The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-glass-backbone-why-the-armys-logistics-will-break-in-the-next-war/

by baud147258 • 13 days ago

470 677 13 days ago

mwi.westpoint.edu

kayo_202110302• 13 days ago

A very insightful, and correct, piece.

I'll quote in full the following, which I think gets to the heart of the matter. If you have no push, you can't apply pressure to the point.

The notion that amateurs talk tactics and professionals talk logistics is frequently discussed in military academies and war colleges, yet it is rarely reflected in the Army’s budget requests or modernization priorities. The outdated concept of the tooth-to-tail ratio, which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined. In modern warfare, the tail is the primary target. If the tail is severed, the teeth are rendered useless.

aprentic• 13 days ago

It's always about logistics. The Three Kingdoms War was one of the bloodiest conflicts in human history. It was largely enabled by the invention of the wheelbarrow.

Linell• 13 days ago

Do you have any more information about this?

silvestrov• 13 days ago

One of the most interesting innovations in the Ukraine war is their internal market place for drones, letting each drone group decide which drones they want to procure and use in battle.

It is not a top-down decision, production and supply as other armies use for their weapons logistics.

homeonthemtn• 13 days ago

I hadn't heard this before. Do you have a good article on it? I'd be curious to learn more

tpurves• 13 days ago

this strategy worked to keep Ukraine alive, by enabling them to throw literally anything and everything they could obtain into the fight. And the system enabled rapid experimentation and evolution of what works. Also they didn't have enough of anything to equip all units equally or fully, so a market-like system of was also a way to triage short supply.

However the logistics costs of fragmentation are very real (relevant to the supply chain theme of this story). And now that Ukraine is producing the better part of 10 millions(!) of drones per year, they are shifting towards more standardized drone models to simplify logistics, achieve more economies of scale and also now to have the capacity to keep units equipped more evenly and reliably.

lopsotronic3• 13 days ago

You also have to ponder how it looks when you remove the Chinese supply chain for all those commodity parts. Which will almost certainly be the case if we decide to punch that dance card.

Having a boundless cornucopia of servos and radios will affect the shape of your logistics/maintenance/fabrication complex.

That's not just a "Ukraine Problem" either.

tim-tday• 13 days ago

Procurement innovation wins the war.

LPisGood2• 13 days ago

The system is useful for many reasons, not the least of which that it provides an easy way to avoid war crimes (which hurt the war effort via bad PR in partner countries). They award units 10x as many points (which can be redeemed for drones, HIMARS strikes, etc) for a capture than they do for a kill.

tencentshill• 13 days ago

Because it's a defensive war for their own homeland, not just a job.

holoduke4• 13 days ago

Ukraine / Russia war is not a real war yet. It's a gentleman's war. If parties want to go all in, even without nuclear weapons it would mean a lot of civilian casualties. Millions would die. It's waiting for when this is gonna happen. Only then we know what real war means.

pj_mukh• 13 days ago

Woah cool! Any write up’s on this?

ExoticPearTree15• 13 days ago

As a "sitting on my couch" war expert, I think future combat should be country level semi-organized guerrilla combat style. When every structure, forest etc. tries to kill you, it might changed the adversary's opinion on how much they want your land.

On the other hand, if they just want to kill you for the sake of killing you, that's another story and the enemy will probably resort to "carpet bombing".

helsinkiandrew2• 13 days ago

Units can also collect e-points to purchase more equipment:

The allocation changes regularly, but as of June 2025, Business Insider reported that destroying a tank was worth eight points. A multiple launch rocket system counted for 10. Killing a regular Russian soldier earned 12 points. Wounding a drone pilot was valued at 15 and eliminating him netted 25. In the final step, the payoff, units use the points they’ve earned to purchase equipment—drones, drone jamming devices, ammunition, and other goods—on Brave1 Market, an online shopping platform not unlike Amazon.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tamarjacoby/2025/09/19/kyivs-e-...

ifwinterco• 12 days ago

It’s a mixed blessing because while the competition should lead to better designs it also leads to massive fragmentation in the drones used which has negative consequences for maintenance, training etc compared to the Russian approach of making huge numbers of a few proven designs

throwaway858253• 12 days ago

I think the actual purpose of the market is to reduce corruption. When everyone has to publish prices and Pavel pays his mate 3x for the same drone it's easier to flag for auditing.

stevenwoo3• 12 days ago

I posted this in another reply, but this is relevant to your point about the market place (deeper in article) and for the hacker news audience - the current Defense Minister for Ukraine is a 35 year old from the tech industry, Mykhailo Fedorov https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theo...

larrik• 13 days ago

They should probably rename it from "tail" to "neck" and watch the attitudes shift immediately.

mcswell4• 13 days ago

Or maybe "dentures"?

cucumber37328423• 13 days ago

Tooth to tail is crappy PC/corporate-approved rename. The concept used to have a bunch of arrow and spear related names and a bunch of informal phallic counterparts all of which are better suited to the fundamental workflow of mechanized offensive operations.

masfuerte• 13 days ago

That should call it coccyx. That sounds like something Trump would support.

alansaber2• 13 days ago

The driving force of peacetime military procurement and organisation is bureaucracy. Hence we see the real developments in military doctrine from Ukraine, Iran etc.

phkahler• 13 days ago

The US military knows full well the importance of logistics. TFA is somehow arguing for distributed distribution networks that are harder to track and attack. Why not advocate for improved defenses along the supply lines? Or is it down to percentages where just one good hit has large effect?

zipy124• 13 days ago

They argue for both no? Increased armour for logistics, but also the notion that yes, if one good hit destroys your whole stockpile then you would need a 100% success rate defense mechanism which is impossible when you can be overwhelmed by the number of drones/missiles seen in modern warfare.

maxglute• 13 days ago

Knowing logistics is important =/= able to adapt logistics to modern environment. Last 40-50 years US adversaries couldn't really contest/degrade US logistics at scale. Article is suggesting with new tech, they probably could, and hence may have to redo the entire system for distributed survivability / operate under chaos. Aka 60/70% of the force (the tail) is going to have to change the way they do things. It's hard to make 60/70% of org change, especially the boring bureaucratic/logistics part built around predictability, who are going to want to stay predictable and insist everything is fine with these minor changes, until its not.

rawgabbit5• 13 days ago

Ukraine is deploying AI enabled drones that require no fiber optic wires and no electronic tethering. They patrol autonomously and identify targets; a human authorizes the strike and they take out targets by themselves. This is the holy grail of modern warfare; destroy the enemy’s rear staging and logistics. If they don’t have fuel or ammo, they are a defenseless sitting target.

Animats8• 13 days ago

The main point of this paper is that rear area bases are too vulnerable now. This paper is from West Point, and is the view from the Army side. It's a big problem for air forces, too.

The US has a tradition of large, supposedly secure bases in the rear. The USAF has relied on this since WWII. It's not working any more. Iran has been hitting US air bases. In the last day, they've hit US bases in Qatar, Jordan, Kuwait and Bahrain. That's just this round. There were previous hits a few months back. It's not publicized much, but it's no secret. It's hard to protect an air base against drones. Air bases are big, everyone knows where they are, airplanes are hard to hide from drones, and are vulnerable to small explosive charges. As Russia keeps finding out as Ukraine hits their air bases. There have been hits well inside Russia. Blast-resistant hangars in Crimea have been attacked. Don't leave a door open.

China is going in for airbase hardening in a big way.[1] This is sometimes called a "concrete sky" program. The USAF is way behind in the Pacific. Too many planes parked out in the open, or in weak hangars.

Active defenses against drones and missiles do work, but they just thin them out. Some get through. If the attacker has enough manufacturing capacity, the defenses can be overwhelmed. Ukraine is currently building about 7 million drones a year.

[1] https://www.hudson.org/arms-control-nonproliferation/concret...

dahart• 13 days ago

A very insightful, and correct, piece.

I agree, or at least it feels insightful and right, though I can’t personally validate if it’s correct. But the big question I have is who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen? Is this to sway the public, to push politicians, to convince the Army internally to plan better, stop using contractors & no-bid contracts, or simply ask for more?

Looks like military spending is currently ~20% of all Federal Revenue at somewhere close to $1T, and it exceeds the combined spending of China and Russia by maybe 2x. Are we wanting to go back to 1960’s 50% of Federal Revenue? Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?

Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_...

tclancy2• 13 days ago

who is this written for, and what do they want to see happen

It's at wespoint.edu. The US military has a long and proud history of really good thinkers writing insightful and important pieces the government then ignores. My outsider impression has always been there was a freedom of ideas there. Don't get used to it though as Pete Hesgeth is fixing it fast as he can.

nradov6• 13 days ago

Foreign military budget numbers are largely fake and can't be attempted to be believed. China's government spending isn't publicly released and can't be independently verified. A lot of what the US considers to be military spending falls into separate categories in China. At least on a purchasing power parity basis their actual spending is probably close to ours now, maybe even higher.

rawgabbit5• 13 days ago

It was written by a major trying to convince both those in charge of military doctrine (army leadership) and military budget (civilian leadership). Both of which can be obstinate and counterproductive. Army brass sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else. Civilian leadership sometimes prioritize their careers over everything else.

AlexCoventry7• 13 days ago

Why don’t we have reasonable logistics and supply lines and infrastructure with $1T?

Deeply entrenched corruption, obviously.

skywhopper4• 13 days ago

It’s written by folks who want to convince the military to do better.

The fact that the US wastes a lot of money on what’s likely a very ineffective military is not a surprise, surely. Yes, they should have a better logistics system for all that money.

zcw100• 13 days ago

I guess you're just supposed to read Clausewitz not actually understand it.

cwillu• 13 days ago

The drinking caused by the reading tends to interfere with the understanding.

Someone3• 13 days ago

Historically, that was phrased as “an army marches on its stomach”

I think that’s an apt comparison because it was hard to keep an army fed (https://acoup.blog/2022/07/15/collections-logistics-how-did-...)

asdff10• 13 days ago

It is kind of interesting seeing the ukraine war tiptoe from actually striking the tail in earnest. We see some attacks on moscow refineries in recent days, yes, but why not full scale targeting of total industrial collapse of the russian state? Similarly, why doesn't Kyiv look like Gaza?

I guess ukraine doesn't want to be slapped equally hard. We see this in the iran war too. Small scale, targeted attacks to some cherry pieces of infrastructure to make headlines and perhaps bring people to the negotiating table, while all the power and capability is there to wipe Iran back to the stone age if so inclined.

I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.

siriusastrebe4• 13 days ago

Moscow could only accomplish this with nukes, and only early in the war. By this point Ukraine has dug underground for most of its crucial war-sustaining industry.

Ukraine, well they don't have nukes but as I understand it, much of the USSR's nuclear arsenal was built in Ukraine. I suspect Ukraine could respond tit for tat.

dgacmu2• 13 days ago

I think you're over-estimating the capability of both sides of the fight (absent nuclear weapons on the part of Russia). Both sides appear to be using drones and missiles as fast as they can manufacture them. One could argue Russia could be more selectively targeting industrial infrastructure - I don't know if their attacks on residential areas are an inability to target well or some kind of hope that demoralization will be effective - but Ukraine is, I believe, doing as much as they can to Russia's oil & defense sectors as they are able.

example: "CAR’s analysis, based on physical examinations of marks on the remnants, shows that the missile that struck Okhmatdyt hospital was produced at most three months before the attack. Or perhaps even eight days before. " [1]

Sanctions and limited parts availability are limiting Russia's ability to manufacture weapons [2]

[1] https://global.espreso.tv/russia-ukraine-war-car-researchers...

[2] https://www.kcl.ac.uk/warstudies/assets/kcl-fasi-paper31-win...

thisislife2• 13 days ago

Similarly, why doesn't Kyiv look like Gaza?

The stated Russian military goals are the "liberation" of the Donbass region and to enforce Ukraine's neutrality (i.e prevent it from joining any military alliance inimical to Russia). With the second goal, there is also the hope that future Ukrainian governments may not be as hostile to Russia as the current Ukrainian leaders and future Ukraine-Russia relations may be normalised as it was in the pre-Zelensky era. Deliberately targeting civilians, with a genocide in mind, makes that highly unlikely.

Note that for the Israeli-right, genocide is the goal because their zionist ideology is based on the settler-coloniser philosophy, and the population of the Palestinian muslims currently outnumber the Israeli Jews (when you include Palestinians that are refugees too, who have a "right to return"). The Palestinians also have a higher birth rate than the Israelis. This is a huge obstacle to the one-state solution - even the Israeli moderates on either political spectrum fear to make Palestinians Israeli citizens (which is one way of ending the conflict) as they fear Israeli Jews would then become a minority. The Israeli-right's solution to this is to make the Palestinian muslims a minority in their own land. (Akin to what the settler-coloniser Europeans did in Canada, USA, Australia etc. with the native population - this is corroborated by a UN probe that says Palestinian children and Babies were ‘special targets’ of Israeli killings - https://www.rt.com/india/642399-israel-gaza-babies-targets/ ). Moreover, as the Israeli-right are mostly religious fundamentalists and have already amended the law declaring Israel to be a Jewish state, they are also resolutely opposed to making Israel a secular state. Thus, in their political vision of Israel, only Jews can ever be a first-class citizen, while non-Jews are always meant to have lesser political rights.

I think there are complex factors at play that prevent an actual total annihilation attack on the tail, even though it seems like it should be well within capabilities.

It's not about military capabilities but the political repercussions. NATO cannot supply enough weapons to Ukraine till they shift to a war-time mode. Moreover, they cannot allow Ukraine to use their territory to attack Russia, which is needed for successfully executing such an operation. (They have been "experimenting" in this area by ignoring Ukraine's drone intrusions into their airspace, as the drones move towards Russian assets). And you also have to ensure that you don't push the Russians into a corner as they are a nuclear weapon state.

With Iran, it is true that the Americans do have the capabilities to launch such an attack successfully. However, American allies - Iran's neighbours - fear that they will be caught in between the attack and bear the brunt of Iran's retaliatory attacks, specifically on their industry (oil and gas).

Thus, in both cases, it is mostly politics that holds them back.

For me, the most interesting bit of the article is this tid-bit:

To survive in contested environments, the Army must transition from a centralized hub-and-spoke sustainment model to a decentralized network of smaller, dispersed, mobile, and signature-managed nodes. Sustainment elements must be capable of relocating with the same frequency as maneuver battalion tactical operations centers, while distributed caching of fuel, water, and ammunition across concealed locations should replace the current reliance on large, centralized supply dumps. This transformation must be paired with deliberate investment in camouflage, concealment, and deception tailored to sustainment operations.

That sounds very much like how the current Iranian military and para-military organisations are with their underground bunkers, warehouses and tunnels, with the ability to make independent command decisions in the absence of orders from central command. Even Iran's proxy, Hezbollah, is somewhat modelled similarly and that is why Israel's attack on Hezbollah's leadership (the pager bombing) hasn't had the impact that the Israelis hoped for - they are still bogged down fighting them in Lebanon.

kakacik2• 13 days ago

Dude, read some proper war news ffs. During a recent single night, those russian assholes send on Kyiv around 500 shaheds, 50 kalibr missiles, 50 of something else I dont recall etc totalling around 600 long range missiles/warheads/medium sized long range drones, each capable of significant damage due to big heavy explosive load. If they could they would send more, luckily russians and competence dont meet at the same room often.

If Ukraine's defense didnt shoot down >90% of them depending on the type it would be a total carnage, day after day.

Of couse its largely useless wave of terror, very similar to V1/V2 terror attacks nazi germany did on London, with similar results - increasing resolve. But infrastructure is hammered, during winter it can be brutal, and country cannot go on like that forever.

anonymars• 13 days ago

Almost like a Prince Rupert's drop (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_Rupert's_drop)

pfortuny• 13 days ago

The first thought when moving people must be "where/how will they shit?" Only once this is solved can you ask "what will they eat?".

petesergeant• 13 days ago

which implies the logistical tail is a bureaucratic waste that must be minimized to support the combat teeth, must be fundamentally reexamined

Current SecDef thinks looking like a war movie hero is more important, however, so action on this front may be delayed.

iwontberude• 12 days ago

Given the defense budget recently doubled and they lose account of trillions of dollars, I guess I don’t see how they aren’t spending money on the tail.

wartywhoa237• 13 days ago

Many complain on negativism in HN comments, but how in the world can a sane person express anything positive when there's a hell-bent will in conjunction with the "next war"?

paulluuk• 13 days ago

I consider myself an optimist, but given that the US has been in 229 wars over it's 249 years since founding, it seems highly unlikely that there wouldn't be a "next war".

wartywhoa237• 13 days ago

My point is that war is the worst thing that humans can engage in, and that the prevailing sentiment is that constant war is an immutable status-quo, and hence it's okay, there's nothing we can do except downvoting those fucking negativists.

xp8411• 13 days ago

There’s nothing peculiar about the US, every country or even tribe has fought many wars.

mcphage3• 13 days ago

Ukraine didn't want to go to war, but someone else made that choice for them.

strictnein• 13 days ago

Are you under the impression that humanity could reach a state where there is never another major war?

