Meanwhile in China

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4,975]

How awesome would it be if we recovered the payload and it was nothing but bottles full of Coke with the seal already broken?

[Dutchrudder 11,133]

2 hours ago, Bevo said:

I found this article interesting:

US Would Run Out of Munitions in War With China: Report

Servicemen of Ukrainian Military Forces move U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger missiles and the other military assistance shipped from Lithuania to Boryspil Airport in Kyiv, on Feb. 13, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

By Andrew Thornebrooke

January 24, 2023Updated: January 24, 2023

biggersmaller

Print

 

 

The United States would likely run out of critical munitions during a major conflict with China’s communist regime due to its inability to adequately mobilize the defense industrial base, according to a new report.

The report, titled “Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment,” examines how the United States has depleted key arms reserves by supplying Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion, and extrapolates how a similar situation could negatively impact the nation in a wartime scenario.

“The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists,” says the report published on Jan. 23 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a security-focused think tank.

“In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), leading to a problem of ‘empty bins.’”

“Empty Bins” follows closely behind the release of results from CSIS wargames, which found that the United States would suffer from low levels of vital munitions in a war with China over the continued de facto independence of Taiwan.

That wargame found that Japan and the United States could likely defeat an invasion of Taiwan by communist China, but only at great cost in lives and materiel. In such a conflict, the United States would likely run out of long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASMs) early on.

“The problem is the U.S. has such low stockpiles for those long-range anti-ship missiles that in our wargames, in multiple iterations of the wargame, we run out [of LRASMs] in less than a week virtually every time,” said Seth Jones, the author of “Empty Bins,” in an associated video.

“We cannot fight in that case in protracted war because we don’t have sufficient supply of munitions.”

US Unprepared for a Major War

The United States’ ill-preparedness for a conflict with communist China has long been a point of contention among lawmakers and defense policy experts.

Taiwanese navy launches a U.S.-made Standard missile from a frigate during the annual Han Kuang Drill on the sea near the Suao navy harbor in Yilan county, Taiwan, on July 26, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Back in 2021, for example, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) warned that the United States would “probably lose” a war for Taiwan, and noted trends in wargames over the past several years in which the United States regularly lost to China in simulated invasions of Taiwan.

“Empty Bins” adds further context to the issue by analyzing how the United States has rapidly depleted critical munitions through its support of Ukraine, noting that the nation’s stockpiles of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155-millimeter howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems have plummeted.

The report notes that the United States has sent more Stinger missiles to Ukraine in the last year than have been built for all non-U.S. customers over the last 20 years. Likewise, the nation has delivered more than 1 million 155-mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, and only placed orders to replace a fraction of that amount.

“More broadly, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that competition and conflict between major powers will require a strong industrial base in the United States and in key ally and partner countries,” the report says.

“The effort to deploy, arm, feed, and supply forces is a monumental task, and the massive consumption of equipment, systems, vehicles, and munitions requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply.”

Thus, the report says, the problem is not that the United States is providing support to Ukraine, as a defense of Taiwan would draw largely on different kinds of munitions and weapons platforms. Instead, the problem rests in the United States’ sluggish procurement processes and lack of a robust defense industrial base for munitions manufacturing.

The Javelin surface-to-air missile system, for example, requires a production lead time of approximately 30 months. This means that, if the United States were to order new units of the system today, it would take more than two years before they were in the hands of the military.

Notably, such slow estimates are what is achievable in peacetime. During war, procurement could take much longer when supply chains are disrupted and vital components like rare earth elements are scarce.

“These shortfalls would make it extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict—and, equally concerning, the deficiencies undermine deterrence,” the report says.

“They also highlight that the U.S. defense industrial base lacks adequate surge capacity for a major war.”

To that end, the report recommends creating a “break-glass” plan in which the government could streamline industrial production, acquisition, and deployment in wartime.

Similarly, the report suggests that the United States create a strategic munitions reserve that would include subcomponents with long production lead times, like metals and electronics.

Only by shoring up its defenses and rebuilding its stockpiles now, the report says, can the United States deter or win a conflict later.

“The main problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base—including the munitions industrial base—is not currently equipped to support a protracted conventional war,” the report says.

“With growing competition between the United States and China—along with continuing threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups—the U.S. military needs to be prepared to fight at least one major war, if not two.”

