that.
|
| The reality is that a monopoly is incredibly hard to
| sustain without government. And even in the cases where
| something close to it can be created, they can seldomly
| really push up the price as much as they think.
|
| Historically its governments creating the monopolies most
| of the time.
| immibis wrote:
| That's the result of capitalism, though. What else would
| the markets do? A corporation would be extremely stupid
| not to do these things. You can't have one without the
| other. And if the government was somehow incorruptible,
| as long as there was capitalism, corporations would still
| do their best to corrupt it.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Large governments increase the agency effect and
| incentive for corruption. Many smaller governments
| operating as a federation decrease both of these. It gets
| to a point where it isn't worth the effort or risk to try
| to corrupt the government because you would have to bribe
| too many people and the payoff is too low.
| eru wrote:
| > Markets will drift towards efficiency without
| considering externalities. Markets will not drift towards
| strategic manufacturing capacity at a higher cost per
| unit produced without government intervention (subsidies,
| tariffs.)
|
| Well, and why would we expect them to take that into
| account?
|
| Btw, there are good and (mostly) bad ways to do these
| interventions. Tariffs are especially bad.
|
| A lot of the discussion of these measures also treats all
| foreigners the same. Eg in practice a chip being produced
| in eg Canada is virtually as good for national security
| as one produced in the US. But acts like the 'CHIPS and
| Science Act' don't see it that way.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Yes, tariffs are especially bad if you want to get paid
| big bucks for the genius business plan of overseeing
| labor and environmental arbitrage.
|
| The US industrialized itself with tariffs and
| deindustrialized itself by removing them.
| MaxPock wrote:
| "Markets will drift towards efficiency" Isn't this
| actually one of the benefits of capitalism ? Either you
| let capitalism allocate capital or you let the government
| -which makes you a communist.
| trashtensor wrote:
| > Isn't this actually one of the benefits of capitalism ?
|
| Is it a benefit if that efficiency turns your
| industrialized economy into a financialized economy that
| can't manufacture enough bullets to fight a war that you
| start?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Capitalism and corporatism is not the same. Corporatism
| is a bit socialist in it's essence.
|
| In classical capitalism, there aren't two or three
| monopolistic players that dominate each industry, there
| are thousands of companies competing with each other. And
| that competition brings costs down, so no outsourcing is
| needed.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Nope. That's not at all what those terms mean. Capitalism
| is not "when competition," and socialism is not "when no
| competition."
|
| Capitalism = private ownership of means of production
|
| Socialism = collective ownership of means of production
|
| Capitalist monopolies are privately owned. A monopoly is
| no less privately owned than a minor company in a sector
| with healthy competition, and there is nothing remotely
| collective about a monopoly. A lack of competition does
| not in any way mean that "the people" own the
| organization. Not theoretically, and not actually.
|
| Collectively owned socialist enterprises are not
| necessarily free of competition. In fact, heated
| competition over quotas had a lot to do with many of
| socialism's worst blunders.
|
| Competition does not remotely guarantee that costs are
| low by international standards either.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Corporatism is a bit socialist in it's essence.
|
| They are orthogonal; it is possible to have socialist
| corporatism, but there is nothing inherently socialist
| about corporatism (or inherently corporatist about
| socialism.)
| torginus wrote:
| Do they though?
|
| Imo markets tend to have 2 trajectories. Either the
| market leader builds a moat that precludes competition
| (often through semi-illegal means).
|
| Or the companies engange in fierce competition and the
| big players will either outspend or outproduce or
| straight up buy their competitors which tends to result
| in either monopolies or oligopolies with barely any
| competition.
|
| This is when the enshittification begins.
| Lutger wrote:
| Exactly. This is why the European single market is so
| regulated. Not because it is a socialist market, quite
| the opposite. It wants to save capitalism both from
| itself and from the protectionism of its states. The
| European project is a deeply capitalist project.
| Lutger wrote:
| If by benefit you mean existential risk, then yes. A big
| benefit. Although in the end, these kinds of markets
| might drift into oblivion as well, by virtue of being
| conquered by stronger states. So in that sense, it will
| all sort itself out. You may get slain by by communists,
| but at least you're not a communist yourself. So there's
| that.
| schmidtleonard wrote:
| Selling the industrial plant of the United States to
| Communist China is truly one of the moves of all time.
| paganel wrote:
| It was supposed to turn the Chinese into capitalists, and
| hence into potential allies. They're not communists any
| more, that's for sure, of course, they're not Western
| "liberal-democrats", either, which is why the West is in
| this whole conundrum.
| panick21_ wrote:
| Yes it is a benefit of capitalism. But capitalism isn't
| perfect if you are in a long term strategic battle.
|
| That is why states that created capitalism like Dutch and
| British always had a strong comportment of fiscal-
| military state where the government made sure that they
| could defend their country and their trade.
|
| The problem is that if somebody much larger then you
| comes along, this gets increasingly difficult. Specially
| if they are part of the same world and market as you. As
| Britain learned with the rise of Germany and far more so
| the US.
|
| The US basically invited China, because they were
| concerned about the Soviets. This was smart in a struggle
| with the soviets. But unfortunately China was the much
| larger strategic danger all along.
|
| The good thing is, that if China continues on along the
| same lines, the US will continue to do pretty well in a
| China dominated world. Just as Britain do in a US one.
| And as the Dutch did in a British one.
|
| The question is, if China will behave the same or not in
| the long term given that they are not democratic and not
| even slightly germanic.
| pitaj wrote:
| Have you ever heard about the Jones Act? The US tried to
| specifically keep shipmaking capabilities, but implementing
| such protectionism arguably backfired. The point is, what
| policies would you have implemented to keep that
| manufacturing capacity?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Financialization is eating the rest of the economy. That
| is the beast that must be slain if we wish to survive.
| Since that is not going to happen I think it is wise to
| instead prepare for the worst.
| eru wrote:
| The question is, how would you do that preparation?
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps
| move to a country that maintains cordial relationships
| with both China and the US. I'm preparing by learning how
| to design and make things so I can do my own
| manufacturing in-house to minimize dependency on supply
| lines that could be disrupted. Manufacturing technology
| is has improved in leaps and bounds. It's much easier
| that it used to be. And I can do all this from a self
| sufficient homestead deep in the forest.
| eru wrote:
| > Some countries will fair better than others, so perhaps
| move to a country that maintains cordial relationships
| with both China and the US.
|
| I moved to Singapore a while ago. Not for those reasons,
| but being on good terms with almost anyone certainly is a
| nice bonus.
|
| Though my question was rather, what policies would a
| country want to adopt?
|
| > Manufacturing technology is has improved in leaps and
| bounds. It's much easier that it used to be. And I can do
| all this from a self sufficient homestead deep in the
| forest.
|
| Yes, but that's essentially just a hobby or at most craft
| production. So that is neither competitive as mass
| production in peace time, nor of much use for mass
| production in wartime.
|
| (It definitely sounds like a great hobby, though!)
| Teever wrote:
| A mostly self-sufficient homestead isn't a hobby, it's a
| way of life.
|
| And the user you're replying to is advocating for that
| way of life because they are predicting a severe downfall
| in the quality of life for those who stay in the global
| system.
|
| I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to be
| right.
| eru wrote:
| > I have a sneaking suspicion that they're going to be
| right.
|
| Over what time horizon? The market consensus is
| definitely not giving this a big probability any time
| soon.
| Teever wrote:
| I'm skeptical that market consensus (whatever that really
| means anyways) is good at predicting events like
| ecological collapse and deranged authoritarians launching
| senseless wars of aggression.
| wumbo wrote:
| I don't doubt the danger, but I still feel safer in a
| city with people to trade with than going full Walden
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| You can still trade with people when living outside of a
| city. I don't expect complete civilizational collapse,
| there will still be roads and internet, I just like
| living remote.
| wumbo wrote:
| If we need to grow our own food, gasoline is a problem
| for most American ideas of remote homesteading.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| With some modifications you can run cars on ammonia which
| can be made, albeit inefficiently at small scales, from
| solar power. Perhaps some new catalyst or meta-material
| would enable a more efficient process.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| Being on nice terms is a policy. One way is by having a
| defensive oriented army and not getting involved in
| conflicts. Big chunks of the world already do this.
|
| While I am treating it as a hobby I do have a garage full
| of CNCs, 3D printers, laser cutters, a pretty complete
| machine shop and the ability to do some foundry work. I
| am not expecting a complete collapse of society, mainly
| the collapse of the middle class as gradually the things
| they need get more expensive and they earn less. Being
| able to make stuff myself is already saving me money -
| you'd be surprised that for many of the bespoke things I
| need it is far cheaper to make it myself than send it out
| to a job shop. The idea is to be able to make replacement
| parts to contribute to the success of my local community
| so that it's in their interest to shield me from whatever
| is going on beyond my gates.
| logicchains wrote:
| Bring back something like Bretton Woods. When it ended in
| the 70s and the dollar was no longer tethered to anything
| physical, is when the financial system started eating up
| more and more of the economy. Using the financial system
| as the middleman for money creation (as opposed to e.g.
| directly depositing helicopter money into people's
| accounts, or having a non-inflationary currency)
| necessarily entailed a continuous transfer of wealth from
| main street to wall street.
| yardstick wrote:
| Probably a policy that directs funds, every year, to
| building ships and other critical things. Possibly to
| state owned construction conglomerates. Essentially what
| already happens with Boeing, Lockheed etc for military
| aircraft.
| pjc50 wrote:
| > Essentially what already happens with Boeing
|
| You want to subsidize a failing company?
|
| The deeper problem is that, while the war isn't
| happening, the war products are _not critical_. It doesn
| 't matter whether they work or are delivered. Even the
| medium scale wars the US did maintain over the past
| couple of decades to keep the machine going showed that
| various areas were just fleecing them for inadequate
| products or regular grift (like the vanishing Afghan
| government). Much of the Pacific fleet's maintenance
| budget was being stolen by one guy named "Fat Leonard".
| This sort of thing doesn't go away until the war is
| _actually_ critical rather than something you can escape
| by turning off the news.
| bluGill wrote:
| The US Navy builds a lot of ships and submarines in the
| US.
| csomar wrote:
| I think the US underestimated the capacity of the Chinese
| to grow this much this fast. To give you an example, India
| in 1960 had double the gdp per capita of that of China.
| China now has x5 the per capita of India. That's 10 times
| more growth than India.
| k12sosse wrote:
| The "gave it up" to make the elite even richer, offshoring
| everything in the name of returns on shareholder
| investments.
|
| People like to complain that it's the labour market, that
| nobody wanted the jobs.. but that's a lie told to stop the
| masses from organizing and putting some heads on pikes.
| jltsiren wrote:
| China had a steady supply of cheap skilled labor.
| Automation has made that less important than it used to be,
| but back then it was a decisive advantage. At least when
| combined with good enough quality and sufficient political
| stability.
|
| One mistake the US did was switching from defined benefit
| pensions to individual retirement savings. When the stock
| market is something you hear about in the news, most people
| don't really care about it. But when you see it in your
| retirement account balance, it becomes relevant. If
| outsourcing to China is good for the stock market, you vote
| politicians who make it easier.
