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A Weak Army

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How do the people who insist that the U.S. army is not in terrible shape explain the war in Iran? It’s been dragging out for months. There have been zero successes. If the army is good, why are the results so bad?

The only attempt to handle this contradiction that I’ve encountered so far is to say that the army is good, but its leadership is bad. This is ridiculous because army and its leadership are inseparable. What’s good about it if it’s not achieving any results?

Let’s leave aside for the moment the issue of whether the war was necessary. I don’t believe it was, but that’s not the point. Is this the army anybody wants defending them in case of an attack? With all of the money in the world, with all of the best science and technology, why is it so exceptionally unsuccessful against a smaller, weaker, more primitive regime?

The war was unnecessary. It was a big unforced mistake of the Trump administration, but since it already happened, can’t we try to learn something from what we’re seeing?

I have no idea how it is possible to sit on a conflict with Iran for half a century and fail to prepare for it to this degree. I also have no idea how it is possible to observe Iran actually wage war for the past four and a half years, as it has done in Ukraine, and not learn anything from the kind of weapons it very obviously and insistently uses. What kind of a “good” army fails to notice the rise of a completely new type of warfare spearheaded by the very country you’re attacking? A good army is prepared for the existing warfare. You can’t be a good army when you come out with muskets against machine guns. This is exactly what the US Army is doing in the war with Iran.

None of this would change if the war were completely justified. Let’s say, God forbid, that we need to fight a defensive war. How would we suddenly gain competence in drone warfare? Not that this army won anything before drone warfare was invented.

The US Army is like the US secondary education. Gigantic amounts of money are thrown stupidly at the issue, with predictably poor results. Maybe this is the unplanned purpose of the war with Iran. It’s a low-stakes conflict that finally makes us realize that urgent reform to the armed forces is needed.

21 responses to “A Weak Army”

  1. v07 Avatar
    v07

    Or another possibility is that we are objectively at the point (re weapons tech development) where weaker countries can make it prohibitively expensive for stronger countries to wage war against them. Especially if the weaker country is backed by another stronger country in terms of supplying weapons and intelligence information. In this sense what is happening in Iran is not that different from what is happening in Ukraine. Which by the way means that Russia and China want the US to get as stuck in Iran as Russia is in Ukraine.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      What prevents the US from fighting drones with drones? Why is this tech development so one-sided and why is the US excluded from it?

      Leaving that aside, was tech development also to blame for Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam and everything else that the wonderful US army lost so pathetically for almost a century?

      This is not a situational problem. It has existed for at least 70 years.

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        As for the analogy with Ukraine, the United States is doing colossally worse in Iran than Russia is in Ukraine. Why? Can anybody explain this? Stupid Russia is on a different planet of effectiveness than the US against an enemy that can’t even reach the US. How is this possible? A trillion dollar budget buys us this? And Afghanistan? And Iraq? What sense is this making?

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        1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
          oldcowboy3

          Kid, men measure everything. When enlistment commercials suddenly show white men instead of diversity bumpf, the hairs go up on the back of my hair ;-D

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          1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
            oldcowboy3

            LOL, back of my head ;-D

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            1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
              oldcowboy3

              LOL, damn, back of my neck ;-D

              What I am trying to say is the last time America was unified in war was WW2, men in all classes enlisted. And even then it took two atomic bombs to beat Japan, the military was not certain that people would tolerate another million and a half casualties in an invasion of the home islands. Given the years of anti-male, particularly straight white men nonsense, your military is not psychologically stronger than Iran’s.

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              1. Avatar
                Anonymous

                To be fair, from what I understand Japan had been trying to negotiate their surrender for a few months beforehand. They were not allowed to.

                On a spiritual issue, someone pointed out the one of the cities targeted in Japan had the largest concentrated population of Christians in Japan.

                Now from what I recall they were trying to reach out through the Soviet Union for negotiations and Stalin refused to relay any messages about their willingness to negotiate.

                • – W

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              2. Avatar
                Anonymous

                Though yea, you are absolutely right. The US military went from commercials about fat lesbians being just as good as straight men, and mixed race families to suddenly all white straight men. Subtly is not their strong suite.