 

lol... our subs would be taking out any ships that so much as glance at our Navy over there. LRASMs are just one anti-boat weapon, and they could probably kill half the Chinese Navy with what's currently on the Pacific fleet. There are plenty of other options to take out their military. Our Air Force would annihilate most of whatever China sends at us or Taiwan, and there are plenty of options to take out boats from the air without them ever seeing the plane shooting them. They have vastly inferior military technology, their only play is to overtake Taiwan from within using political pressure and social engineering. 

[NeverMarryAStripper 21,874]

The Chinese Yuan class submarine is a diesel-electric with an air independent propulsion system.  Those types of submarines are extremely hard to detect.  In 2005 a Swedish sub with the same type of propulsion system ran rings around the U.S. forces in war games and sank the USS Ronald Reagan.

[mchookem 16,321]

 

[Bevo 13,566]

6 hours ago, Dutchrudder said:

lol... our subs would be taking out any ships that so much as glance at our Navy over there. LRASMs are just one anti-boat weapon, and they could probably kill half the Chinese Navy with what's currently on the Pacific fleet. There are plenty of other options to take out their military. Our Air Force would annihilate most of whatever China sends at us or Taiwan, and there are plenty of options to take out boats from the air without them ever seeing the plane shooting them. They have vastly inferior military technology, their only play is to overtake Taiwan from within using political pressure and social engineering. 

I doubt we would go to war directly with China. It would be catastrophic. War games show we would lose a couple of carriers and 20 destroyers. cruiser, and various other ships as well as air bases in Japan. So, theoretically we could prevent the taking of Taiwan. But, we would lose 10,000 troops in the first few weeks of the war. Public opinion would be against it in the US. It would risk nuclear war. Losses could damage Washington’s ability to project global power for a very long time. And, this all assumes that Taiwan itself will be determined to fight back. And, Japan must give its permission for the United States to launch counterattacks from its bases on Japanese territory.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Bevo

[Kennythetiger 9,375]

7 hours ago, NotActuallyALonghorn said:

How awesome would it be if we recovered the payload and it was nothing but bottles full of Coke with the seal already broken?

“Sorry. Not a winner.”  

[BabaYaga 15,288]

38 minutes ago, Bevo said:

I doubt we would go to war directly with China. It would be catastrophic. War games show we would lose a couple of carriers and 20 destroyers. cruiser, and various other ships as well as air bases in Japan. So, theoretically we could prevent the taking of Taiwan. But, we would lose 10,000 troops in the first few weeks of the war. Public opinion would be against it in the US. It would risk nuclear war. Losses could damage Washington’s ability to project global power for a very long time. And, this all assumes that Taiwan itself will be determined to fight back. And, Japan must give its permission for the United States to launch counterattacks from its bases on Japanese territory.

The cost as stated would be catastrophic.  Beyond men and material, Taiwan produces more than 90% of the worlds chip manufacturing.  Every phone.  every computer.  Every "smart" device we have would be impacted.  Taiwan is indispensable to both sides. 

From the perspective of the military, much of our guidance technology would be impacted as well.  We'd compound shortages in material with a deficit of guidance options that operate just about everything these days.  Both sides are investing in domestic plants, but that could be a decade off and lack the expertise of the TSMC to run them.  If shit goes sideways, it will be Operation Paperclip all over again to funnel out experts who know how to run the plants.  

[Schulz2.0 28,951]

1 hour ago, Bevo said:

I doubt we would go to war directly with China. It would be catastrophic. War games show we would lose a couple of carriers and 20 destroyers. cruiser, and various other ships as well as air bases in Japan. So, theoretically we could prevent the taking of Taiwan. But, we would lose 10,000 troops in the first few weeks of the war. Public opinion would be against it in the US. It would risk nuclear war. Losses could damage Washington’s ability to project global power for a very long time. And, this all assumes that Taiwan itself will be determined to fight back. And, Japan must give its permission for the United States to launch counterattacks from its bases on Japanese territory.

Japan cares much more about Taiwan than most people think.

[Parliament 14,243]

1 hour ago, BabaYaga said:

 

From the perspective of the military, much of our guidance technology would be impacted as well.   

