Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
I'm assuming he means that solid-propellant rockets are conceptually simple to make; rocks being either the explosive at the end (akin to throwing stones) or maybe the basic fuel and oxidizer propellant mix. Either way it's the idea that the most well funded military on earth could make another rocket factory easily if needed.
The Soviets had liquid-fuelled rockets forever, and they come with a bunch of problems: corrosion, leaks, weight and slow deployment requiring specialized equipment.
There are a bunch more problems than those you listed, and they're more serious. You don't typically keep the fuel in a liquid fueled rocket (because it's highly corrosive), so you load the fuel before launch, which takes time and commits you to either launching or shutting down the rocket for months while it is refurbished.
There are safety issues too. I once heard a story from a missileer about a wrench being dropped into a silo, which caused a leak. When the fuel leaks out, the structural integrity of the missile is lost. Two (low ranked) men were sent in, and they both died.
Solid fuel solves a lot of problems, and is really the best way to go.
Lastly, articles like this are irresponsible because they disclose facts that may not be known to the enemy, and the enemy can adjust their tactics to take advantage -- which is exactly what we've been seeing in Iran over the past month. Half of the US population is against anything that our president does, to the point of actually hoping that he fails in Iran, and supporting the opposition party's efforts to stop him. If that occurs, and the Iranians detonate a nuke, they will have helped create another holocaust.
Got a bit sensationalist and baiting there at the end.
A more relevant comparison (- the baiting) would be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki given that those are the only nukes that have been used against civilian targets...
Also: despite nethanyahu saying for the last 30yrs that they have nukes (look up the compilation it's quite funny) the only one party in the middle east that we are 100% sure of has nukes is Israel...
Last night Iran wounded 63 (seven who required major, urgent surgeries.) and one dead because Iran happily fired missiles randomly across the middle east and hit random civilians in an airport terminal which this site would be screaming about if Israel/the USA did.
If Iran were to use a nuke it could easily start a chain reaction. Iran CURRENTLY has a billboard with a date for the erasure of Israel. They have a countdown clock. This is nothing like Hiroshima or Nagaski. Iran is targeting a country with over half the population of one ethnicity in the entire world. The 4.6million in greater Tel Aviv make up over 25% of all Jewish people in the entire world.
Iran's moderates in government pushed students off roofs to their deaths. That is the moderate Islamic Republic position and are not people that should have access to nuclear weapons.
> Lastly, articles like this are irresponsible because they disclose facts that may not be known to the enemy, and the enemy can adjust their tactics to take advantage...
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
yep... other factors do matter in determining the length of the war, whether the manufacturing base can be defended / get the raw materials it needs, etc. The enigma machine is estimated to have reduced WWII by a few years.
but there's really no winning when the enemy can put more planes, tanks, guns, boats and troops than you by a large factor, if they are even somewhat competent at using them.
It's true my abiding thought after reading the book was what about nuclear weapons. The great powers would absolutely use their nukes if in danger of being overrun, and I think long before that, in a total war.
German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
"Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight."
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
Exactly. Iran is beating us with balsa wood (paper airplane) drones. We're outspending them, but they can produce them faster and cheaper. We have to spend hundreds of thousands/millions per drone and missile. They are producing them for a fraction of that. We're being sold an expensive military industrial complex that actually is going to fail when put to the test of reality.
It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.
"Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country."
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
"They have seen French and Brits also as not-aryans"
Not so simple, they also divided the german population by aryan and non aryan tried to "improve" by breeding programms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn) and well hunting down all "inferior jews" and less so other people like sinti and roma.
And it is pretty established that Hitler wanted the UK as ally (who have been pretty racist at the time as well).
See also the flight of Rudolf Heß, which he did to make a favor to Hitler. (pretty interesting story, showing the delusion of the whole thing)
I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. German Jews were not seen as of german race. None of that contradicts what I said.
Hitler wanted UK as ally, just like he wanted Russians as allies as step 1. The plan was not to treat them as equals in step 2. UK jist was not dumb to fall into that trap.
