US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed to It’ in Wargames: Here’s a $24B Fix

https://breakingdefense.com/2019/03/us-gets-its-ass-handed-to-it-in-wargames-heres-a-24-billion-fix/

by pmastela • 5 years ago

55 97 5 years ago

aurizon8• 5 years ago

The USA as well as the Western allies have a beurocracy 6 deep in old fossils who have optimised how to win the last war. The buying rules require enormous rules of procurement and parts verification that a chip resistor that costs 1/10th of a penny acquires a bought cost of many dollars - it has been tested and x-rayed and heat cycled etc. The net result is a procurement sysyem gone mad with rings of empires, each with go/nogo approval decisions that interfere with test/approval/production at every level. Then the old fossils of the general staff - also 5 deep in decisions. Why are we still building long range missile targets (which the general stall call a carrier attack group) We know China will toss 1000 missiles at them and when their magazines go empty after downing a few hundred - the 600+ left will sink them all. Then the USA will toss nukes at China. China shrugs - we have no voters to kill, so who cares and the communist party is in a safe hole.

What the USA needs to do is revamp the whole thing top to bottom, get some gamer minds in there, buth students and experiences. Sweep out the guys that won the last war - we will not be fighting that again as this time it will lose - we do not want that. Get new missiles, get new radars - all designed my military colleg grad students. I could go on... What the war games reveal is what Churchill saw when WW2 started - dead wood, so he trimmed it. He had his flaws though.

elevation• 5 years ago

While an organization full of "the guys that won the last war" may not be optimal for the next conflict, having a few old salts to mentor the new "college grad" engineers makes a much more effective team overall. The kind of clean sweep that you advocate leaves green engineers to reinvent the wheel; they don't know how to google for what they don't know, and most colleges will not supply the industry-specific and even proprietary knowledge that a young engineer or engineering manager may need to avoid wasting many months of efforts.

You may wish to eliminate the "last war" echo chamber but you'll pay for it if you lose their expertise entirely.

aurizon8• 5 years ago

There is validity in what you say, trim the dead wood, keep the good wood and build well.

Closi2• 5 years ago

Get gamers in to define the strategy and use graduate engineers to build new radars?

I can’t tell if this is satire or not.

aurizon8• 5 years ago

Partly satirical - They need to invigorate the talent pool from the top down, new ideas and new management - and keep the good old techies and managers and weed out the bad ones and move them away from the fast creation track. The British system that started WW1 carried on to WW2. The Germans foresaw the Lightning War - Blitzkreig https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/blitzkrieg

Hitler was no warrior, or strategist, or general - he was a populist, a rabble rouser - didn't the USA just get rid of one of those? Had Hitler given his generals the keys and said win this war. They would have done so. They would have destroyed the RAF and airplane industry on the ground and invaded and taken the UK before the USA entered. Then they could have carved up Europe with Russia as well as the middle east and wire netted the Mediterranean against subs and ships and allow who they like. The UK fleet large as it was would have to flee to other ports or surrender. Then what would the USA do? They would see a fortress europe. Would stalin invade, or digest the meat hitler had given him while Hitler grabbed the middle east oil. At this time Russian oil was unknown. The generals would not let the Jews be killed - they are our best instrument makers and physicists, so no Holocaust. Even Hitlers own officers waned him killed.

I am sure glad he ran their war into the ground with his bed strategies and diplomacy.

I for one am glad he lost

ArkanExplorer2• 5 years ago

Its an interesting take, but the Military's sole purpose isn't to fight China. Its to scare smaller nations into the USA sphere of influence, or to destabilise those firmly outside it.

For example, the coup in Bolivia: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-moral...

China might win the first battles with that rocket barrage, but it will also firmly cut itself off from world trade - ores, food, gas, oil. There's no winning move.

There are large-scale dysgenic Demographic changes occurring in the West: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/iq-rates-are-dropping-...

