What Sort of War Are We Prepared to Fight?

In an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal Elbridge A. Colby and Alexander B. Gray underscore a point I have been making for some time—the U. S. has a major security problem in that it is too reliant on other countries for materials it needs to fight a lengthy war:

The war in Ukraine should galvanize Washington policy makers. It has demonstrated that America’s defense-industrial base isn’t up to the job of supplying the U.S. military with weapons for a prolonged conventional conflict with a major power such as China. Production lines for Stinger and Javelin missiles destined for Ukraine are stretched to capacity, with critical components no longer produced in sufficient quantity to meet demand.

The industrial competencies required for sustained conventional warfare have atrophied. In 2018 the Trump administration identified nearly 300 significant gaps across 10 “risk archetypes” in the defense industry, such as reliance on a foreign supplier, that could directly undermine the U.S. military’s ability to fight a major war. The causes of these gaps vary and are subject to debate. They range from the general decline of domestic manufacturing to Congress’s failure to ensure a predictable defense-funding cycle and from the predatory industrial policies of other nations to an assumption that America’s future wars would be quick and decisive. Whatever the causes, the status quo is profoundly dangerous.

The issues they go on to cite include ship-building, maintenance, and logistical support. Not only do we are we lacking in those areas, we don’t produce enough steel. We don’t produce enough iron or coal to make the steel.

Consider just one group of products: computer memories. Forty years ago we produced most of the computer memories in the world. Now our production is relatively miniscule. And they’re used everywhere, not just in computers but in phones, vehicles, and all sorts of tools. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, should a conflict continue for more than a couple of weeks, we would be reduced to doing what the Russians are reportedly doing—scavenging parts from the most unusual of sources.

These days most memories are produced in Taiwan using materials produced in China.

There’s a larger question as well. What sort of warfare are we preparing for? If you look at it from William Lind’s “generations of warfare” model, in just twenty or thirty years we’ve gone from being prepared primarily for 3GW to focusing so much on 4GW we are nearly unable to fight 3GW. That has implications.

One of those implications is that it limits your strategies. We aren’t prepared to fight a months or years-long war across the Atlantic or Pacific. And it would take use years to become prepared.

14 comments… add one
  • Stephen Taylor Link

    I had hoped that the Great American Empire would wind down in an orderly fashion, but that’s not the way to bet.

  • TastyBits Link

    The good news is that wars are won by “boots on the ground” using dumb bullets and bombs. Warfare is about breaking shit and killing people, and whomever can do the most breaking and killing wins.

    Hopefully, the US still has the capacity to produce bullets, beans, and bandages in massive quantities. They do not need to be “smart”, just deadly.

  • Andy Link

    Even with adequate materials, the weapons production lines could not keep up with demand in a major war. That is as true for the US as it is for any other country. Some of our larger high-intensity operations over the last couple of decades depleted stocks of many weapons that were then built up again in subsequent years. If we expect to be in a major, long conflict, we would need to increase our weapons stockpiles considerably now to allow time to increase production during the conflict.

    We are already reducing our stockpiles of HIMARS rockets via support to Ukraine, for example.
    https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/are-there-enough-guided-rockets-for-himars-to-keep-up-with-ukraine-war-demand

    “Hopefully, the US still has the capacity to produce bullets, beans, and bandages in massive quantities. They do not need to be “smart”, just deadly.”

    How is that working out for the Russians?

    Yes, if you run out of capabilities that give you an asymmetric combat advantage, you will be reduced to bullets, beans, and bandages, and attritional warfare. That is not smart, that is a last resort.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Andy

    The only way to decisively win a war is to convince people that resistance is futile. The Germans bombed London to sap the will to fight. The US firebombed Dresden and Tokyo for the same purpose.

    The initial Iraq campaign was too fast. If the US had bombed cities for months or years, the chance of success would have been much higher. Afghanistan is a little different, and it would probably have taken a lot more bloodshed.