Rudolf Heß was his initiative and attempt to avoid war, he was very much in minority.
"I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. "
But we agree it seems. I was just arguing against the common missconception of trying to understand the Nazis as Ultra-nationalists, while they were mainly thinking in racial terms. Not germany should have ruled the world, but the Aryans. (With germany at it's heart, but that was more a side point)
> I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
US sent tons of war material to the USSR as well as experts to help them get their manufacturing up and running. The success on the eastern front was partially due to US support. I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US.
also as far as who was first to capture Berlin... pretty sure the western front commanders decided/were ordered to slow down and let the USSR get some parts of Germany for themselves.
"I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US."
Considering that 90 000 tanks were produced in russia alone, I really doubt those numbers, as it would mean Russia would have had 270 000 tanks on their own.
Vehicles, not only tanks. For instance, the mobility of the Red Army relied on Studebaker trucks. The US delivered about 115 000 of them. In total, including other types of vehicles like Jeeps, the USSR received about 400 000 vehicles.
Roughly 50-65% of Red Army's transport pool was US-made.
The USSR had already reached Oder (less than 70 km from Berlin) around the time the Battle of the Bulge ended. They stopped there for over two months to regroup and to secure their flanks, rather than advancing on relatively undefended Berlin. While taking the capital early would have been a symbolic victory, the Soviets didn't believe it would be enough to end the war at that point.
> Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.
The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
It was very much Germany as such that lost WWII. Really.
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
If Iran was winning strategically they wouldn't have lashed out last night wounding 63 civilians (many needing immediate surgery) by launching missles at the neighbors and killing one Indian national because they couldn't get an empty tanker in to pump/store crude in. The blockade they initiated has blocked 125 commercial ships from accessing Iran.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are so afraid they won't even allow families of people like Mojtaba Vaisi and Meysam Vaisi, two brothers and well-known cultural activists in Kermanshah who were killed by security forces, to hold funerals. To recruit people to their pro-regime nightly vigils they are having 'temporary weddings' as incentives.
In addition with the restoration of internet more and more videos are coming out of the murders the Shia Islamic theocracy conducted on their own people who no longer want to live under Islamic rule, be forced to wear hats under threat of beating/death/rape, and those videos will undermine the lame lego propaganda attempts shortly.
https://eyesofiran.com/event/59879
Iran has been incredibly restrained. Notice how Israel keeps attacking civilians but Iran has been attacking military targets? Iran is letting Israel know (since they know Israel is the one driving negotiations...) that Iran can still attack them whenever they want--and they know Israel is running out of missiles for Iron Dome. Iran knows they just have to wait this out. Every day American support for the war decreases and people begin to resent Israel more and more for dragging us into the war. Iran is winning the war by every metric. This is the first war where the target ended up coming out of the war more economically powerful... it's a complete backfire.
Maybe a few, but the vast majority of their strikes illegally targeted civilian infrastructure. Off the top of my head, there was Dubai airport (struck at least 4x), Kuwait airport, various residential neighborhoods of Tel Aviv (with high-altitude cluster munitions that couldn't possibly target military assets), civilian energy infrastructure in several neighboring Gulf states, an MSC container ship, etc. etc.
I wouldn't say "only". But the industrial advantage that the US brought to the allies made an Allied victory almost inevitable - in hindsight, the only way the Allies could've lost was if the situation looked so hopeless that the US chose to stop fighting - or never entered the war in the first place. Maybe if the Nazis had overrun Britain and either avoided engaging the USSR until they were ready to give it undivided attention, or somehow have conquered it, then maybe the US could've looked and said "we don't want to pick this fight" ... of course the moment Hitler declares war without actually being ready to invade the US, he's made a huge mistake.
Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.
Both on the eastern front and the western front the soviets were responsible for the ultimate defeat of the Axis.
Note: I'm not pro russia or pro America... Unlike the current team putin / Trump / Zelinsky / Taylor Swift and they can't do anything wrong we should always strive to discuss events > people.
>I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status.
We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.
Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.
We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.