I don't know how one would reach that conclusion, least of all a Major at the nation's leading military educational institute. Nothing "hell-bent" about it.

wartywhoa237• 13 days ago

Yes, I am. That requires a total reassesment of who the real enemy is, though (hint: psychopaths at power).

pjc503• 13 days ago

People were starting to think that way at the "end of history" period between the Cold War and 9/11. At that time the major powers were not involved in wars, and it was believed that regional ones could be "solved" like Yugoslavia.

9/11 was a huge success for Bin Laden's goal of restarting a forever war, though.

alansaber2• 13 days ago

Comparing the negativity of HN to the inevitability IRL warfare is absolutely hilarious, but I take your point

marssaxman• 13 days ago

Your concern is reasonable but misdirected. This article is a publication of the "Modern War Institute", a research organization at West Point, the US Army military academy; it is literally their job to anticipate and plan for the next war, whatever it may happen to be. Deciding whether those plans ought to be used is a completely different responsibility.

causality02• 13 days ago

Change is not going to happen until it's forced. The US military was born as a force required to rebuff existential threats. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, the gravitational center of the US military has been the profit margins of defense contractors. What creates the greatest profit? Centralization. Why have a dozen logistics centers when you can have one big one? A trillion dollar fighter program more efficiently absorbs tax dollars than half a dozen specialized vehicle programs from mid-sized companies. Why get congress to pay you to make cheap drones when you can get them to pay you to build $4M Patriot missiles? The MBAs have been riding the US military into the dirt for forty years and I don't think it's going to stop any time soon.

kasey_junk• 13 days ago

Isn’t the American military logistics the most decentralized supply chain in the world? Famously (perhaps apocryphal) _every congressional district_ has jobs in the military logistics supply chain.

causality02• 13 days ago

It would be decentralized if the same things were being built in different places. The way US government manufacturing is set up is more like taking all your organs out, sticking each of them in a separate room, and piping the blood back and forth. Every item has a mile-long supply chain and attacking any part of it shuts the whole thing down.

snowpid• 13 days ago

sorry, but the European defence is more decentralised.

Tostino• 13 days ago

Decentralization doesn't matter at all if you still have single points of failure everywhere.

bflesch• 13 days ago

I agree with your point but it's incredibly naive to identify "the MBAs" as scapegoat for this problem.

We're living in times where an evangelical POTUS dislikes the pope, oligarchs talk about the "antichrist", wars are started with reference to "armageddon" [1] to distract from old money power brokers such as Epstein who has esotheric Kaballah symbols on his office walls [2 @14min42sec].

The authoritarians are concluding the democratic experiment because they can't hide their heritage any longer. All hail the King.

[1] https://www.huffpost.com/entry/troops-being-told-to-prepare-...

[2] https://www.yahoo.com/news/videos/never-seen-video-shows-eps...

xp8411• 13 days ago

Why are defense contractors not better investments, then?

https://youtu.be/C2gIId1dpDs

ptmcc• 13 days ago

They are largely congressional jobs programs, not traditional business investments

AlexCoventry7• 13 days ago

Change is not going to happen until it's forced.

Yes, Pearl Harbor was a known vulnerability, prior to the Japanese attack. The US just wasn't ready to take airpower seriously, at that point.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/k5okm8/why_d...

bad_haircut723• 13 days ago

When Russia invaded Ukraine, nobody (even the Ukranians) imagined that 5 years later they would have their own missiles hammering Russia 2500kms in the rear. Americans need to start accepting that a) the Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years and b) Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking.

mcphage3• 13 days ago

Iran will probably in a better place than they are now, strategically speaking

How could that be? Are they getting an influx of $300 billion dollars or something?

jandrese3• 13 days ago

They'll be getting the Hormuz toll money.

xp8411• 13 days ago

It’s an odd declaration and maybe based on Rus/Ukraine. But Ukraine is doing better now than in the first week of the “Special Military Operation” due to having a lot of rich allies who have (in fits and starts) given them a lot of money and gear, and due to a Russia which has stretched its military and economy to the breaking point.

By contrast, Iran’s only allies are its terrorist affiliates in Lebanon, Gaza, and the Houthis. Those guys can’t do much to help. China and Russia (see above though) are willing to do business with them but don’t really give a crap about Iran surviving.

Anyway, the US and Israel can keep degrading Iran’s military and “government” by dropping bombs (or better, drones) on them every week for a decade and it won’t really be a big deal for the former. Iran though will not be better off for it, I’m pretty confident. (Other than their surviving religious fanatics will be even more suicidally devout.)

malfist2• 13 days ago

Iran war will also probably still be going on in 5 years

The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.

What's the goal of the US/Iran war? So far it seems like the goal is to mostly return to the status quo prior to the war. I can't imagine that could continue 5 years because there's just not an objective. Of course, I could easily be mistaken.

mcphage3• 13 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

What's the goal?! The US/Iran war has a ton of goals! Every day a new goal, each as improbable as the last.

segbrk• 13 days ago

That’s exactly why it could continue indefinitely. A war with no goal can’t be won. Nor can it be abandoned without bruising powerful egos.

jandrese3• 13 days ago

The Trump administration forgot all of the lessons of Vietnam.

pjc503• 13 days ago

The goal is a very simple one: make Trump look good. It wouldn't be the first war in history to be driven by pure vanity of an absolute ruler.

forshaper2• 13 days ago

There hasn't been a clear goal for an American war since the first Gulf War.

strulovich• 13 days ago

This is not a very charitable explanation, it takes politicians at their word during a war. (One should not do that, and you can refer to Putin’s language at 2022 as a parallel example to Trump’s)

The initial US goals clearly were: 1. Regime change 2. Denial is of nuclear weapons

It’s also clear these goals were not achieved. So the US changed tactics and goals. (Same as Russia no longer plans on capturing Kiev it seems)

Most likely the US is stalling for time due to oil markets and has the same intentions as before, limited only by current capability.

bad_haircut723• 13 days ago

Once you've lost something (I think sooner or later, Iran will succeed in sinking a big US ship) then even if you cant win, you also cant leave else its an admission of defeat - so it drags on and on and on.

ApolloFortyNine• 13 days ago

Well at this point the goal is for Iran to stop randomly blowing up innocent cargo ships. Or firing missiles at airports and cities in retaliation.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/iran-war-live-us-says-iranian-...

271833• 13 days ago

Initially it's unclear what the goal was. But now the goal must be opening the strait of Hormuz ASAP. There's going to be serious economic fallout if that doesn't happen[0]. It remains to be seen how realistic that goal actually is. Iran has big advantages in their favor.

[0] https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/08/business/iran-oil-trump-strai...

tbrake• 13 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

kneecaping china by cutting off a huge source of its oil imports. Russia will not be able to make up the difference.

lenerdenator8• 13 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

It varies. Which is the problem.

I can think of a few:

1) Severely kneecap the Iranians' nuclear ambitions. This one might actually be working to an extent.

2) Severely kneecap the Iranians' military ambitions in the Middle East as a whole, particularly with respect to Israel. This remains unknown. Their neighbors seem content to give them a pass for launching missiles into their infrastructure, possibly on the grounds of shared religion. Maybe they'll get tired of it.

3) Cause regime change in Iran. Not happening now. Might not happen in the foreseeable future.

Varelion3• 13 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

Distract from the Epstein files. If you think anything else you:

    1 - Haven't been paying attention since 2008.