    While the Soviets endured horrific conditions during the Siege of Leningrad, I suspect they would have accepted surrender if Germany were able to take the city, and despite Churchill, I suspect Londoners would have done the same.

    By drawing out the conflict, any Russian gains will have the same effect. The resistance will be dead or gone.

    Against Russia or China, asymmetric combat will be over in the first days or weeks. Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Libya are one thing, but even Iran (Persia) would not be a cakewalk.

    Were Russia to go onto a war footing, they would crush the Ukrainians, but that would be as far as they got. Historically, the Cossacks have been fierce fighters, but the Ukraine has been Russian territory for most of that time. The Polish and Hungarians have not been, and both have been formidable fighters.

    (@Icepick was well informed about Eastern European warfare.)

    You should be able to do a quick “back of the envelope” assessment of what it would take to engage a full scale war using only asymmetric combat. I suspect that even Amazon does not have enough warehouse space.

  • Andy Link

    The notion that bombing cities reduce the will to fight is a myth that never seems to die.

    The Germans bombing London did not sap the will to fight – it increased it, and from an operational perspective, it’s a major reason why Germany lost the air war over the UK because the Germans stopped bombing British airfields.

    Bombing Dresden or any other cities did not cause the Germans to surrender – that only happened when armies took cities and conquered Germany.

    About the only case for the idea that bombing cities sap the will to fight is the nukes dropped on Japan.

    And I’m sorry, but this could not be more wrong:

    The initial Iraq campaign was too fast. If the US had bombed cities for months or years, the chance of success would have been much higher. Afghanistan is a little different, and it would probably have taken a lot more bloodshed.

    Winning the war fast is ideal. The idea that delaying victory in order to kill a bunch of civilians on the theory that they will submit after the conflict is just bizarre.

    If you look at something like the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the country had a population of about 13 million at the beginning of the war. The Soviets killed as many as 2 million, wounded another 3 million, and caused the external displacement of 5 million and the internal displacement of 2 million more. By your logic, that should have resulted in a resounding and decisive victory for them.

    War is inherently brutal, but the idea that brutality and the willingness to engage in more brutality than an opponent is a requirement to win a war is simply wrong. The purpose of war is to achieve specific political objectives, and excess brutality very often runs counter to achieving those objectives.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Andy

    The history of warfare is brutality, and the more brutal, the better. Unless you intend to replace the population, razing every city is not required, but a precedent must be set.

    Any territory that Russia is able to hold will have much of the resistance dead or gone. While they may have desired a quick victory, a war of attrition will produce a better result.

    Sherman’s March should have included Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. Today, I suspect that things would be different.

    Today’s warmongers believe as you do, and we get “quick, painless wars” that are neither quick nor painless. We drop some smart bombs and drone a few leaders, and we will be greeted like liberators. More than likely the Ukrainians will repay our generosity like the Afghans.

    Since the world is long overdue for a large scale war, we may not have to simply “agree to disagree”. While “winning hearts and minds” is not totally useless, I am betting that the winner will be the one who blows up the most shit and kills the most people, but I could be wrong.

    (Actually, the formulation is backwards. It should be: politics is war by other means.)

  • steve Link

    Lets add in North Korea. We really did conduct a long, brutal air campaign that decimated, at least, North Korea. The result is that we now have an isolated kingdom with nukes. A country that is almost impossible to deal with. Look at Afghanistan where the Soviets didnt hesitate to kill people. Didnt work well.

    We probably arent prepared to fight a really long prolonged war but I am not so sure that is all that likely now, I hope. Our long wars have been wars of occupation, Afghanistan and Iraq. I seriously hope that we have learned some lessons from those two and wont repeat them. I cant really see us wanting to invade and claim land anywhere. If we are talking about “wars” where we swoop in to rescue groups of US citizens somewhere we are more than OK for that.

