The Russian-Ukraine War, with no direct US involvement, is a weird edge case we weren't prepared for.

https://www.npr.org/2023/04/07/1168725028/manufacturing-pric...

https://www.ausa.org/news/csis-warns-ammunition-shortages

this whole situation shows deep issues in how the US military does procurement and also basic forecasting/planning

The US only has a shortage of Javelins because they have sent so many into Ukraine. In the past half a century the US hasn't had to supply a military conflict as it has with Ukraine v Russia, and almost nobody in a position of power (including across Europe) on the planet was predicting Russia's invasion. The notion of literally planning for every possibility is absurd, and if the US military tries to do that regarding a budget, it'll just get that much more flak for spending policies.

Armchair Internet users will proclaim the US military should know all and see all and know exactly how many Javelins it will need based on knowing every single conflict that will happen before it happens. And if they make a mistake, and spend a lot of money on weapons they don't need, then they must be attacked for the ridiculous spending. The armchair crowd can't have it both ways.

I’m surprised by this. There were articles and discussions on it for years. The water supply to Crimea was sore point. In the immediate lead up to war the troop build ups were in the news.

If the US Army or Marines needs to defend against air attack, they expect to have their own air support available.

Keeping this production line hot would be extremely expensive, and since none of our allies were buying any and the US military expects to have air superiority/supremacy in any conflict they fight, this is a tempest in a teapot.

Ukraine isn't an edge case, Ukraine is what you would expect from anything less than a turkey shoot. It's just we haven't been in anything other than a turkey shoot since the Stinger came out.

The US Air Force is the largest one in the world. The second largest? The US Army. 4th largest? US Navy. I think the USMC is #7 or so.

That doesn't mean the US will have air supremacy in every situation or even air superiority, but it's unlikely to be close to even for long, if it ever is.

> ... despite a world-class air force’s best effort against a second-rate defense, the United States never gained air supremacy. High-value intelligence platforms such as the E-8 Joint Surveillance and Target Attack Radar System were prohibited from flying over land where their sensors were most useful and instead had to stand off outside the threat region.

(c) https://warontherocks.com/2022/03/the-dangerous-allure-of-th...

A military that cannot send stingers to allies, right now, is objectively not very capable; focusing on air superiority might be the best choice after all, but it cannot be an excuse for late stingers.

Nuclear powers feared conflict between each other not because one or the other's conventional army (or arms) were superpowered, but because it dramatically increased the chances of a conflict escalating to the nuclear level - which could well be the end of both civilizations, if not the better part of the entire human species.

Anyone planning for that war needs to stop whatever the hell they are doing and start planning for how to avoid it instead.

IIRC Russia is at 99% air defence effectiveness vs the start of the Ukraine war; i.e. it has not been materially degraded at all, despite HARM anti-radar missiles and so forth given to Ukraine.

Though I don’t full agree with Russia only using ground based air defense as the few newer generation jets Russia have are shooting down a lot of Ukrainian jets. They fly higher, faster, and can both lock and engage Ukrainian jets before the Ukrainian have even detected them.

I think that the USAF will have its hands full overcoming Russia's A2AD environment, assuming it's set up and competently managed. The range on S300/S400 makes it hard to use anything other than Tomahawks and stealth aircraft to target. It definitely won't be like Baghdad during DS.

[1] https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/first-marine-corps-tom...

- old C versions from early 90s - only working on pre-programmed target mode - no targeting pods like AN/ASQ-213

And nobody flies aircraft at "treetop level", with the possible exception of the A10 which is designed to and actually has flown home successfully after a missile hit. https://theaviationgeekclub.com/a-10-pilot-explains-how-the-...

Also there is no such thing as a "MANPAD", it's not a plural -- it means "Man-portable air-defense system".

Helicopters fly this low all the time.

I can understand not having full production facilities due to expense, but at least plans for those facilities if they need to be built in a hurry?

We have allies to do that for us.

Before the Russia-Ukraine war escalated in 2022, Ukraine was procuring drones from Türkiye, artillery from Germany, and combat training from Canada and the UK.

If we began directly providing offensive weaponry to Ukraine before 2022, we would have ended up escalating the conflict much sooner.

By allowing our allies to handle procurement we were at least able to buy Ukraine enough time to rebuild their army after it collapsed in the aftermath of 2014.

Don't you mean artillery from Deutschland? :)

Probably that suggestion/rule is followed by some parts of the UN and perhaps some documents from a few foreign ministries. I certainly hadn’t ever seen it in the wild until the GP comment. It made me chuckle…not at the commenter but at the country.

But what the hell, yes I wrote (and will continue to write) “Turkey”, but I won’t call Istanbul Constantinople, much less Byzantium.