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| > _One mistake the US did was switching from defined
| benefit pensions to individual retirement savings._
|
| Depending on how the pension system is setup, it could
| become an indefinite pyramid scheme. You end with
| countries like Canada (and many in places like Europe)
| constantly importing immigrant labor just to prop up the
| older generations' retirement. It kicks the ball down the
| road.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Europe isn't importing immigrants to prop up the
| pensions...
| KRAKRISMOTT wrote:
| I am sure Merkel accepted the Arab Spring refugees out of
| the goodness of her heart.
| geysersam wrote:
| Not out of goodness of heart, but out of ideological
| conviction and obligation to international refugee
| conventions
| immibis wrote:
| Please. Powerful countries ignore international
| conventions at their leisure. Germany included.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| She desperately wanted to avoid "bad scenes" at German
| borders.
|
| IDK if the book of journalist Robin Alexander "Die
| Getriebenen" ( _the driven ones_ , meaning top German
| politicians driven by events) was ever translated to
| English, but that guy had daily access to the Chancellory
| and describes the situation to a T.
|
| Merkel built her career on media appeasement and an
| illusion that Germany is in such good hands that nothing
| untoward can happen to it. It sort-of worked until 2015,
| when the outside world could not be kept at bay anymore.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| Even if the will to have younger blood to fuel the
| economy is a driver for such a move, it has nothing to do
| with propping up pensions: in an aging population you'll
| need people working in your country if you want to keep
| things running, no matter how your pensions are being
| paid...
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I think she actually did, that and her Christian beliefs.
| Not all of politics is cynical, sometimes politicians are
| selfish and unreasonable and act on their principles.
| There were more fiscally prudent ways for Germany to
| increase its population for various political and
| economic ends if Merkel so chose to use them.
| diordiderot wrote:
| Yes it is.
| concordDance wrote:
| How do you know?
| rlf_dev wrote:
| Portuguese here, yes we most definitely are. It's been of
| the arguments to support immigration by the previous
| government since they usually are always net contributors
| to Seguranca Social (Social Security).
| littlestymaar wrote:
| It's not because a politician say something that it's
| true, you should know better ;).
|
| The reason why governments promote immigration is because
| they want to increase the workforce (and in the case of
| Portugal, replace all the emigrants from Portugal). As
| the population is aging, if you want to keep cheap labor
| you need new arms to work, no matter who pays for the
| pensions.
| geysersam wrote:
| No idea what you are talking about. Europe has a wide
| variety of different pension systems, many are based on
| stock market investments. Very few countries in Europe
| takes in significant numbers of migrants, generally
| Europe is very anti-immigrant.
| reisse wrote:
| > Very few countries in Europe takes in significant
| numbers of migrants
|
| Yes, but that's the biggest EU countries and they take a
| lot of migrants. Wikipedia says 18% of Germany population
| are first-generation immigrants. In comparison, in US
| it's only 14%. For the whole EU the number is around 11%.
|
| > generally Europe is very anti-immigrant.
|
| From what I know about "how to legally immigrate to US"
| vs "how to legally immigrate to Europe", the latter is
| much easier. The public sentiment might be there, but the
| laws say the other way.
| fifilura wrote:
| What are the numbers if you compare Germany to
| California, including people moving in from other states
| of the US?
|
| Remember that EU has a free flow of work force, so I
| expect lots of those 18% will come from Netherlands or
| France.
|
| In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from
| neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
| biztos wrote:
| In Germany when one talks about "migration background"
| one is not talking about fellow EU citizens, nor about
| immigrants from the US, Australia, etc.
|
| But if you take the broader, official definition then you
| get something like 30% apparently:
|
| https://www.bpb.de/kurz-knapp/zahlen-und-fakten/soziale-
| situ...
| reisse wrote:
| > Remember that EU has a free flow of work force, so I
| expect lots of those 18% will come from Netherlands or
| France.
|
| What's the point for the native citizen of Netherlands or
| France in moving to Germany? The quality of life and
| salaries are similar, but the culture context is just so
| different between these countries. Completely different
| languages, different customs, etc. The numbers surely
| confirm that - the France is in the bottom of the list,
| and Netherlands are not even included. [1]
|
| Anyway, out of ~14 million foreigners in Germany only 5
| million are from other EU states, and most of them (~3
| million) are from Eastern European countries (Poland,
| Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary).
|
| > In Sweden at least, immigration was always biggest from
| neighboring countries (e.g. Finland/Norway)
|
| There are less cultural differences between Sweden,
| Finland and Norway. At least they have more or less
| similar languages (ok, Finnish is different, but Sweden
| is also an official language in Finland).
|
| 1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-
| Environment/Popula...
| fifilura wrote:
| Right. It also highlights the extreme situation we have
| with Russias brutal and illegal invasion of Ukraine.
|
| Ukraine (oustide EU sofar) is number two on the list
| afger Turkey and also Russia is pretty far up.
| Scarblac wrote:
| Is that maybe including immigrants from other EU
| countries? If so then that's a very misleading number to
| compare to the US's.
| reisse wrote:
| Out of ~14 million foreigners in Germany only 5 million
| are from other EU states, and most of them (~3 million)
| are from Eastern European countries (Poland, Romania,
| Bulgaria, Croatia and Hungary). [1]
|
| Then, why is it misleading to compare Polish and Romanian
| immigrants to Germany with Mexican immigrants to US?
|
| 1. https://www.destatis.de/EN/Themes/Society-
| Environment/Popula...
| Scarblac wrote:
| Because California probably has lots of immigrants from
| other US states too, and they should be counted too to
| make the numbers comparable.
| geysersam wrote:
| > From what I know about "how to legally immigrate to US"
| vs "how to legally immigrate to Europe", the latter is
| much easier.
|
| I don't know what your experience is, but immigrating
| legally to the EU is not easy unless you're from a rich
| country like the US.
| kaashif wrote:
| But immigrating to the US is difficult even if you're
| from a rich country like one in the EU.
| mcny wrote:
| > But immigrating to the US is difficult even if you're
| from a rich country like one in the EU.
|
| If you are thinking like my Portuguese friend complaining
| about how "hard" it was because it took six months to
| immigrate to the US, you have no idea how hard it is for
| other people to come to the US legally.
| kaashif wrote:
| No, I'm talking about being completely unable to
| immigrate because they can't find an employer to sponsor
| them. I'm talking about failing the H1B lottery for years
| and having to leave.
|
| I'm not talking about filing paperwork taking a long
| time.
|
| I agree it's harder if you're not from a developed
| country, but it's hard for a lot of people across the
| board.
| reisse wrote:
| Never said it is easy, it's just much easier than
| immigrating to the US.
|
| Legally immigrating to the US (getting a residence
| permit) is either a matter of luck (lotteries),
| extraordinary skills, very long waiting lists, or a
| combination of these.
|
| On the contrary, immigrating to the EU is "just" finding
| a job on the local market and applying for some
| paperwork. And the EU does not discriminate you on the
| basis of the country where you've been born.
| Propelloni wrote:
| You make it sound like that's a bad thing. If you can get
| a job, hold it, and obey the law, why would it be
| important where you have been born?
| Teever wrote:
| > Wikipedia says 18% of Germany population are first-
| generation immigrants.
|
| Are they counting EU citizens living in Germany?
| matthewdgreen wrote:
| This happens in any pension system you design. If you
| invest your retirement savings in stocks, you're not
| magically wealthy: you're just finding another mechanism
| to have younger workers pay for older retirees. And if
| the stocks you buy are heavily invested in foreign
| countries with authoritarian governments and low birth
| rates, you're trading one problem for different ones.
| billfor wrote:
| It is not the pension system per se, but the national
| debt that is the pyramid scheme requiring a growing
| population.
| torginus wrote:
| I think it's much better that ordinary people actually
| are active participants in how money is made and value is
| created, and have some control of their own destinies,
| even if that pushes some burden onto the individual.
|
| The alternative is having the worldview that money is
| something that shows up on your bank account on the first
| days of the month.
| ben_w wrote:
| > The alternative is having the worldview that money is
| something that shows up on your bank account on the first
| days of the month.
|
| I think that is how normal people (is the term
| "unsophisticated investors" or does that mean something
| importantly different?) view sock market investments --
| sure, it _says_ your investment may go down as well as
| up, but how many normal people doing investments act like
| that 's true?
| immibis wrote:
| If we believed that was true, we wouldn't invest. At
| retirement, a 100% chance of $X is worth much more than a
| 50% chance of $2X and a 50% chance of $0.
| ben_w wrote:
| The average person has a worse understanding of
| investments than does ChatGPT, including with regard to
| logical consistency and following the implications of
| what they say they believe. This is also why so many
| treat lotteries and pyramid schemes as "good
| investments".
|
| Even one step up from that, my dad's advice to me was:
| "Invest in Lloyds bank, if they go under we have bigger
| problems". We had bigger problems.
|
| (To riff off what some ancient dead Greek philosopher
| said, the only reason I can meaningfully regard myself as
| better informed than most, is that I am aware of how
| little I know).
| faeriechangling wrote:
| Defined benefit pensions themselves are set to implode
| once population growth stops - they are a Ponzi scheme
| that will break down within a hundred years resulting in
| at least a reduction in benefits.
| deepsun wrote:
| Don't see how it can "implode" -- the pensions would just
| get smaller.
|
| Similar thing happened e.g. after fall of USSR -- elderly
| people simply became poorer with way less buying power
| they expected.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| > Don't see how it can "implode" -- the pensions would
| just get smaller.
|
| You are describing an implosion - something getting
| smaller.
| BeetleB wrote:
| > Don't see how it can "implode" -- the pensions would
| just get smaller.
|
| Two problems with this:
|
| First, it will get small enough that you won't have a
| retirement and will work till you die.
|
| Second, reducing pensions tends to be quite unpopular,
| and when chasing profits for the current quarter, CFO's
| don't care about the unsustainability of pensions decades
| down the road. By the time they have to deal with it,
| it's too late.
|
| Oregon still has a defined benefits pension for its
| workers, and the problem is here and now. Small towns
| cannot afford to hire more firefighters, police, etc as
| their population grows because more and more of the money
| they have is going into paying out the defined pensions.
| They keep getting around this problem by taking out more
| loans to sustain those pensions. Despite the problem
| being _now_ , they cannot politically reduce benefits for
| new hires.
| fastaguy88 wrote:
| Under-funded defined benefit pensions may be a Ponzi
| scheme. But properly funded (X% of salary per month,
| calculated to cover future costs) defined benefit
| pensions are significantly cheaper for a given level of
| benefits, because they only pay out only until the
| beneficiaries die. Employee owned accounts (IRAs, 503Bs)
| are passed on to the next generation. Good for the kids,
| but not for the parents or the company.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Defined benefit and defined contribution plans both have
| access to the same government bonds and private markets.
| If a 401k can fund a retirement, so can a pension fund.
| Likewise, if broad changes to the economy cause a
| reduction in pension benefits, those changes will also
| result in reduced benefits for 401k owners.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Because the "elite" that actually make US economic policy
| made a mint on it and could engage in their all time
| favorite activity in the world:
|
| undercutting and destroying the financial viability of
| unions and labor
|
| The rich don't actually care about how much money they
| have, they care about how much money they have relative to
| other people. Hollowing out the middle class meant while
| milking profits from cheap overseas near-slave labor? My
| god, so many billionaire boners.
|
| Why do you think nothing tangible has been done about
| illegal immigration in, what, 40, 50 years now? Something
| that massively increases the number of desperate workers to
| undermine labor supply and union-based manual labor and
| trades?
|
| As it stands now, this problem will self-correct because
| manufacturing WILL onshore. It has to. China is dropping
| the hammer on economic reforms and ratcheting up
| totalitarian control, to say nothing of demographic bombs,
| the real estate / regional debt crisis, and the inevitable
| sanctions from a Taiwan invasion.
|
| Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have
| carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore more
| than a hundred miles or so.