    The big one with China or Russia? If they try to invade us we are OK. If we try to invade them I dont think we have the means. Stopping an effort by either country to aggressively enter an adjoining country? Logistics will always be an issue but I think we would be OK against Russia. China I am less sure about. Numbers matter at some point. OTOH China has not had an active engagement in a long time and there are really questions about their professionalism. War on the Rocks had apiece on that recently and it seems clear China realizes this is a problem and is addressing it but not sure they have fixed it.

    Steve

  • CuriousOnlooker Link

    Resistance in war is a non-linear phenomenon.

    David Goldman made the observation that the greatest resistance (willingness to suffer casualties) is usually just after a war is irreversibly lost (occurred to the Confederacy, Germans, Japanese in WWII). But at some point, if the losses are severe enough, armies snap and the will / ability to fight disintegrates. In those cases, that point was estimated to be casualties to 30% of the mobilizable population.

    While bombing cities can do that, its a poor tactic to achieve that goal. In many cases the mobilizable population aren’t in the city — i.e. bombing Kabul off the map won’t break the Taliban if 90% of Taliban forces / potential Taliban recruits live in the countryside. This was a problem the Russians faced in deterring the Chinese back in 70’s. Second, few wars escalate to be that genocidal. To apply it to the Brits and Germans in WW2, bombing London isn’t enough — to break resistance would have required an invasion, casualties in the millions. The last one that became that hot was the second Chechnyan war.

  • TastyBits Link

    @steve

    … we swoop in to rescue groups of US citizens …

    I agree with you in spirit, but our half-assed warmongers will use that as an excuse to invade. At one time, we would have used covert ops, but those days are long gone.

  • Andy Link

    “Today’s warmongers believe as you do, and we get “quick, painless wars” that are neither quick nor painless. We drop some smart bombs and drone a few leaders, and we will be greeted like liberators. More than likely the Ukrainians will repay our generosity like the Afghans.”

    I don’t believe in quick, painless wars, but given the choice, I will choose a quick painless war over grinding attrition. I also do not agree with the idea that we can smart bomb our way to transforming foreign societies into secular democracies – indeed, I’ve been arguing the folly of that here and elsewhere for well over a decade.

    But equally foolish is the notion that the key to winning (ie. achieving your political objectives) is to just dial up the horror and brutality. That is just stupid, as has been proven throughout history. It’s only a logical strategy if the political goal is to consign your opponent into the dustbin of history like Carthage or Native American tribes.

    The problem with failed wars has been much more fundamental – the attempt to use warfare to achieve political ends that it cannot achieve. Dialing up brutality doesn’t alter the fundamental flaw.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Andy

    Trying to use just a little violence to convince somebody you are right is bizarre. When the beatings start, politics is over. I have beaten somebody into submission, but I do not think I convinced them of my point of view.

    I do not understand the belief that dropping smart bombs and droning leaders will somehow convince your opponent that you are right. It did not work in Afghanistan or Iraq. If you want to transform Afghans or Iraqis into good little Americans, you need to kill a lot of them.

    Violence is a method to achieve an end, and it is brutal. Non-brutal violence is nonsensical.

  • Andy Link

    “If you want to transform Afghans or Iraqis into good little Americans, you need to kill a lot of them.”

    Again, killing doesn’t achieve that end. It breaks and destroys societies, it doesn’t turn them into good little Americans.

  • TastyBits Link

    @Andy

    Again, the experiment of smart bombs and drones failed. Turning Afghans and Iraqis into good little Americans requires you to break and destroy societies.

    If you object to doing that, you should not start using violence.

  • Andy Link

    Tasty,

    My position is you can’t turn a society into great little Americans via war regardless of how much violence you use.

    So I don’t support attempting to change societies via smart bombs, nor do I support trying via decimation. Changing a society requires actions outside of warfare to accomplish – which is one of the major lessons of Afghanistan and Iraq. The whole idea of nation-building at the point of a gun is folly.

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