Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nostrademons | Hacker News Reader

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Much of peacetime military procurement is all about keeping defense contractors alive "just in case" (which you could look at charitably as "maintaining readiness for the next war" or uncharitably as "corporate welfare and pork barrel politics"). Right now, we're at peace. There's no reason for these companies to exist - except that if they didn't, it might encourage adversaries who believe it would be an opportune time for war.

A lot of things that don't really make sense on a military level make a lot more sense on a corporate welfare level. Each Virginia-class submarine is built half at Newport News in Virginia and half at Electric Boat in Connecticut; this is far more expensive than just building the subs in one yard, but is intended to keep both submarine manufacturers in business. The Ford class carriers and F-35 warplanes both contain numerous design innovations that don't really work in practice, but could be viewed as experimentation so that we have engineers with experience in various techniques should we ever need to rapidly build up the military later. The F-35 itself has a large number of subcontractors; you could look at that as a way to make sure that expertise in the program remains widely distributed across as many firms as possible.

I suspect the government is content to allow mergers because it doesn't really reduce the deterrent value of having these programs exist, and the whole point of their existence is to funnel money to defense contractors. If we actually got into a major arms race you'd probably see an explosion of new defense contractors as people start chasing the money available, but for now we're at peace with a shrinking military.

I agree with you re: keeping them alive, but the US is very much perpetually at war:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_lengths_of_United_...

Almost so much so, that it seems like a reason to keep them alive.

Those low-grade conflicts aren't what much of the US military is designed for--a large conflict with another capable military force like China, Russia, etc. They are occupations and anti-surgency operations.

A major conflict would require a lot of new manufacturing.

It's interesting to see the U.S. military retooling for these low-level occupation and anti-insurgency operations. Systems like the Zumwalt destroyers, littoral combat ships, America-class amphibious assault ships, Predator/Reaper/Avenger drones, and laser weapon systems are all adapted to low-intensity, close-to-shore work.

I also wonder whether the assumption that the next big war will a great-power conflict with China, Russia, etc. will actually hold. Our template for what war looks like is WW2, because that's the last time in living memory that the whole world erupted in high intensity warfare. So we've naturally built a military machine to fight the last war, but with bigger and more high-tech weaponry.

But historically, Peter Thiel's observation that "each moment in history happens only once" may be closer to the truth. The era of nation-states duking it out with industrialized armored weaponry started with the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and ended with WW2 in 1945; it had never happened before, and it never happened afterwards. The previous template for wars before then were the "wars of nationalism" (U.S. civil war, unification of Germany, unification of Italy) in the 1860s-1870s - these had some use of industrialization, but still featured things like cavalry charges and generals personally leading troops into battle. Before then was Napoleon's conquest in 1812, and before that were the American and French revolutions, both of which were very different types of war with entirely different political groups on each side.

For all we know, the next major war might look like Syria but on a global scale, with numerous non-national actors all fighting over territory, resources, and mindshare.

> Our template for what war looks like is WW2, because that's the last time in living memory that the whole world erupted in high intensity warfare. So we've naturally built a military machine to fight the last war, but with bigger and more high-tech weaponry.

This criticism might loosely have been true in the 1980s to 1990s, but doesn't seem particularly relevant now.

> But historically, Peter Thiel's observation that "each moment in history happens only once" may be closer to the truth.

It's obviously literally true, and it's been recognized as true more broadly in military matters since before Thiel was born. What is always in dispute until the next war starts is which lessons learned from the last one are critically in error now, not whether that will be the case somewhere.

US defense priorities have firmly shifted towards fighting potentially Russia and China (maybe even at the same time).

Have you read Philip Bobbitt? esp. "The Shield of Achilles"

His theme is something like this, but stressing the coupling between technology (what weapons, and economies, are possible) and law (what states, and what goals, are thought legitimate) and wars.

The 20th-C meat-grinder armies were unique, in that they were both possible to sustain, and useful. And in turn the countries which survived were ones that could support them (i.e. not the Ottomans, the Austrians, etc) for which he reserves the term nation-state -- they had, and needed, a much higher degree of cohesion than had been common before.

He lays out a number of distinct eras before this, with their own notions of what states were, and should do, and could do, and how this all interacted.

Highly recommended if you can stomach 1000-page tomes & skip a lot. I wish there was a great more-popular presentation but I don't know of one.

It sounds really interesting - looking at the Wikipedia summary, it also mentions a potential downfall of the nation-state in favor of the market-state, which is a trend I see happening around me. I'll have to read it when I get a chance.

You are 4-6 years out of date.

1989/1991 to 9/11/01 was genuine aimlessness and downsizing, missing the boat on a bunch of important developments, etc.

9/11 to Iraq War was massive IC expansion and trying to assign "counter terrorism" to any budget line item.

Iraq from ~April 2004 to ~2011 was the massive retasking toward occupation and LIC. That sort of continued until 2014 in Afghanistan as well. This was also when CIA went from an intelligence agency to a global strike agency, and when JSOC became the second most powerful military in the world (after the US-except-JSOC).

