Guest Post by William Schryver
The erstwhile “arsenal of democracy” is neither a democracy nor an arsenal. It’s a pretentious empty shell.
As I originally wrote in my July 10, 2022 article Wunderwaffe Du Jour:
“The US military is not built nor equipped for protracted high-intensity conflict. Nor can it supply a depleted proxy army with the means to prosecute a protracted high-intensity conflict.”
The incontrovertible reality is that the US and its NATO allies are presently incapable of supplying the massive material demands of modern industrial warfare, as Lieutenant Colonel (Ret.) Alex Vershinin articulated so well in this essential June 2022 analysis: The Return of Industrial Warfare.
And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.
This titillates the biases of American exceptionalists in general, and is a particularly seductive fantasy of the #EmpireAtAllCosts cult drones propagandizing for filthy lucre at the countless armaments-industry-funded “think tanks” in Washington and London.
But the notion that the rapidly declining empire can resurrect the Arsenal of Democracy band for one final farewell tour is a singularly delusional vanity.
You see, for all its massive plunder of the public purse, the US armaments industry is effectively a modestly scaled high-end boutique.
And there is simply no way this domestic US industry can expeditiously expand its production. It would literally take years – probably a full decade – for the US to expand its military production to a seriously potent industrial scale.
For one, the labor pool for these industries is extremely finite and highly specialized. In the overwhelmingly financialized and service-oriented US economy, there is a shocking dearth of technical expertise of ALL kinds.
It’s not simply a boomer cliché that “kids these days are innocent of almost any mechanical know-how”.
If the US wants to staff new armaments factories any time soon, it will have to import the skilled labor from Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea.
Beyond that, the permitting of new factories, with the attendant bureaucratic delays, public hearings, environmental impact studies, and various special interest road-blocking … well, everyone knows how these things work now in America.
It took five years to build the Hoover Dam in the early 20th century. It would take FIFTY here in the early 21st century – if it could be built at all.
Those clamoring for the US to intervene in the Ukraine war in order to “teach those filthy Russians a lesson they’ll never forget” simply have no conception of the catastrophe that would ensue were their dreams to be fulfilled.
If the Pentagon consented to such an undertaking, it could probably amass no more than 250,000 combat-capable troops in the theater, and to do so would entail the evacuation of virtually every major US military base on the planet (and most of the minor ones).
It could probably assemble an additional quarter million troops from the active reserves and National Guard units in the United States. That said, it is empirically impossible that 500,000 combat troops could be satisfactorily equipped for high-intensity conflict such as would be the scenario in a war between the US and Russia in eastern Europe. And even if they could be assembled and equipped, it would be an insufficient force to face over a million Russian troops, close to a third of which are already “battle-hardened” from almost a year of high-intensity combat in Ukraine.
In anticipation of the casualties attendant to great power warfare, it would become necessary for the United States to reinstitute conscription almost immediately. If a strong anti-war movement had not already been incited by its previous actions, conscription in America would almost certainly induce a widespread political upheaval, with large and aggressive public protests cropping up in all the major cities of the nation.
And, of course, it should go without saying that Russia would not simply remain passive (as did Iraq in 1991 and 2003) while the United States concentrated a huge force on its borders preparatory to an invasion. A shooting war would ensue even before the US was able to position in eastern Europe the men and equipment required to launch an assault against Russian forces in Ukraine.
Most meaningfully, even if the US/NATO could magically materialize a million and a half soldiers on the Polish, Romanian, and Lithuanian borders, it would not be able to sustain such a massive force for more than just a few weeks; likely less than a month. It would turn into the most humiliating military debacle in American and European history, and the Russians would sing songs about it for centuries to come.
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Anybody with half a brain could see that this country is pure bullshit .From the deteriorating cities to the dilapidated and closed factories . The only thing this country produces is criminals ,sexual deviants and delusions of grandeur.
The country that could turn out a B-24 every 18 hours is long gone. That was a country of talented, decent, and determined white people. Diversity is our strength” my ass.