                • – W

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              3. oldcowboy3 Avatar
                oldcowboy3

                “Subtly is not their strong suite.” Yeah, about as subtle as a swift kick in the arse with a frozen gumboot. One would think that those handling advertising would learn from the Gillette and Budweiser disasters, men measure ;-D

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        2. v07 Avatar
          v07

          One thing – Russia can afford to lose order of magnitude more men… Its own, North Korean, random mercs… An advantage of an authoritarian state where the government does not have to care about peoples opinions.

          There is another thing – the Russians believe in their entitlement to bomb others much more than the Americans do. It is not just propaganda, they really do believe that Ukraine striking back is “unprovoked aggression”. I am not sure I want the West to emulate this degree of narcissism in the name of some conservative utopia.

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      2. Avatar
        Anonymous

        Clarissa, on the drone tech. You have to understand our military leadership is fighting the last major war. They still think jet fighters are the wave of the future. What makes it worse is that the companies that build all their toys don’t want to start making drones, because every F-35 or any other version brings them a ton of income. A drone is cheap.

        Ex. A drone costs 10K to make, add military markup and your looking at 15K per drone. Each F-35 brings in roughly 130 million per. And that is just the fighter, they get even more for parts.

        The military industrialists have no desire to build cheaper and loose the golden goose.

        The military high command are too old and stuck in their ways. I would give good odds most of them have no idea what drones are capable of these days. In the end both groups don’t care because as long as the US mainland isn’t threatened it doesn’t matter to them. One will get rich off building replacement fighters, the others will fight the last major war without a care in the world of all the lives being lost.

        • – W

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          All true. And the result is what I said. A bad, weak, useless army.

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  2. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ok so this isn’t a simple one to answer, in reality there are several different branches to this, and those would just be the major ones. So bear with me for a moment.

    First lets break it down. Leadership, Technology, Combat Effectiveness, Supply, Geography, Outside effects.

    On leadership, the US military is actually really good from Mid Level down. The issue is that at some point after WWII the US started getting the same symptoms that every other large empire or kingdom got once it became large or powerful. That is you started to have more and more of the upper levels of leadership filled with political appointees and yes men.

    Now this is not to say this never happened in US history before WWII, it did, but it went overboard after then. Sort of like England which has a total of 200 Warships of all types, and about 50 admirals who are currently running the navy. After WWII the US went from having about ten four or five star commanders and twelve million soldiers to today having roughly forty and just over a million soldiers.

    Worse yet, the leadership issue deepened back in Obama’s term when he preformed a loyalty test for the upper ranks and purged most of remaining leadership who were not yes men or political appointees. Since that point there has not been another purge to remove them and a lot of them are still in place.

    Technology. This one is a mixed bag. We likely have not seen everything the US military has in its bag of tricks. However one symptom of rot is the insistence on continuing to build and use weapons from a previous war. As an example crossbows were expensive in their day. So what would happen if a country’s military continued on insisting on building crossbows even as other countries that when the crossbow had yet to be invented were now experimenting with muskets.

    That wasn’t a great example, so let me clarify. The US military has a love affair with carriers and aircraft. Anti-Air tech has gotten quite good, and we have been extremely lucky losses (confirmed losses) are so low. However there is an issue here. Those aircraft, aircraft carriers, and weapon systems require specialty parts. They also can’t be pumped out of a factory a thousand a day like weapons in WWII. One of the podcasters I listen to is a former US Colonel and he estimates we tend to produce about 50 patriot missiles a month. We are using about fifty or more a week.

    Continuing all the missiles, aircraft, etc. Require specialized parts we mostly import from overseas. Please note shipping is down due to the war, leading to delays in production. Now while we do have most of the natural resources needed to build our own parts, the facilities would take years to build, and huge amounts of money that congress is not willing to give to America.

    Iran on the other hand has focused on a mix of cheap missiles and drones. These can be produced with very easy to source items, can be built in house, with resources from Iran, and can be produced (drones not missiles) in the hundreds a day if not more.