China needs merely wait a few generations (if it has the patience) and it will have a much easier time asserting itself. Alternatively, to just buy off Western politicians (as it is already doing) - which beats rockets for cost efficiency.

firebaze2• 5 years ago

China has made alliances with a lot of african nations. If the shit hits the fan I - at least - wouldn't exclude the possibility that china is better positioned in a semi-post-nuclear scenario than the US (russia, africa, china are the most relevant rare-resource exporters, to my knowledge)

And I personally wouldn't count a bit on saudi arabian allegiance in a scenario like this. I wouldn't be surprised if they just follow the "strong wo:man" in the world, which right not still is the US.

vagrantJin4• 5 years ago

There are large-scale dysgenic Demographic changes occurring in the West

The article you linked dismisses the "dysgenic" idea immediately. Yet that's what you picked to make your point?

Surely you must've known some of us would read the article. It concludes with wild swings and guesses...I'm wondering why you linked it.

China needs merely wait a few generations (if it has the patience) and it will have a much easier time asserting itself.

I'm on mobile and lacking the patience to type a more nuanced, thoughful reply. I suppose "we shall see" will suffice.

firebaze2• 5 years ago

Don't know why this was heavily downvoted at the time of this posting. No sources, sure, but most of it is common knowledge with a few unsourced opinioned edges - fair enough to me, and I think an interesting viewpoint.

Especially the part regarding china (or russia, or north korea, or iran, for that matter, in order of decreasing confidence) seems to be just true to me.

2OEH8eoCRo0• 5 years ago

I work in defense and mostly agree with that they are saying. The GAO and DIB both agree that defense procurement is broken af.

aurizon8• 5 years ago

Someone at HN is abusing his moderator's trusted role and acting in a childish and irritating manner.

jcranmer• 5 years ago

It is very easy to point out, with hindsight, what the seminal moments that change the nature of warfare are. It is not so easy to point them out when they are occurring right now. Furthermore, it's always going to be the case that people will promise that their shiny new technology will be the one that makes all existing battleplans obsolete and is unstoppable, etc., etc. Only rarely are they right, and in historiographical terms, we tend to only remember the people who were right and not those who were wrong.

A good example of people betting wrongly on new technology is air power, or specifically, strategic bombing. Early air power theorists (we're talking the 1920s here) made the case that once you start lobbing some bombs at civilian targets, you'd so shatter the morale of the target country that it would collapse in a few weeks--a few months, tops. When WW2 came about, both sides indeed attempted to end the war via bombing the other side's civilians into oblivion. And both times, it failed miserably. Even the US Strategic Bombing Survey struggled to find examples where it came close to achieving its goals, hardly a ringing endorsement of the concept.

aurizon8• 5 years ago

Yes, I was living in London when the blitz started(I was 2). The bombs were a random event, and you lived/died on that basis. It failed to defeat the British public - it made them angry. In addition to being useless strategically it also diverted Nazi efforts away from the RAF and allowed a higher degree of production dispersion to be implemented - the result was the UK won the air war and it was impossible to invade the UK with air superiority. Our house was bombed, but we had an estate in Wales and we went there when the blitz began. Insurance failed to pay under an 'acts of war' clause.

JPKab• 5 years ago

In the past, both my brother and I worked in military intelligence. Specifically, he spent a long time working for ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) doing war game simulations.

He routinely would get shouted at by various Admirals, for fairly obvious reasons.

Wars aren't won by the nation who is best prepared when they start, but by the nations which respond with the most honesty to their own failures after they start.

DudeInBasement• 5 years ago

The next cyber/eco war doesn't care about military. It can easily destabilize and let the country collapse.

aurizon8• 5 years ago

Sadly, the pace of modern war will not give you the luxury of a re-start after a loss. The enemy will be taking over the best houses and issuing occupation scrip and the women will soon be mothering children of the occupiers while the men are in labor camps - if they are allowed to live at all.

vagrantJin4• 5 years ago

This isn't 1850.

No one cares about your women. Less so as a military objective. If they shoot, they'll shoot everyone and the dog. If they don't, thank a war treaty.