Not sure why these absurd dictatorial tendencies are being taken seriously...

Also it's 2023 and people know how to deal with tricky alphabets and stuff now.

Not saying it's wrong to not deride someone for using the proper spelling but the existence of the French forms shouldn't inherently require forms from languages without significant influence on English.

They asked for it to be changed, and got what they asked for. Both the UN (https://turkiye.un.org/en/184798-turkeys-name-changed-türkiy..., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Name_of_Turkey#Presidential_ci...) and the USA (https://www.dw.com/en/us-officially-changes-spelling-of-turk...) decided to change that spelling.

I think I may have mixed up some of the post-2022 arms exports to Ukraine with pre-2022 with earlier reporting about Ukrainian weapons imports.

Everyone in the military did indeed have their "doctrine and practice" in mind, the status quo, and suddenly the world rushed up to the military's front door, knocked furiously at the door saying "we need 20,000 Stingers, fast!" And hopefully they had the introspection to realize 'wow, we failed. We can't supply this. Our doctrine and tactics are wrong."

Do you seek air superiority via spending money to create an air-superior fighter jet, or do you seek air superiority via spending money to give every infantry soldier a manpad? Two different tactics with the same goal. Except that the former is a wasteful illusion of superiority, the latter is meat-and-potatoes common sense superiority.

Begs the question what's going on with the lack of common sense in the military.

That doesn't make any sense at all. Stinger type MANPADS are designed for short range point defense, no greater than 5km range and limited by cloud cover. It's a completely different ballgame to have air superiority fighters with radar guided missiles covering you from above. US doctrine is based entirely around this fact; that winning a war means being the side which is able to maintain that.

The only way to achieve air superiority is with a fighter aircraft and its associated support aircraft. You can deny air superiority with a full spectrum AD program (which a MANPAD is but a small part), but you can not impose it.

Poland plus Romania plus Czechia plus Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia, and potentially Ukraine and Bosnia and Central Asia with Georgia and Azerbaijan, where these could be used.

It was totally not obvious that Russia (an important but quite small subset of Warsaw pact) will keep its military production capacity but the rest of collective will not - eventually running out of it and often without meaningful replacement.

They supplied significant number of these to Ukraine where it performed well.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.armyrecognition.com/polish_...

Estonia and Norway also likes them https://www.technology.org/2022/12/01/piorun-manpads-goes-ma...

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/558342-america...

The lack of basic weaponry seems to be a failure in that regard. Imagine if the US and Russia were fighting directly. The US may not have air superiority because of Russian jamming and air defense systems. Neither side wants to use nukes. So a long term ground and air war is a possibility, and the same seems possible with modern China. The Pentagon was not prepared for this as shown by what is happening in Ukraine. Instead they seem to have assumed that there will be no more big wars (not unreasonable until Russia decided otherwise and the US decided to "diversify supply chains" away from China) and they spent all the trillions on ever more advanced weaponry, never making large quantities of anything, but always starting the next new program. It is apparent they were caught by surprise, as was the EU who underinvested in defense for a long time. Now everybody is putting out contracts for new arms, but the manufacturers are going to take years to ramp up production. I expect this is partly caused by Congress in the US who tend to assume money solves everything, but in this case money can not buy time. Much of the material needed to make gunpowder and rocket motors comes from China, good luck ramping up production of those quickly if the US is fighting China. Part of the problem is outsourcing of manufacturing to other countries such that the US no longer has the ability to quickly switch industry to a war footing. US car makers rely on thousands of parts from other countries. That happened slowly over time, but even so the Pentagon wasn't keeping their eye on the ball and let capabilities slip away; car factories today could not make a tank, they are not set up for handling the heavy sheets of armor, all the robots would be useless, and there are no workers still trained in the old manufacturing methods. Yet another factor is secrecy, the US can't/won't give its most current weapons to Ukraine because that would reveal them to Russia and China. So all our super weapons can't even be used because of secrets. This shows a lack of foresight that not everyone fighting on our side in a war is going to have access to the most current US weapons. If it was NATO fighting Russia the EU do not and would not have the most advanced versions of the F35 and F22 for example, they'd have the export versions. There are factors unique to the Ukraine war, such as the time needed to train the Ukrainian military to use Western weapons (where the assumption was the US and EU already knew how to use them, so no problem for us) and the fear of escalation to nuclear war, but it seems the US military really was not ready for a long drawn out war in a remote location and they are obviously scrambling to adjust to that. A big concern recently is the realization that it would be very difficult for the US to fight against China (say to protect Taiwan) because it is so far away and we have few bases in the area. F22's and F35's can be refueled mid-air, but mid-air refueling planes can be shot down. Aircraft carriers are really vulnerable to anti-ship missiles. Basically it seems the world has changed (or perceptions of it anyway) and the US military has not adjusted (yet) to the that and didn't seem to see it coming. Maybe their hands were tied by Congress (for example demands to keep old planes flying instead of stocking more ammunition), we'll probably never know. The US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time, much of its planning for such a war has to be guesswork by people with little experience. If the US was attacked by Russia or China in a conventional war current munition stockpiles would probably be plenty, the long distance would work against the attackers. A war on the other side of the world is a very different set of logistical problems, yet may be considered just as crucial as defending home territory. If US military strategy says that is not worth considering, that's a decision to intentionally limit what kinds of wars can be fought. History would then judge whether that was a mistake or not.