If diversity is such a strength, why is it that it’s only the US and Canada and the EU that have to put up with it?
China doesn’t … mexico doesn’t … israel sure as hell doesn’t … no african nations do … no central or south american nations do …
No … it’s only the First World Nations that have to bear the propaganda and the burden of the invasion …
As soon as they put trannies and woke ideology in places of ‘authority’ it was fucking over. Gone are the glory days of western civ.
Good luck folks.
POC trannies! FIFA
Of course the 250,000 to 500,000 troops that the US could muster in the short term would be primarily those who aren’t sure if they are a man or a woman and get offended at the thought of being called by a wrong pronoun. Then of course there are the carbon emission from the fighting that would need first John Kerry’s approval. US troops would be lucky if they didn’t have to fill out Environmental Impact Statements and share MSDS sheets.
How long does it take to recharge an electric 60 ton tank?
Depends on the ambient temperature lol.
Maybe they’d put Pete Butteplugge to good use and send him over to any war zone with his charging stations …
Used to be you just need the tanker truck to fill all your vehicles and maybe even your helicopters with I think it’s called JP8. Under Joe the genius you need multiple generators and trucks to haul them. You need more tankers than before because of inefficiencies between fuel and the electricity it generates. Then instead of a few minutes to fill up in combat situations to hours or days sitting in one spot glaring like the sun 24/7 to thermal or infrared heat seeking weapons or recon.
and those songs would bring much merriment and laughter, across the world.
more vodka please, and another song.
“In anticipation of the casualties attendant to great power warfare, it would become necessary for the United States to reinstitute conscription almost immediately. If a strong anti-war movement had not already been incited by its previous actions, conscription in America would almost certainly induce a widespread political upheaval, with large and aggressive public protests cropping up in all the major cities of the nation.”
The problem with resuming conscription aside from opposition from a potentially vocal animated and effective PEACE MOVEMENT is the pool of sober, physically fit, intellectually able males (females, trans and homosexuals in the current “woke” environment) is small. The moral rot, decadence, depravity and nihilism metastasizing throughout the US would undermine the needed disciple a modern, efficient military needs. Plus an immensely fractured, divided and antagonistic ideological, cultural, racial and ethnic populous would make training and forging a unified military extremely challenging. What goes around comes around; we are witnessing the Law of Consequence (KARMA), aka the collapse of the American Empire.
Glad they have all these foreigners and spicks to draft ,fuck this country.
Well … in place of our own unfit, the agenda would just be an extension of that in place today — to offer illegal aliens citizenship for serving in our military. They’re doing that today … and look at what a shitstorm our military is today …
Thanks — but, no thanks …
Grab your rifle and your kit there be some Jews needing your sacrifice.
I gave at the office … decades ago …
“What goes around comes around” , picking up speed.
Like the bully who’s let himself become enormously fat. Like the woke bullies right now. As long as everyone keeps tolerating them they bully at will, and believe they’re right to do so. Reputation alone supports the bully after he’s lost the capacity for mayhem.
Sooner or later someone tries the bully and he collapses in a heap. Every time wokeness is tried it backs off in disarray, shrieking impotently. Omar’s removal and the reaction of the BIPOC ginches in the house for example.
Reputation works until it doesn’t, then we find the true character of the bully and he does too.
How far will the punks that run this show go? They’ve proven they’ll waste American men and to a greatly lesser extent women’s lives in unsuccessful cowardly attacks on much smaller foes. What happens now that they’ve jumped what they call a near peer? They believe their publicity, but do they have the ass end to back their play?
During the early ’40’s, there were vastly more factories, and producers of raw materials for those factories (like steel mills) in the US than now. They were able to retool car factories to make tanks, appliance factories to make guns, but the US has nowhere near the same materiel production capacity or number of workers capable of accomplishing the same task today. Most of their capacity was shipped overseas decades ago, and they have to import what engineers they do have. In a state of all out war, the US would flail to produce anything approaching their military needs, much less the high tech toys they rely on to fight.
They can’t even manufacture a dildo in this shithole any more.