    Continuing Combat Effectiveness. Something that is never mentioned in the media. While there are weapons capable of striking across the planet, most require you to have a base, or a launch platform (read ship) somewhere fairly near the target area. Unfortunately as we have found out, this also means that if the enemy has the same ranged weapons, said bases are in the strike zone too.

    This by the way is why our bases all over the middle east are on fire, and our navy has abandoned the port in Bahrain which was the major US naval base for the Middle East. They are currently staying out of range of Iran. And judging by some of the earlier stories at least a few of our ships where hit before they could get gone.

    A further note, the navy requires major bases to resupply weapons, fuel, repair parts, etc. They are locked out of the base in the middle east, (it is behind the blockade) which means it takes about a week plus for the ships to make it to another major US Naval port to restock, repair, and refuel. So add in time for that, plus return trip, your looking about about 3 weeks to a month every trip. Ships do not have unlimited numbers of missiles, and we used most in the first strikes.

    Part 2 in a moment. – W

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    1. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Continuing in Part 2, Supply is a big problem. This battlefield is a very long way away from the US. In prior wars in the middle east we had bases set up all over the place and were able to funnel supplies through them. Essentially reducing the issue of distance. Today those bases are on fire. Iran despite the media successfully hit almost all of them and that was before Russia and China allowed them access to their satalights.

      With these bases essentially shut down due to being in range of enemy weapons, all supply has to be rerouted to bases outside the combat zone, and then filtered in from there, adding huge delays to getting ammo, parts, replacements, etc.

      In addition as mentioned before shipping has become a huge issue making it more difficult, this is likely going to continue to be a problem as time goes on.

      Iran does not have this issue. Most of their stuff can be made in house, their supply lines are short and they have large borders where what little they can’t make can be smuggled through without an issue.

      Apparently back in Afghanistan and Iraq we were having major issues keeping the borders sealed even when occupying the countries with huge amounts of troops. We currently have neither, so they are constantly getting whatever they are lacking in parts.

      Continuing Geography. This one is something people pay no attention too, but they really should. It matters when it comes to military action. Iran is about 65-80% mountainous. This is great for defense and horrible if you are on offense. Lots of places to hide, to vanish from people trying to track you by drone or plane.

      You can dig in and hide military equipment (they have been doing this for 40 years.) Heck check out their missile cities. We still have not managed to destroy even one of them. At best we knocked out a few firing positions and tunnels. Reports stated those were cleared out and back in operation within 24 hours.

      Further, our “Allies” in the region are mostly in terrain that is flat, or has little in the way of fresh water sources. Kuwait relys on about 6 or 8 Salt Water Reclaimers. These take a year to build and blow up fairly easily if attacked. Iran threatened to destroy the reclamation systems of (the nations supporting the US if we took out any of Iran’s which Trump threatened to do. Well he did destroy one, and they took out one of Kuwaits. Please note, there are 5 million people in Kuwait. If the remaining reclaimers are destroyed it will be a disaster. As they will either flood out into other nations or die of dehydration.

      Continuing. Trump has threatened to invade several times. The issue is not the actual invasion, its the getting a foothold. If you don’t give a damn about your troops lives, you can sacrifice millions to take heavily defensible terrain. However if you can’t get a foothold first, then they will simply be killed without ever doing anything.

      To invade Iran you need troops on the border. Except all their borders are either hostile to us, ocean, or flat lands. Basically no matter how you put it, they will see an invasion force coming at least 12 to 24 hours before they arrive. This means any attacking force will be getting attacked without being able to stop it for half a day to a day, BEFORE they hit the actual ground based defenses.

      This is why outside of the yes men in high command everyone else is saying don’t do this, an invasion would be a disaster.

      I’ll put outside effects in Part 3 – W

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        So Part 3, Outside Effects. Again things the media will not tell you is that the US military is not simply just told. Here is the objective do whatever it it takes then come home. No they are bogged down from outside effects.