    2 - Are giving the administration way too much undeserved credit.

wnevets• 13 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

To make certain people money by shorting the oil market. There is a reason why these "peace" deals are always announced on Fridays.

kylehotchkiss2• 13 days ago

Write off depreciation on military hardware?

MyHonestOpinon• 13 days ago

The US had the power to start the war. The US doesn't have the power to stop the war.

373748484• 13 days ago

the goal of the war in iran is to produce a regime change that will prevent them from having nukes targeting israel

islamic iran with nukes makes israel untennable and the us puppets in the gulf too

the us will be forced to physically invade now that the first strike failed

the us in its current form will not tolerate an existential threat to israel

onlyrealcuzzo• 13 days ago

The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.

No, it has a goal to keep Putin in power.

The Iran war happened to move people's interest from a certain set of files about a certain group people onto something else.

It succeeded by that standard, but now has created the mess that you can't just start a war with a country to distract your voters and not suffer any consequences from it.

Iran was not thrilled to be bombed to play a part in this distraction.

throwaway274483• 13 days ago

The Russia/Ukraine war has a goal, to make Ukraine either part of Russia or a client state.

Or at least the Donbas... I can't imagine they'd want a border pressing up against nato without a rump state in between.

0x073• 13 days ago

If it's continue 5 years, the country connected to this war in this region will go fast downstairs and maybe even end in a broken state. I don't sympathies with any monarch country there, but no one wants more unstable countries, especially in the Arabic region.

__turbobrew__3• 12 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

Distraction from Epstien Files

yodsanklai• 12 days ago

What's the goal of the US/Iran war?

I'm just a layman, but the goal seems obvious to me. First it's not US/Iran but US + Israel / Iran. From Israel's point of view, I assume the goal is the preemptive destruction of Iran's military capabilities (especially nuclear weapons).

kcatskcolbdi• 13 days ago

It's hard to imagine them in a better place; they seem to have us by the balls already.

stronglikedan• 13 days ago

lol, no. no comparison between those wars

anjel2• 13 days ago

History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

cliglot• 13 days ago

History reveals that every war is won by the nation with superior industrial capacity.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichimeca_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet–Afghan_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Afghanistan_(2001–2021)

You’d be pretty hard pressed to refer the victor of any of these wars as having “superior industrial capacity” compared to their opponents.

tclancy2• 13 days ago

Is this some kind of subtle gag?

mythrwy• 13 days ago

The Mongol army was much less industrialized than the people they conquered though so I'd say it's factor but not decisive.

asdff10• 13 days ago

People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen. Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine? Why not fire off a littany of missiles? Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest?

Everyone assumed the war would be over in two weeks, because it really could have ended in two weeks if russia went full throttle early on. But there must be some factors at play that prevent total war from seeming like an attractive option. Maybe fear of equal reprisal. And in the end you get this slog of a war, with an unchanging front line and various headlines every few weeks of some one off piece of infrastructure or industry being destroyed, and little coming after that. I'm not sure what these factors are exactly, but clearly they exist to quiet the beast and have this slow drip war be the optimal outcome compared to alternatives. Maybe the threat of NATO taking control of the war is what keeps it at its current slow pace.

KittenInABox• 13 days ago

My understanding is that Russia's "full throttle" isn't actually as strong as they had posed...

nradov6• 13 days ago

Russia has no ability to carpet bomb anyone anymore. They have only a handful of operational strategic bombers left and little or no capability to manufacture new ones. Much of the USSR's old heavy aircraft supply chain was in Ukraine. So Russia is unwilling to risk their aircraft in defended airspace because they need to preserve them as part of their strategic nuclear deterrent triad.

Animats8• 13 days ago

- Why don't they carpet bomb all of the Ukraine?

Russia does not have anywhere near enough aircraft to do that. If they tried, they'd lose more of their air force.[1] Russia does not have much of an aircraft industry left. For one thing, much of the USSR's aircraft industry was in Ukraine.

- Why not fire off a litany of missiles?

Nuclear? Russia so far has not wanted to cross that threshold and start WWIII. Non-nuclear, they have to build them.

- Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest?

Because Russia is running out of manpower reserves. The draft in Russia now covers all males from 18 to 30. In that age range, men can no longer leave Russia. Russia has 1.4 million military casualties so far, with about 400,000 deaths. Currently, the casualty rate is higher than the new recruit rate. Conscript soldiers serve for one year, but there is heavy pressure to sign up as a "volunteer" with no time limit. The Russian tradition of throwing recruits into battle with a huge casualty rate continues. It worked in WWII, but cost 20 million lives. It hasn't been working in Ukraine. The Ukrainian claim is that the survival time for a new soldier on the Russian front lines is four hours. This is probably exaggerated.

It was policy for a while that the draft wasn't enforced too strictly in Moscow and St. Petersburg. This was to avoid generating political opposition to the war. That seems to be over.

[1] https://nationalsecurityjournal.org/putin-cant-fix-this-the-...

creato2• 13 days ago

Other than nukes, Russia does not have significant spare capacity. They use missiles and drones with months of their production. They fly bomber aircraft as close to the front as they can. They've burned through most of their cold war era stockpiles of equipment. 0.5-1% of their entire population is a casualty of this war (so probably closer to 5% of their working age men).

lostlogin12• 13 days ago

People assumed Russia would press with their full might and that has just yet to ever happen

I don’t think you are appreciating how large the Ukraine is, how deficient the Russian military is and how depleted its population has become.

Look at the losses they are taking, with military casualties having passed a million. Their military spending is a huge portion of GDP (as mush as 50%, see wiki). Their parking lots of mothballed tanks are depleted and their refineries smashed. Russia is teetering and may not be able to sustain this much longer.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_Russia

orthoxerox8• 13 days ago

Why not conscript the bulk of their manpower reserves and actually invade in earnest?

Because it's hugely politically unpopular. There's a risk that this will happen after the parliamentary election this autumn.

Fizz436• 13 days ago

You cannot mass troops easily in the days of satellite and targeted long ranged missiles. They mass 20 million troops but they have to transport them down supply lines and house them all to get them close to the front. They'd be picked apart.

3371• 13 days ago

Why don't they carpet bomb all of the ukraine?

In Chinese we call it "wash the ground with missiles", and many Chinese and Taiwanese say this constantly as a threat or concern. It's amusing that many people think this is a practical thing to happen, and keep bringing it up.

paxys• 13 days ago

Big difference between the two - America has elections.

croes2• 13 days ago

Iran and Russia have elections too

jmyeet2• 13 days ago

So if the Iran war is still going on in 5 years the global economy has collapsed. I'm not sure people realize just how quickly this situation is going to be dire. 2-3 months more of this and certain countries are going to have rolling blackouts. We will be having shortages of avgas and huge price spikes in avgas, gas and diesel. Diesel in particular is going to have a massive impact on inflation.

Oil futures don't currently reflect this because a lot of players have exited the market because they're sick of being fleeced by Donald Trump who has bet big and then announced yet another fake ceasefire, at least a dozen times. We actually have a bunch of short positions, such that we risk a Gamestop like short squeeze.

Ukraine is harder to figure out because it's really difficult to get good information. We have people on one side saying Russia is on the verge of collapse (and has been for 3 years) while it's also clear that Russia still has a manpower advantage and Ukraine's army is facing desertion and a lack of soldiers to draft. It's also unclear what the real impact of strikes on oil infrastructure deep in Russia are really changing the battle lines and overall position. If anything it might just exacerbate the energy crisis brought on by the Iran war.

jojobas2• 13 days ago

Russian goals are vastly different from US'. US has no intent to incorporate Iran or fight out for each and every mountain village. US goals might not be easily achievable either but for completely different reasons. Iran is also unlikely to get 10% of the logistical support Ukraine has.

nerdyadventurer• 12 days ago

US may not take Iran under them, but they will grip the Iran's economy by controlling their oil and gas resources. It is what US doing in Irque, all oil sales going through bank of New York, they not only take cuts from sales but also make threats like we would not send dollars if you did not do this and that.

US involvement in the Middle East has ruined those countries. It is not a just middle east where ever they involve they ruin others ex: Trump's Congo deal which locked in their mineral for decade without any benefit to poor Congos

Stevvo• 13 days ago

A limited view of the threat. All very well worrying about keeping your armored brigade combat team fueled up, but that won't be much use when the same weapons that threaten the logistics have destroyed all the Abrams and Bradleys that use the fuel. The Army is still under the delusion that its possible to win a peer conflict, not having learnt the lesson of the cold war there will be no winners in this hypothetical fight.