American weapons have Taiwanese chips?  Gulp

[BabaYaga 15,288]

2 minutes ago, Parliament said:

American weapons have Taiwanese chips?  Gulp

Taiwan basically underwrites our entire military complex.  So yeah, this is not ideal

[Captainant 27,635]

11 minutes ago, Parliament said:

American weapons have Taiwanese chips?  Gulp

Man, your fuckin electrical outlets and light bulbs probably have taiwanese chips in them lol. They hold the lions share of global silicon manufacturing capacity, even moreso now that the US is so heavily restricting EUV and other cutting edge tech from export to china 

The US is working on building domestic chip fabs, but we're probably only four years into the ten year ramp up for fully opening a new fab

[Schulz2.0 28,951]

14 minutes ago, Parliament said:

American weapons have Taiwanese chips?  Gulp

https://www.voanews.com/a/race-for-semiconductors-influences-taiwan-conflict-/6696432.html

[Nicole44 22,057]

I mean that’s why they unleashed TikTok on the world. Prepping to take back/invade Taiwan and they already have their shit on people’s phones…right? My dad was hugely paranoid about 1999 Y2K shit (which turned out not to be an issue) but he honestly thought all things manufactured in China would just blow up and threw his really cool alarm clock away. I tried telling him it wasn’t going to blow up but he didn’t listen. I guess if he were alive we’d laugh about it now…maybe not.

Texas universities block access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks:

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/17/ut-austin-tiktok-ban/

[Parliament 14,243]

17 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

https://www.voanews.com/a/race-for-semiconductors-influences-taiwan-conflict-/6696432.html

 

I presumed military chips were made here.

U.S. dependency on Taiwanese production of chips for defense systems extends beyond AI. TSMC makes semiconductors used in F-35 fighters and a wide range of “military-grade” devices used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Many U.S. defense systems use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) which are similar to commercial versions but introduce certain specific militarily relevant features, such as higher levels of heat and radiation tolerance. The major designers of FPGAs are U.S. firms that depend on Taiwan for much of their production. The U.S. firm Xilinx, for example, invented the FPGA, but most of its semiconductor wafers are manufactured by TSMC and United Microelectronics Co., another Taiwanese firm. The full extent of U.S. reliance on Taiwan for the manufacture of chips for military applications is unknown, but it is an important factor underlying U.S. government pressure on TSMC to move its production of military devices to the United States.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/semiconductors-and-national-defense-what-are-stakes

9 minutes ago, Nicole44 said:

I mean that’s why they unleashed TikTok on the world. Prepping to take back/invade Taiwan and they already have their shit on people’s phones…right? My dad was hugely paranoid about 1999 Y2K shit (which turned out not to be an issue) but he honestly thought all things manufactured in China would just blow up and threw his really cool alarm clock away. I tried telling him it wasn’t going to blow up but he didn’t listen. I guess if he were alive we’d laugh about it now…maybe not.

Texas universities block access to TikTok on campus Wi-Fi networks:

https://www.texastribune.org/2023/01/17/ut-austin-tiktok-ban/

I'll refer back to the opium era of China in the 1800's.  Social media engages the same addiction parts of the brain that opium does, and TikTok seems to be the worst.  TikTok is to social media what Fentenyl is to opiods.  It may not be a coincidence that the most addictive social media comes from China.

A more humorous example: the Chinese Norinco SKS.  Back in the 90's you could buy one, NIB, for $145.  It was  are revelation.  At a time when AR 15's were >$1000 you could get a box-fed semi-auto intermediate cartridge rifle for $145.  I don't recall, but I'm sure ammo was cheap.  I have a working theory that the Chinese saw all those gangster rap videos and movies and Americans flaking out over violent crime, and decided to "flood" the US with guns.  Joke's on you, Chinese Communists.  We came up with better ways to kill eachother!

[Nicole44 22,057]

As I was watching the Grammys last night and seeing Ben Affleck get absolutely roasted on Twitter for looking so miserable…I imagine this is the reaction the Pentagon had when us regular folk saw the Chinese Spy Balloon and had to deal with it…I mean seriously she just lays into his ass and his reaction is like, The fuck did she just say to me? I can’t stop watching it. It’s sad…

 

[Fudge Nuggets 19,189]

11 hours ago, Bevo said:

I found this article interesting:

US Would Run Out of Munitions in War With China: Report

Servicemen of Ukrainian Military Forces move U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger missiles and the other military assistance shipped from Lithuania to Boryspil Airport in Kyiv, on Feb. 13, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

By Andrew Thornebrooke

January 24, 2023Updated: January 24, 2023

biggersmaller

Print

 

 

The United States would likely run out of critical munitions during a major conflict with China’s communist regime due to its inability to adequately mobilize the defense industrial base, according to a new report.