The “game changing weapons” that the US has been providing are very old. And we’re still not giving them the good stuff. Secrecy is not the reason.

Ukraine wants ATACMs for the HIMAR units and F16s.

The storm shadow missiles which have been making headlines lately are fired off of Ukrainian Soviet era planes

It’s true that surface to air missiles are very good these days. But that’s not very useful against long range missiles precision weapons. Which Russia largely does not have. See their recent use of an iskander ballistic missile to take out a company of infantry under a bridge out of desperation and lack of alternatives.

1) Poorly trained (by highly motivated) Ukrainian soldiers are fighting successfully against the best the Russian Federation can offer, using both old Soviet era that they owned and manufactured (Most of the good Soviet gear was made in Ukraine), and old US and NATO gear. Old HIMARS, old M113, old Leopard tanks, etc etc. The best stuff being provided is Javelin, M777, a few Patriot batteries, etc. Even the Abrams and Bradleys are old versions.

So the Russians aren't doing well, and are no threat in conventional terms.

2. The US wasn't surprised at all by the invasion, though the IC was surprised at how poorly the revamped Russian military performed.

3. The EU has been underinvesting in defense for 50 years, so their lack of deep inventories is no surprise.

4. This isn't WW2 where Detroit can switch in a month from building Studebakers to Sherman tanks. The only tank factory in the US is in Lima, OH, and has been building Abrams since 1980. The idea that defense items can be built quickly and cheaply ignores the complexity of the gear US forces use.

5. NATO members who have purchased the F-35 have the same capabilities as the USAF etc. There's no "export" version, and some purchasers are even part of the manufacturing process. And none of them have the F-22 as you imply, since it's not available for export (and the production line has been shut down for decades).

6. It's not "a big concern recently" about the tyranny of distance in fighting a war against China. This has been discussed for decades.

7. Finally, you say that the US has not fought a war against a near peer power in a long time. Well, duh. The US has had the most powerful economy since 1916, two oceans to keep enemies away, and hasn't had it's homeland significantly touched by an enemy since the War of 1812.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/how-america-bro...

Modern military equipment is incredibly expensive, complex, bespoke, and made in small batches. Even in cases when that is not true, as with artillery shells, peacetime supply chains cannot meet wartime demand. Ramping them up takes time, and maintaining them in a constant scaled state of readiness entails an opportunity cost that most societies are not willing to pay.

HN readers should know that military supply chains are not like global commercial supply chains. The supply chains that say Apple or Walmart have built are global scale and quickly responsive to demand. That simply does not apply to many military components from manufacturing through assembly and deployment. The timelines are much longer.

There are things Ukraine needs that money cannot immediately solve. These bottlenecks are an example. (Fears of escalation are another…)

Ukraine is fighting a poor man’s war with a lot of second-hand Cold War equipment and Stingers that served the mujahedeen just as well decades ago.

This is partially due to US funding mechanisms. It’s very easy for Biden to exercise discretion in what he sends (and therefore regulate the intensity of the war) through the mechanism of Presidential Drawdown Authority (PDA), which can only draw upon existing DOD stocks. He relies heavily on PDA, thus the nature of the second-hand stuff.

What’s interesting is the dual-use piece of the equipment used in Ukraine. By paying frontline soldiers some 5x what they would normally earn, Ukraine has created a market driven by the demand of infantry, usually pooling their purchases in small groups.

They are buying all sorts of equipment, notably power banks, satellite ground terminals, mobile devices, from much more responsive supply chains.

That is, we have strong revealed preferences of the kind of equipment soldiers buy when their lives depend on it, and it looks very different from the bloat purveyed by primes to the Pentagon.

Disclosure: I work with Ukraine Defense Fund to send dual-use tech to the AFU.(Ukrainedefensefund.org)

That’s how completely mismanaged the defense industry is in the US.

Businesses barely do any contingency planning because there is no money to be made in it and it takes away from making money. so when a contingency finally hits, they're all caught with their pants around their ankles