|
| The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food imports
| and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most domestic food)
| shipments in Malaysia at will and ... China starves a
| couple months later.
|
| The policy that needs to be pursued isn't one of China as a
| dangerous peer state. That has already passed. The policy
| is to deal with China as a dangerous collapsing state. It's
| kind of the same effect (manufactured goods being shut off,
| reestablishing more domestic production and manufacturing),
| just with or without overt warfare.
|
| IMO this is an opportunity for greenfield modern
| manufacturing construction: lots of automation, lots of
| modern EV-based low cost low carbon transportation and
| infrastructure, building up the domestic energy industry
| around alternative energy on a fundamentally cheap basis
| never seen before.
|
| One way to do this is to intelligently allow the best and
| brightest in China to immigrate. They'll certainly want to
| get out...
|
| As for the article, it was a lot easier to crank out
| airplanes when they were basically automobiles with
| different body shapes. These weren't turbojets, they were
| ICE engine-powered prop planes. Yes that handwaves a
| massive amount of engineering and retooling, but it wasn't
| like ICE engine designers suddenly needed to learn how chip
| manufacturing worked.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| >> US Navy can blockade China's food imports and
| petroleum
|
| It can't, as long as China has atomic bombs and ICBMs to
| deliver them.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 1) China won't care about the starvation of a half
| billion people. That's the totalitarian effect.
|
| 2) That is suicide for the CCP. They may be crazy
| authoritarian, but they aren't suicidal.
|
| By the same justification, China won't invade Taiwan
| because we "have atomic bombs and the ICBMs to deliver
| them". But it's pretty inevitable they will.
| ovi256 wrote:
| The US 5th fleet can just stop policing the Bab-el-Mandeb
| strait and the various local peoples would hinder
| maritime traffic through piracy and ransom. Those can't
| be stopped with ICBMs.
| panick21_ wrote:
| But it can be stopped by other governments and it can be
| stopped by ship owners simply taking defense into their
| own hands. If prices are high enough.
|
| Pirates can almost never fully cut off a shipping lane.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The US 5th fleet can just stop policing the Bab-el-
| Mandeb strait and the various local peoples would hinder
| maritime traffic through piracy and ransom. Those can't
| be stopped with ICBMs.
|
| While it would be a particularly horrific way to deal
| with the problem, the local people in the area of the
| Bab-el Mandeb strait and their capacity to interfere with
| international shipping can, in fact, be stopped with
| ICBMs.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have
| carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore
| more than a hundred miles or so.
|
| >The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food
| imports and petroleum (as in, fertilizer so ... most
| domestic food) shipments in Malaysia at will and ...
| China starves a couple months later.
|
| The fact is that China do not have ships because they
| don't intend to do large scale invasions thousands of
| miles from home.
|
| US Navy can't blockade China because the have enough
| missiles to destroy 100 times more ships. And they have
| the capacity to fab more than 1000 missiles per day.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I agree in many respects that the US surface fleet is
| basically obsolete against a power with a decent supply
| of antiship ballistics, but US nuclear submarines are an
| entirely different matter.
| CraigJPerry wrote:
| I don't know enough to form an opinion but there's an
| entertaining geopolitics chap called Peter Zeihan who's
| thesis is basically exactly what you've said.
|
| He's one of these folks who are really engaging to listen
| to and he uses a fun argument style like Simon Sinek
| where he presents stuff in a way that leaves you to put
| 2+2 together and feel smart about yourself when you think
| "aha! 4!" Just before he says "4".
|
| That argument style seems to be like catnip for me so
| when I recognise it I have to force myself out of the
| "well that's obviously true" mindset I've fallen into and
| go spot check a few of the facts he shares during his
| opinions. Maybe about 1/3rd of them don't hold.
|
| It leaves me thinking he's probably meaningfully wrong
| but like I say I don't have enough knowledge to say for
| sure, just using a simple heuristic of "is this person's
| argument consistent?". I haven't decided one way or the
| other, I just rate his thesis "caution, may not be true"
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I consume a lot of Zeihan. He's a dramatic clickbait
| artist in many respects, but his "takes" are nonetheless
| often based in a lot of truth, just projected too
| quickly.
|
| He's been saying China would collapse for quite a while,
| but only recently have I seen a lot of other geopolitical
| types go from poo-pooing him to essentially agreeing with
| him.
|
| He still has a very strongly petrodollar/petroleum
| dominates the economy/alt energy isn't important, but a
| lot of that is because the tech churn in batteries/solar
| panels is so rapid. He doesn't really appreciate what
| sodium ion will bring to the table for example, he still
| thinks batteries can't scale because of limited cobalt
| and nickel, which is a two year old take.
|
| He is still a bit too dramatic on open seas
| piracy/reduction of the US Navy, but I've seen him reduce
| that take. Really the open seas and global trade are
| going to disrupt because between Russia in Ukraine and
| China doing the Taiwan invasion, there's going to be a
| LOT of global trade disruption.
|
| At this point I agree with his China take because it has
| four different fronts which are conspiring. Demographic
| collapse didn't cause Japan to completely fall apart, but
| demographic collapse + totalitarian incompetence
| absolutely can.
|
| I also haven't seen as many rebuke videos of his China
| take, and the US and its megaconglomerates are definitely
| shortening their supply chain and re-shoring
| manufacturing already. The most public one is the fab act
| (which will also expose Taiwan to a higher risk of
| invasion).
| gwervc wrote:
| > The fact is the US Navy can blockade China's food
| imports and petroleum
|
| Yeah sure, just like Russian economy was supposed to fall
| in a few months after sanctions.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| Russia has its own domestic oil supply.
|
| China does not. It is that simple, basically.
| lossolo wrote:
| China have access to Russia through land and they are
| building new pipeline that should start operating this
| year
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-says-oil-
| pipel...
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| A single cross continental pipeline will not supply a
| nation of 1-point-whatever (statistics are in flux on a
| monthly basis) billion people.
|
| Ukraine alone can take that out. Cruise missiles,
| sabotage, special forces, mercenaries. You don't even
| need to explicitly destroy it, Russians and Chinese build
| poor infrastructure.
|
| Sarah Paine, a prof at the Naval War college really
| opened my eyes to this and the Belt and Road. Marine
| shipping is basically free. Keeping rail lines and
| pipelines intact over thousands and thousands of miles in
| Asia through desert wastes, mountains, tundra, and a half
| dozen politically iffy -stans is not a recipe for
| efficient trade logistics.
|
| And China and Russia hate each other. Strange bedfellows,
| but would China want to rely on Russia for oil if it
| invades Taiwan and Russia has their country's oil supply
| in a firm iron grip? Putin? Nope nope nope.
| lossolo wrote:
| > A single cross continental pipeline will not supply a
| nation of 1-point-whatever (statistics are in flux on a
| monthly basis) billion people.
|
| As another comment in this thread has already mentioned,
| they have sufficient local production to fuel their war
| machine, while restricting other uses.
|
| > Ukraine alone can take that out.
|
| It's actually quite interesting. Are you aware that there
| is a pipeline running from Russia through Ukraine that
| pumps Russian gas to the EU? Ukraine earns $800 million
| USD a year from this. Then, they buy back that gas. Life
| is a little more complicated than it seems.
|
| > And China and Russia hate each other. Strange
| bedfellows, but would China want to rely on Russia for
| oil if it invades Taiwan and Russia has their country's
| oil supply in a firm iron grip? Putin? Nope nope nope.
|
| It doesn't matter whether they hate or love each other,
| the only thing that matters is interests. Stalin was
| called a dictator and a ruthless killer by the West, but
| when he changed sides, he was suddenly 'Uncle Joe.'
|
| China will only invade Taiwan if the US forces their
| hand. In the short term, it's against their interests to
| invade Taiwan, just as Taiwan prefers to maintain the
| status quo. They know that if they invade, the US can
| say, 'You see? We told you. Look what they are doing'
| which would result in sanctions from the US and EU and
| lead to internal problems. Why would they do it? It's
| neither logical nor rational, and it goes against their
| culture. There's a Chinese saying: 'The wise win before
| the fight while the ignorant fight to win'.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| To your point, China is no longer in the Western
| interest. That is what it is about. COVID has permanently
| changed the tenor of Chinese-based manufacturing. And the
| US Government is taking huge steps to start addressing
| its logistical dependence on China.
|
| Now when I say that, I mean "in 5-10 years for some
| substantively detectible change" not "next month".
|
| The United States/Americas is quite well positioned for
| resource independence since the Bakken Shale became so
| productive. They are globally dominant still militarily.
| The only weakness is the offshored manufacturing, and as
| I stated in a different comment, the world that supported
| China being the manufacturing center of the US is OVER.
| It died with Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting
| supply lines, the autocratic power convergence of Xi. End
| of an era. 75 years of free seas trade "end of history"
| type thinking is over.
|
| "US forces their hand" ummmmmmmmm what would the US do
| that would "force their hand"? That's a WEIRD comment. Of
| course the US is quietly and carefully going to draw down
| their manufacturing dependence over a decade. Of course
| China can trump up some Gulf of Tonkin incident or
| affront to provoke casus belli.
|
| You are ascribing FAR too much intellectual stability to
| the Chinese government. The Chinese government is now an
| unopposed Kim-style autocrat. There is only what the dear
| leader wants, and the dear leader wants to be as Dear a
| Leader with capital letters as possible.
|
| If invading Taiwan is what dear leader wants and it
| matches some false rallying war rhetoric that dear leader
| wants about "restoring China" as it demographically
| declines, then dear leader will do that. The CCP is
| actively crushing independent action by China's major
| corporations. They are installing "thought police" in
| every country, and the population is being subjected to
| higher and higher degrees of surveillance and control.
| This is not conducive to a functioning economy in the
| long run.
|
| Oh, and as for your proverb: China has already lost the
| long run. They didn't establish themselves as a
| benevolent world power and construct their own political
| sphere. They do not have resource independence. Their
| demographics are collapsing. Their society is becoming
| closed, oppressive, authoritarian, and corrupt. And the
| world that powered their economic wunderkind of free open
| seas trade is ending.
|
| BRICS by the way is NOT a sphere of influence. Russia and
| India hate China, South Africa is a western country by
| nature, and Brazil is an Americas country.
|
| If you can explain how the long term economics of China
| will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and
| a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.
| panick21_ wrote:
| In general I don't disagree with your point. People can
| go to far on China in how powerful they are. But I think
| you are going to far in the other direction.
|
| You have a lot of confidence in the US to implement smart
| long term thinking industrial policy. Despite the US
| having shown to be very bad at that for a long time.
|
| For a country that can seem to figure out how to build a
| single high speed train line or figure out that having a
| subway makes a lot of sense.
|
| While the other country builds high speed train lines all
| over the place and has many cities building more subways
| then all of the US combined.
|
| We can look at EVs as well. China dominates the supply
| chain and production.
|
| Yes the US
|
| > If you can explain how the long term economics of China
| will survive crushing authoritarianism, isolationism, and
| a sharp demographic decline, I'm all ears.
|
| Authoritarianism increases and decreases over time. China
| has been well functioning for a while now. Claiming that
| Authoritarianism is gone ruin everything they do is
| questionable at best. Our actual insight into China
| government internals isn't mostly guesswork. Specially as
| there is lots of evidence that US democracy isn't
| actually producing fantastic long term thinking.
|
| China isn't actually isolated right now. And they wont be
| unless they make pretty fundamental mistakes.
|
| The West in totality is also suffering demographic
| decline. Specially Japan.