The report, titled “Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment,” examines how the United States has depleted key arms reserves by supplying Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion, and extrapolates how a similar situation could negatively impact the nation in a wartime scenario.

“The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists,” says the report published on Jan. 23 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a security-focused think tank.

“In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), leading to a problem of ‘empty bins.’”

“Empty Bins” follows closely behind the release of results from CSIS wargames, which found that the United States would suffer from low levels of vital munitions in a war with China over the continued de facto independence of Taiwan.

That wargame found that Japan and the United States could likely defeat an invasion of Taiwan by communist China, but only at great cost in lives and materiel. In such a conflict, the United States would likely run out of long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASMs) early on.

“The problem is the U.S. has such low stockpiles for those long-range anti-ship missiles that in our wargames, in multiple iterations of the wargame, we run out [of LRASMs] in less than a week virtually every time,” said Seth Jones, the author of “Empty Bins,” in an associated video.

“We cannot fight in that case in protracted war because we don’t have sufficient supply of munitions.”

US Unprepared for a Major War

The United States’ ill-preparedness for a conflict with communist China has long been a point of contention among lawmakers and defense policy experts.

Taiwanese navy launches a U.S.-made Standard missile from a frigate during the annual Han Kuang Drill on the sea near the Suao navy harbor in Yilan county, Taiwan, on July 26, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Back in 2021, for example, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) warned that the United States would “probably lose” a war for Taiwan, and noted trends in wargames over the past several years in which the United States regularly lost to China in simulated invasions of Taiwan.

“Empty Bins” adds further context to the issue by analyzing how the United States has rapidly depleted critical munitions through its support of Ukraine, noting that the nation’s stockpiles of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155-millimeter howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems have plummeted.

The report notes that the United States has sent more Stinger missiles to Ukraine in the last year than have been built for all non-U.S. customers over the last 20 years. Likewise, the nation has delivered more than 1 million 155-mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, and only placed orders to replace a fraction of that amount.

“More broadly, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that competition and conflict between major powers will require a strong industrial base in the United States and in key ally and partner countries,” the report says.

“The effort to deploy, arm, feed, and supply forces is a monumental task, and the massive consumption of equipment, systems, vehicles, and munitions requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply.”

Thus, the report says, the problem is not that the United States is providing support to Ukraine, as a defense of Taiwan would draw largely on different kinds of munitions and weapons platforms. Instead, the problem rests in the United States’ sluggish procurement processes and lack of a robust defense industrial base for munitions manufacturing.

The Javelin surface-to-air missile system, for example, requires a production lead time of approximately 30 months. This means that, if the United States were to order new units of the system today, it would take more than two years before they were in the hands of the military.

Notably, such slow estimates are what is achievable in peacetime. During war, procurement could take much longer when supply chains are disrupted and vital components like rare earth elements are scarce.

“These shortfalls would make it extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict—and, equally concerning, the deficiencies undermine deterrence,” the report says.

“They also highlight that the U.S. defense industrial base lacks adequate surge capacity for a major war.”

To that end, the report recommends creating a “break-glass” plan in which the government could streamline industrial production, acquisition, and deployment in wartime.

Similarly, the report suggests that the United States create a strategic munitions reserve that would include subcomponents with long production lead times, like metals and electronics.

Only by shoring up its defenses and rebuilding its stockpiles now, the report says, can the United States deter or win a conflict later.

“The main problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base—including the munitions industrial base—is not currently equipped to support a protracted conventional war,” the report says.

“With growing competition between the United States and China—along with continuing threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups—the U.S. military needs to be prepared to fight at least one major war, if not two.”

 

Remind me again what we get in return for our $740 billion annual defense budget?

[BabaYaga 15,288]

11 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Remind me again what we get in return for our $740 billion annual defense budget?

[Captainant 27,635]

10 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Remind me again what we get in return for our $740 billion annual defense budget?

Weapons that are good at killing a shitload of ruskies, judging by the results of lend lease so far

[bolverk 29,655]

With all due respect, @Bevo, the fucking Epoch Times is not a credible source of information, and you should be embarrassed for quoting anything from it. I mean, you might as well be posting articles from the Weekly World News.

