Now they'll exhaust interceptors and other long range missiles like tomahawks and whatnot.
And then China gets frisky with Taiwan and the US will totally not abandon them and tell them to just give up pressured by the lack of firepower to defend them, the risks of China getting back into bidding oil in international markets and the mess the treasury would be in if China raises capital by selling bonds (they just told the fed to print more so Japan can buy yens without selling their US bonds, so they are at least very concerned about the possibility).
Of course there can be - likely with a gentleman's understanding that neither would use them, and each side careful to not back the other into a corner where they'd have nothing left to lose.
It's just going to be your typical meatgrinder and attrition warfare.
An organised army is the most effective coercive tool that money can buy, so every nation has to have one otherwise it'd be crushed by foreign militarys. And an organised army requires a large group of people who obey orders rather than stopping to debate the wisdom or morality of them charging out to get shot or shoot some other people. An army has to obey orders in a hierarchical fashion to be effective.
That basically sets up an equilibrium where you have a small number of people who can cause the deaths and suffering of millions. To escape it there'd need to be an economic sweet spot where armies couldn't cost effectively coerce small groups of people. But that seems unlikely because the economies of scale to outfit an army favour large groups. We've been lucky enough so far in the modern era that a strong army requires supporting a thriving economy.
It's very simple, really: we're susceptible to indoctrination and brainwashing. That's what one of the main objectives of military training - throughout history.
The point is that before the era of modern weapons, many wars were a net positive for the winners. Much of our genome is inherited from successful conquerors, many of whom are long forgotten.
Starting wars has only been unequivocally negative for maybe the last 100 years. Not enough for an evolutionary change to manifest itself.
3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.
The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems.
The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for health insurance for themselves.
As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control. No other military could even try, but the the USA could. It's not a matter of lack of military capacity.
Health insurance company margins are 3% to 5%. The book America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (2015) by journalist Steven Brill blames mostly wasteful practices in hospitals, pharma and device manufacturers, government and corporate health administration costs.
US health insurance margins are thinner than European private insurance. Their administrative cost however are 9-10%, when in Europe (or really, France and Germany, I haven't looked elsewhere) they are 5-8%. The difference is probably in negotiating costs and audits. But that means that in total, for every 100 dollar paid, US insuree pay 4-10 dollar in efficiency+dividend that a European doesn't.
I think it's worth pointing out that the US almost certainly could have taken control of the strait. But it would have required boats in the water and boots on the ground. But that puts many more lives at risk, would have been very unpopular (much moreso then the current war situation), etc.
You can't win a war purely through air superiority and bombs. That's not a new lesson but it's one the administration failed to learn through history and is apparently now failing to learn through practice).
What are we even talking about here? Controlling the strait? This actually means controlling so much land around the strait that Iran can't launch missiles or drones at ships. Essentially conquering all of Iran by ground invasion. The USA could do this, sure, but we don't want to because its too stupid even for us.
Soft power would have gone a long way towards furthering US interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it seems too late for that. By the time a new administration's diplomacy reverts the current antagonism and lack of trust, the dollar will have lost ground as the default reserve currency and financing US debt will become much more expensive than it is now, making military expenses prohibitive, but still a priority.
This is usually the point the economy is flipped around into a war-based economy where all output is directed to military equipment.
That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive
In previous conflicts the US military could get a lot done with bombs, but that's risky if you can't get air superiority and take out all enemy anti-air systems. Which is more difficult against an enemy who can shoot at your air bases and aircraft carriers. But those previous conflicts might have contributed to a false sense of security about required missile stockpiles
Doctrine never intended for these bombs to be used almost exclusively as means to wage wars. These are meant for strikes that need to be precise and carried in a short notice.
If you have 10 targets and use atacms in all 10, there's something wrong in the decision making process or the strategy.
like waging a war while insisting they aren't really waging a war and it's just a special military operation and as a side effect having effectively no access to a lot of the resources/means normally used
Air superiority was established fairly early on in the conflict. Flying F-15 and F-16s now. Not even stealth and they drop more than just missles - they carry bombs. B-52s weren’t sent in to carpet bomb the area of that’s what you mean.
US could indiscriminately drop dumb bombs but you would have a higher civilian casualty rate.
Except not really. If they were willing to risk sending many aircraft deep into Iranian airspace with SDBs and JDAMs they wouldn't be running out of ballistic missiles.