|
| Its kind of Ironic that the fear of 'overpopulation'
| pushed by idiot leftists intellectuals in the West was
| the greatest strategic weapon ever invented against
| China.
|
| > They didn't establish themselves as a benevolent world
| power and construct their own political sphere.
|
| They are increasing their influence in lots of places.
| And lots of other places are willing to go with the flow.
| One can imagine a future where Russia, Central Asia,
| Iran, Pakistan and many South East Asian countries become
| influenced by China over time. The same goes for Africa.
|
| And places like UAE/Saudi and co aren't actually US
| allies in any meaningful way and would happily turn to
| China if they thought it gave them an advantage.
|
| China doesn't need to lead them as the US leads NATO, but
| if they are all opposed to the 'Western Order' its gone
| be tough.
|
| > They do not have resource independence.
|
| But they do actually have control over lots of resources
| and refinement currently that would be incredibly hard
| for the West to be without. It would take very long for
| the West to produce sufficient amounts of these things.
| So I think in practice a divided market would be
| catastrophic for both sides.
|
| Practically speaking the West does not have resource
| independence. And even best case, it would take decades
| to have it.
|
| If China really wanted they could mass produce nuclear
| reactors and produce carbon fuel as needed. Its only a
| matter of investment. They have the Uranium/Thorium to do
| it. And if you do it at scale its not that expensive. If
| China were actually preparing for a serious war they
| would do this.
|
| This leads me to think that China and the US will
| continue to rattle their chains at each other for decades
| to come with neither actually doing anything to throw
| over the apple cart.
| lossolo wrote:
| > US Navy can blockade China's food imports and petroleum
|
| It's such an unrealistic comment. Have you seen the new
| Navy report in Congress? Have you seen the yearly
| Congress report about Chinese rocket capabilities from
| the last few months? Have you seen the results of the war
| games in the South China Sea, most of which were lost by
| the US?
|
| "US Congressmen: 90% of US fighter jets in the Western
| Pacific will be destroyed within hours of a US-China
| conflicts by missiles. The military bases being mentioned
| are those in Japan, S Korea, Guam and Northern Marianas."
| [1]
|
| > to say nothing of demographic bombs, the real estate /
| regional debt crisis, and the inevitable sanctions from a
| Taiwan invasion.
|
| They are heavily investing in Sub-Saharan Africa because,
| based on IMF data, it will be the only region in the next
| few decades experiencing significant population growth.
| This region is their own 'China.' With increasing
| automation and a cheap workforce, demographics are not a
| significant problem. They just poured 53 billion USD into
| the real estate crisis. To receive sanctions for a Taiwan
| invasion, first, you need to invade it, and it's not in
| the short-term interests of either China or Taiwan.
|
| > Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have
| carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore
| more than a hundred miles or so.
|
| Don't worry? If they destroy a US ship, it will take 5-10
| years to rebuild it, whereas they will rebuild theirs in
| a year. This is also mentioned in reports.
|
| Your entire comment is wishful thinking. China is not
| collapsing, and the data confirms that. [2][3]
|
| 1. https://x.com/Ignis_Rex/status/1791035870210085350
|
| 2. https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/china-
| still-ris...
|
| 3. https://x.com/davidpgoldman/status/1792215020941565983
| axus wrote:
| The problem with centralizing power in one person for too
| long, they get strange ideas about what's in their
| nation's interest.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| 1) you can't trust most of China's numbers. They are in
| full only-show-numbers-that-please-dear-leader mode. The
| tarriff war that is brewing between the US and China is
| about China doing some last-gasp production dumping
| before economic collapse, although that argument could
| admittedly be dressing up numbers that don't support
| their arguments of the pro-collapse geopoliticists.
|
| 2) China's rattling on Taiwan is very similar to the
| demographic motivations of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
| both are suffering huge demographic collapses soon, so
| this is the last generation that the country can use for
| an offensive war. Yes, it is utterly stupid to take a
| demographic problem of a shrinking younger generations
| and KILL THOSE PEOPLE IN A WAR to exacerbate the problem,
| but strongmen just concern themselves with keeping their
| positions, not how the nation as a whole thrives.
|
| 3) Sub Saharan Africa? Like, that is 5,000 to 6,000 miles
| away? And an area that will become increasingly utterly
| uninhabitable due to global warming. The Belt and Road is
| a complete failure, again, because the infrastructure was
| poor and the payoff isn't there. The countries are just
| going to walk away from China, and instead of paying them
| back or restructuring (China won't restructure), they'll
| join a Western bloc against the Chinese.
|
| Belt and road, for the reasons described about the
| complete inability to defend multi-thousand-mile
| infrastructure lines like pipelines and rail, is an
| impossibility to work in Asia. Even if the political and
| security challenges are solved (which requires a nice
| intercooperation and low-war world, which we are NOT
| headed for right now), it isn't even remotely
| economically viable.
|
| 4) Ultimately war games are meant to be lost. Because
| that drives the exigent threats to American hegemony that
| drive the near-trillion-dollar defense and intelligence
| budgets politically. Yes you don't want to underestimate
| the enemy, but look at what is going on with the Russian
| army under decades of totalitarian corruption and
| incompetence. China is headed down that path, but doesn't
| want to stop at a neo-western society like Russia has,
| they want full on North Korean dear leader control.
|
| 5) The fact of the matter is that China imports its oil
| through the Malaysian Staits/Straits of Malacca. Go look
| at the map. No matter how much shipbuilding China has, no
| matter how many cruise missiles, they won't get oil
| through there if the West decides to impose sanctions.
|
| 6) Finally, there's India. India of course hates China as
| well, and India is modernizing its military under Modi
| and it alone would jump at the chance to choke China in
| the Indian Ocean.
|
| China is not collapsing overnight. It is not economic
| armageddon, these things are always slow slides. I mean,
| in theory it could because mass starvation at the hands
| of the communist party is in China's 20th century
| history, and it is actively occurring in North Korea.
|
| The point is that the old world political economic order,
| and by order I mean stability and structure, not the
| illuminati evil control council "order", is over. Russia
| invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply chains, and
| China becoming aggressive and authoritarian ended that.
| That era, a solid 75 years between bipolar Cold War
| stability and unipolar post-Cold War is OVER.
|
| Every five years that go by in China will decrease their
| military effectiveness by a substantial degree, because
| of authoritarian degradation in chain of command and
| corruption, because of demographic reductions and
| disruption.
| lossolo wrote:
| 1. It's not entirely accurate to dismiss all Chinese
| economic data outright. While there is a consensus that
| some data might be manipulated, international agencies
| like the IMF and World Bank, and multinational
| corporations operating in China, rely on a combination of
| official data and independent assessments to guide
| investment and policy decisions. Moreover, the idea of a
| "last-gasp production dumping" ahead of an economic
| collapse seems exaggerated when considering China's
| consistent economic growth and its strategic long-term
| planning evident in initiatives like Made in China 2025.
| Have you read article I linked in Foreign Affairs?
|
| 2. I don't buy this argument, they only keep their
| positions because of the economy growth currently in
| China.
|
| 3. The claim that BRI is a failure and that Sub-Saharan
| Africa will become uninhabitable and thus, unimportant,
| overlooks the long-term investments and geopolitical
| influence China is garnering through these initiatives.
| The BRI has indeed faced challenges, but it has also led
| to significant infrastructure developments in
| participating countries. These nations may face debt
| issues, yet many continue to engage with the initiative
| because of the substantial economic benefits and the lack
| of alternative funding sources for infrastructure.
|
| 4. You haven't addressed the Congressional reports, which
| show that a US vs. China military conflict, including a
| blockade, does not have an obvious winner.
|
| 5. The vulnerability of China's oil imports through the
| Strait of Malacca is a well recognized strategic concern,
| often referred to as the "Malacca Dilemma". China has
| been actively working to mitigate this risk through
| various strategies, including the development of the
| China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), building
| pipelines through Myanmar, and increasing domestic energy
| production and diversification of energy sources. While a
| blockade of the Straits of Malacca would be significant,
| it is not an insurmountable obstacle given these
| mitigating measures.
|
| 6. While India might oppose certain Chinese actions, an
| outright confrontation is not a foregone conclusion given
| the potential economic and political costs. They do not
| want to escalate, which you can see based on agreement to
| use only sticks in border clashes.
|
| > The point is that the old world political economic
| order, and by order I mean stability and structure, not
| the illuminati evil control council "order", is over.
| Russia invading Ukraine, COVID disrupting supply chains,
| and China becoming aggressive and authoritarian ended
| that. That era, a solid 75 years between bipolar Cold War
| stability and unipolar post-Cold War is OVER.
|
| Fully agree.
|
| > Every five years that go by in China will decrease
| their military effectiveness by a substantial degree,
| because of authoritarian degradation in chain of command
| and corruption, because of demographic reductions and
| disruption.
|
| I'm not as optimistic as you are.
| AtlasBarfed wrote:
| I haven't read the congressional reports. I am handwaving
| them away, but mostly because while China can be
| formidable in regional defense, they simply don't have
| power projection military technologies yet.
|
| I don't remember the actual numbers, but Japan is heavily
| increasing its defense budget. This is significant
| because historically, unlike China/India, if Japan
| invests in its military, it produces a good military.
| Japan + India with funded modern militaries is a very
| legitimate counter to China. In particular India is a
| sleeping tiger that should be far more influential and
| productive.
|
| India we won't give our top weapons. Japan we very likely
| will.
|
| Energy diversity helps in many respects, China can
| mitigate domestic needs with EVs, solar, and wind, and I
| guess coal if they want to burn money.
|
| But war and food need petroleum. Pipelines and rail are
| extremely vulnerable, a single raid can shut them down
| for weeks or months, they have fixed, limited capacity.
| If we were talking a 50 million population country, sure.
| But it's a goddamn billion+ frikking people, and not
| enough productive land to feed them.
|
| India is a billion plus people, so if it wants to
| militarize, corruption and internecine ethnic relations
| be damned, they'll probably have one capabable of
| worrying China.
|
| Everyone is arming up. NATO nations are reconstructing
| their military industrial complex in anticipation of
| Russia beating Ukraine.
|
| I guess fundamentally I see China as a nation that is
| critically dependent on open maritime trade, and that
| world is basically over, partially of their own creation.
| The "Dear Leader" phenomenon is particularly troubling,
| particularly because Xi sets the stage in 10-15 years for
| a bloody succession and equally or more autocratic leader
| that assumes the strings of control.
|
| Most "Dear Leader" countries start from a point of
| stagnation and then limp along under the repression.
| China is different, it went through a massive economic
| expansion due to free trade and relative free will, but
| now it will sharply regress. If it wasn't so dangerous,
| it would be fascinating to see what happens.
|
| The Naval War College prof points out that historically
| continental powers overextend, and then collapse when
| their central government fails. China has done this
| something like 5 or 10 times in its long history. Both
| Russia and China seem to be in the overextension phase.
| She contrasts to maritime powers like the UK and US that
| don't need buffer states, and thrive with world trade,
| while the buffer state syndrome of continental empires
| inevitably leads to an autocratic paranoid country or
| corruption/decay.
|
| Anyway, what do I know.
| vimy wrote:
| > Don't worry about the shipbuilding. China doesn't have
| carriers. They don't have a navy that can leave shore
| more than a hundred miles or so.
|
| They have 3 carriers and are rapidly building more. They
| have naval bases as far as Africa.
|
| A lot more misinformation in your comment but it would
| take too long to correct it all.
| littlestymaar wrote:
| _"Capitalists will sell the rope to hang them"_
|
| Lenin
|
| > Is it just because it would be impossible to have an
| industrial base in a world where Asia exists and can
| produce everything that could be built in the US for 1/5
| the cost?
