Giled Pallaeon

People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do (at least on our specialties)

The issues of FFG(X) were in no way worked out

So, there’s this thing called the Total Munitions Requirement and it doesn’t give a fuck if you can bench press 315.

The persistent threat that Iranian long range strike has on hydrocarbon infrastructure in the Gulf combined with the fact that there is no theory of victory to end that beyond complete disintegration of the Iranian state is probably freaking them out because it has very clear implications

Without knowing existing reconstitution rates and what other reserves they had vice units needing replacements, fractional losses isn’t a helpful metric.

Power and array size stand. Strictly you are correct that SPY-1 is a PESA; for the purposes of this conversation the difference is marginal and outweighed by the power and sensitivity part.

Every Burke has an AESA. They’re also all larger arrays with more power behind them than anything in that picture.

That’s already what has to happen (concentration of the DDG fleet). Why are we crediting the FF(X) for improving survivability via distributed fleets for allowing the exquisite platforms we’re complaining about to operate in greater numbers?

On paper, yes. However, industrial capacity is not entirely fungible, and I’ve never heard of a complaint that the Germans were running out of tanks until a point where being out of tanks wasn’t the most pressing issue.

The Wehrmacht didn’t intervene in Africa until 1941, and fighting there didn’t start until 1940. How and why would the Germans have propositioned escort forces inside the Mediterranean given that blasting their way past Gibraltar would have been out of the question?

I’m so tired, man

So fucking tired

This whole thread is correct but this most critically so. War is chaos, accidents, incomplete and incorrect information, and general bedlam. It cannot be modeled with high fidelity. False precision abounds.

But still farther than where you are

I’m expecting more like a week of months

You remain reliant on “exquisite” platforms that carry frankly bare minimum sensors like SPY-6. In theory you can build distributed sensor and fire control networks, but you are now placing all your bets on survivable and reliable comms. All you’re doing is moving risk around.

Which brings us to this last one. The kicker for missile age naval warfare is that it’s a game of sensors AND missiles. Converted merchantmen can bring lots of missiles, potentially even bigger ones to the fight, but if they bring sensors at all they’re inferior ones.

I’m sorry, but what the hell does the NSC bring to a peer fight? NSM and maybe a helicopter? Can we be serious? I’m not defending the current design of DEFIANT, its cost-per-effect is awful but it at least has effects.

The correct answer for the Germans was probably more U-boats, but U-boat Command’s training pipeline was also horrifyingly brittle. And by late 1943, the Type VIIs were horribly outclassed. Investment in the “exquisite” Type XXI years earlier might have been the only solution.

I’m not about to defend the construction of any of the four German battleships, particularly BISMARCK and TIRPITZ. But what exactly would more destroyers have done for the Kriegsmarine? Japanese ASW sucked, but that was as much a failure of doctrinal imagination as anything else.

Strongly disagree with the framing of a lot of this article. For example, part of the USN success was that successful pilots were rotated home and sent to teach. The new pilots came out of the gate much better trained than their counterparts, which compounded the Japanese problem.

They say you go to war with the army you have. Particularly in the opening days of a conflict, you also go in with the COMREL and joint/combined coordination and deconfliction infrastructure you built (or didn’t).

That would be very cost-inefficient and therefore fairly unlikely.

The measure of bullshit continues to far outrun the effort to refute it.

good reminder that like 90% of the American public's understanding of military affairs, including some ostensibly highly educated people, can best be summarized by swooping your hands around while making pewpew and woosh noises

Nothing good, and certainly nothing worth doing, just like the rest of that exercise.

Begging people to stop boosting your pal Johnny's take on Iran. The superficial, "common sense" opinions of non-experts are not good. I promise.

Not the job nor the powers of a Service Secretary. (Not a comment on the qualifications or ethical conduct of Phelan in his actual job.)

Forgive me for saying most of my respect for Hudson left with Dr Seth Cropsey.

The Battle of Taoyuan would make Stalingrad look like a game of paintball. And it’s only the first urban domino that must fall.