And when an F-15E was shot down they got spooked. They're relying heavily on missiles because it doesn't cause a multiday story in the news when one is shot down on its way to the target (and because they're incapable of thinking more than one move ahead, and because it's not their money...).
> That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive
I don't think so. This observation completely misses the root cause, and it ain't missiles.
Armed forces size their stockpiles in terms of their short term needs focused on rapid reaction and deterrence. The goal is to be able to react to immediate threats and then shift the economy to a war economy to supply the effort in economically efficient ways.
What failed this time is that the trump administration was hoping to attack Iran without having to declare war, effectively starting a war without preparing for the war.
The results are obvious: the peace time stockpile was depleted at a time where the country was not prepared to replenish it. Trump shifter the us armed forces to deplete their stockpile while avoiding the responsibility of supporting them in their mission by taking care of supplies.
And so they ran out of ammo.
There are further compounding factors such as a lack of plan and lack of exit strategy. But placing your military in a state where they spend their ammo without any plan to ressuply it... You will have the same problem if you replace hellfire missiles with sticks and stones.
Those are interesting points. The US military is optimised for limited strike "special military operations", which it does all the time, and deterrence. Neither of those require a super deep arsenal, just enough to complete a limited intervention, or blunt an initial assault. Initiating a long deep ongoing offensive campaign is a whole other thing the US never planned for.
This logic doesn't hold under closer scrutiny. The timeline to expand missile production is on the order of years. This isn't the 1940s anymore where you can convert every car factory into making tanks and missiles. The idea of a war economy is wildly outdated. Either you have enough stockpiled until your weapons manufacturers can scale their production, or you're just out of missiles. Being out after some weeks of a "military operation" is frankly a damning indictment of the US military's logistics and manufacturing.
"...deplete their stockpile while avoiding the responsibility of supporting them in their mission by taking care of supplies."
And blames Biden for this mess. "Oh... the cupboards were bare when I came back...". If you KNEW you were running low on supplies, why start a war? There's enough general answers to this, all revolving around his immaturity, lack of intelligence and the cult around him - the truth is somewhere in the middle of all that...
I think that's an unfair assessment. Depleting a stockpile of a particular munition (since missile strikes are less unpopular than a full-scale deployment) because of overreliance shows a particular strain, not a pervasive weakness.
The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in. The USA's industrial output back in WWII was staggering, its enemies had little hope of victory given the sheer number of materiel that would eventually get deployed. Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
>The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.
On the other hand the US did prevail in Iraq, and often prevails in smaller interventions such as Kosovo, or various strikes on particular targets.
>Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
American workers just don't want to do those jobs any more, at least not enough of them, and the country won't tolerate enough immigration to make up the shortfall domestically. There just aren't tens of millions of Americans sitting around waiting to take up manufacturing jobs. If citizens prefer to do other jobs, then non citizens have to do them, whether that's in the USA or outside it.
"The estimated cost of the war in Vietnam during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations was $176 billion."
Adjusted for inflation, that is $1,192 billion in 2026 dollars.
"The longest war in American history had significant economic effects both domestically and internationally in terms of what was spent on the war and what expenses had to be cut."
They have been preparing for 50 years yet lost all their leadership, nuclear facilities, ballistic missile manufacturing ecosystem and air defenses in minutes to days.
The US is not doing amazing in this war but no need to give the Iranians too much credit. The Iranians are expanding a lot of resources of their own as much as this war drags on.
It is still very early to say how a country will fare considering that it ran out of water and was on a verge of economic breakdown and revolt before fighting a prolonged war with economic blockade of its main export.
yesn't in case of Russia a lot of their military just "didn't work properly"/"was ineffective in a very fundamental way"
this wasn't the case for the US, their military did work and was effective in context of the specific think they where used for. It's just that the thing they where used for isn't effective in winning the kind of conflict the US did start.
while this is "just" the "non effective" part being some where else it is a very fundamental difference in the end
like to put it this way,
if weapons of mass destruction like nukes, bio weapons etc. would magically disappear an invasion and takeover of (part of mainland) Russia would be relatively viable (mainly by China, but others might want a slice, too).
on the other hand even without weapons of mass destruction trying to invade the mainland US still seems futile/to be a losing battle, no matter who tries it.
No, the opposite has happened with this war. Adversaries globally have seen the ability of the US and Israel to operate with near-impunity over Iran, and it has destroyed confidence in non-Western defence systems.