_y5hn3• 5 years ago

Modern warfare leaves only rubble left.

devoutsalsa• 5 years ago

When I was in the US Army, I wondered how anything got done at all. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate that something can be inefficient and still work. And you don’t need to be a well oiled machine to achieve results; you just need to be less screwed up than everyone else.

ISL• 5 years ago

Sometimes, when I'm having a bad day, I watch this for a little while. https://rednuht.org/genetic_cars_2/

It takes time to learn your way in a new environment. Sometimes the odd duck finds a way.

smbv• 5 years ago

Thank you for this. I've been getting progressively more crazy cars and progressively better performing ones.

MattGaiser• 5 years ago

That was the surprise for me after school as well. I wondered how schools could function on their seeming ambivalence to so many things.

Then I found that was just the whole world.

yellow_lead• 5 years ago

This is from 2019. (2019) should be appended.

schimmy_changa• 5 years ago

This is asinine - why do we need to spend billions and billions of dollars for more missiles for theoretical hot wars with Russia and China? Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent?

The tone of the article is "we've got a missile gap! but don't worry, only 24 billion dollars will fix it". Yet we already spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the military and don't seem to balance that against other things we could do with the money (pandemic preparations, anyone?).

chrisseaton2• 5 years ago

Isn't a hot war what nuclear deterrence is supposed to prevent?

No a nuclear deterrence is supposed to stop a nuclear war.

It doesn't help anything if you're both operating below the nuclear threshold.

mensetmanusman• 5 years ago

Just tell everyone your nuclear threshold has changed to save $24B ;)

ASalazarMX3• 5 years ago

The nuclear threshold is being able to land nuclear bombs in the most strategic cities of any country, not carpet bombing them. USA already has that capability and more.

nielsbot• 5 years ago

"roads and bridges", schools and teacher pay, health care, public arts, etc etc.

I'd be way more interested in a solution that cuts $24B from the military budget. Hopefully more.

ggggtez6• 5 years ago

Yeah, I think since we're talking a 10-20 year time frame, they are vastly overlooking less obvious things like investing in the next generation in a broad way, rather than these tactical goals relating to theoretical conflicts.

But setting these agenda items are not the responsibility of the Military. Congress should be deciding where the money goes, and they should actually get around to infrastructure and education spending that will allow the next generation to be more effective.

Bancakes2• 5 years ago

The USA will achieve less unrest if the 24B goes right into the law enforcement budget. Domestic incidents have been, from my point of view, more damaging than any alleged ISIS attack.

thebean11• 5 years ago

Law enforcement tends to escalate unrest

dr-detroit• 5 years ago

In my state the police have started ticketing people for all the things that expired due to covid so they clearly dont need our help to find way to re-fund themselves after being defunded for deplorable standard operating procedures.

ggggtez6• 5 years ago

I think you're vastly overestimating how much domestic terrorists cause in terms of damage and loss of life.

The 9/11 attacks are estimated to have cost $40 billion in insurance losses alone, not even including all the additional spending that went into the military and security budgets (including the new Department of Homeland Security) afterward. [1] Additionally, it cost at least $10 billion in property damage, almost 3000 deaths, and 25k injuries. 340 of the dead were firefighters and 72 were police. [2]

Maybe if you are an avid consumer of twitter bubbles, you'd think that domestic terrorism is a more widespread problem (well, no argument there). But that doesn't mean it's a good use of money to try to prevent it by giving to local law enforcement, that has neither the ability, legal rights, nor will to seriously tackle. The way you reduce domestic terrorism isn't by hiring more cops, it's by tackling the things that lead to terrorism: namely conspiracy theorists, religious cults, and economic hardship. Cops don't factor into the equation at all.