2013/2014 was when they realized that they'd basically cannibalized/neglected the entire conventional military and couldn't fight real wars anymore and then did the "pivot to Asia" under Obama, which has continued under Trump. There are still some serious problems (like Pacific Fleet being...substandard, despite being critical).

They're now basically not planning to occupy anyone ever again, given how badly Iraq/Afghanistan have gone (and would love to get out of Afghanistan to the degree possible); the purpose of the military is now fighting near-peer adversaries (China, to some extent Russia) while continuing to make contractors rich and get congressmen re-elected.

Could be. New military hardware tends to lag strategy by 5-10 years, and most of my examples first shipped in the late 00s. If we changed strategies in 2015, I'd see it around 2020-2025.

It'll be interesting to see if this new strategic priority is actually accurate in the near future.

The new strategy is mostly "not doing the other new strategy" and retaining our nominal 1960s-2000s focus. Doing things like keeping brigade combat teams at strength with armor/strategic logistics, etc. Upgrading existing Abrams/Bradley/etc. vehicles vs. switching everyone to MRAPs and Strykers, etc.

I hope this kind of conflict never happens; US v near-peer basically is vanishingly small distance from full-on nuclear WW3 total war, and even a conventional conflict at that scale (or a more limited scope but still all-out within that space) will be incredibly destructive to even the winners.

The wars we're more likely to see are second/third tier powers fighting as well as cyber. However, the lower probability but high severity events need to be mitigated, which is why we need the triad, a substantial navy, ability to rapidly deploy at divisional strength, prepositioned WRM, etc.

>They're now basically not planning to occupy anyone ever again,

>the purpose of the military is now fighting near-peer adversaries (China, to some extent Russia)

I agree with you here, but this seems like a massive contradiction. I don't understand how one would win against a near-peer adversary without occupying something, e.g. Taiwan or Hong Kong or parts of Eastern Europe.

Presumably Taiwan or Hong Kong would invite us in if there was a serious threat from China.

I think the problem with occupying countries is when the people in the country don't want us there. Occupying companies that want you there isn't really an occupation.

I think you're mostly right, but it depends - and presumably Eastern Europe would want us there too in the event of a Russian invasion.

The problem when they "want you" is that your occupying Army now has to do things like government administration and nominal policing, something the United States military hasn't done, at least convincingly well, since WWII (one could make an argument this started going well at the end of the Iraq war but I would heartily disagree). It's just a different type of occupation.

It would be "maintain forward bases during a dynamic conflict with or without the support of the local government", not "try to turn Afghanistan into an 18th century state for the first time, or fix Iraq".

"Those low-grade conflicts aren't what much of the US military is designed for--a large conflict with another capable military force like China, Russia, etc."

Doubt it. The US has basically close to zero experience in such a conflict. Even the 2nd WW was mainly a Russian-German war in Europe. 9 out of 10 German soldiers fell on the Eastern front and the US had already a much larger population and industry then Germany.

In Addition, the Navy would be not very useful to engage an able opponent: http://www.johntreed.net/sittingducks.html

We've always been at war with Eastasia.

Thought it was Oceania...

I thought it was supposed to be Eurasia?

No, we live in Eurasia, remember?

Conflicts which the military industrial complex has no interest in us ever getting out of, as recent events in Yemen demonstrate. Not to mention what's looming on the horizon in Venezuela or Iran.

https://www.opensecrets.org/industries/lobbying.php?cycle=20...

>Not to mention what's looming on the horizon in Venezuela or Iran.

Lol. Regarding Venzuela, there is still exactly zero appetite among the general public for another nation building boondoggle. So what if they have oil. We have plenty of oil too. The idea of "building" a friendly nation that's dependent on us to sell us oil has little upside these days.

Regarding Iran, the defense industry is drooling over the idea that the next president may thaw relations and they'll be able to sell to both sides of the Iran/Israel standoff.

The US is perpetually at ‘war’ on purpose. It helps to justify the military spending which in turn boosts the economy.

To put it shortly, it may be the case that "we don't need F-35 because we have peace". But a more realistic POV is "We have peace because we build more F-35s"

Si vis pacem, para bellum.

By saying that there is no reason for defense companies to outside of war, you are vastly underestimating the kind of projects they are involved in.

Interesting perspective, but let me throw out this perspective from Sun Tzu:

The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.

Part of why we invest in defense is to ensure we never have to fight. True war is costly, by definition.

It should be used as a last resort, when no other tool is available. Conversely, if you do have to deploy it, you want to be sure that it “changes the equation”. In other words, If it didn’t truly hurt/disable you or your opponent at the end if it, then there was no reason to do it in the first place.

How does this relate to current US defense posture? In short: we want to make it such that no one wants to have a real fight with us, that instead they prefer discussions/diplomacy (at least at the nation state level).

While folks complain about how much we spend in defense, a lot of it is not for the result per se (though ensuring cutting edge capability is important), but more to make the point that we are spending X times a given country A. This is intended to make country A less interested in being a bad actor to the US.

Is this perfect? Probably not. Is there lots of waste? Certainly. But overall it has generally worked, and as such underlies much of why the US does what it does with military spending.

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