 

Spoiler

 

[YGIFS 19,449]

I've been trying to give it a chance for a few years now just to be fair, but you'd have a hard time proving that the Epoch Times isn't an "underground" college paper from Hillsdale.  

[Bevo 13,566]

Don’t care. There were many, many other sources but if you haven’t noticed, ladder isn’t as effective as it once was and I’m not interested in removing ad blocker or paying for Bloomberg, Times, NYT, or whatever source you find credible just to make you happy. So believe the articles or not - it doesn’t make a difference to me.

[YGIFS 19,449]

Former high-up White House officials now indicating the balloon was very likely a "manned craft" with a Chinese pilot.  

[Bevo 13,566]

1 minute ago, YGIFS said:

Former high-up White House officials now indicating the balloon was very likely a "manned craft" with a Chinese pilot.  

From 60,000ft? And with no parachute onboard? And for a month of travel from China and back? I don’t think so. 

[YGIFS 19,449]

1 minute ago, Bevo said:

From 60,000ft? And with no parachute onboard? And for a month of travel from China and back? I don’t think so. 

tell that to the stable genius who just tweeted what I posted.

[Bevo 13,566]

1 minute ago, YGIFS said:

tell that to the stable genius who just tweeted what I posted.

Do you have their telephone numbers?

[YGIFS 19,449]

555-HES-DUMB

[Parliament 14,243]

7 minutes ago, Bevo said:

From 60,000ft? And with no parachute onboard? And for a month of travel from China and back? I don’t think so. 

Can we get a link?  I'm not questioning it, but that's hot.  

[Red Five 40,843]

I think Lobo is just referencing a Trump tweet, or whatever that's called, in which he said that it could have been manned.

[Bevo 13,566]

13 minutes ago, Red Five said:

I think Lobo is just referencing a Trump tweet, or whatever that's called, in which he said that it could have been manned.

Thanks. My internet is down at work, so I’m stuck doing this on iPhone. And it’s too much effort to Google shit or give too much critical thought to random bullshit. But off the cuff it was pretty obvious that breathing at that altitude and staying warm at -70 for an extended period of time wasn’t likely.

Edited February 6, 2023 by Bevo

[YGIFS 19,449]

3 minutes ago, Bevo said:

Thanks. My internet is down at work, so I’m stuck doing this on iPhone. And it’s too much effort to Google shit or give too much critical thought to random bullshit. 

Precisely how he goes through life, too.  

To be fair, I've seen this rumor that it was manned in a few other places as well.  We're gonna be mired in conspiracy theories for months, if not longer about this. 

Disconcerting that this is the 5th time (IIRC) that this happened in just the last few years.  

 

[JesusSweatDuck 17,781]

1 hour ago, Parliament said:

 

I presumed military chips were made here.

U.S. dependency on Taiwanese production of chips for defense systems extends beyond AI. TSMC makes semiconductors used in F-35 fighters and a wide range of “military-grade” devices used by the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). Many U.S. defense systems use field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA) which are similar to commercial versions but introduce certain specific militarily relevant features, such as higher levels of heat and radiation tolerance. The major designers of FPGAs are U.S. firms that depend on Taiwan for much of their production. The U.S. firm Xilinx, for example, invented the FPGA, but most of its semiconductor wafers are manufactured by TSMC and United Microelectronics Co., another Taiwanese firm. The full extent of U.S. reliance on Taiwan for the manufacture of chips for military applications is unknown, but it is an important factor underlying U.S. government pressure on TSMC to move its production of military devices to the United States.

https://www.csis.org/analysis/semiconductors-and-national-defense-what-are-stakes

I'll refer back to the opium era of China in the 1800's.  Social media engages the same addiction parts of the brain that opium does, and TikTok seems to be the worst.  TikTok is to social media what Fentenyl is to opiods.  It may not be a coincidence that the most addictive social media comes from China.

A more humorous example: the Chinese Norinco SKS.  Back in the 90's you could buy one, NIB, for $145.  It was  are revelation.  At a time when AR 15's were >$1000 you could get a box-fed semi-auto intermediate cartridge rifle for $145.  I don't recall, but I'm sure ammo was cheap.  I have a working theory that the Chinese saw all those gangster rap videos and movies and Americans flaking out over violent crime, and decided to "flood" the US with guns.  Joke's on you, Chinese Communists.  We came up with better ways to kill eachother!

TSMC has fabs in the US

[Red Five 40,843]

2 minutes ago, YGIFS said:

To be fair, I've seen this rumor that it was manned in a few other places as well. 