HelloMcFly4• 13 days ago

This piece seems logical and correct. It also seems entirely AI-generated, but I suppose we've moved into a world where that's just the way content is now.

ranger207• 13 days ago

Nah that's just the way defense essays have sounded for the past 20 years or so

Noumenon722• 13 days ago

Yes, I disagree with Pangram on this. It's a very familiar style, so familiar that things that might look like LLM-isms in another context actually give a smooth feeling of fitting the style exactly.

BadBadJellyBean3• 13 days ago

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. You gain nothing from pointing out every post that seems LLM generated. Read it or don't but we don't make the world better by accusing each other of using LLMs. The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration.

HelloMcFly4• 13 days ago

There is no "maybe", it is at least largely AI-generated though I'm sure there's a human involved in building the perspective. Run it through any checker you can find, the outcome is without doubt.

I don't think I've made a similar comment elsewhere on Hacker News, reddit, etc., (nor do I plan to make a habit of it) but this one stuck out to me. I know this because I did read it just as I've read previous posts such as these on West Point through the years. This just isn't how things used to be written. It's a little more ambiguous out in the wild on any given site/blog/etc.

The only things we increase are mistrust and frustration

Mistrust of what? The human voice behind this thought? Yes, I think that mistrust is valid and earned. Nevertheless, I admit the topic seems pertinent and the argument has merit.

haunter• 13 days ago

If history provides the theory, the ongoing war in Ukraine offers a brutal contemporary lesson: Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics, not when they run out of weapons.

Is this really a new lesson? I thought that was common knowlegede since WW2 especially with the events of the Eastern Front.

realusername• 13 days ago

"Amateurs discuss tactics, professionals discuss logistics"

Napoleon

tristramb• 13 days ago

He learnt the hard way (as did all those who followed him into Russia)

hvs• 13 days ago

That was discussed in the article.

ksd482• 13 days ago

She specifically said "contemporary lesson" while citing the original WW2 lesson on logistics.

By contemporary lesson I assume she means similar lesson but more recent and keeping modern world/logistics in mind.

jillesvangurp• 13 days ago

If you know your military history, it's a lesson military planners learn with essentially every war that is then forgotten when the next generation of military planners and politicians come along.

Both Russia and the US learned expensive lessons in Afghanistan fairly recently. And yet here they are engaged in conflicts in Ukraine and Iran that don't seem to go as they planned.

hunmernop• 13 days ago

So many armchair quarterbacks

bee_rider• 13 days ago

The “game” has been reinvented recently, there aren’t any non-armchair quarterbacks. Thankfully.

AlexCoventry7• 13 days ago

There's likely a major world war brewing. Should I not be thinking and forming opinions about that? It's probably going to profoundly affect me.

thrownawaysz• 13 days ago

the difficulty of transporting extremely heavy 155-millimeter artillery shells and guided multiple-launch rocket system pods across contested oceans and degraded theater road networks

I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked

LinuxAmbulance• 13 days ago

I found it interesting that not even this article thinks about it that the US mainland ever can be attacked

It can be, but it would be very, very difficult for anything short of lobbing ICBMs around. You'd have to have a fleet of ships that would be detected as soon as they set sail, and then protect that fleet for the entire voyage, which would also be extremely difficult for any adversary.

Getting boots on US soil would be even tougher.

Drones are an option, but cross-ocean ones are not an easy problem to solve.

kylehotchkiss2• 13 days ago

For better and for worse our country is armed to the teeth with civilians who would take great offense to a foreign military invasion

AlexCoventry7• 13 days ago

According to Zelensky, there will be drones capable of traversing tens of thousands of kilometers within a couple of years. The US mainland is definitely at risk of drone attack in the near-medium term, IMO.

One, two, three years — drones will strike ten, twenty thousand kilometers. With reactive engines, they will be very cheap -- Zelensky

https://x.com/nexta_tv/status/2042105223989035429

protocolture5• 13 days ago

Getting boots on US soil would be even tougher.

Getting them there seems easy, its the keeping them there that seems like a logistical nightmare.

You'd have to have a fleet of ships that would be detected as soon as they set sail, and then protect that fleet for the entire voyage, which would also be extremely difficult for any adversary.

Or make friends with one of your neighbors that the USA appears to be keen on pissing off constantly. I have never seen more negative sentiment about the USA from Canadians before, who now see the USA as a strategic threat instead of their mentally challenged neighbor.

And dont get me started on Mexico, they can probably be had for pennies.

contubernio• 13 days ago

It could be attacked easily via an alliance with Mexico or Canada. The premise that such a thing could never happen is not a good one for military planning.

mcswell4• 13 days ago

I was puzzled by this: "...the Army must reinvest in up-armoring its logistical fleet. While adding armor reduces payload capacity and increases fuel consumption, violating the peacetime gospel of efficiency, it is a mandatory trade-off for survival." Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine? I don't hear much about them, and I thought that was because drones can find the weaknesses in armor. Instead the emphasis now seems to be on rapidly moving logistical vehicles (and even, for the Russians, on hand-carried "stuff", which seems unlikely to be sustainable). Can someone who knows more than I do comment on this?

mpyne2• 13 days ago

Where are the armored vehicles now in Ukraine?

A more appropriate question might be, where are the armored vehicles now in Russia?

And as it turns out, they have indeed started adding armor to transport craft, including trains: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_armoured_train_Yenisei

And despite Ukrainian strikes earlier, the Russian bridge over the Kerch strait remains standing and in use for some (not all) logistical supply from Russia to Crimea, and this is due in no small amount due to the amount of 'armoring' that is inherent to the design of a bridge that must cross a strait of that size.

It's a question of cost more than anything, the more expensive a transport means becomes to build, the more it makes sense to start including armor to force an attack on that transport to itself have to invest a lot more for success.

asdff10• 13 days ago

But it also stands to ask, why isn't the bridge being constantly targeted? What factors are weighing ukrainian decisionmaking to not simply strike the hell out of this bridge until it falls?

The strikes ukraine makes in russian territory seem like they are extremely successful but limited in quantity and scope. Why not push that envelope? Some factors must exist that prefer these attacks to be small scale headline makers vs actual large scale destruction.

throw-the-towel5• 13 days ago

Holy cow, they've reinvented the armoured trains from the Civil War (late 1910s to early 1920s). In ten years, everything changes, yet in 100 years, nothing does.

mcswell4• 13 days ago

"A more appropriate question might be, where are the armored vehicles now in Russia?"

Well, that's what I meant, where are the Russian armored vehicles in Ukraine. Because I consider the areas that Russia occupies to be temporarily occupied Ukraine.

Although you (I) could ask where the armored vehicles are that the US and other countries gave to Ukraine. For awhile, Bradley Fighting Vehicles (lightly armored) and M1A1 Abrams were making a lot of news (I think the former were doing surprisingly well, and the latter not as good as expected). But lately I have heard very little about either, or about other armored vehicles that were given to Ukraine.

rawgabbit5• 13 days ago

The most common truck used by the US army has no armor. The author is saying they need to be up-armmored despite the additional weight and fuel consumption; that is the "A2".

https://oshkoshdefense.com/vehicles/medium-tactical-vehicles...

red_admiral• 13 days ago

I would not underestimate the power of a fully mobilized USA. If we really need to, we can do a lot of things that would die to bureaucracy in peacetime - see WWII.

asdff10• 13 days ago

I read there was actually significant war exhaustion among the public towards the end, contrary to the patriotism lens this time in history is frequently shown with. There was also a lot of effort to censor what was actually happening in the war from the public, both in terms of press coverage and in screening soldier letters to home. I'm not sure how long the american war machine can actually last. All the post WWII wars are characterized by significant public war exhaustion. And these days you are going to have the other side posting on social media POV videos of american soldiers getting decimated by drones.

lostlogin12• 13 days ago

What’s more damaging at home? Pictures of your own soldiers dying, or video of the war crimes they are committing?