The big weakness is industrial capacity, but only China can exploit that at scale.
North Korea has a bunch they're willing to sell. Russia is buying already so get 'em while they're hot.
I have been vaguely watching the Ukraine conflict over the past few years. From my distant and zero experience observations, it seems like missiles are extremely effective BUT also extremely limited. So you blow up that one building or SAM you targeted. Well done. What about the other 10,000 static targets? What about the guys with FPV drones and shoulder-launched anti-air now inside the rubble of the building you just destroyed? Send another XX-million USD missile to blow up the building you already blew up?
Feels like a determined adversary who is not easily cowed with a quick bit of "shock and awe" and armed with cheap, mobile winged/quad drones and man-portable guided anti-air/-tank missiles has totally changed the equation. Expensive limited missiles/planes/tanks/ships in smaller numbers seem kinda limited in their ability to get results in today's battlefield where there are FPV drones literally at every turn, and can be operated from literally a hole in the ground 15km away by people who aren't about to easily surrender.
It feels somewhat like the US doctrine has been to start with a "hit 'em hard" opening salvo of cruise/ballistic missiles and rockets etc and hope for immediate surrender. So far the lesson from Ukraine and Iran seems to be expect a big wave first attack or two and if you survive that initial push then suddenly the big super-power has no more cards left to play and it's down to men on the ground with hand-held weapons and drones. I wonder if people will look back at this era as a "WW1 moment" where the old ways of battle suddenly looked hopelessly out of date.
This is good for Anduril. The future of war is cheap, massed, intelligent drones. Its strategically fortunate for us to burn through all of this expensive, obsolete crap.
That's hard to believe. US with it's military spending should be able to join two large scale conflicts at the same time, not to have problem with a one minor conflict.
The conflict with Iran is only 'minor' in certain respects, it's a major air campaign otherwise, involving strategic bombing on par with the Iraq War 2 - or at least the initial period.
The US is bombing them from very far away places, the amount of logistical overhead is unthinkable.
These munitions cost a fortune in part because they are purchased in lower quantities, and yes, they have to be able to do a 10x-50x instant ramp up in order to be effective (aka capacity not inventory which is the strategic key).
It takes 2 years minimum to adjust an economy in that way and the US does not have good supply chains.
It's unlikely the US could hope to fight any kind of prolonged conflict with China 'in the area of Chinese territory' for very obvious reasons: they have the supply chains, 1 billion workers, and can turn them on a dime, and don't have 'far to go' to deploy weapons.
The US doesn't even have reliable ways of getting goods and materials into the theatre and has limited quantities of everything.
That said, there are still ways to defend Taiwan and/or to make an invasion futile - but 'broad conflict' ... nope.
America could theretically sustain other cheaper losses, like a few more F15s going down - but Trump is rightfully terrified of the political fallout of American pilots being capturred and torture videos showing up on Telegram.
Im no military planner so Im not gonna get invested in this debate haha - and obviously a human death is a huge loss - but presumably you could drop a lot of bombs for each lost fighter, so the bang/buck (literally) would be better than with missiles.
Planes aircrew high fixed/operating cost - lower unit costs on strikes.
Missiles, more expensive - depending on.
Missiles are not 'rocket science' - pun intended. They're expensive because of the overhead of military industrial complex.
Russia is making ballistic missiles 'China style' - super fast, super cheap. Basically - much bigger than ATACMs, longer range, a bit less precise but vicious. Similar to Iran.
Venezuela thought the same thing. Keeping a full-scale deployment at arm's length, and 'only' targeting military targets with exhaustive use of precision missiles is poor strategy, but if a military victory were the US's only ambition the Iranian regime has no capability that could prevent its country from being turned into a smoldering parking lot.
>if a military victory were the US's only ambition the Iranian regime has no capability that could prevent its country from being turned into a smoldering parking lot.
I read this and I wonder, "are we back to 2003 and Iraq?"
Incredible how little memory Americans have. Absolutely none. You just have no grasps on reality.
"Minor" conflict? You really don't realize how much ressources Hesgeth has committed to this, and how much your president likes to make things go "boom".
See also: the number of strikes on boats in the Caribbean (with absolutely no result on drug trafficking).
It might actually be for the best to stress the system in this way. It's not practical to keep a military based only around "stockpiles" that you're scared to use up. Modern combat looks like long wars of attrition where two countries compete to see who can burn through more missiles so you need to keep the actual supply chain active.