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

[YGIFS 19,449]

Just now, Red Five said:

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

CARRONBAWL! 

[Orange&White 5,522]

Just now, Red Five said:

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

You need to pay closer attention.

We already covered that the US asked China to lower the balloon so they could shoot it down and China complied. It would have only been six miles, so, no problem.

[JesusSweatDuck 17,781]

2 minutes ago, Red Five said:

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

We Tu Lo?

[Nicole44 22,057]

17 minutes ago, Red Five said:

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

Hmmmm…

[Amos Moses 795]

He would have splashed down in the water, so I'm sure he's fine. 11 miles up is pretty high though. Hope he didn't land on his back.

Ouch. Berry frop from too high.

[Fudge Nuggets 19,189]

4 hours ago, Captainant said:

Weapons that are good at killing a shitload of ruskies, judging by the results of lend lease so far

We need to teach the Ukrainians how to aim better.

[Brian Fantana 6,680]

17 hours ago, wild_turkey said:

 

Please tell me you aren’t serious. You think the Pentagon asked China to lower the balloon to make it easier for us to shoot down and China agreed to do that?

 

Yeah I might have been on one with that one. It threw me off that it was so low.

[deadshank 24,652]

[Homercles 10,205]

[Neonmoon 38,129]

23 hours ago, Bevo said:

I found this article interesting:

US Would Run Out of Munitions in War With China: Report

Servicemen of Ukrainian Military Forces move U.S.-made FIM-92 Stinger missiles and the other military assistance shipped from Lithuania to Boryspil Airport in Kyiv, on Feb. 13, 2022. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

By Andrew Thornebrooke

January 24, 2023Updated: January 24, 2023

biggersmaller

Print

 

 

The United States would likely run out of critical munitions during a major conflict with China’s communist regime due to its inability to adequately mobilize the defense industrial base, according to a new report.

The report, titled “Empty Bins in a Wartime Environment,” examines how the United States has depleted key arms reserves by supplying Ukraine’s resistance against Russian invasion, and extrapolates how a similar situation could negatively impact the nation in a wartime scenario.

“The U.S. defense industrial base is not adequately prepared for the competitive security environment that now exists,” says the report published on Jan. 23 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a security-focused think tank.

“In a major regional conflict—such as a war with China in the Taiwan Strait—the U.S. use of munitions would likely exceed the current stockpiles of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), leading to a problem of ‘empty bins.’”

“Empty Bins” follows closely behind the release of results from CSIS wargames, which found that the United States would suffer from low levels of vital munitions in a war with China over the continued de facto independence of Taiwan.

That wargame found that Japan and the United States could likely defeat an invasion of Taiwan by communist China, but only at great cost in lives and materiel. In such a conflict, the United States would likely run out of long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASMs) early on.

“The problem is the U.S. has such low stockpiles for those long-range anti-ship missiles that in our wargames, in multiple iterations of the wargame, we run out [of LRASMs] in less than a week virtually every time,” said Seth Jones, the author of “Empty Bins,” in an associated video.

“We cannot fight in that case in protracted war because we don’t have sufficient supply of munitions.”

US Unprepared for a Major War

The United States’ ill-preparedness for a conflict with communist China has long been a point of contention among lawmakers and defense policy experts.

Taiwanese navy launches a U.S.-made Standard missile from a frigate during the annual Han Kuang Drill on the sea near the Suao navy harbor in Yilan county, Taiwan, on July 26, 2022. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Back in 2021, for example, Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) warned that the United States would “probably lose” a war for Taiwan, and noted trends in wargames over the past several years in which the United States regularly lost to China in simulated invasions of Taiwan.

“Empty Bins” adds further context to the issue by analyzing how the United States has rapidly depleted critical munitions through its support of Ukraine, noting that the nation’s stockpiles of Stinger surface-to-air missiles, 155-millimeter howitzers and ammunition, and Javelin anti-tank missile systems have plummeted.

The report notes that the United States has sent more Stinger missiles to Ukraine in the last year than have been built for all non-U.S. customers over the last 20 years. Likewise, the nation has delivered more than 1 million 155-mm artillery rounds to Ukraine, and only placed orders to replace a fraction of that amount.

“More broadly, the war in Ukraine has demonstrated that competition and conflict between major powers will require a strong industrial base in the United States and in key ally and partner countries,” the report says.