All you say is true … but, strangely, they got GM and some others to manufacture the deadly ventilators that put so many folks into their graves, even as knowledgeable folks said that that’s what would happen.
And, of course, the US will likely never again produce the strong and patriotic men — especially from the South — who fought our wars for so very long … even when they had nothing to do with US
No need for war when we can just send in our Resident tough guy. Besides, imagine how many fags would come back pregnant.
I was stationed at Camp Pendleton from ’66 to ’68 — in the full swing of the Vietnam war — when there were upwards of 35,000+ Marines there … and just in the training of those Marines the amounts of ordnance that was expended was enormous.
The entire 5th Marine Division was there plus elements of the 3d Marine Division … plus Staging Battalion (the final training, etc., before shipping to Vietnam) … plus the 2d Infantry Training Regiment (post-boot camp) … and all of those troops were utilizing any number of weapons and ammunition from .45 M1911A1 pistols through M-14 (and M16) rifles — all the way to 155mm howitzers, as well as tanks.
The base had numerous ammo dumps supplying these enormous demands … and this was just one Marine Corps base stateside …
The statistics on the actual war in Vietnam that I recall — besides the outrage of more than 58,000 of our people killed there — included that more than 5,000 pounds of ordnance was expended for every enemy killed.
And that doesn’t include the massive amounts of food and fuel and medical supplies that were expended … plus, of course, we ended up leaving the Vietnamese the 4th best equipped military on the planet at the time due to all of the materiel we abandoned.
That war was bad enough and evil enough that it should have lasted us for the next 1,000 years … but, no, we let ‘our friend and ally in the Middle East’ drag US into wars on its behalf … fighting those who aren’t a threat to US … in places far from our shores.
Enough, already … there has to be a better way …
Now all they need are some stilletto pumps and panty hose and those Marines are ready to go.
Sad, but true, that … and the 3 or 4 Marines from my extended family that have predeceased me are likely turning over in their graves …
It wouldn’t be so bad if the Women Marines were the only ones wearing those pumps and pantyhose … but … tragically, it’s not.
The Military industrial complex is not designed to provide the military with the best weapons available. It is designed to embezzle trillions of dollars from the American taxpayer. It is a system of bribing lawmakers to fund ridiculously expensive weapons systems which are designed not to work, in order to justify going back every single year to have more and more money approved to fix the systems engineered flaws.
The problems we now plainly see in military procurement, are systematic of how our entire Federal Government operates. It is a system that runs on greed and corruption, and that is something anyone paying any attention has known to be a fact for several decades.
The problem is this is not an issue that can be fixed because it is systemic. It is not the result of a few bad actors, but the culture of our country as a whole. A corrupt government can only exist within a corrupt national culture.
That corruption along with our arrogance has enticed us to believe our own lies, and we are now discovering the outcome when lies are faced with reality. It does not matter how much the MSM lies about the war in Ukraine, because on the ground we are still losing. It does not matter how much we lie to ourselves about the outcome of a war with China, because in the end, it will be reality that dictates the outcome.
“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so. “
Mark Twain
Mark Twain was an astute observer of human nature — at its best as well as at its worst.
“And yet the public discussion of potential war always includes convinced voices proclaiming that, just like in the Second World War, US industry could very rapidly ramp up to produce armaments of surpassing quality, and in overwhelming quantities.”
How? Globalization aka outsourcing, off shoring, capital export/flight have destroyed the US’ capacity to manufacture anything let alone advanced weaponry, armaments and equipment. The Ukrainian misadventure will cost the Empire dearly since there is no way for the miscreants who created this debacle to either win or save face.
Exactly, there are no more factories that can be converted to making weapons, and if there were, we have no trained labor to man them.
We do not have the machinists, or the shipfitters, or the welders, or the mechanics, or even the engineers to do what we once did. We are now a service based economy and services are worthless in a situation where real things have to be produced. As a nation, we have become stupid, weak, and soft, and yet we still have the arrogance to believe we are somehow superior to the rest of the world.
Just finding kids who can do basic math will be hard enough.
Fake it ’till you break it.