It's incredibly rare for cops to know about a possible domestic terror incident before hand. We see it with every mass shooting. I can only think of one incident where people were arrested before hand, and that was a rare incident involving an entire gang of individuals, rather than the lone shooter which is the most common situation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_effects_of_the_Septem... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/September_11_attacks

whimsicalism• 5 years ago

And overpolicing isn't?

ben_w• 5 years ago

Deterrence of any kind requires the other side believes you will (or even might) do it, not just that you have the capacity.

China in particular may well not believe you’ll use nukes on them, despite you having already used nukes twice on populated cities, given how dependent you now are on China for manufacturing.

chroem-• 5 years ago

A nuclear deterrent only works if you're willing to use it (and basically commit suicide in the process). China is betting that the US isn't willing to risk MAD over Taiwan, and I would say that they're probably right.

manuelflara2• 5 years ago

Would the US be willing to launch a bunch of non-nuclear missiles to China, though? Because I'd also bet they wouldn't. And if they would be, the missiles they already have would already work

ASalazarMX3• 5 years ago

Nuclear deterrence is basically "whoever nukes first gets nuked second". As long as retaliation is assured, no country (barred extremists) will start a nuclear war unless someone else fired at them first. Nuclear weapons will only be used against non-nuclear countries.

Reagan wanted to upset that balance with his failed "Star Wars" program, but seeing how the nuclear powers interact, it seems no one has achieved asymmetrical nuking. Yet.

marktangotango• 5 years ago

Defense spending isn't about missiles, it's about jobs and ultimately Red state welfare.

BitwiseFool• 5 years ago

You'll find plenty of blue states dependent on military industrial complex spending as well.

elefanten• 5 years ago

The article explains that the war games pertain to regional theatre wars, eg- defending Taiwan or the Baltics, which are threatened perennially by China and Russia respectively. The impact on US alliances and various global structures would be huge. Big enough that you want to prevent them, but not big enough to get into a full-scale nuclear exchange over.

Tldr: Nukes don’t solve all conflict, not even all major conflict.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

Well, the article itself seems to be saying that the existing budget should be reallocated.

A bigger issue is how well (or poorly) past predictions on what is required for defense have turned out. Similar to how the U.S. was often ranked #1 in the world for pandemic preparations, with western Europe close behind, but in the first six months of 2020 all of the hardest hit countries were either west European, or the U.S. Figuring out how to spend the money to prepare for a crisis (medical or military) is harder than getting the money to do so.

ggggtez6• 5 years ago

I think this is misinterpreting the figures.

It's important to know that the US and Europe also collectively have higher populations, and are more interconnected (so their risk of contagion is higher than for small countries).

And when it comes to research and vaccinations, it's clear that the US quickly developed effective vaccines and was able to distribute them. While this is still an ongoing process, you only need to look at India to see that other countries are still far behind on vaccine supply, research, and distribution efforts.

These kind of things are relative, I'd say that the US did seem handle the crisis relatively well, all things considered. Certainly room for improvement though.

lumost3• 5 years ago

The recent concern is a situation where Russia or China know that the US is unable to retaliate without pushing the nuclear button and is also unwilling to push the nuclear button.

In the cold war a lot of military planning effort went into ensuring that direct conflict between the US and Soviet Union would escalate to nuclear conditions fast by ensuring that American forces were always in the critical path of a Soviet invasion of Europe. In reality the Americans would have lost a conventional war in Europe quickly, but this reality also ensured tactical nukes would be used to protect against a route and that the Soviets would need to respond with strategic weapons.

There is no trigger for a nuclear war if China invades Taiwan, and there is a lot which could go wrong in SK, Japan, or southeast Asia before nukes entered the picture. Arguably the US nuclear deterrent in Europe is also approaching the point where one could credibly assume that the US wouldn't escalate to nuclear war.

