Comment on Conservatives Quickly Turn Against “Idiot” Marjorie Taylor Greene
sxan@midwest.social 6 months agoEh. The US has twice proven that it can ramp up war production enough to go from essentially no war capacity to overwhelming force very quickly. Weapons manufacturers are salivating at the chance to satisfy wartime demand. And who are we holding back in fear of? China? If we get into a tangle with China, weapons reserves are going to be the least of our concerns. Russia? Ukraine - tiny little Ukraine - is showing that the mighty Russian war machine is mostly façade over rusting or entirely missing parts. The only threat Russia presents the US right now is nuclear - and weapon stockpiles aren’t going to protect against that.
So who are we afraid of? Canada? Honestly, I think Canada is the real threat; I think they’ve been putting on a friendly face and biding their time, waiting until we’ve given all of our ordinance in support of another country, and then they’ll sweep in and take back Old Fort Niagara, Youngstown, and Buffalo, and then they’ll have all the tourists mwahahaha!
This “holding in reserve” is a cop-out. We’re giving Ukraine stock that was due to be rotated out for newer stuff anyway; they aren’t getting latest-gen anything, and if the US goes into any conflict and burns through enough latest-gen munitions and has to reach into old stockpiles, I think we’re in for a rough ride no matter what.
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Are you talking about ww1 and Ww2? Those were very different times.
This is the easiest way to tell someone never served or has any military experience.
The javelin, patriot, 155mm, stinger, mlrs rockets, etc are all current issue. Isn’t the exact same thing we fight with. It’s the latest generation of fighting weapons.
sxan@midwest.social 6 months ago
Oh, yeah? Your meter is completely off, then.
Ordinance gets replaced on the regular. A lot of it gets used during training. When I was in, once a year we’d go to the range and get issued a ton of everything: cans of ammo, grenades of all sorts (but mostly smoke, and no CS, and no LAWs). We’d be there most of the day. More than once Saw gunners from our platoon would would melt barrels trying to go through all the ammo we were issued. One time, there was still a dead tree standing down range and my buddy and I spent about an hour trying to cut it down by shooting it with our M16s. Even the TOW gunners were there doing their thing, and they were usually pretty stingy with the TOWs. I think they left out the CS and LAWs because someone in command decided that was just a little too risky; but otherwise they have us a ton of everything. Like, we would be there all day, trying to find things to shoot at from our trench.
There was no objective to these exercises except to burn ammo. There were no targets except some rusted out old trucks, like maybe deuce & halfs? They were fairly unrecognizable by the time we saw them. Some long-dead tree trunks. Now that I’ve spent some decades in corporate US, what it reminded me must of was departments wildly trying to spend the rest of their budgets before year’s end.
It was glorious; just sending destruction downrange with nobody shooting back. Maybe there was some hidden purpose, but there orders were: “here’s ammo. Shoot it all.”
wintermute_oregon@lemm.ee 6 months ago
Then you should know we are giving Ukraine very formidable weapons. I get tired of people downplaying the quality of weapons we are sending. We are sending some solid weapons to Ukraine. It’s not old obsolete equipment. It’s the same equipment we use.
And law? That would date you. I never saw a law only the at-4
sxan@midwest.social 6 months ago
I’m not downplaying what we’re giving Ukraine; I was taking objection to the idea that the US barely has enough munitions to defend itself from a nebulous enemy and we need to be careful about how much we give out.
Yup, my service was decades ago.