|
| It's not impossible, had the US kept capital control and
| tariffs there would have been no way for Asia to catch-up
| at all. But the free trade ideology and greed led the US
| where it is now.
| concordDance wrote:
| Worth noting this also lifted a billion people out of
| poverty.
| mrguyorama wrote:
| China could have lifted their people out of poverty on
| their own. We didn't need to sell them our manufacturing
| base to do that.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing all
| your factory employees, and move your manufacturing to
| China, well...what do _you_ think will happen?
|
| This is especially egregious, because the few folks that
| have enough ethics to not do that, get driven into
| bankruptcy, by the ones that do.
|
| The general consumer market basically wants cheap. If they
| can get stuff that does what they want, for less, then they
| go that way. They aren't particular, as to the source.
|
| The market for High Quality is actually pretty small.
| People that make good stuff, don't get rich. People that
| make lots of cheap crap, get very rich.
|
| The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke
| protectionism (or have a war, which will do that, anyway).
| That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
| mcny wrote:
| > The only way to reverse this, would be to invoke
| protectionism (or have a war, which will do that,
| anyway). That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
|
| Because we know that protectionism with people like those
| you explained at the top
|
| > If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing
| all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing
| to China, well...what do you think will happen?
|
| does not guarantee better products/outcomes. Those who
| would use basically slave labor offshore for profits,
| will also do other nasty things for profits at home as
| well. Not a fan of dichotomy like these.
|
| I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> I want cheap Chinese electric cars here in the US._
|
| Not sure I support that broad a statement.
|
| Here in NY, we have had _many_ instances of dangerous
| building fires, caused by cheap Chinese scooters, which
| are a favorite transportation mode for folks without
| means.
|
| A number of these fires caused many families to lose
| their homes and meager possessions, because one tenant
| was charging crap batteries.
| askura wrote:
| Makes sense to be fair. People only think of personal
| quick gains over long term generational games as has been
| shown time and time again
| readyman wrote:
| > _People only think of personal quick gains over long
| term generational games as has been shown time and time
| again_
|
| Nonsense. It has been shown for much longer and many more
| times that people have a capacity to act on the long-
| term. It might involve various social thought mechanisms
| like religion, moralism, and politics that prevent so-
| called progress, but evolution often favors societies who
| act on the long-term. This is a especially true in
| moments of sudden catastrophe. A classic example is
| Catholicism in the face of the plague.
| DoughnutHole wrote:
| > That isn't very popular, with this crowd.
|
| It's not that popular with the masses either.
|
| Sure, it can be very popular with the people whose
| specific industries are protected, and there's many who
| like it in the abstract - but if you're the party in
| power when everything gets more expensive as a
| consequence of protectionist policies a lot of people are
| going to be very unhappy with you.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| Yup. It also corrupts _very_ easily.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| Protectionism is expending resources to direct production
| to areas where you have weaker comparative advantage --
| it is, in other words consuming value to force your
| people to create less value.
|
| There may be very specific cases where very carefully
| tailored uses of it are good for certain long-term
| interests or risk mitigation, but mostly it is waste --
| and extremely subject to corruption from those invested
| in inefficient industries.
| avidiax wrote:
| > consuming value to force your people to create less
| value
|
| That's the "spherical cow on a frictionless plane in a
| vacuum" of economics.
|
| Protectionism is probably a good idea when the competitor
| is temporarily subsidizing various industries to build a
| permanent comparative advantage that can then be abused,
| either by being an effective monopoly, or by shaping your
| enemies to be logistically unprepared for war.
| ahmeneeroe-v2 wrote:
| Exactly right and love how you phrased it. War is also
| one of those areas where the concept of economic value
| falls apart.
|
| I do totally agree with dragonwriter that it is
| vulnerable to corruption
| jahewson wrote:
| While you're not wrong about people's motivations, or the
| market's sentiments, I do think this isn't the right take
| on globalised industry. There's no need to close US
| factories and move workers - it will happen naturally.
| For example, nobody closed US auto factories to move
| production to Japan - the Japanese out-competed the US on
| price and quality. The same is just starting to happen
| with electric cars now. Greed may have accelerated this
| transition, but it was inevitable.
| User23 wrote:
| > If you can get an extra lambo in your garage, by firing
| all your factory employees, and move your manufacturing
| to China, well...what do you think will happen?
|
| I wonder what would happen to a Chinese CEO who pulled a
| stunt like that? I hear they send the next of kin the
| bill.
| someguydave wrote:
| China "cheats" in the sense that they suppress their
| currency. In theory the profits from successful exports
| should go back into the Chinese people's pockets and China
| should become much richer than it is. But the CCP cannot
| abide that scenario, so they sell yuan and buy dollars to
| keep the price down.
|
| I do not think they can do this forever.
| bluGill wrote:
| > I don't understand why the US voluntarily gave up its
| significant advantage in manufacturing
|
| We didn't. The US manufactures more than ever. It seems
| like we gave up the advantage because we let China take
| over the cheap junk market (before them Japan and Taiwan
| had that - both have moved up quality though); and we use
| far less people. A typically factory in 1950 with 2000
| workers would now have around 200 to produce the same
| amount.
| notfromhere wrote:
| We did. The U.S. is really more of a low volume, high end
| manufacturer.
|
| We don't have the ability to do the same kind of
| industrial mobilization we did in ww2.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I don't understand why the US voluntarily gave up its
| significant advantage in manufacturing
|
| Because there's a basic heirarchy in capitalism where
| resource extraction is at the bottom, manufacturing in the
| middle, and finance at the top, and the higher on that
| heirarchy your comparative advantage is, the more value you
| capture out of the global economy.
|
| The US won (or, more accurately, is winning, its not a
| static state) global capitalism is what happened.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| I think it's very easy to explain. The US are some of the
| worlds greatest sellers of intellectual property which
| makes for better business, since you only need to invent
| something once and then you can sell it over and over. The
| US would prefer to spend it's time doing more lucrative
| work.
|
| I don't even think it's very clear that recent US efforts
| to onshore manufacturing, both broadly and within green
| energy specifically, are even helping it. The US is paying
| close to a million in extra costs for every job it's on-
| shoring, although there is the benefit of improving the US
| negotiating position and military readiness beyond
| bolstering employment.
| deepsun wrote:
| Sorry but I didn't understand anything from your
| explanaiton. Nothing in it answers the parent's question.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| >The US would prefer to spend it's time doing more
| lucrative work.
| pphysch wrote:
| In short, Washington abandoned the republic after WW2 and
| embraced shadow imperialism. It doesn't matter who is
| working the factories as long as the global elite gets to
| set the rules and reap the profits.
| up2isomorphism wrote:
| When you don't have enemy, you are your enemy. This is
| exactly what happened in US. Putting the part that work
| actually been done in US fosters competition, and outsource
| will always benefit for big corps to kill of competitors in
| early stage.
| the_duke wrote:
| Lots of "greed", "stupidity", etc arguments here, but that
| is too simplistic.
|
| There are other aspects.
|
| * Industry/mining/some types of manufacturing are often
| dirty business and cause pollution, not something you love
| to be around. Energy consumption is also high.
|
| * They usually come with many hard jobs that people don't
| exactly love to do if they have alternatives.
|
| This can be countered with automation, but that comes with
| high cost and limitations that we are only now approaching
| solutions for (eg flexible humanoid robots with AI-driven
| controls).
|
| * The big industrialization craze of the 90ies/early 2000s
| came about as western markets started to saturate and
| approach low growth rates. The hope was that lifting new
| countries out of poverty would create economic
| opportunities.
| topspin wrote:
| This. US deindustrialization can only be understood as a
| major political shift and, _like all major political
| shifts in the world_ , it is the product of a conflation
| of multiple, simultaneous pressures.
|
| Among these are: 1. political leaders exploiting the
| lucrative US market for foreign relation wins. 2.
| differential labor costs 3. differential regulatory
| burdens (health and safety, environmental, etc.)
|
| Manufacturers have had all of these pressures applied and
| they've responded accordingly. Seeking lower labor costs
| and lower regulatory burdens is not merely simple-minded
| "greed." When competitors leverage these affordances they
| gain an advantage in cost, so others must consider
| following.
| tyre wrote:
| They'd need to switch to aircraft carriers and fast. The US
| has 11. China has 2. They are expensive, require specifically
| trained crews, and air superiority counters all of that
| shipyard capacity.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Why though? China's building drone carriers instead. Taking
| down aircraft carriers is of course no simple matter, but
| hardly infeasible for a super power. The problem with
| capital ships is that they're just as expensive to replace
| as they are to build. Also, blowing one up eliminates 9% of
| the US' AC fleet at a stroke, which would be a big
| psychological blow. I don't think China is as emotionally
| invested in its aircraft carriers and built them primarily
| to show that they could. That said, in any military
| conflict with China an opponent would be well advised to
| target their nearest aircraft carrier as early and
| powerfully as possible for the humiliation factor.
| cj wrote:
| > Why though?
|
| I suppose because you want to have more ships to store
| your nuclear armed planes in more places around the
| world. Speed.
|
| Honestly (and unfortunately) if anyone actually did
| destroy a US aircraft carrier, the counter strike would
| be immediate and an order of magnitude more devastating.
| thriftwy wrote:
| > the counter strike would be immediate and an order of
| magnitude more devastating.
|
| The thing is, not many things in the world cost more than
| an aircraft carrier. What's you're going to blow up?
| Also, how, short of strategic nuclear war.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >I suppose because you want to have more ships to store
| your nuclear armed planes in more places around the
| world.
|
| Why? ICBMs are good enough and much cheaper. Also,
| launching missiles from submarines can be very effective.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Everyone gave up on putting nukes on planes: too
| vulnerable, and quite capable of crashing on their own
| during routine operations. They're all on ICBMs.
| linschn wrote:
| France does carry their tactical nukes on the Rafale.
| blackoil wrote:
| Third is in sea trial and fourth under construction. Also,
| China doesn't pretend to be global police, so it needs them
| only in South China sea, while US need to be present in
| Middle East, Europe and USA also.
| kurthr wrote:
| Ummm, who's going to make sure all the oil comes from the
| middle east? It's not like the US needs to import light
| sweet crude from there since the refineries are made for
| heavier oil than comes from Saudi or fracking.
| hollerith wrote:
| That great, so the US, which produces all the oil it
| needs within its borders, needs to be present in the
| Middle East, but China, which produces some oil, but not
| enough to run its current fleet of cars and trucks, let
| alone fight a war, does not need to be in the Middle
| East. Interesting analysis :)
|
| Note that Russia's oil does not help China here: the
| infrastructure in Russia only allows export via European
| ports, not Asian ports and not over the Russia-China
| border, though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-
| long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years
| if Russia cares enough.
| maxglute wrote:
| PRC extracts ~4 million barrels per day, they're a
| continental sized land power with resources, not JP. IIRC
| US military consumes 90 million barrels per year / 240k
| barrels per day. PRC domestic consumption is 14m barrels
| per day. ~6m goes to transportation, 2m goes to heating,
| both in process of being electrified. 2m goes to other.
| Industry, uses ~4m barrels, of which PRC MIC uses
| relatively little as % of output relative to behemoth
| that is entire PRC manufacturing/industry. TLDR
| short/medium term, they can ration transportation, focus
| industry on MIC, and sustain military multiple times
| their current size on wartime economy, indefinitly.
| Medium/long term with rapid electrification and some RU
| piplines they can operate normally. There's also
| estimated 300m barrels and growing in strategic reserves.