Yep, the conflicts in Iran and Ukraine have shown how weak our strategy is. Iran is beating us with balsa wood drones. Cheaper is better in this case. But we still like buying the best/most expensive/most over-engineered option available. We should be figuring out how to design a supply chain that can mass produce these in the event of a real conflict from local materials... not building the most high spec exotically sourced version... which is what we are currently doing.
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
The U.S. would do just fine but the rest of the world would descend into chaos and we know this for a fact because it happened twice in just the first 50 years of the 20th century.
perhaps the US would be mostly safe from violence, but not consequences. We're heavily dependent on international trade and any major war in another part of the world will impact us if it involves any important trading partners or their ability to trade with us.
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
Nearly everyone in the world is heavily dependant on international trade.
They all manage to get by without the leverage of 11 carrier fleet groups. You know, trade between equals, and not subjects.
WW2 was largely driven by the personalities involved. Roosevelt really, really, really hated fascism, and was doing everything in his power to stick it in their wheel spokes. Had the industrialist coup succeeded, or had Hoover or Landon won, it's quite likely that neither would have done much to oppose either Japan or Germany.
WW1 was also driven by principles, as opposed to pragmatism. Wilson found more alignment with the anglosphere than he did with the central powers - and after watching the most destructive war in history go on for four years, was keen on embarking on his League of Nations project. Practically, there was no reason for the US to not maintain neutrality in it.
> Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
> Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
The same peace they enjoyed for decades before the UN decided to court Ukraine for membership. They had balance of trade agreements, resource use agreements, and generalized peace.
Can you elaborate as to why you seem to think this was impossible?
Also, NATO accession talks for Ukraine were dead for years when Russia invaded Crimea. The notion that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine holds up about as much as the claim that America was forced to bomb Iran.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
> Satellite launch is so much easier than storable SAM/ABM
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
Where exactly is that storability not needed? In the VLS cells of USN warships? In the missile canisters of field-mobile SAM batteries being driven cross-country (which, for survivability on the modern battlefield need to be moving a lot more)?
The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.
Which means US servicemen handling extremely dangerous chemical oxidizers under fire. This stuff reacts explosively with everything, including common metals and anything organic.
Admittedly, it allows you to sidestep the regulatory hassles with handling those chemicals in the US, we can order troops to do all sorts of non-OSHA bad ideas, but wouldn't it be easier to just do the dangerous chemical handling on US soil, on a 9-5 in factory?
Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here? The article said HTP in which case you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles. N2O4 is nastier but more stable when contained.
Either way, you're going from "dangerous chemistry in the plant" to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations". The solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard. Room temperature oxidizers are terrifying.
To be clear, I know a good amount about rockets and less about missiles. I’m standing on this hill. I won’t die on it.
> Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here?
I’m thinking kerosene or even methane. UDMH is a toxic mess.
> you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles
Sort of? It’s a nuisance. Not a dealbreaker. Certainly not an issue compared to running out of munitions.
> to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations"
The dangerousness of an energetics plant is not comparable to that of managing HTP. (And at a certain point, LOX becomes economically competitive for base protection.)
> solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard
It’s great while you have them. Then you run out. That’s the current situation. Lots of perfect for a while, and then rationing while the enemy gets free hits.
Put two militaries against each other, one which can mass produce and fuel liquid rockets against one with fewer solid ones, and the former has an attrition advantage while the latter has a readiness one. If one only has solid-fueled rockets being made at a tiny clip, where the AP all comes from one plant, they become an easy adversary to defeat.
The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
It’s a bit odd as well as they then go into describing hybrid and gel systems that are both and neither respectively. But overall it’s a pretty informative article and I learned a lot.
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
I'd say the biggest missile crisis is cost asymmetry. We're using $4m interceptors to shoot down $10-20k drones and $1M missiles, sometimes multiple of them for a single target. When your opponent can produce thousands of those per month that becomes impossible to counter and economically prohibitive to do so if you could.
There are a bunch of other problems with this comment, but this part in particular is laughably wrong.