        Politicians put their oars in the water. Rules of Combat tie up military responses. Which is why you see stupid things like they have to shoot first even if you spot them first. Or soldiers cannot be armed in bases. And a thousand other such stuff. Some of these Rules of Combat are necessary, but a lot of them are imposed by politicians to make themselves look good in front of crowds.

        The objectives get muddied or expanded. To the point there are no clear objectives. Take Iraq for instance. Why were we there? Originally it was because they had WMDs. Yet somehow we ended up occupying the country, replacing its leadership, some of our senators created and funded ISIS (McCain I’m looking at you.) and it all spiraled out of control from there. In the end we never found any WMDS, in fact I’m fairly sure they had none in the first place. It was a massive waste of manpower, treasury, and oh yes some lovely laws were passed in the US allowing active spying on US citizens and other such things in the name of safety.

        In Iran we have Israel or rather Netanyahu who keeps dragging us back in. Back in the beginning when we actually had negotiations, they kept attacking while we were trying to end the war. Now their government has actually said. “We aren’t going to send any troops to invade Iran, the US will have to do it without us.”

        It is at this point I realized I have kind of gotten away from the topic so I’ll try to narrow it back down.

        We are stretched too thin. We are attempting to maintain effective amounts of forces in every continent and sea. We have politicians who don’t care about winning, they just want money or power. A lot of them have been blackmailed by other nations. We have a belligerent nation who has blackmail on a lot of our government leaders who wants this war and demands we fight it.

        We are low on supply, support is in the gutter, Iran has high moral, all the supply they need, and a willingness to die for the cause. They believe they are in the right. Americans mostly believe this is not a war we should be fighting.

        And lastly the war is being run by incompetents on America’s side who are yes men, not actual leaders. I mean really they still think a decapitation strike is possible. Iran is not a dictatorship. They have lines of succession just like we do. There is an order for who will take over control. All that will do is simply make them less willing to negotiate, and put our civilians as legitament targets considering we struck their civilians first.

        So yes, we are losing, and short of using nukes which would be a horrible idea we will lose this war. All Iran has to do is just sit there and the fall out will be worse than Vietnam for the Trump Government. As for Netanyahu. His own people have tried to arrest him multiple times. Each war or conflict he engineered or started has kept him out of jail, but eventually he will run out of things to put in front of the mob and will probably be hung for his part.

        • – W

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  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    “War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence.”

    Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

    I’ve said before that I don’t think you really understand what war is, war is simply the continuation of politics by other means. You seem to see it as some kind of athletic competition where we keep score by deaths or levels of destruction. Even by those standards the war is no failure. The markets clearly see it as a success. The final word is yet to be written but I would not bet against Trump. As a side note I would recommend you read Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, I know women tend not to like sci-fi but the controversial work is so much more.

    Walnut

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I very, very much want it to be a success. Words can’t describe how much I want you to be right. A lot is riding on the November election, and even more depends on the election of 2028. The war with Iran is the main thing preventing us from being successful in those elections. If we manage to conclude the war with something even a little bit resembling not a total loss in the eyes of the general public in time for the election, that will be phenomenal.

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      1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        Kid, I can tell you from personal experience that Canadian reserves, militia, are not quite as heavily DEI infected as our regular military has sadly become. Hopefully your national guard units are somewhat similar.

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          That’s good but whether the army can actually prevail in a conflict is a different issue.

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  4. ed Avatar
    ed

    Eveyone already covered stuff very well. Just one clarification:

    There are no ground troops in Iran. The Army is not doing the major fighting, it’s the Navy and the Air Force. We’re deadly afraid of mass loss of American lives, Iranians are ok with sending meat attack waves to martydom. This makes a huge difference. If US was ok losing tens of thousands of ground troops in Iran the situation would be very different right now. They’re fighting at home for survival of their regime; we’re not, this is a war of choice for the US and it makes a huge difference.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      It was exactly the same when we did have ground troops fighting. No matter what the warfare type is, our army invariably gets creamed. What does this tell us about the quality of the army? Does anybody remember Afghanistan? What happened there?

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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