| And that's assuming US blockades PRC MENA oil, in which
| case US refineries on CONUS probably going boom. It
| doesn't matter how much oil you have in the ground if you
| can't protect your extraction infra. Entire PRC Malacca
| dilemma assumes US can choke PRC SLOC unilaterally with
| little consequence to herself, the calculus changes when
| CONUS serenity is on the line, which looks like PRC end
| game when they indicated they're pursuing conventional
| global strike program a few years ago.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| US isn't in Middle East to protect their oil sources in
| case of war. US is in Middle East to control oil prices,
| do policing, help Israel and threat Iran and other
| regional actors.
|
| I believe Russia and China signed agreements for building
| gas and oil pipes.
| hollerith wrote:
| I agree with your "control oil prices" only if it means
| making sure Iran or some other country does not close the
| Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers.
| lossolo wrote:
| > though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long
| pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if
| Russia cares enough
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline
|
| https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-says-oil-
| pipel...
| hollerith wrote:
| Interesting. From the second link: "Russia currently
| sends gas to China through the Power of Siberia 1
| pipeline, which began operating in 2019 and runs through
| eastern Siberia into northeast China. Experts say that as
| China is not expected to need additional gas supply until
| after 2030, Beijing could drive a hard bargain on price
| for a second pipeline via Siberia."
| maxglute wrote:
| This assumes US has air superiority within 1-2 island chain
| and carriers are survivable in a peer war. PRC has 230x US
| ship building capacity and is trickling carriers because
| it's nice to have peace time presence/coercisve capability,
| but they're not betting the farm on it. They're barely
| betting on it at all. For reference US was dropping a big
| displacement carrier every year/other year post WW2. Scale
| that to PRC ship building capacity and they can do 2-3 a
| year, but instead did 2.5 in 15 years. They're deliberately
| not playing the carrier game. PLAN only still have 60 J15s
| for 2 carriers (3rd doing trials). Thats a profound lack of
| urgency if that's a capability they really cared about. PRC
| is doubling down on missiles to sink carriers and hit US
| regional aviation basing. They're likely assuming entire
| PRC / PLAN fleet going to be sunk, but also they can sink
| entire USN. Then it's a matter of who can play attrition
| and reconstitution game the fastest, that's where 230x ship
| building capacity comes in play. T+1-2 years AFTER war,
| they're betting they can spit out a fresh new navy and US
| can't. They're hoping that prospect deters US because US
| needs her navy for global hegemony and security commitments
| and PRC doesn't. Realistically the only threat to PRC
| global shipping is US doing a blockade, hence they aim to
| sink USN anywhere in the world by pursing conventional
| global strike, and third world pirates that posting some
| security on merchant ships can deal with.
| panick21_ wrote:
| What China is really after is slowly pushing out and
| slowly increase its control in seas around China and its
| neighborhood. While slowly pushing out and giving itself
| more options.
|
| China is playing the slow game and they will continue to
| play it for a long time to come. But of course the slow
| game also has lots of issues for them as well. Issues
| with their population, with India, with the regime and so
| on.
|
| China is in a position not that different from Germany
| pre-WW1, but arguably even better. But unlike Germany
| they are not controlled by complete war glorifying
| idiots. China believes the future is going their way,
| unlike the Germans who basically believe they would lose
| out in the long term. They don't have a insane collapsing
| Austro-Hungary as an ally constantly dragging them into
| conflict. And nuclear weapons exist.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting wars.
|
| America loves fighting so much it's had a civil war and
| fought a few of it's closest allies at various times.
|
| China is a novice at fighting. Whilst they may have lots of
| ships, having really good people to fight in a complex
| battlespace is different.
| eru wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The last war China was involved in was the relatively small
| Sino-Vietnamese war in 1979. And the last one before that
| was WW2.
|
| It would be hard to count all the wars the US involved
| themselves in during that time.
|
| However, with regards to China Americans seem to be mostly
| worried about Taiwan. Taiwan is a lot closer to the coast
| of the PRC than it is to the coast of the US. (On the other
| hand, the people living in Taiwan are even closer to Taiwan
| than the PRC is. And they would certainly enter the fray,
| too.)
| MaxPock wrote:
| Funny how you forgot the Korean war and how Chinese entry
| ensured a stalemate
| eru wrote:
| Sorry, yes, you are right.
|
| However, that was before the Sino-Vietnamese war. So the
| point about their last war being almost half a century
| ago still stands.
| gonzo41 wrote:
| For China to take Taiwan, it would represent China doing
| the most complex surprise invasion that even the US
| military couldn't probably pull off.
|
| Assaulting a beach head is up there as possible the most
| difficult thing you can do. In WW2 the Allies got lucky
| because, Radar, Missiles, and drones didn't exist yet.
| Taiwan has stacks of weapons, enough to repel and
| invasion and they also have, jungles, mountains and
| cities to extend the fighting into.
| ramblenode wrote:
| China doesn't need to take a beach in the first phase. If
| they gain sea superiority, they can blockade the island
| and eventually exhaust anti-air defenses with drones
| until they gain air superiority. At that point defenders
| wouldn't be able to mass to defend a beach.
| maxglute wrote:
| Bingo, PRC is not going to start amphib ops until TW has
| minimal weapons that can repel invasion left. They're not
| stupidly charging into a Normandy because they have
| magnitude more radars, missiles, drones etc, enough to
| make sure TW won't have much of theirs for long. TW is an
| island 16x smaller than UKR, much larger gap in MiC
| production vs PRC than UKR vs RU, and unabled to be
| resupplied via porous land borded by friendlies. TW also
| thoroughly covered by PRC ISR, including SAR to look
| through foliage, nearly every inch of which can be hit
| within 7 minutes with PRC rocketry. Less once PRC
| establishes persistent drone presence. It's why all the
| recent analysis depends on TW buying enough time for
| US+co to enter picture.
|
| The flip side of a contested amphib operation is an
| uncontested one, which is potentially siginifantly easier
| than land invasion because there's no where for defenders
| to hide / ambush. Crossing a shallow strait where subs
| can't hide is probably easier than US plowing through
| Iraqi desert where defenders can at least pretend to put
| up defense by entrenching tanks / digging trenches. It's
| basically untested sailing if PRC destroys TW platforms
| that can hit back and lock down with air supremacy.
|
| Also folks should look up TW river map, TW island is
| broken up into a series of bastions cut up by rivers
| where connections / bridges can be severed and sections
| attacked piece meal. If PRC's smart, they'll destroy most
| of TW weapon platforms that can reach out into water,
| bombard a few km of map squares of landing site to dust,
| have drones shoot everything that moves 5km out to carve
| a landing zone that can't be contested by large or small
| fires. If PRC smarter, they'd just blockade TW until
| world realize the only country with enough sealift to
| supply an island of 24m with food and water is PRC.
|
| As for taking urban centres, look at how Israel is doing
| in Gaza with 20x population density than TW,
| theoretically urban combat is suppose to be slaughter vs
| attacker but if you indiscrimantly bomb and starve the
| population until they can't put up organized high end
| fight, then it becomes a managable problem. And again if
| PRC smart and they have to land boots on ground, they'd
| likely just siege from outside urban centres and small
| fires range, and wait for factional struggle and find
| collaborators willing to do boots on ground enforcement
| in return for controlling food + water.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I think China won't attack soon. It seems they play a
| long time game vs Taiwan, where they try to bring Taiwan,
| closer, weeken it's ties to its allies and slowly making
| Taiwan to become more dependent on China.
|
| China is convinced they will get Taiwan back and whether
| that happens in 20,50 or 100 years, that is good enough.
|
| At least until China builds a self sufficient
| semiconductor industry, I don't think they are going to
| attack Taiwan.
| maxglute wrote:
| I don't think they want to go kinetic first either, but I
| think natural byproduct of PRC military modernizing, and
| modernizing specifically with taking TW _AND_ fighting
| US+co in mind, is if things pop off for whatever reason,
| the escalation will snowball. And it will snowball
| somewhere very destructive because all parties in this
| game are ramping up capabilities to deter, but when
| deterrence fails, there's lots of hardware that's not
| going to do deterring but shooting.
|
| As for PRC waiting, I think they can wait, even past
| 2049, PRC centennial, but they're not going to wait for
| ever. TW indentity growing, a few more generations and
| culture completely disentangle (aging pro-ish PRC, KMT
| cohorts not going to be around forever). At some point,
| PRC isn't going to see TWneses as "fellow Chinese"
| occupying TW, a Chinese province. But a foreign culture
| occupying Chinese land, and that's going to generate all
| manners of opennings for conflict.
| contrarian1234 wrote:
| On the one hand you have a point, and they're drifting
| apart culturally - but at the same time Taiwan is not
| keeping up economically or culturally at all.
|
| If the rate of economic progress stays close to constant,
| in a decade it's going to be hard to look at the evil
| communists across the straight who are much better off
| living standards wise. Taipei is a bit drab and ugly that
| hasn't seen any development in the last decade. It looks
| worse than second tier cities in China. Just my surface
| level impression is that you fly across the straight and
| people are dressed nicer and look better off on the
| subway there.
|
| On the cultural front they're also not doing hot.. the
| domestic culture is anemic. They don't make movies like
| they did in the 90s. Nobody cares about Taiwan's cultural
| output (other than bubble tea). The art scene is
| honestly.. pathetic here. In large part b/c they can't
| engage with anything historic other than recent history
| of the White terror. There is an eww factor with regards
| to engaging with Chinese history - its seen as the
| culture of the "other" and so you see it in every day
| life.. no tea ceremony, no hanfu, no interest in history.
| There is also no real "Taiwanese culture" that would be
| alien to a Chinese person (I can only think of Pili?).
| There is some stuff built on top of Fujianese culture..
| but it's got no legs so far.
|
| The elephant in the room is that Taiwanese are also
| starting to consume more and more Chinese media - which
| was kinda garbage quality for a long time but has vastly
| improved in the last 5 years. I think this will take off.
| You can already see it on Tiktok and stuff.. people use a
| lot more mainland terms and expressions.
|
| If the Chinese were smart they'd build 10-20 ferries and
| offer people free trips to Xiamen/Shanghai. Most
| Taiwanese never travel to China and have little sense for
| the cultural similarities
|
| If the Chinese manage to ramp up chip production then
| Taiwanese is really screwed. TSMC is some insane
| percentage of the GDP. The other insane fraction is of
| course businesses that work in China like Foxconn.. China
| already has this place by the balls unfortunately
| ramblenode wrote:
| > the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting
| wars.
|
| I don't think you can extrapolate fighting in Kosovo,
| Afghanistan, or Iraq to fighting China. If a war were to
| break out, both sides would be learning a lot of lessons
| very quickly.
| sanxiyn wrote:
| US fought a war with China in Korea and they were evenly
| matched. Korean War is the best historical reference we
| have.
| vlabakje90 wrote:
| Back when China consisted primarily of illiterate
| peasants (only about 20% literacy in 1949) without a
| significant industrial base (it took China until 2000 to
| overtake Germany in terms of total GDP).
| audunw wrote:
| Logistics is under appreciated. And the logistics lessons
| from fighting real wars are mostly applicable in other
| wars even if they're of a different nature.
|
| I don't think China has a chance until they've at least
| had a practice run with a real conflict somewhere.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >the USA is VERY competent at deploying to and fighting
| wars.
|
| But not at wining. Last war US won was WW2.
|
| Newertheless, US discovered that wars are good for making
| money.
| smackeyacky wrote:
| What?
|
| They had their own civil war that went from the early 1900s
| right up until 1965 which was sporadically interrupted by
| the Japanese.
|
| The Chinese did nothing _but_ fight for two thirds of the
| twentieth century
| inglor_cz wrote:
| It certainly used to be.
|
| I am not that sure anymore. US armaments industry got a bad
| case of Wall Street in the 1990s and there aren't many
| factories left. Even though the US is indirectly involved
| in a big land war with Russia, plus has a lot of purchase
| orders from other countries, the industry is spinning up at
| snail's pace. Smaller countries in Europe will wait 10 or
| more years for their F-35s.
|
| One of the serious diseases of the developed world is
| bureaucracy. The US has way less of it than, say, Germany
| (which is almost a fatal case), and maybe it could get rid
| of it in times of need.
|
| Maybe. But Starship development is still being delayed by
| licensing, even though said licensing didn't stop the only
| really serious problem until today (the destruction of the
| concrete launch pad in Boca Chica).
| bluGill wrote:
| The US is the worlds largest arms supplier today, and
| getting more orders all the time. There might not be a
| lot of factories, but the ones there are produce a lot of
| stuff.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| China is now capable of producing more than 1000 missiles per
| day.