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
In January 2026, the US Naval Institute wrote [1]:
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
"Crews can't stop sweating on the flight deck" is exactly like saying "the middle east is hot and people sweat in the sun there". It has very little to do with the ships and everything to do with a climate that is hot (which, rather obviously, effects almost everyone in the region). If you want an actual example of a meaningful operational problem cause by a warship not suited to operations in hot waters, see the Type 45 (and even that is finally being fixed).
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
THAAD was a prototype in the same sense that the F-22 was a prototype. They proved a particular type of very advanced capability that took decades to develop but were expected to be replaced on a relatively short timeframe with a less prototype-y implementation once the engineering theory was worked out.
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
Have you any source for this? Because all I've seen is that the Army is expanding and upgrading THAAD (eg BGIs to NGIs) and seeking to replace munition stockpiles, which like all anti-missile munitions, are seemingly running critically low in supply eg [1][2][3].
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
Yes and when you start dropping them diplomacy ends. Do you have a position on whether or not the US engages with diplomacy often and effectively enough to avoid dropping munitions on the third world? Do you have a position on Iraqi "weapons of mass destruction" or Colin Powell's missing "yellowcake?" Did we find Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan? Did we win Vietnam?
These morons wasted over 1000 Tomahawk missiles within a couple of months to achieve nothing in Iran. And that's not even the worst part. The wasted PAC-missiles for the Patriot anti-air systems are.
It would be that rocket with German or similar guidance components. They are in a bit of a hurry, hoping to start intercepting incoming ballistic missiles this year.
NDlurker | 20 days ago
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
tclover | 20 days ago
tartoran | 20 days ago
Someone | 20 days ago
“Printed Engines Propel the Next Industrial Revolution“
tim333 | 20 days ago
>X-Bow is an emerging player in the solid rocket motor market, using 3D printing technology to produce motors and propellants
prawn | 20 days ago
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
oliver236 | 20 days ago
More like putting their mouth where their money is.
peyton | 20 days ago
oliver236 | 20 days ago
springhalo | 20 days ago
Henchman21 | 20 days ago
locknitpicker | 20 days ago
Aren't they selling their product?
protocolture | 20 days ago
sam_lowry_ | 20 days ago
anonymousiam | 20 days ago
There are safety issues too. I once heard a story from a missileer about a wrench being dropped into a silo, which caused a leak. When the fuel leaks out, the structural integrity of the missile is lost. Two (low ranked) men were sent in, and they both died.
Solid fuel solves a lot of problems, and is really the best way to go.
Lastly, articles like this are irresponsible because they disclose facts that may not be known to the enemy, and the enemy can adjust their tactics to take advantage -- which is exactly what we've been seeing in Iran over the past month. Half of the US population is against anything that our president does, to the point of actually hoping that he fails in Iran, and supporting the opposition party's efforts to stop him. If that occurs, and the Iranians detonate a nuke, they will have helped create another holocaust.
Paradigm2020 | 20 days ago
A more relevant comparison (- the baiting) would be another Hiroshima or Nagasaki given that those are the only nukes that have been used against civilian targets...
Also: despite nethanyahu saying for the last 30yrs that they have nukes (look up the compilation it's quite funny) the only one party in the middle east that we are 100% sure of has nukes is Israel...
_DeadFred_ | 20 days ago
If Iran were to use a nuke it could easily start a chain reaction. Iran CURRENTLY has a billboard with a date for the erasure of Israel. They have a countdown clock. This is nothing like Hiroshima or Nagaski. Iran is targeting a country with over half the population of one ethnicity in the entire world. The 4.6million in greater Tel Aviv make up over 25% of all Jewish people in the entire world.
Iran's moderates in government pushed students off roofs to their deaths. That is the moderate Islamic Republic position and are not people that should have access to nuclear weapons.
LargoLasskhyfv | 20 days ago
But don't you see? Information wants to be free!
tim333 | 20 days ago
NordStreamYacht | 20 days ago
cguess | 20 days ago
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
z3ugma | 20 days ago
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.