As smart munitions become commonplace its hard to see a world where a country escalates to a wold ending nuclear response over a few thousand well targeted cruise missiles. Even a crippling attack on the continental US military-industrial base with ~100k cruise missiles wouldn't have a fraction of the casualties a single strategic bomb would carry.

bigfudge• 5 years ago

The opportunity costs of military spending are often overlooked (likewise for space travel etc). The availability heuristic means we can all point to things that's spending money in these wasteful ways has produced... but it's hard to visualise the counterfactual case where were spent that money on strong public infrastructure, institutions, global development etc.

mytailorisrich• 5 years ago

To me the F-35 illustrates what happens when too much money is thrown at something, with too many vested interests serving themselves and spending the budget. It's a bit like a hot startup that raises a huge round, more that they actually know what to do with, and that spends the money on swanky offices, fancy benefits, and a hiring spree.

The US already spend $700+ billion a year on the military, vastly more than any other country on Earth (although China's spending is increasing rapidly). Whatever problems they might have, I don't think that even more money is the solution.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

Excellent analogy.

nickthemagicman• 5 years ago

If US defense spending was a countrys GDP it would be number 18.

The US spends over half the GDP of the entire country of Australia on defense.

https://www.worldometers.info/gdp/gdp-by-country/

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

The US military is primarily a job creation program and corporate benefit scheme. Only secondarily a military force.

ars3• 5 years ago

The US needs to learn about missile defense from Israel (after all, that type of sharing is why the US spends so much on aid). Israel's low tech neighbors spend most of their military power on rockets. Other countries will do exactly the same to the US.

Israel responded with high tech missile defense, the technology exists, the US just needs to start implementing it in huge numbers.

Instead US strategy is to promise to obliterate any country that messes with it. The trouble with that is that the enemy will hide amongst civilians.

BobbyJo2• 5 years ago

Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US? Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US.

iamricks• 5 years ago

I believe the Iron Dome was funded by the US, i agree the situation is different. The US is also positioned very far away from any country that would lob rockets at us.

ars3• 5 years ago

Doesn't Israel buy most of those solutions from the US?

No, the Iron Dome was developed by Israel. US funding only came at the end of development, during production.

Also, the rockets coming out of Palestine are a lot different than what would be lobbed at the US.

People always forget about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David%27s_Sling and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile)

sebmellen• 5 years ago

I think the Iron Dome works well in Israel because the scale of the attacks they're dealing with is relatively limited. Large-scale nation state warfare is a completely different ball game.

In fact, what you're talking about sounds similar to Reagan's "Strategic Defense Initiative" [0], which ultimately failed/morphed into another agency, the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO).

In 2002 the BMDO morphed into the Missile Defense Agency (MDA), whose stated mission is to "develop and deploy a layered Missile Defense System to defend the United States, its deployed forces, allies, and friends from missile attacks in all phases of flight." [1]

Interestingly, the MDA co-developed the "Arrow" family of anti-ballistic missiles in conjunction with Israel [2].

The ideas you're suggesting have certainly floated through the halls of DC, and Israel and the US clearly work together very closely on these initiatives.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defense_Initiative

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_Defense_Agency#Mission...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_(Israeli_missile)

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

This all works on the assumption the US armed forces exist to defend the US and allies. They don't.

Partly they're a jobs program both for "jarheads" and engineers and scientists. Partly they're for bullying small nations that happen to get into political cross hairs (Iraqx2, Afghanistan, Iran soon). Partly they are an export industry that let's the US maintain trade balances with places like Saudi Arabia (and effectively charge them for protecting their regimes).

That's why the US even has aircraft carriers: they've been useless against China or Russia for decades. But they create jobs and let you bomb nations with no real defenses.

No one wants to give up 28bn from their part of the Knot of self service or risk 50 more casualties the next time we invade Iraq. So we keep prepping for that war.

rossdavidh3• 5 years ago

You have a decent point, but IMHO you're overstating it. The US armed forces exist for all the reasons you state...AND they also exist to defend the US and allies. Life is complicated.

LatteLazy2• 5 years ago

Thanks for the reply.