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| China has a lot of shipbuilding capacity, but I think it'd be
| pretty vulnerable to attack. The USA couldn't ramp up
| shipbuilding capacity overnight, but it could certainly
| degrade China's ability to build ships overnight. I'm
| assuming that most of China's ship producing capacity is on
| the coast, which may be an incorrect assumption.
| jandrese wrote:
| Any shipbuilding not on the coast would only be set up for
| river vessels anyway which are mostly irrelevant in this
| scenario.
| faeriechangling wrote:
| The thing about building ships is not only does it take
| forever to build up shipbuilding capacity - it takes
| forever to build ships.
|
| This should be interpreted as emphasizing the strength of
| the US Navy though, since it would take years and years for
| China to possibly match the tonnage of the US Navy even if
| the US didn't build anything.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Maybe if the US spent 230 times more on defense that would
| help? (/s)
|
| More seriously, why are we not prepared? Didn't we spend
| enough to keep our defense industry competitive?
| jrexilius wrote:
| I think the expectation is that China is the one that would
| massively outproduce the US. And that our technological
| "advantage" is roughly that of Germany over the US in WWII
| (i.e. noticable, but not meaningful). We likely would be barely
| capable of a WWI performance as far as output..
| bruce511 wrote:
| >> If a conflict with China ever comes to pass,
|
| If a conflict with China comes to pass, it won't be on US or
| China soil. It'll be a proxy conflict somewhere else.
|
| All the major conflicts since ww2 have been in proxy locations.
| Korea (US/China), Vietnam (US/Soviet Union), and so on.
|
| "Occupying" a country is fruitless (see pretty much everyone in
| Afghanistan) and unpopular.
|
| So I don't see Chinese bombers over Seattle or US bombers over
| Shanghai. In that sort if conflict both sides lose.
|
| Taiwan is the obvious proxy in play. The South China Sea is the
| other. Both would give China significant geographical
| advantage. Taiwan is just important enough (making PCs) that
| the US may intervene. But will the US land troops in Taiwan to
| fight street battles? Probably not (imo).
|
| Will Chinese troops parachute into LA or US troops parachute
| into Tibet? Not a chance.
|
| With all this in mind, statistics and behaviors from ww1 and
| ww2 are somewhat irrelevant.
|
| If there is a US China conflict though, it's more likely to be
| economic. Supply chains disrupted. Chips in short supply. In
| that sense domestic production of non-military items becomes
| paramount (to keep the population appeased.)
| acd10j wrote:
| If you want to have strategic deterrence capability, all
| scenarios are kept in mind, even if they are little low
| probability, in warfare sometimes enemy tries to find low
| probability scenarios and exploits that. (Remember german
| blitzkrieg in ww2)
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >If you want to have strategic deterrence capability
|
| For strategic detterence capability building lots of ICBMs
| and missiles is good enough and cheap enough.
| Teever wrote:
| I would imagine that the Chinese goal is destroy the island
| chain that keeps them contained and push them out of Hawaii.
|
| That would be more than enough to allow Chinese full control
| over that region of the world and give America a shamefully
| large black eye.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Island_chain_strategy
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Taiwan is part of that Island Chain.
| Teever wrote:
| I agree with this statement.
| anovikov wrote:
| U.S. simply participated in WWI for too short a time, only 1.5
| years. It didn't produce much stuff in WWII by spring 1943
| either - everything was in desperately short supply then. If it
| wasn't, why didn't Normandy invasion happen a year earlier?
|
| And lack of preparedness in the previous years before WWI was
| deliberate, because public was too much against the idea of
| interfering into European affairs and politicians made every
| efforts to make it as physically difficult as possible.
| Zimmermann Telegram changed that.
| crorella wrote:
| > If a conflict with China ever comes to pass, it is not at all
| predestined that the US will repeat its WW2 feat rather than
| its WW1 experience.
|
| Exactly, I see it pretty hard to pull the same feat again
| unless there is a very big alignment with the companies that
| have installed capacity in the country.
| sbmthakur wrote:
| Absolutely had no idea about US preparedness before WW1. Any
| books that shed more light on it?
| trynumber9 wrote:
| That's weird that they would have a rifle shortage as the US
| manufactured millions of rifles for the UK (P14) and Russia
| (Winchester 1895 and Mosin-Nagant) and France (Berthier) during
| WWI.
| dclowd9901 wrote:
| > The Vinson-Trammell Act limited profits on government contracts
| to just 12% (later reduced to 8%)
|
| What the actual _hell_ happened to this idea?
| Manuel_D wrote:
| It's still in force, unfortunately. Cost plus incentives
| unnecessarily expensive projects. If the government orders 100
| planes and your profit is fixed at 8% of cost, do you want to
| build a $10 million dollar plane or a $20 million dollar plane?
| matt3210 wrote:
| Don't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new
| soldiers to grow up. Everybody knew WW2 was coming and was
| preparing for over 20 years.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Don't forget that the armistice was just a pause for the new
| soldiers to grow up.
|
| The armistice was a pause for the peace treaty to be negotiated
| and signed.
|
| Now, if you think the Treaty of Versailles was intended as just
| a pause for new soldiers to grow up...I don't think that's
| particularly accurate for most signatories. Had it been,
| appeasement wouldn't have been tried.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >It's no secret that the Allies won World War II on the back of
| the U.S.'s enormous industrial output.
|
| Now China is the country with the largest industrial output.
| torginus wrote:
| It's very weird to me that we could build airplanes at this scale
| almost a century ago, yet nowadays even the biggest airforces can
| barely field more than a tousand planes.
|
| It's not like those old machines were primitive, and there have
| been major breakthroughs in mass-manufacturing.
| bjord wrote:
| I don't think they're limited to "a thousand planes," I think
| that's just all they need
|
| the capabilities of planes from ww2 and today are almost not
| worth comparing
| torginus wrote:
| Imo the Ukraine war has shown just how inadequate the
| (relatively large by modern standards) Russian airforce is at
| serving a front of WW2 proportions.
|
| The F-35 is on back-order to the mid 2030s. Even superpowers
| can't make more than tens of planes every year.
|
| It's just that the modern world is relatively peaceful,
| that's why they don't need more.
| pjc50 wrote:
| There's some sort of r/k selection effect happening here;
| modern aircraft have been getting more and more sophisticated
| to improve survivability, which raises their cost, so there are
| fewer of them. Things like the stealth bombers are at the far
| end of that curve.
|
| (the logical end point of that thought process is some kind of
| Space Battleship Yamato scenario where the designers produce an
| "invincible" design, but only one of it. Hopefully real
| planners can be dissuaded from that nonsense, although the Axis
| were prone to this way of thinking)
| igammarays wrote:
| Meanwhile America is now struggling to produce something as
| simple as artillery shells, while Russia is producing 2-5 times
| the number produced by the entire US + EU combined.
|
| Sources:
|
| [1] https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-
| artill...
|
| [2] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/03/10/politics/russia-
| artillery...
| immibis wrote:
| Capitalism at work.
| igammarays wrote:
| Slavoj Zizek talks about "wartime communism", the tendency
| towards centralized control during extreme situations like a
| war or pandemic, because it is absolutely necessary for
| effective results at scale, when the problem is narrow and
| well-defined. Capitalism tends to do better at peace when
| there is no single fixed objective.
| Negitivefrags wrote:
| I guess the market isn't demanding a lot of mortar shells.
| pjc50 wrote:
| https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-
| artill... makes it clear that's exactly what's happening in
| Europe: there's vague statements about demand, but not
| cash-up-front payments to make it actually happen.
|
| The economics and politics actually matter! The public do
| not want a war, and they do not like forseeing one, they
| want their own pricing issues dealt with, and they have
| power at elections. Whereas Russian and Chinese leaders can
| simply impose whatever level of hardship they need that
| doesn't provoke full scale open revolt and mass slaughter
| in their own streets.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Russia also spends something like 7% of its gdp in the
| military, while for most European countries defence budget is
| around 2% of their gdp.
|
| I'm not a war analyst also, but nato doctrine is kinda
| different from Russia'S. During both Bosnia and Serbia bombing
| campaigns nato inflicted most damage through bombs, not shells.
| In Ukraine both Ukrainians and Russians had to resort to
| artillery shells because none of them could fly uncontested
| JoBrad wrote:
| Your linked articles don't back up the first part of your
| claim: the US doubled production, and exceeded production
| targets, but that progress is being hindered due to
| Congressional funding. So we have the ability to make shells,
| but don't need them in mass numbers (because we're not in an
| active war).
|
| The OP article is about creating the manufacturing capability,
| which is different from having the capability and not needing
| it.
| igammarays wrote:
| Actually, an American engineer notes, the US is actually
| "struggling" with manufacturing artillery shells for some
| strange reason. https://roblh.substack.com/p/as-much-as-you-
| ever-wanted-to-k...
| hollerith wrote:
| Sure, if you have the mistaken belief that making modern
| artillery shells at scale is simple, the US looks bad compared
| to a country whose government has always prioritized having
| lots of supplies for its army because unlike the US, it is not
| separated by vast oceans from any army that could possibly pose
| a threat to it.
| bluGill wrote:
| There is good reason for that: the US/NATO war plans are not to
| get into an artillery war in the first place. If there is
| artillery in the way the US/NATO plan is send an airplane with
| a few bombs to take it out. There is still some room for
| artillery in the army and so we produce some, but that isn't
| the major way to fight wars.
|
| The Soviet plan - which both Russia and Ukraine are well
| trained in - was to use lots of artillery. In backing Ukraine
| NATO suddenly sees a need for some shells that they wouldn't
| use if it was them. But the Ukrainian generals know them and so
| that is what they want. (Note too the nobody has provided
| Ukraine anywhere near the number of airplanes needed to fight a
| NATO style war - even if all promised F16s arrive today with
| full training it isn't enough for a NATO war)
| John23832 wrote:
| Right, I think the idea that America plans to go into an
| artillery slugsfest misunderstands American military
| doctrine. One could argue that the reason we weren't prepared
| to do "artillery war" in Ukraine is because, politically,
| we're restrained from conducting an air superiority campaign
| (which would be used to eliminate enemy artillery).
|
| The Soviet/Russian land doctrine is totally based on
| artillery. It makes sense that that is their priority.