Paradigm2020 | 20 days ago
Iran got invaded. North Korea didn't and won't. Cuba might.
Guess what those 2 countries that are part of the world don't have that the 3rd does...
cguess | 20 days ago
Paradigm2020 | 20 days ago
diogenescynic | 20 days ago
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
rf15 | 20 days ago
rwmj | 20 days ago
elnerd | 20 days ago
https://walton.uark.edu/clc/posts/when-supply-chain-is-the-b...
dgoldstein0 | 20 days ago
but there's really no winning when the enemy can put more planes, tanks, guns, boats and troops than you by a large factor, if they are even somewhat competent at using them.
don_esteban | 20 days ago
Would Russia/China/US not use their nukes if in risk of being overrun by conventional forces of another superpower?
rwmj | 20 days ago
dghlsakjg | 20 days ago
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
lukan | 20 days ago
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
dgoldstein0 | 20 days ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrclztGCg6M is a decent watch, though really only tells the "US out produced everyone" part of the WWII story.
I recall seeing a better article that talked about WWII tank production but I can't find it right now.
diogenescynic | 20 days ago
scheme271 | 20 days ago
lukan | 20 days ago
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
watwut | 20 days ago
The western front was a choice, not something they did not wanted to do.
lukan | 20 days ago
Not so simple, they also divided the german population by aryan and non aryan tried to "improve" by breeding programms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lebensborn) and well hunting down all "inferior jews" and less so other people like sinti and roma.
And it is pretty established that Hitler wanted the UK as ally (who have been pretty racist at the time as well).
See also the flight of Rudolf Heß, which he did to make a favor to Hitler. (pretty interesting story, showing the delusion of the whole thing)
watwut | 20 days ago
Hitler wanted UK as ally, just like he wanted Russians as allies as step 1. The plan was not to treat them as equals in step 2. UK jist was not dumb to fall into that trap.
Rudolf Heß was his initiative and attempt to avoid war, he was very much in minority.
lukan | 20 days ago
I think the honest plan was to accept UK as sea power and germany as the mainland power. Later .. open how things developed.
See also
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joachim_von_Ribbentrop
"I mean sure, it was about race, not about passport. "
But we agree it seems. I was just arguing against the common missconception of trying to understand the Nazis as Ultra-nationalists, while they were mainly thinking in racial terms. Not germany should have ruled the world, but the Aryans. (With germany at it's heart, but that was more a side point)
dgoldstein0 | 20 days ago
US sent tons of war material to the USSR as well as experts to help them get their manufacturing up and running. The success on the eastern front was partially due to US support. I just saw a video claiming something like 2/3 of vehicles the Russians used were made in the US.
also as far as who was first to capture Berlin... pretty sure the western front commanders decided/were ordered to slow down and let the USSR get some parts of Germany for themselves.
lukan | 20 days ago
Considering that 90 000 tanks were produced in russia alone, I really doubt those numbers, as it would mean Russia would have had 270 000 tanks on their own.
mopsi | 20 days ago
Roughly 50-65% of Red Army's transport pool was US-made.
jltsiren | 20 days ago
locknitpicker | 20 days ago
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
scheme271 | 20 days ago
SanjayMehta | 20 days ago
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
watwut | 20 days ago
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
SanjayMehta | 20 days ago
The EU was created so that the US would have one entity to control instead of many.
NATO was created as a captive marketplace for US weapons.
Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.
I could not care less about your emotions. I'm not a romcom writer.
watwut | 20 days ago
No one used that word until Trump got pissed they did not invaded Iran.
> Coming back to the Ukraine issue, Russia is facing off 50 plus countries supplying materiel and intelligence using the Ukrainian proxy regime.
Russia is facing Ukraine that it invaded who is getting help from countries who find invasion disgusting or simply think Russia will invade them next.
Funny, USA moved to Russia side but the vassals did not.
tim333 | 20 days ago
If Ukraine is a US proxy then how come when Trump told them to surrender and cut all funding they said yeah right and fought on?