Hopefully they're able to learn lessons from Ukraine as well and pivot towards cheaper missiles and autonomous vehicles
- A country, even as big as the US, is strictly, evidently, not exceptional.
- The US lost the majority of the wars it joined/started in the last 100 years and came home every time trying to sell it as a victory despite not achieving their war goals.
- You may have weapons or power of some kind, but every move you make costs you some kind of currency: time, material, energy, credibility, goodwill. You may have large amounts, but they're never infinite.
- Acts of raw destruction as mean towards a goal is often not ideal: change and control are "constructive" concepts, while bombs can only offer you guaranteed chaos. You MIGHT be able to steer that chaos afterwards, but it's not guaranteed and numbers do not simply improve your position here. (see: Iraq, etc.)
No - the Iran war is a total strategic failure, but the US is very obviously 'exceptional' - I'm not saying necessarily admirable, or more moral etc but it is hugely 'stand out' in terms of capabilities. That's just a fact of reality irrespective of all of the political and moral context.
- The US did not 'lose' the majority of the wars it started - it won most of them, and arguably failed to achieve strategic objectives in some.
- "Acts of raw destruction as mean towards a goal is often not ideal " - this is a misrepresentation of US doctrine for decades. Even in Vietnam the US did not pursue 'full war' and refused to do strategic bombing in North Vietnam for a decade. As soon as Nixon did (op: Linebacker) - basically, the US 'won' right away. They decimated N. Vietnamese ability in a very material way. Were that strategy to have been undertaken in 1967, the war would have had a completely different outcome, probably more like Korean detente.
- US is very careful in their campaigns, there are chains of authority, externalizations are always assessed. The rules of engagement may shift a but - but it's false to suggest it's 'arbitrarily destructive' in targeting, it's generally minimal.
If you want to see what 'destructive' is, just look at Russian engagement in Ukraine, or Assad in Syria, or Saudi in Yemen. They don't care what they hit, it's a totally different environment.
To this day Iran's Oil Infrastructure remains intact. Just let that sink in.
All of this is outside of any moral or whatever other consideration - it's just 'what it is'.
The 'important note' here is that 'Power Has Limits' and that's truly the defining characterization of this war. This is not 'America is not capable' is that 'capabilities have limits' - and they become very obvious in difficult ways if power is applied poorly.
The Generals 100% warned Trump of all of this - this conflict is not a military failure in that sense, this is predictable. It's the political apparatus pushing the boundaries. The Generals would have none of this.
>If you want to see what 'destructive' is, just look at Russian engagement in Ukraine, or Assad in Syria, or Saudi in Yemen. They don't care what they hit, it's a totally different environment.
Show us the difference with Vietnam (and Cambodia).
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953
That fools running a country who turfed out military experience for loyalty were completely blind to what they were doing? I had no idea that running out of missiles was a distinct possibility until Spencer Ackerman started beating that drum in his newsletter around the start of the conflict. Forever Wars (along with the pieces he links to) has been an eye opening read.
US adversary countries have to love everything that is happening. If you’re China you win by doing nothing, just let the US administration pillage the country
It bodes well for Europeans when the Americans begin their invasion of Denmark, at the very least. Not great for a potential Russia-USA war and Taiwan wouldn't get as much support if the Chinese invade would also be difficult, though.
The title says "virtually all" but the first paragraph says "much". The actual stockpile is probably larger than this news report would make it seem. It would be convenient for Trump and his Russia-loving cronies if it would appear that the USA has no more weapons to support Ukraine with, of course.
Many advanced NATO weapons being difficult to produce and only being available in small quantities is something that has been discussed before, I don't think that's news. The rate at which they're being spammed without much result at Iran is, but that's hardly surprising given the current people in charge.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes", international relations edition.
America is not happy when it is not at war. There has to be an enemy. The old WOT had finally run out of steam; people are coming out of college who were born after 9/11. Venezuela (and Latin America generally) made a good enemy for a while, but they were too easily defeated. But Iran? America has wanted a rematch since Jimmy Carter.
(A bipartisan problem, mostly, but propped up by pro-war media. The only people against it are a few Democrats, almost all of whom are women)
Not sure why anyone has a taste for the kind of butch, chest-pounding performative foreign policy we have these days. Not only does it not work, it's dangerous to national security.