Sadly, most wars generate both.

marking-time3• 13 days ago

"see WWII" ... I agree, however it is very unfortunate that we have off-shored so much of our industrial capacity.

yborg• 13 days ago

I wonder when the use of 'culminate', v. "reach a climax or point of highest development" for "cease to be effective" became the standard in military-related writing when trying to sound smart. The original usage in the specific context of an army's advance or offensive coming to an end made some sense but it's now used as basically a wordy synonym for "stops" in any context.

coffeecantcode• 13 days ago

Not to mention the closing paragraph of the article essentially says the same thing 8 times - for such a well written paper the closing paragraph was a real disappointment in my eyes. Overall though, good write up.

m_dupont• 13 days ago

I'm also loving their phrase "on a nonlinear battlefield"

... not sure what a linear battlefield would be

wilkommen2• 13 days ago

I think a linear battlefield is one in which there is a "front line", which was a given for prior wars but maybe not as much anymore. Future wars might see adversarial forces mixed among each other spatially more than in the past.

eszed4• 13 days ago

Static (relatively, at least) battle lines? Think of WWI: you knew where the danger was, and where it wasn't.

Not that I know anything in particular about this piece of military jargon, but that's my contextually-informed supposition.

neocodesoftware• 13 days ago

What’s missing - the cost of armoring and weaponizing logistics. Maybe easier to invent a new “startup” logistics than replace the old - especially when he talks about a new autonomous delivery in kill zones.

moi2388• 13 days ago

“ In a future peer conflict, the US Army will not be granted a six-month, uncontested build-up phase, nor will it operate under friendly skies.”

Depends how the war starts. Russia? USA somehow attacks? Easily 6 months of buildup in Europe.

China? Again USA somehow attacks? Again buildup in Australia, Japan, Korea.

Also US air power is absolutely supreme. I don’t see how they will be fighting in actually contested skies even only 2 months in.

siriusastrebe4• 13 days ago

Air power relies on fuel and maintenance and runways. It's not necessary to contest the skies if the adversary can destroy the "tail" that supplies the aircraft.

Stationary bases can easily be targeted globally. The United States has 11 nuclear powered aircraft carriers. We can assume any peer adversary will have knowledge of their approximate whereabouts at all times. It's unclear how they would fare in next generation conflict but we can assume USA's enemies are designing their weapons around taking those carriers down.

The Air Force is currently upgrading many of its aircraft for longer range operations to increase standoff range

lenerdenator8• 13 days ago

The entire body of assumptions that the post-Cold War US military was built on is flawed. China didn't democratize, Russia's oligarchs didn't stop using NATO as their boogeyman, and the world isn't willing to turn dictatorships and ultraconservative theocracies into pariah states.

All of that was assumed to be true. The US would do small police actions here and there with highly-specialized forces. The rules-based system would more-or-less do the rest.

In the meantime we gutted not only the logistics but the manufacturing base needed to feed that system so that we could "cut costs"... which didn't really happen anyways.

We should be throwing people in prison over this.

amanaplanacanal2• 13 days ago

We usually wait for people to break laws and be convicted before we do that.

lenerdenator8• 13 days ago

I'm sure we could find one. It's the military-industrial complex. It exists to facilitate corruption.

Laurel1234• 13 days ago

and the world isn't willing to turn dictatorships and ultraconservative theocracies into pariah states.

The US has been foremost among western democracies in backing dictatorships, even genocidal ones.

briandw3• 13 days ago

These systems are antifragile. Just like what was exposed by the supply chain shock during covid. You optimize like crazy to squeeze every bit of efficiency (I know it's the military, so this is relative) out of a system when times are good / easy. Then the game changes a little and the entire thing comes apart. The US military has been operating in an uncontested space for far too long and there is major weakness in all the unprotected assets away from the front. Think about all the aircraft that are unprotected and near civilians. A project spiderweb in the US would be relatively easy and devastating. The US military needs to get their butt in gear and take action to close those vulnerabilities.

phyzome• 13 days ago

By antifragile, do you mean fragile?

briandw3• 13 days ago

I mean that when you have a system like this and you don’t stress it, it becomes more likely to fail catastrophically. It’s like the Dodo bird. It evolved in the absence of predators, so was easily made extinct. Had the island had dogs the entire time, the Dodo would have evolved to survive.

fiatpandas2• 13 days ago

A project spiderweb in the US

What is that referring to?

graysnow86• 13 days ago

A Ukranian operation where they launched drones from semi trucks driven deep into Russian territory, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Spiderweb

bix63• 13 days ago

Does the US have any initiatives to fix this? Like I keep hearing about reshoring manufacturing but is there actually a concerted effort? It seems like we get a major plant announcement every now and then for some behemoth but is there anything targeted for the SMB or startup space?

catigula• 13 days ago

Tariffs and import controls. Why do you think that BYD is banned from the US?

malfist2• 13 days ago

We had a bill for that, the build back better bill, but it's been gutted.

a34729t• 13 days ago

China has missed their window of opportunity, sadly.

For the next big war, the US will simply not even need to air or sea to deliver weapons or supplies (see SpaceX's StarFall, of which 60x4 should fit into Starship). Per my calculations, the JDAM version of this will be cheaper than flying planes (and pilots) to drop bombs or cruise missiles.

For small(er) wars, cheap drones break everything as they can destroy your backfield. Unless of course you happen to move your backfield into orbit and beyond.

pphysch3• 13 days ago

Opportunity for what?

greekrich92• 13 days ago

Not sure if you've noticed, but none of that SpaceX stuff is going to happen

marcusverus• 13 days ago

L̶a̶u̶n̶c̶h̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶p̶r̶i̶v̶a̶t̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶u̶n̶d̶e̶d̶

̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶s̶s̶i̶b̶l̶e̶.̶ ̶

̶F̶i̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶g̶e̶ ̶r̶e̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶n̶’̶t̶ ̶e̶c̶o̶n̶o̶m̶i̶c̶a̶l̶.̶ ̶

̶M̶e̶g̶a̶c̶o̶n̶s̶t̶a̶l̶l̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶L̶E̶O̶ ̶a̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶i̶p̶e̶ ̶d̶r̶e̶a̶m̶.̶ ̶

̶S̶t̶a̶r̶s̶h̶i̶p̶ ̶w̶i̶l̶l̶ ̶n̶e̶v̶e̶r̶ ̶f̶l̶y̶.̶ ̶

Starfall will never happen!

lostlogin12• 13 days ago

The next war is going to need the US to do something pretty spectacular if it’s going to reclaim the ground it’s lost in the Iran war.

The situation there is an utter joke, and shows no sign of wrapping up any time soon.

Robotbeat5• 13 days ago

That’s because there’s no political will for ground forces by the US because it’s a dumb war. If there was political will, then the area around the Hormuz strait would’ve been seized, as well as the nuclear sites secured. Carpet bombing, too, not just surgical strikes.

manvillej• 13 days ago

I just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there. especially since rocket launches tend to be extremely static.

More dangerously, I think that would inevitably lead to space being the battlefield. Since that area doesn't need any more shrapnel orbiting at 17,500 mph; it seems an idea best left to the drawing board. The cleanup required will make clearing mine fields seem like dusting the living room.

ceejayoz8• 13 days ago

I just don't see how the fuel costs of getting things up to space winning out unless production is located up there.

Starship's in theory targeting something like a million bucks in fuel for a launch. For a military that spends more than that on individual missiles, that's peanuts.

tofuahdude• 13 days ago

The prospect of cleanup duty has never stopped anyone at war. Fields of landmines maiming children for decades, unexploded ordinance in cities, etc etc.

Near earth orbit will be a field of debris until gravity takes over.

throwawayqqq11• 13 days ago

Have you considered the cost difference of drone re-entry vs commercial container logistics?

There are many options to deliver drones to a location and i dont think from orbit is the most viable one, let alone moving any production there.

icegreentea2• 13 days ago

Unclear how China will react to orbital/near-orbital launches that track near/over China in a hot war situation.

If I were China, I'd probably be backdoor signalling that they would consider these launches to be potential nuclear strikes to try to get them off the table.

__turbobrew__3• 12 days ago

China could also prove to the world their ASAT capabilities by shooting down military orbital payloads which overfly their territory.

tsimionescu3• 13 days ago

I'd bet China would like nothing more than the USA basing its future war strategy on Starship, with its long history of fictional timelines and capacities.

w10-1• 13 days ago

If decisions are actually being made based on analogies instead of analysis, the whole thing is brittle.