|
| Now, that doesn't mean that American doctrine would work well
| in a hypothetical war with China. I personally don't think
| the current doctrine would work well. But those that watch
| the military sphere know that brass have taken note of that
| and are implementing changes. That all you can really ask
| for.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| It's disingenuous to claim without citation that the US does
| not anticipate using artillery as one (of many) primary
| weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer adversary. The
| fact that thr US hasn't had such a conflict since at least
| Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.
|
| Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with static
| lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air supremacy
| would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a static conflict,
| but no air force has ever established supremacy in a conflict
| with saturated strategic air defenses. Perhaps the US air
| forces could, but this capability is untested. Sadam and
| Yugoslavia were limited to tactical air defenses in
| relatively small numbers compared with modern day Russia or
| China.
|
| In short, artillery remains important, which is why US
| artillery shell production is up an order of magnitude over
| the last 3 years, and will continue to rise.
| John23832 wrote:
| > It's disingenuous to claim without citation that the US
| does not anticipate using artillery as one (of many)
| primary weapons in a land conflict against a near-peer
| adversary.
|
| It's not disingenuous at all. It's pretty apparent if you
| even take a cursory look at modern American military
| doctrine/spending. The plan is always to park a carrier
| close by (maybe two), conduct an air campaign, then send in
| the troops. Artillery wars just chew up people which the
| the American public has not had an appetite for since
| Vietnam.
|
| >The fact that thr US hasn't had such a conflict since at
| least Vietnam (and arguably Korea) not withstanding.
|
| It think that is a caveat as big as the Pacific. Vietnam
| was literally 60 years ago. You don't think top brass have
| rethought how wars are fought since then? For context,
| that's 10 Presidencies since LBJ (36th).
|
| > Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with
| static lines in the last 100 years.
|
| Again, modern American doctrine has focused on the layering
| of power projection and troop mobility specifically to NOT
| fight in static positions.
|
| > Artillery has proved decisive in every conflict with
| static lines in the last 100 years. Sure, hopefully air
| supremacy would overwhelm your opponent and prevent a
| static conflict, but no air force has ever established
| supremacy in a conflict with saturated strategic air
| defenses. Perhaps the US air forces could, but this
| capability is untested. Sadam and Yugoslavia were limited
| to tactical air defenses in relatively small numbers
| compared with modern day Russia or China.
|
| Again caveats. Also a war with China will be fought exactly
| opposite to Ukraine (with missiles not artillery, and with
| dynamic naval fronts, not trench warfare).
| stanford_labrat wrote:
| Fighting static positions is what you do when your
| opponent is literally your neighbor occupying slightly
| different dirt that touches yours. Which is not the case
| with China and the US.
|
| When you switch from land to water tooling your military
| doctrine to things like air superiority, missiles, island
| hoping make much more sense to me at least.
| igammarays wrote:
| > The plan is always to park a carrier close by (maybe
| two)
|
| It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft
| carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia
| or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers
| and shoot down planes easily. Carriers are only good
| against unsophisticated terrorists.
|
| But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia,
| which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
|
| [1] https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/us-navys-
| aircraft-car...
| John23832 wrote:
| It funny I actually read that article earlier this month.
| I don't have articles to rebutt, but there are people in
| military circles who think diametrically to the that
| article (including me).
|
| > It's an open secret in military circles that aircraft
| carriers are useless against a peer adversary like Russia
| or China, which both have the ability to sink carriers
| and shoot down planes easily.
|
| This is not true. How else do you expect to fight an
| adversary in their home turf without a platform for air
| superiority? If anything, aircraft carriers would have
| more survivability (they move) than our supporting
| airbases in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines (which will
| almost immediately be hit with ballistic missiles at the
| start of a conflict). Carriers have layered missile
| defense. Our arguably biggest weakness in our navy is our
| lack of ability to underway replenish vertical launch
| missile cells (used for both offense and defense at sea),
| but there is a huge push to solve this at the moment.
|
| I'd also challenge you to show examples of China actually
| shooting down a fighter jet. There's also the fact that
| China just doesn't have the military experience. Half of
| war fighting is experience (rehearsing isn't the same as
| active conflict), and logistics.
|
| > Carriers are only good against unsophisticated
| terrorists.
|
| This is laughably untrue.
|
| > But it is pointless to talk about a war with Russia,
| which would very quickly turn into nuclear Armageddon.
|
| This is Russia's single schtick.
| anikan_vader wrote:
| Well we certainly do agree that artillery will not be the
| primary weapon of choice in any naval war!
|
| I do appreciate your point of view, but I maintain that
| in a lengthy land war with a near peer, missile
| stockpiles would run low and 4th gen fighters would be
| unable to contest enemy airspace. Of course, the caveat
| is that the US would very much like to avoid any such
| conflict via either diplomacy or a decisive first few
| weeks of combat. And the hope is that 5th gen fighters
| would evade air defenses. Even so, US doctrine calls for
| being capable of fighting prolonged land wars on multiple
| fronts.
| igammarays wrote:
| As a Ukrainian, this sounds like betrayal. We went to war
| expecting sufficient military support from our superpower
| partner/ally.
| John23832 wrote:
| > As a Ukrainian, this sounds like betrayal. We went to war
| expecting sufficient military support from our superpower
| partner/ally.
|
| You didn't "go to war". A portion of your sovereign
| territory was invaded, and you did/are attempting to defend
| it. The fact that the US/NATO are willing to contribute to
| your defense is just a plus. Ukraine is not a NATO member
| and has no defense treaties with anyone in Europe.
| igammarays wrote:
| The point is not whether US/NATO would fight an artillery
| war. The point is about proving your industrial base's
| manufacturing capacity. Artillery shells should be relatively
| cheap and easy to produce. It's a really bad sign if America
| is such a bureaucratic mess right now that production can't
| be ramped quickly. Doesn't bode well for future war, doesn't
| demonstrate capability.
| bluGill wrote:
| The US doesn't want an artillery war, so they don't need
| that, and therefore I disagree. However it is bad that we
| haven't scaled up patriot production as that is something
| we would need and should know (in fact we knew that 20
| years ago after the gulf war).
|
| While asking we should also question how fast we can scale
| up F35 production along with all the various arms the F35
| carries.
| tacocataco wrote:
| With what we spend on the military, it's shameful to not have
| an entire factory mothballed ready to crank out ammunition.
|
| But maybe I'm not a military genius like those in charge of
| for profit defense contractors.
| bluGill wrote:
| If the factory isn't used you have no idea if it will work.
| Did mice eat the wires? Machines rust? Did we discover the
| something is hazardous and we wouldn't use it? Is the thing
| obsolete and we wouldn't want it anymore? Do we have people
| who know how to run the factory? This is one reason why the
| army has thousands of tanks they don't want (the more
| cynics say is is a jobs program that congress forces on the
| army - you decide which view you want to take, but both are
| valid)
| alberth wrote:
| That's expected.
|
| Russian has been in a war for the past 2-years.
|
| The US & EU have not.
| pphysch wrote:
| On the topic of supplying materiel, which is the topic of
| this thread, NATO countries have been 100% involved.
|
| If NATO could supply the materiel for Ukraine to
| "singlehandedly" defeat Russia, they would do it in a
| heartbeat. But they don't have it!
| alberth wrote:
| I'm not sure that's the case.
|
| It seems more like politics than anything else.
|
| Countries want to help.
|
| But they don't want to help too much, where they then get
| pulled into the war (or have Russia target them).
| class3shock wrote:
| Did you read these? The first article clearly states the US is
| actually ramping up production better than expected and it can
| do even better with more support/funding. It's Europe/NATO
| being behind where they want to be and limitations on
| funding/support in the US that is causing the difference in
| supply, not US production struggles.
| sumosudo wrote:
| Except The Red Army actually won WWII.
| aaa_aaa wrote:
| What a waste.
| AlOwain wrote:
| I don't know how; but I find that you said that ingenious. This
| comment section is full of touting it as a positive (somehow?)
| and being pessimistic about U.S. capabilities today in
| comparison to China. No one seems to mention that all this is
| unnecessary wastefulness. World hunger would have been solved
| decades earlier had they not hindered the productive output of
| those folk expended on such wastefulness.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I will say, that I live on Long Island, which was a major
| industrial area, during WWII.
|
| We enjoy one of the highest cancer rates in the world. All those
| factories used to dump their waste into our aquifers.
| pulkitsh1234 wrote:
| Factorio IRL
|
| The post has one interesting resource that can become a
| bottleneck: people, what if there is a mod where you need to find
| and employ aliens to run your production line? Maybe some of the
| aliens will choose to work in factories instead of attacking
| you..
| openasocket wrote:
| I haven't finished the article yet, so I'm not sure if this is
| brought up. But I'm always amazed by how much government control
| there was in mobilizing the US economy for WW2. Factories were
| converted to producing war goods overnight. From Pearl Harbor to
| Japans surrender, the US produced less than 200 commercial cars!
| The amount of centralized government control during this period
| was astounding. It makes you wonder if that would be possible in
| the US today. Not just would the American people tolerate this
| kind of drastic change, but whether the modern economy and supply
| chains could support these kinds of sudden, drastic re-directs
| hn8305823 wrote:
| Yes, they would tolerate it. Both because of the Government's
| monopoly on violence, and because citizens always rally to
| support a war when under direct attack. The latter effect was
| popularized by Randolph Bourne in an essay
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randolph_Bourne
|
| > the phrase "war is the health of the state" that laments the
| success of governments in arrogating authority and resources
| during conflicts.
|
| The problem the US might have in full war mobilization today
| would be due to cronyism. Remember all of the exceptions to
| Covid lockdowns for "essential" employees? Some of that is of
| course necessary but I suspect it would be very widespread if
| it happened today. This would stoke resentment from
| people/companies not so privileged.
| dmix wrote:
| One thing about these sorts of gov run industry things is that
| when it works it almost always coincides with great national
| urgency where you get total civilian/private industry buy in.
|
| Everyone points to NASA in the 60s as a perfect example of gov
| production but like all newly formed bureaucracies they are
| largely the sum of the people they recently absorbed into it.
| NASA mined all the universities and nerds from private industry
| who brought their work patterns, leadership, and attitudes to
| the organization.
|
| But as these orgs age it's the classic Iron Rule story of
| managers taking over and accountants ruining things etc etc.
|
| Maybe we need to move away from monolithic mega gov orgs and
| create new ones to solve new problems each generation instead
| of being catch alls that do nothing well and never face any
| risk of being replaced. There needs to be ways to breed new
| life and kill off the natural development of bad management and
| crippling rulemaking.
| csours wrote:
| I wonder anyone has a suggestion for a book on the NACA ->
| NASA change era
| andbberger wrote:
| > There needs to be ways to breed new life and kill off the
| natural development of bad management and crippling
| rulemaking.
|
| corpos are functionally immortal and it's the cancerous mass,
| not the germ line that survives.
| csours wrote:
| I worked in an automotive plant opened in 1954. (I worked there
| from 200x to 201x). I was specifically told that the support
| columns were set a certain distance apart from each other in
| case it needed to be re-tooled for wing production, and that
| was a condition of the financing or deal or something with the
| govt.
|
| Any of that could be a misunderstanding or an urban legend
| though.
| jordanb wrote:
| If you are interested in how this all worked there is a book
| called 'Destructive Creation'. Here is an interview with the
| author:
|
| https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gdbjVMxdnpQ
| codexb wrote:
| It wasn't so much centralized control as just spending gobs and
| gobs of money. If the federal government just started handing
| out money to produce consumable goods and machinery today, you
| can bet every company in the world would be all over that.
| consp wrote:
| I could not find it in the article and here but i wonder how much
| not getting the factories bombed helped with this.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-05-24 23:01 UTC)