These morons wasted over 1000 Tomahawk missiles within a couple of months to achieve nothing in Iran. And that's not even the worst part. The wasted PAC-missiles for the Patriot anti-air systems are.
Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
> Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
Where exactly is that storability not needed? In the VLS cells of USN warships? In the missile canisters of field-mobile SAM batteries being driven cross-country (which, for survivability on the modern battlefield need to be moving a lot more)?
The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.
The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
I wouldn't say "only". But the industrial advantage that the US brought to the allies made an Allied victory almost inevitable - in hindsight, the only way the Allies could've lost was if the situation looked so hopeless that the US chose to stop fighting - or never entered the war in the first place. Maybe if the Nazis had overrun Britain and either avoided engaging the USSR until they were ready to give it undivided attention, or somehow have conquered it, then maybe the US could've looked and said "we don't want to pick this fight" ... of course the moment Hitler declares war without actually being ready to invade the US, he's made a huge mistake.
Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
"Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight."
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.
"Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country."
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
> Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.
The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
It was very much Germany as such that lost WWII. Really.
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
It’s a bit odd as well as they then go into describing hybrid and gel systems that are both and neither respectively. But overall it’s a pretty informative article and I learned a lot.
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
I'd say the biggest missile crisis is cost asymmetry. We're using $4m interceptors to shoot down $10-20k drones and $1M missiles, sometimes multiple of them for a single target. When your opponent can produce thousands of those per month that becomes impossible to counter and economically prohibitive to do so if you could.
There are a bunch of other problems with this comment, but this part in particular is laughably wrong.
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
In January 2026, the US Naval Institute wrote [1]:
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
"Crews can't stop sweating on the flight deck" is exactly like saying "the middle east is hot and people sweat in the sun there". It has very little to do with the ships and everything to do with a climate that is hot (which, rather obviously, effects almost everyone in the region). If you want an actual example of a meaningful operational problem cause by a warship not suited to operations in hot waters, see the Type 45 (and even that is finally being fixed).
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
THAAD was a prototype in the same sense that the F-22 was a prototype. They proved a particular type of very advanced capability that took decades to develop but were expected to be replaced on a relatively short timeframe with a less prototype-y implementation once the engineering theory was worked out.
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
Have you any source for this? Because all I've seen is that the Army is expanding and upgrading THAAD (eg BGIs to NGIs) and seeking to replace munition stockpiles, which like all anti-missile munitions, are seemingly running critically low in supply eg [1][2][3].
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
The U.S. would do just fine but the rest of the world would descend into chaos and we know this for a fact because it happened twice in just the first 50 years of the 20th century.
perhaps the US would be mostly safe from violence, but not consequences. We're heavily dependent on international trade and any major war in another part of the world will impact us if it involves any important trading partners or their ability to trade with us.
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
> Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
> Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
These morons wasted over 1000 Tomahawk missiles within a couple of months to achieve nothing in Iran. And that's not even the worst part. The wasted PAC-missiles for the Patriot anti-air systems are.
Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
> Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
> I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
More like putting their mouth where their money is.
Haha. Honestly it’s rocks in a tube. If we need to we can figure it out.
Thats crazy which plant tho.
> The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid (...)
Aren't they selling their product?
[dead]
It's a good article. I learnt a lot.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM, the comparison is not really useful.
> Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
Where exactly is that storability not needed? In the VLS cells of USN warships? In the missile canisters of field-mobile SAM batteries being driven cross-country (which, for survivability on the modern battlefield need to be moving a lot more)?
The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.
> There is really only one case of this: Guam
Every U.S. base has this need. Stored munitions take out the first wave. That buys time to fuel the plentiful replacements.
The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
I wouldn't say "only". But the industrial advantage that the US brought to the allies made an Allied victory almost inevitable - in hindsight, the only way the Allies could've lost was if the situation looked so hopeless that the US chose to stop fighting - or never entered the war in the first place. Maybe if the Nazis had overrun Britain and either avoided engaging the USSR until they were ready to give it undivided attention, or somehow have conquered it, then maybe the US could've looked and said "we don't want to pick this fight" ... of course the moment Hitler declares war without actually being ready to invade the US, he's made a huge mistake.
Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.
