>One of the interesting lessons of the past few years is that supply chain lead times are a thing and policy doesn't just happen because central planning says it should.
I would say exactly the opposite, the vaccines were made quite quickly and there weren't major supply issues.
The Defense Production Act (er... central planning as you put it) was used to say what was going to happen when with money to back it up and... things happened quickly.
DPA wasn't invoked to build you new cars or supply you toilet paper so... those things had their supply issues.
The US actually can do logistics very well, especially when there's somebody willing to foot the bill for big asks. The lack of corruption and general merit-based placement here compared to so many other places combined with a large degree of vertical integration means that we can accomplish quite a lot and is one of the underappreciated cornerstones of our ability to make war (and why nobody wants to fight us).
We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
This would have been categorically true circa-1970s.
Unfortunately, US industrial vertical integration now includes foundations placed in global low-labor-cost countries.
The crash vaccine manufacturing scaling program was possible because we were rich enough to throw mountains of money (of which we have the most) at any international supply problems.
If the Atlantic or Pacific had been hostile to commercial shipping, or countries hadn't cooperated, it would have had a very different result.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.
"We" are not. Ukrainians are dying and holding their own against a much larger country, with the help of NATO surplus equipment.
20,000-50,000 Ukrainians now have at least one limb amputated as a result of the war. [0] [1]
And Russia's military is not being decimated. It's holding its own with an elastic defense, that's making progress difficult and costly for a Ukrainian army that's trained halfway between Soviet mass doctrine and Western maneuver warfare.
At some point the Ukrainians will hopefully manage to exhaust Russia's logistics sufficient to break through their defense, but that's in no way a sure thing.
Russia's military is being decimated, just not at the line of contact currently. You're watching a protracted battle play out all across the world right now between Russian interests and Western interests. Some of these include:
1. Russian/Wagner (now admitted to be the same) neocolonialism in African states, most recently Niger. Within days Niger stopped trading Uranium to France. Conveniently, France is the least dependent on Russia for energy and will force the French to buy outside of Niger and then refocus on Russia.
2. The latest naval drone hit on a Russian oil tanker in the Black Sea took place well beyond the expected range of Ukrainian capability, which likely means someone else (Turkey?) helped at least get it into launch range. This coupled with the Ukrainian position that all russian ships, and all ships trading with russia are now targets in the Black Sea is also big for the area.
Currently Russians may not be dying in droves defending their positions. However, the knock on effects for russian military capacity, industrial capacity, and naval capacity are incredible. The longer they flounder and the more they commit to Ukraine, the more their traditional enemies are able to take advantage of their weakness.
If russian gas and oil cannot flow out of the black sea safely, their PMC backed interests in Africa and South American become less effective, and the corresponding governments will look elsewhere for influence/protection/trade.
It'll be fascinating to learn whatever grey/black ops details come out after the war hopefully ends.
The naval drone question is especially fascinating.
IMHO, they have to be transported closer to impact site by some other vessel.
Ukraine doesn't have submarines, and Russia has 6(?) Kilo's in the Black Sea, so traditional submarines would be insane in that environment anyway.
And whatever transport method would need to be stealthy with respect to Russia's sensing methods: acoustic, radar, to a lesser degree visual.
Given Ukraine's technical capabilities and traditional shipbuilding expertise, I'd hazard there's a somewhat-stealthy drone carrier boat (probably also unmanned).
They could also be hiding/launching the drones directly from commercial shipping, but that's an awfully big risk for the flag country/ship owner with respect to Russia boarding and searching, or even back tracing launch points.
> The lack of corruption and general merit-based placement here compared to so many other places combined with a large degree of vertical integration means that we can accomplish quite a lot and is one of the underappreciated cornerstones of our ability to make war (and why nobody wants to fight us).
First of all, other countries managed to develop and produce large amounts of vaccine in very short timeframe during the pandemic. Second of all, the reason nobody wants to fight the US is that the US spends as much on its military as the next ten or so countries. The US makes up 40% of all global military spending.
> We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine
The total value of NATO aid to Ukraine is on a similar scale as Russia's entire military budget. NATO is not just giving away second-tier equipment. It's giving Ukraine what it thinks Ukraine can use most effectively right away (such as upgraded T-72 tanks, man-portable air-defense and anti-tank systems early on), and some of that is cutting-edge gear (such as the Storm Shadow missile).
Whilst I agree with some of your post I think the following is incorrect.
> and some of that is cutting-edge gear (such as the Storm Shadow missile).
Storm shadow is 20 years old from first deployment and 29 years since development started. Its replacement is being actively developed since 2017, it’s hardly “cutting edge”.
It’s just new enough that the Russians have trouble countering it.
I would say exactly the opposite, the vaccines were made quite quickly and there weren't major supply issues.
The Defense Production Act (er... central planning as you put it) was used to say what was going to happen when with money to back it up and... things happened quickly.
DPA wasn't invoked to build you new cars or supply you toilet paper so... those things had their supply issues.
The US actually can do logistics very well, especially when there's somebody willing to foot the bill for big asks. The lack of corruption and general merit-based placement here compared to so many other places combined with a large degree of vertical integration means that we can accomplish quite a lot and is one of the underappreciated cornerstones of our ability to make war (and why nobody wants to fight us).
We are decimating (and then some) Russia's military by giving away second tier equipment to Ukraine, and the amount we're giving away is basically an afterthought. A one-time superpower is scraping the bottom of the barrel for equipment fighting against largely NATO supplied spare equipment.