The entire military is predicated on physical possession and distance; that's the main reason Ukraine is a quagmire, Iran was a no-go, and Taiwan has been relatively safe.

But the next real war for the US is not for territory but to destroy its economic and financial leverage, and destroy its ability to produce those -- by cutting academic research, firing military and intelligence leadership, alienating allies, creating divisions that paralyze democracy, crashing the market, overloading government debt, and binding the Fed, so any response would be muddled and capital and people find opportunity elsewhere. Hence the political enlistment of the poor and unemployed on one hand, and single-minded capitalists on the other, to the same ends.

The trillions of dollars in AI spending and on the military do nothing to address this, and indeed make it worse by exhausting resources for real solutions.

dfedbeef• 13 days ago

Almost all of those things have happened already except for the market crash

skywhopper4• 13 days ago

Not sure we need to wait for the next war. The Iran war has shown some pretty major holes in US military (mostly Navy) logistics already when they aren’t picking a fight with someone who can’t fight back at all.

kens• 13 days ago

Serious question: does Figure 1 in the article make sense to anyone? If you understand the symbols, do you look at the diagram and it's clear how logistics works?

CapricornNoble• 13 days ago

Yes. It depicts how supplies arrive at a port, move via roads to a logistics organization that is brigade-sized, assigned to support a corps. It depicts the subordinate units within that logistics organization (the Army calls these "Sustainment Brigades"). From there supplies go to the corps's subordinate divisions. Within one of those divisions, the supplies go to/between sustainment batalions. From there, supplies go to support battalions and maintenance companies at the division's subordinate brigades. Also, along the top you can see supplies delivered from outside of the AO directly to airfields within a Division Support Area. They can also be moved via air from Corps-level airfields. The icons there depict medium and heavy lift utility helicopters.

Ask your favorite LLM for a brief tutorial on "NATO unit symbology" and "logistics-related operational terms and graphics". The relevant publication is "MIL-STD-2525D". https://www.jcs.mil/portals/36/documents/doctrine/other_pubs...

diddid• 13 days ago

This has been true for as long as war has been a thing. The Army logistics won’t break, it’ll adapt, because that’s what war machines do. What’s good today isn’t good tomorrow. It’s a nice piece but nothing Sun Tzu or a good game of hearts of iron couldn’t teach you.

awfafawf• 13 days ago

LOL IRAN NOT MENTIONED ONCE AND WE SUPPOSED TO TAKE THIS SERIO? THE MAN POINTING OUT THE PROBLEM - HE IS THE PROBLEM.

wilkommen2• 13 days ago

The arguments in this article seem very similar in spirit to the ones mad in "The Sling and the Stone" book by Thomas X. Hammes.

marking-time3• 13 days ago

I just finished listening to a series of podcasts on Crusades I-IV. It is interesting to note that logistics were as important then as they are today. Many battles were influenced by the simple things like food and water availability. In the IV Crusade, financial logistics became one of the key factors.

As for the article, when the institution that trains future generals says we have a problem then we should _listen_.

0x59• 13 days ago

WWII? Fabius did this to Hannibal more than a thousand years ago. The core of his strategy was to dunk on supplies, stall, and have the Carthaginians run out of food.

I imagine Iran, Ukraine, and Russia all know about Fabian strategy.

stevenwoo3• 12 days ago

It appears that Ukraine is executing on this (after building up its internal defense production), and Russia is not adjusting well, yet. https://foreignpolicy.com/2026/07/09/ukraine-russia-war-theo...

ychnd• 12 days ago

More than two thousands years ago! Time flies ;)

phlipski• 13 days ago

Nukes prevented global super powers from going to war against each other for the past 80 years. Maybe the vast democratization and spread of cheap drones will prevent all these stupid little wars that have been fought since WWII. One can hope at least. The whole idea of the US going to war against China is idiotic once any half witted person spends at least 2 minutes thinking about the implications... But hey - it's been great for the military-industrial complex to profit off the fear mongering!

mmooss3• 13 days ago

How much would electrification reduce the fuel logistics burden?

Electricity can be moved anywhere in the world instantly, if you can dig a trench and lay cables. The problem, of course, is density, some combination of (energy OR power) per (liter OR gram) depending on the application:

Batteries don't come close to the energy/power density of jet fuel, but what about whatever fuel armored vehicles use? And what about other electrical storage options, such as hydrogen fuel cells?

Some options might be uneconomical in a civilian environment where logisitics is relatively cheap but fine in a warfare environment where logisitics is far more expensive both in moving assets and in the consequences of logisitical failure.

Also, I'm assuming vehicles consume most of the fuel, but maybe there are other significant applications? And I'm assuming throughput on electrical lines is sufficient - it's fast but how much energy can you move per hour? - but that's something I've never had to think about.

protocolture5• 13 days ago

but what about whatever fuel armored vehicles use?

In WW2 when low on fuel they would gassify combustible items and run that through the engines. The germans called it Holzgas. You could rig this up in the field. It wasnt good mind but the vehicles could move about when logistics fell through.

The idea of being tethered to your supply lines by a cable would probably scare logistics people witless. It would become a game of finding and destroying power cables.

mmooss3• 13 days ago

Interesting. Maybe you could charge your electric vehicles on local supplies and/or carry emergency generators for charging that burn whatever input that is available, including wind, solar, and maybe even cranks, or that can be made, a la Holzgas. Also, you could charge one electrical device from others - even others at a distance.

The idea of being tethered to your supply lines by a cable would probably scare logistics people witless.

I think buried electrical cables would be much more appealing than being tied to roads and trucks full of gasoline. Electrical cables are easy to lay, probably by uncrewed ground or even air vehicles, and could be done quickly with optimization. Redundancy would be cheap and easy, creating a network with few single points of failure. And keeping some generators close to the front, you can also ship them liquid fuel if needed.

mmooss3• 13 days ago

It's important not to overreact:

Early concepts of aircraft in warfare, between WWI and WWII, often said aircraft would make battle lines irrelevant. They assumed nothing could stop aircraft. It didn't work out that way.

Now people say the same about small, uncrewed aircraft (drones). It's based only on a few years of very early adoption - even among technologists in vast, public, civilian markets, who can make predictions like that? Very possibly defenses will improve substantially and possibly defense will gain the advantage or even dominate. I don't believe anyone knows.

One difference between crewed and uncrewed aircraft is that the latter are much less expensive, and easily adopted by forces with minimal resources. The Taliban were not going to build or buy effective crewed fighter planes or bombers - they could not cross NATO battle lines in that way - but now they could build or buy drones.

vondur• 13 days ago

Yep, how long does it take to replace an F-35 or one Reaper drone? In WW2 we probably could have buried Germany in the amount of tanks we could produce. We are like Germany from WW2 now, with hand stitched upholstery in our Tiger Tanks.

susiecambria• 13 days ago

I know nothing about the topic BUT I can remember John Kirby and Jake Sullivan regularly talking logistics, Poland, and other things mentioned here. I don't think I've heard those things from this administration's reps. Not sure if not hearing is good or bad. I sure learned a bunch from Kirby and Sullivan, though.

elzbardico2• 13 days ago

As Stalin said: in a war, quantity is a quality in itself.

gerdesj• 13 days ago

My old man used to say: "an army marches on its stomach".

Most people hereabouts will be wittering on about how best to kill people/do stuff with drones and forget that logistics is rather more complicated than killing things.

Fundamentally: people need food, water and shelter. Vehicles need fuel, mechanics and stuff. Killing people and destroying stuff needs ammunition or at least something sharp (and that will need something to keep it sharp).

Then you need to coordinate all this stuff, along with comms and a lot more details that I've not mentioned.

Then you need to persuade your troops to do their medieval best on the opposition and hope it works.

bandrami• 13 days ago

This is a pendulum I've now seen fully swing twice since I enlisted 30 years ago.

"We need more integrated logistics because the teeth can't fight without the tail!"

Some years pass

"Why do we have all these non-combat roles in the military? Shrink everything down and focus on warfighting!"

More years pass

"Why can't we do any support internally? We need stronger and more integrated logistics!"