And if they are losing why is Russia blowing up and losing 1400 soldiers/day?
_DeadFred_ | 20 days ago
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are so afraid they won't even allow families of people like Mojtaba Vaisi and Meysam Vaisi, two brothers and well-known cultural activists in Kermanshah who were killed by security forces, to hold funerals. To recruit people to their pro-regime nightly vigils they are having 'temporary weddings' as incentives.
In addition with the restoration of internet more and more videos are coming out of the murders the Shia Islamic theocracy conducted on their own people who no longer want to live under Islamic rule, be forced to wear hats under threat of beating/death/rape, and those videos will undermine the lame lego propaganda attempts shortly. https://eyesofiran.com/event/59879
diogenescynic | 19 days ago
FunnyUsername | 19 days ago
Such as..?
> Iran has been attacking military targets
Maybe a few, but the vast majority of their strikes illegally targeted civilian infrastructure. Off the top of my head, there was Dubai airport (struck at least 4x), Kuwait airport, various residential neighborhoods of Tel Aviv (with high-altitude cluster munitions that couldn't possibly target military assets), civilian energy infrastructure in several neighboring Gulf states, an MSC container ship, etc. etc.
dgoldstein0 | 20 days ago
Perhaps there's an alternative history where Germany was less incompetent with their production and had less stupid leadership. But even in those, as long as the US got into the war and the war continued until one side or the other was fully conquered - I think it would've been Nazi Germany being conquered. The US started at a huge disadvantage of not having much of a military, weapons or ammunition ready, but we got to ramp up production for a good ~4 years before going over to Europe to kick ass and ran circles around the Axis powers with our production.
Paradigm2020 | 20 days ago
Both on the eastern front and the western front the soviets were responsible for the ultimate defeat of the Axis.
Note: I'm not pro russia or pro America... Unlike the current team putin / Trump / Zelinsky / Taylor Swift and they can't do anything wrong we should always strive to discuss events > people.
mikewarot | 20 days ago
We were one poorly chosen voluntary conflict away from being shown to be a paper tiger. Now we've proved it, thanks to the fool in the White House and everyone who supports him.
Focusing our efforts away from mass produced drones is a huge mistake in my opinion. We need to produce drones by the million.
We also need both .50 caliber and shotgun sized proximity rounds by the billions to enable local defense against them.
diogenescynic | 19 days ago
jimbo808 | 20 days ago
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
jimbo808 | 20 days ago
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
stackghost | 20 days ago
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
vkou | 20 days ago
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
chrisco255 | 20 days ago
dgoldstein0 | 20 days ago
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.
vkou | 20 days ago
They all manage to get by without the leverage of 11 carrier fleet groups. You know, trade between equals, and not subjects.
WW2 was largely driven by the personalities involved. Roosevelt really, really, really hated fascism, and was doing everything in his power to stick it in their wheel spokes. Had the industrialist coup succeeded, or had Hoover or Landon won, it's quite likely that neither would have done much to oppose either Japan or Germany.
WW1 was also driven by principles, as opposed to pragmatism. Wilson found more alignment with the anglosphere than he did with the central powers - and after watching the most destructive war in history go on for four years, was keen on embarking on his League of Nations project. Practically, there was no reason for the US to not maintain neutrality in it.
locknitpicker | 20 days ago
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
_carbyau_ | 20 days ago
See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false.
Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe.
But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
themafia | 20 days ago
Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
locknitpicker | 20 days ago
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
themafia | 20 days ago
Can you elaborate as to why you seem to think this was impossible?
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
...NATO?
Also, NATO accession talks for Ukraine were dead for years when Russia invaded Crimea. The notion that Russia was forced to invade Ukraine holds up about as much as the claim that America was forced to bomb Iran.
locknitpicker | 20 days ago
Russia started invading Ukraine in 2014. Who do you think you are fooling?
Also, are you conveniently forgetting that Russia invaded Ukraine? Meaning, Russia started this whole mess?