“The effort to deploy, arm, feed, and supply forces is a monumental task, and the massive consumption of equipment, systems, vehicles, and munitions requires a large-scale industrial base for resupply.”

Thus, the report says, the problem is not that the United States is providing support to Ukraine, as a defense of Taiwan would draw largely on different kinds of munitions and weapons platforms. Instead, the problem rests in the United States’ sluggish procurement processes and lack of a robust defense industrial base for munitions manufacturing.

The Javelin surface-to-air missile system, for example, requires a production lead time of approximately 30 months. This means that, if the United States were to order new units of the system today, it would take more than two years before they were in the hands of the military.

Notably, such slow estimates are what is achievable in peacetime. During war, procurement could take much longer when supply chains are disrupted and vital components like rare earth elements are scarce.

“These shortfalls would make it extremely difficult for the United States to sustain a protracted conflict—and, equally concerning, the deficiencies undermine deterrence,” the report says.

“They also highlight that the U.S. defense industrial base lacks adequate surge capacity for a major war.”

To that end, the report recommends creating a “break-glass” plan in which the government could streamline industrial production, acquisition, and deployment in wartime.

Similarly, the report suggests that the United States create a strategic munitions reserve that would include subcomponents with long production lead times, like metals and electronics.

Only by shoring up its defenses and rebuilding its stockpiles now, the report says, can the United States deter or win a conflict later.

“The main problem is that the U.S. defense industrial base—including the munitions industrial base—is not currently equipped to support a protracted conventional war,” the report says.

“With growing competition between the United States and China—along with continuing threats from Russia, Iran, North Korea, and terrorist groups—the U.S. military needs to be prepared to fight at least one major war, if not two.”

 

It’s always fun to understand why someone else is writing what you are reading. Now, I’m sure there is a lot of information that is true in the report that this “article” is based upon. The report is locatedEmpty Bins in Wartime Environment 

This report was created by the CISC https://www.csis.org/programs/international-security-program think tank. It offers tons of foreign policy papers. Now, who funds this think tank? 

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2018/09/foreign-influence-at-the-witness-table

Quote

Many of CSIS’s top-tier government funders are Asian or Middle Eastern countries, including Japan, Taiwan, United Arab Emirates, South Korea, and Turkey

Sooo…I’m not saying any of their conclusions are wrong, but maybe a report fanning the fears about China to everyday Americans, funded by Japan and Taiwan, in an effort to focus American military buildup on China is being reported for a reason. Maybe 

 

Edited February 7, 2023 by Neonmoon

[Homercles 10,205]

Speaking of China, seeing those videos of the Ohio train wreck made me think of this…one of the most insane videos I’ve ever seen, with hilarious commentary.  The Tianjin explosion.  

 

[Bevo 13,566]

4 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

It’s always fun to understand why someone else is writing what you are reading. Now, I’m sure there is a lot of information that is true in the report that this “article” is based upon. The report is locatedEmpty Bins in Wartime Environment 

This report was created by the CISC https://www.csis.org/programs/international-security-program think tank. It offers tons of foreign policy papers. Now, who funds this think tank? 

https://www.pogo.org/investigation/2018/09/foreign-influence-at-the-witness-table

Sooo…I’m not saying any of their conclusions are wrong, but maybe a report fanning the fears about China to everyday Americans, funded by Japan and Taiwan, in an effort to focus American military buildup on China is being reported for a reason. Maybe 

 

An organization that focuses on a particular region may or may not be biased, but let's assume that it is. So the article says that we would run out of stockpiles if we went to war with China. Thus, it concludes that we need more weapons and more weapons manufacturing capabilities and control over our supply chain and the supply of scarce materials such as rare earth metals. Should we conclude that we are cool with all that stuff because we can't trust the source? I think maybe we should get other sources, but to discard it entirely seems kind of dumb especially when we already know that stockpiles of weapons are being depleted that our supply chains suck when we can't rely on China and that China has made an effort to corner the rare earth metal market. So the article's conclusions fit with logic. Maybe the main bias is that the think tank gets the US to focus on things that are important to them and not that it fabricates all its data and conclusions.