I guess this comes back to the age old question about such wars: how would anyone fight one and not have it turn nuclear?

noja• 5 years ago

Any Americans here know the reason why the military is excluded from the usual argument for small government?

websites420• 5 years ago

Small government means not making laws which otherwise interfere in the citizens' ability to make their own choices about how to live. It doesn't have anything to do with the size of the military, whose missions are mostly abroad to protect trade routes anyway.

redis_mlc• 5 years ago

The only institution that can field an army is the government - it's not something that happens organically or can be trusted to private companies.

Same with the State Department, FEMA, regulations, etc.

Having said that, neither Republicans or Democrats want small government. But the Biden administration is like a crack addict when it comes to deficits - they're destabilizing our currency.

Meekro• 5 years ago

The Constitution gives the federal government a very short list of enumerated powers, and maintaining a military is one of them. Small government libertarians want the federal government to return to its traditional (pre-New Deal) Constitutional role.

lumost3• 5 years ago

Prior to the Cold War the US maintained a minimal standing military during peace time. The military has steadily reduced its share of the budget from its 1950s peacetime peak via budget freezes, but active budget cuts mean base closures and lost jobs.

Semiapies• 5 years ago

Because the usual people making "small government" arguments are insincere about them.

Personally, I'd be happy to massively decrease the size of the US military. What prevents that is that neither party wants to abandon the vast scope of uses that such a huge military lends itself to.

mbrodersen3• 5 years ago

Because “small government” is code word for “only do what benefits me”. In the same way that “governmental waste” is code word for “spending money on things that doesn’t benefit me but somebody else”.

joshgachnang• 5 years ago

Article should have a "2019" tag.

whoisjuan• 5 years ago

Well, for what it's worth the US is already 'getting its ass handed to it’ in real modern warfare.

The US has been playing defense with the misinformation campaigns and fake narratives created by adversary totalitarian states that salivate over the idea of dethroning the US from its implicit world leader status.

Sometimes it really feels like we are doing exactly what they want. To create a self-inflicted societal fracture and to blame it on America's favorite scape goat, Big Tech. Like if that was our real problem. The very same thing that is giving the US an edge right now (technology) is the very same thing that gets attacked by right and left politicians alike. How convenient for Russia and China, isn't it?

ASalazarMX3• 5 years ago

"You will salivate in vain, adversary totalitarian states! This implicit world leader will not step down from his throne!"

Loud USA's anthem starts

sschueller• 5 years ago

Don't exclude the large number Americans whom also start and fuel miss information campaigns.

A lot has to do with general mistrust of government and industry because there is a lot shady stuff going on. The system is broken and industry takes advantage of it from dumping chemicals and getting away with it or knowingly selling toxic products for decades only to receive a slap on the wrist.

It becomes very difficult to figure out who you can trust.

_y5hn3• 5 years ago

Rollback of environmental protections https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/climate/trump-envir...

remarkEon• 5 years ago

Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems, Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. Those are hardly easy goals, Work said, but they’re also doable with technology now in development.

I don't know, this seems like the wrong thing to do. I mean, it seems worth considering but it also sounds like "if we don't sink N+1 battleships we lose the war", which doesn't seem any more right today than it was in the 20th century.

IMO a smarter, and probably cheaper, approach would be to force things to operate in a more decentralized fashion. Maybe at scale lots of smaller, distributed infantry and fire/air support units would be just as expensive but it seems more survivable for a longer term grind. My bias though is that, yeah, I was an infantryman and most of us (at least in my circles) expect the next one to be a long grind like WWI than a flash pan mass-extinction event like a lot of planners do today.

The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.”

Okay, then maybe "whoever can figure out how to continue operations during an extended comms blackout gets the most money." I know field craft isn't as "cool" anymore as the newest gadget, but maybe teach the boys how to make those Vietnam era claymore-wire antennas again (half joking). Cutting some massive check for another decades long R&D project is suspect to me.

moltar• 5 years ago

I’ve heard on JRE podcast recently that war games are always rigged to be lost so that generals can work harder at winning next time. Also probably to get more budgets.

US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed to It’ in Wargames: Here’s a $24B Fix

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