And ships. We ended the war with (EDIT: practically) none of the carriers we started out with.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
"Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight."
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
with the help of US industrial advisors who helped them set up factories / production lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrclztGCg6M is a decent watch, though really only tells the "US out produced everyone" part of the WWII story.
I recall seeing a better article that talked about WWII tank production but I can't find it right now.
Wars between great powers are won and lost on manufacturing base. The classic book on this topic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great...
Same goes for logistics, which is an extension to your point:
https://walton.uark.edu/clc/posts/when-supply-chain-is-the-b...
It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.
"Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country."
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
They have seen French and Brits also as not-aryans. Below aryans, above slavic.
The western front was a choice, not something they did not wanted to do.
> Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.
The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
It was very much Germany as such that lost WWII. Really.
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
Get some Totseans working on it
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
Before discussing anything related to nuclear missiles *[Command and Control by Eric Schlosser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)) should be required reading.
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
> anything related to nuclear missiles
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.
Well There’s Your Problem, a podcast with slides , covered this recently : https://youtu.be/NJAgvXH5H20?si=OLMJVhOPT40yzHDN
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> Missile fuel is a binary: it can either be solid or liquid.
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
I think "missile fuel is a binary" is just a very inarticulate attempt to say "there are two types of missile fuel"
It’s a bit odd as well as they then go into describing hybrid and gel systems that are both and neither respectively. But overall it’s a pretty informative article and I learned a lot.
I think they meant like the odds are 50/50 - it either happens or it doesn’t (lol).
> the frailty of US munitions stock
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
Without the bombs and muscle sitting behind, diplomacy is merely just talking with no results.
Exactly, the issue is not that the US produces too few missiles, it’s that it uses too many
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
I'd say the biggest missile crisis is cost asymmetry. We're using $4m interceptors to shoot down $10-20k drones and $1M missiles, sometimes multiple of them for a single target. When your opponent can produce thousands of those per month that becomes impossible to counter and economically prohibitive to do so if you could.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/30/us-military-equipme...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-informs-switzerl...
There are a bunch of other problems with this comment, but this part in particular is laughably wrong.
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
In January 2026, the US Naval Institute wrote [1]:
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs. [1]: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/january/navy...
"Crews can't stop sweating on the flight deck" is exactly like saying "the middle east is hot and people sweat in the sun there". It has very little to do with the ships and everything to do with a climate that is hot (which, rather obviously, effects almost everyone in the region). If you want an actual example of a meaningful operational problem cause by a warship not suited to operations in hot waters, see the Type 45 (and even that is finally being fixed).
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
THAAD was a prototype in the same sense that the F-22 was a prototype. They proved a particular type of very advanced capability that took decades to develop but were expected to be replaced on a relatively short timeframe with a less prototype-y implementation once the engineering theory was worked out.
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
Have you any source for this? Because all I've seen is that the Army is expanding and upgrading THAAD (eg BGIs to NGIs) and seeking to replace munition stockpiles, which like all anti-missile munitions, are seemingly running critically low in supply eg [1][2][3].
[1]: https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2026-05-21-New-Lockheed-Mart...
[2]: https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/next-generation-in...
[3]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventor...
We could also just not start wars and we wouldn't need to worry about missile production
Which is why Ukraine, today, doesn’t have to worry about missile and drone production.
America isn't Ukraine, we are a *massive country with a nuclear deterrent,* wedged between two massive oceans and two friendly countries.
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
The U.S. would do just fine but the rest of the world would descend into chaos and we know this for a fact because it happened twice in just the first 50 years of the 20th century.
perhaps the US would be mostly safe from violence, but not consequences. We're heavily dependent on international trade and any major war in another part of the world will impact us if it involves any important trading partners or their ability to trade with us.
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
> Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
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US of A has already created enemies.
See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false.
Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe.
But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
> Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
Perhaps Boris Johnson shouldn't have interfered with the peace process at the behest of the United States.
Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
> (...) interfered with the peace process (...)
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
Turns out you can’t print rockets
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/tech-transfer-spinoffs/print...:
“Printed Engines Propel the Next Industrial Revolution“
yes, it's a bit harder an more involved than printing money. Best thing is not to squander them.
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