Lather, rinse, repeat.

douglee650• 12 days ago

Ironically, the text color choice on the website reflects exactly this kind of thinking.

jmyeet2• 13 days ago

A lot of people end up commenting on current and potential conflicts clearly knowing nothing about logistics and it shows. I think this whenever I see "China will invade Taiwan". But it also shows up when people don't realize the Iran war is unwinnable and was unwinnable from the start.

First, China. 100 miles of open ocean separate mainland China and Taiwan. To invade you need to put boots on the ground. That means you also need armor. And then you need everything that goes with that. Food, medical, resupply, ammunition, a place to repair your vehicles and so on. You can't airlift this, even with air supremacy. It requires ships, a lot of ships. And that means Taiwan, the US and allies could, if they wanted to, wreak havoc with supply lines.

I've seen one estimate that it would take over a million soldiers for China to occupy Taiwan, possibly two million. China simply does not have that amphibious capability so this is a silly conversation. American politicians talks this up to give more money to weapopns manufacturers for weapon systems that are too expensive and don't work and also to propagandize the population into "China = bad". But it's not a real threat.

On a clear day from Calais you can see the white cliffs of Dover. I believe the distance at its closest point is 17 miles. Yet despite having an Army that exceeded 12 million soldiers, Germany was unable to invade Britain. This is big of a problem water was then. It hasn't changed.

Second, Iran. Iran is surrounded by mountains on 3 sides and the Persian Gulf on the 4th. There is nowhere where a US invasion could muster like they did with Kuwait (ie from Saudi Arabia). We saw the futility of this in the Iran-Iraq war, which was a complete stalemate (with over a million dead) despite an almost decade of the US supplying Saddam Hussein.

So with mountains on 3 sides, that leaves an amphibious landing. Again, the problem remains of where would troops muster? It can't be anywhere beyond the Strait of Hormuz because the Navy can't defend against drone and missile attacks at close range like that, let alone get thousands of supply ships through safely. So that leaves Pakistan or Oman. Both are in range of drone attacks. The US has essentially abandoned all Gulf bases because of the complete inability to defend them. How would the US defend a million troops and all the supplies they need, including landing craft?

Logisitcally, the operation would be as complex and large as D-Day. The US doesn't have that military anymore. The Navy has a pair of amphibious landing craft that could put 5000 Marines somewhere. Great. They'd die. For enough infantry, you'd need a draft. You'd need to build so many ships. It would take years and nobody has that kind of time.

The Joint Chiefs know this. It's why no US president has started a war with Iran despite the Israeli PM asking every one of them to do so since at least Reagan. It's only this president who took the bait of Mossad telling him how the regime would fall within days after a decapitation strike.

The entire Iranian military project is to resist the US military. Bases buried in mountains, cheap ballistic missiles and drones that can be mass-produced, a mosaic defense to avoid potential decapitation and air defenses that are seemingly good enough that the US, even with F35s, still has to stand off.

I bet you won't find a single serious military planner who thought this operation was possible.

djeastm• 12 days ago

The Joint Chiefs know this.

Any thoughts on why they presented the operational plan to the President as an option then?

JeremyHerrman• 13 days ago

In large-scale combat operations, victory will depend less on which force fields the most advanced weapons and more on which can sustain combat power under persistent attack.

"force fields" had me reading that sentence entirely wrong

txoria• 13 days ago

Presumably, the article is intended for military officers. Do military officers have nothing better to do than strain their eyes, reading a light gray text on a white background? And the article gives advice on strain-proof logistics, no less.

Seems like Modern War Institute is more concerned with looking posh, than getting their message across - the message of endurance. That's ironic.

pards• 12 days ago

a light grey text on a white background

This makes the page SO hard to read. Why are "designers" still doing this? Have they no respect for their readers?

zhdc12• 13 days ago

Good article but, like a lot of stategic studies pieces, grossly underestimates what the American industrial base is capable of.

1. The US is second in the world, behind Ukraine, in military drone production.

2. The US is a close second to China in logistics + last mile drone production.

3. The US is still the only country with the proven ability to move mass anywhere in the world.

None of this means that the US will win a hot war against China. However, that has - always - been the case. The US fought against China in Korea and SE Asia/Vietnam and had the opportunity twice to move the conflict into Chinese territory. They didn't, for obvious reasons.

Geography + LOCs + population are a b***h.

eimrine• 13 days ago

Are there any vessels proved to move mass anywhere, which are still alive from the latest moving mass happened? AFAIK, all those ships are not in service, and all American males got somewhat femalified.

zhdc12• 13 days ago

Yes, well over a hundred iirc that the US can requisition on day one of a conflict. America still leads here.

Worth noting that, outside of WW2, the US has never really had a large merchant fleet.

lljk_kennedy• 13 days ago

"No-one can match out tririme fleet, or move men as quickly through the Mediterranean" - Athens circa 440 CE

latentframe• 13 days ago

Precision weapons are shifting the center of gravity from firepower to logistics. Industrial capacity, redundancy, and resilience may matter more than having the most advanced platforms.

tim333• 13 days ago

Modern armies collapse when they run out of logistics

It'll be interesting to see how that goes in Ukraine where Russia has ~700k troops and the logistics are being cut by Hornet drones and similar.

austin-cheney• 13 days ago

I did cyber defense for the army for more than 10 years before moving into logistics. Logistics is far more complex and challenging.

I can see from many of the comments here people generally have absolutely no idea what logistics management comprises. Let this be a lesson on Dunning-Kruger.

Havoc• 12 days ago

Would sure be helpful to have bases in cooperative allied countries to help with logistics…so best not to threaten and shit on them at every diplomatic encounter…

eagerpace• 12 days ago

It’s ok for it to break as long as the enemy’s breaks first. I don’t see anything comparing this to other armies. Air superiority doesn’t exist in the Ukraine war and I question how many lessons can truly be drawn from it for the US because of that. Not chest pumping here, this just feels a little too in the moment.

sometimes_all• 12 days ago

What I am really impressed by is that experts and the army itself is open to criticism and commentary (I am sure there are limits, and censoring will be happening on the more important parts), but coming from a country where the government seems to think that any critique is "anti-national", such articles seem like a breath of fresh air.

A more open space means better ideas with potential edge get shared, which is better for everyone.

mandevil• 12 days ago

The key is selecting officers for competence, not loyalty. This requires all the other stuff in your country to be set up so that the leaders aren't worried about coups from your own military, but the advantage to getting all of that is that you can have a much more effective military.

Why? Because any time junior officers just went through losing a war they are going to be pissed off that they were sent out there to do something that was impossible, and got a lot of their friends killed doing it. And if you let them, they are going to fix your military and make it more effective. My favorite example of this is the unpublished Ph.d thesis from Marshall Michel, The Revolt of the Majors (https://etd.auburn.edu/handle/10415/595) about all of the junior pilots in the US Air Force who experienced, first hand, how terrible and useless the USAF was during Vietnam and over the course of the 1970's and 1980's built the totally different US Air Force that did Desert Storm.

If you are fortunate enough that you don't have the experience of recently losing a war, there will be a smaller number of junior officers who will be worried about losing the next one, and it will take more effort to identify those officers and put them into positions of power, but it is still possible to revolutionize your military without the bitter taste of a defeat. Defeat just makes it so that there are lot more junior officers committed to reform, and they will have the upper-hand over the more senior officers- so long as they are all selected for competence and not loyalty. If promotions are selected with loyalty as the primary factor, then you don't get reform, you get patronage.

Sometimes a patronage system can be effective, but it ends up being like the Czarist Russian fleet of 1905: Admiral Makarov was very very good, and everything directly under him was competent, but all of the other admirals varied between mediocre and terrible and the rest of the fleet was as well. After Makarov's ship the Petropavlovsk sank with almost of its officers and men (including him) the Russian Navy gave no further benefit to the state, it was just a sacrifice.

ody2• 12 days ago

When the hordes of Genghis Khan conquered Asia, how did they deal with logistics? Answer - They didn't. Everything they needed came from the horse. Transportation and food in the form of blood and milk.

How could a modern army replicate this? Mobile nuclear powered bioreactors that could create food? Mobile 3d printers that could consume local materials to create ammunition? An interesting thing to think about.

The glass backbone: Why the Army's logistics will break in the next war

Related Stories