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
nixon_why69 | 20 days ago
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
The only real cases a non-storable SAM/ABM is viable are where the target being protected is so small and so known that (1) all missile infrastructure on/near the target is vulnerable and (2) sufficient advance warning is available to handle liquid fuels as needed. There is really only one case of this: Guam. I think there is a case that a dedicated unique-to-Guam liquid-fueled SAM/ABM farm would go a long way to addressing stockpile and magazine depth concerns.
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
Every U.S. base has this need. Stored munitions take out the first wave. That buys time to fuel the plentiful replacements.
nixon_why69 | 20 days ago
Admittedly, it allows you to sidestep the regulatory hassles with handling those chemicals in the US, we can order troops to do all sorts of non-OSHA bad ideas, but wouldn't it be easier to just do the dangerous chemical handling on US soil, on a 9-5 in factory?
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
Fueling and oxidizing is automated now. The only risk would be the oxidizer being struck. But that isn’t super different from storing any ammunition.
> wouldn't it be easier to just do the dangerous chemical handling on US soil, on a 9-5 in factory?
No, it’s not. Particularly when you factor into the risk calculation the inevitability of exhausting those stockpiles in a conflict.
nixon_why69 | 20 days ago
Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here? The article said HTP in which case you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles. N2O4 is nastier but more stable when contained.
Either way, you're going from "dangerous chemistry in the plant" to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations". The solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard. Room temperature oxidizers are terrifying.
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
To be clear, I know a good amount about rockets and less about missiles. I’m standing on this hill. I won’t die on it.
> Are we talking HTP+Kerosene or UDMH+N2O4 here?
I’m thinking kerosene or even methane. UDMH is a toxic mess.
> you have 1% breakdown to water per year which will be an ongoing problem for stockpiles
Sort of? It’s a nuisance. Not a dealbreaker. Certainly not an issue compared to running out of munitions.
> to "dangerous chemistry in the plant, through a global logistics network, and in operations"
The dangerousness of an energetics plant is not comparable to that of managing HTP. (And at a certain point, LOX becomes economically competitive for base protection.)
> solid rocket fuel is pretty stable after it's built, just don't light it on fire or drop it too hard
It’s great while you have them. Then you run out. That’s the current situation. Lots of perfect for a while, and then rationing while the enemy gets free hits.
Put two militaries against each other, one which can mass produce and fuel liquid rockets against one with fewer solid ones, and the former has an attrition advantage while the latter has a readiness one. If one only has solid-fueled rockets being made at a tiny clip, where the AP all comes from one plant, they become an easy adversary to defeat.
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
[OP] JumpCrisscross | 20 days ago
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
_DeadFred_ | 20 days ago
zarzavat | 20 days ago
isoprophlex | 20 days ago
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
lazide | 20 days ago
fnordpiglet | 20 days ago
jbxntuehineoh | 20 days ago
jmyeet | 20 days ago
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
I'd say the biggest missile crisis is cost asymmetry. We're using $4m interceptors to shoot down $10-20k drones and $1M missiles, sometimes multiple of them for a single target. When your opponent can produce thousands of those per month that becomes impossible to counter and economically prohibitive to do so if you could.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/30/us-military-equipme...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-informs-switzerl...
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
jmyeet | 20 days ago
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs. [1]: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/january/navy...
cpgxiii | 20 days ago
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
jandrewrogers | 20 days ago
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
jmyeet | 20 days ago
[1]: https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2026-05-21-New-Lockheed-Mart...
[2]: https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/next-generation-in...
[3]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventor...
themafia | 20 days ago
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
ifwinterco | 20 days ago
chii | 20 days ago
themafia | 20 days ago
iammjm | 20 days ago
tim333 | 20 days ago
which they are hoping to make into a Patriot alternative https://united24media.com/war-in-ukraine/a-ukrainian-patriot...
It would be that rocket with German or similar guidance components. They are in a bit of a hurry, hoping to start intercepting incoming ballistic missiles this year.
They currently use solid fuel motors cast in Ukraine but are opening a plant in Denmark https://militarnyi.com/en/news/fire-point-to-launch-rocket-f...