My conclusions are a little different though. I have a hard time believing that we would go to war with China mainly because it would be colossally stupid. They are a huge economy that has more people than us and a very strong manufacturing base. So, if it happens, we damn sure better have the rest of the free world on our side. And assuming a lot of the free world isn't stupid, I would assume that many of our allies in Europe would hang us out to dry rather than risk their economies. So going to war with China over Taiwan despite all the war games stuff is pretty much a no go. We may bluster but that is about it. What we can do though is arm Taiwan to the teeth. Right now Taiwan would lose in about 3 months if my memory is correct. We need to change that narrative. We also need to find other ways to lessen our reliance on China and on Taiwan for that matter. At the very least, we need to continue to make it very costly for China to invade Taiwan without it being too costly for us. Deterrence is better than direct conflict in most cases but especially in this one.

[Captainant 27,635]

It's surprising to read some of the pentagon's statements on this whole thing, including that we formerly had an "awareness gap" for even detecting these, and the previously balloons were discovered through intelligence gathering and post-hoc analysis (CNN reporting on Pentagon and NORAD commander interviews)

[Homercles 10,205]

We’d almost certainly lose a war with China over Taiwan…I’m sure our stockpiles are taking a hit as noted above, but ‘empty bins’ crying over sending aide to Ukraine is just someone pushing a narrative.  We wouldn’t lose because we ran out of stingers and artillery during an amphibious campaign, we’d lose because China is roughly 100 miles from Taiwan.  

Our logistics train across the Pacific Ocean would be an absolute nightmare, rife for targeting by all kinds of harassment.  Traditional escorts as part of a carrier group would be extremely risky against their ballistic missiles, there’s only so many beans and bullets you can jam into a C5, and their fanatical devotion in communist China probably wouldn’t match our morale whether they’re uniformed or civilians facing the loss of cheap shit from Amazon.  

So you build a deterrence posture and pivot (especially USMC) towards a decentralized, network-centric organization that would make invading Taiwan very expensive for China…both militarily and economically.  Meanwhile you undertake the incredibly slow process of relocating key manufacturing elements out of harms way.  

Ultimately you can’t stop them, but certainly slow them down while bleeding them.  So long as we don’t end up in a real, official shooting war with China this may ultimately be good for our country as a whole.  Pull back on globally distributed, long-lead, lean JIT manufacturing that’s screwing military and business (see Boeing and the 787) alike + reorient your military into a flexible structure that’s more survivable with a missile-heavy near-peer and also appears to work effectively against a communist (ie central control) regime like we are seeing in Ukraine.  
 

TLDR:  We won’t be able to stop China but long term the changes it’s forcing may prove beneficial for both the military and economy. 

[Neonmoon 38,129]

10 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Sooo…I’m not saying any of their conclusions are wrong, but maybe a report fanning the fears about China to everyday Americans, funded by Japan and Taiwan, in an effort to focus American military buildup on China is being reported for a reason. Maybe 

 

5 hours ago, Bevo said:

An organization that focuses on a particular region may or may not be biased, but let's assume that it is. So the article says that we would run out of stockpiles if we went to war with China. Thus, it concludes that we need more weapons and more weapons manufacturing capabilities and control over our supply chain and the supply of scarce materials such as rare earth metals. Should we conclude that we are cool with all that stuff because we can't trust the source? I think maybe we should get other sources, but to discard it entirely seems kind of dumb especially when we already know that stockpiles of weapons are being depleted that our supply chains suck when we can't rely on China and that China has made an effort to corner the rare earth metal market. So the article's conclusions fit with logic. Maybe the main bias is that the think tank gets the US to focus on things that are important to them and not that it fabricates all its data and conclusions.

Read my post again 

I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying maybe we should double check it’s conclusions because wasting oxygen on it. 

[Homercles 10,205]

Great transcript of the radio calls to knock that balloon out, impressive display of coordination and goes to show taking it out at the right place with one shot was no easy task

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-operation-to-down-chinas-spy-balloon-in-moment-by-moment-audio

[BabaYaga 15,288]

14 minutes ago, Homercles said:

Great transcript of the radio calls to knock that balloon out, impressive display of coordination and goes to show taking it out at the right place with one shot was no easy task

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/the-operation-to-down-chinas-spy-balloon-in-moment-by-moment-audio

It's a balloon

[ChickenSandwich 9,827]

1 hour ago, Captainant said:

It's surprising to read some of the pentagon's statements on this whole thing, including that we formerly had an "awareness gap" for even detecting these, and the previously balloons were discovered through intelligence gathering and post-hoc analysis (CNN reporting on Pentagon and NORAD commander interviews)