Does this mean that from now on bombings will happen with dumb bombs and that we can expect way more Iranian casualties? Otherwise this seems incorrect.
> A fourth person familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the world.
It also says they declined to say how many the US has left. And saying “person familiar with the matter” is doing a lot of work. It could be anyone with no direct information. This is what laundering a bogus story looks like.
I don’t think the title is inaccurate and robbing Peter to pay Paul isn’t the military flex Pete Hesgeth may think it is. Anyone who has ever slept under a too-small comforter knows how this will go.
The headline is inaccurate, as the article actually says that the US Army has used nearly all of its long-range precision missiles, referring to ATACMS and PCM.
First, those are short- to medium-range weapons.
Second, the USAF and USN hold most of the US's long-range precision weaponry, the only real exception being the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), which is not yet fielded.
It's a good job their allies will defend them then if their ammo is low - this isn't sarcasm, it's the point of NATO, but hey if Trump still wants to pull out of that alliance...
This is already the lifeline Europe is using to save its auto industry from the electric... the US is next. Just need to open up competitive bidding for the production of these components. Licensing patriot production to Ukraine will be a good start... S. Korea next
There is not really any strategy here in place that makes sense
from an US point of view. There is a strategy in place that may
make sense for Netanyahu (e. g. remain in power) but this is not
a US strategic point of view. Trump seems to be the most easily
influenced roleplaying as "president". People need to follow the
money trail here - that would explain the whole situation right
now best.
The strategy was to get Epstein off of everyone’s mind. And if it cost over $40billion and counting then it was deemed worth it, because the president comes first, that how’s our president thinks, me first, and our politicians, party first, our lobby second and the oligarchs third.
Americans living in their bubble might be unable to see from a perspective, but from outside is quite apparent that American-Israeli conflict against Iran will long outlive both Trump and Netanjahu. Hopefully that was the last dumb thing and decision they made.
I like how China and Russia are mentioned as adversaries that the US might be less likely to deter with their dwindling supply of long-range munition, but the country that so helpfully received all that supply and is the reason for the stockpile being minimal right now, isn't mentioned as an adversary that could take advantage of this.
Think Ukraine is the reason the US is low on missiles? Do the numbers actually support that? The numbers don’t seem to support that. From a very cursory search, offensive missiles seem to be around 2:1 Iran. And that’s just raw numbers; someone other than me who might do a little moral editorializing would point out the use in Ukraine was to fight off an illegal invasion while the most effective strike in Iran killed a hundred schoolgirls.
Now they'll exhaust interceptors and other long range missiles like tomahawks and whatnot.
And then China gets frisky with Taiwan and the US will totally not abandon them and tell them to just give up pressured by the lack of firepower to defend them, the risks of China getting back into bidding oil in international markets and the mess the treasury would be in if China raises capital by selling bonds (they just told the fed to print more so Japan can buy yens without selling their US bonds, so they are at least very concerned about the possibility).
Sorry for the rant.
If they can exhaust all their firepower in a couple weeks fighting Iran, China would have no reason to feel threatened in the first place.
The reality is that fighting China would be a proper all-out war, not whatever this spitting match with Iran is.
There won't ever be an "all out war" of nuclear states with each other. Only via proxies.
Of course there can be - likely with a gentleman's understanding that neither would use them, and each side careful to not back the other into a corner where they'd have nothing left to lose.
It's just going to be your typical meatgrinder and attrition warfare.
They called World War I “the Great War” because they couldn’t conceive of a sequel.
Never say never.
You could fight conventionally over logistics chokepoints. China’s not going to lob nukes just because their oil’s dried up.
>not whatever this spitting match with Iran is.
Are you openly saying the president and the secretary of war are lying when they say they have done "massive" bombings of Iran?
The president openly lies all the time. About his pool refurbishment, the size of his crowds and even how good he is at golf.
Are their mouths open and are they making noise? Then yes.
That's an easy one: I don't even have to look at what the facts are to be sure they're lying. Just a question of what about.
Although "massive" is a subjective word. Nothing can be as massive as WW2 carpet bombing.
Or even what they were regularly doing to grids of rainforest in Vietnam.
On the flip side, at least the press is not hammering the Epstein files and the lack of any prosecution for the crimes documented in those.
Much of the press is pro-regime or owned by regime oligarchs.
Trump's Iran war is known as "operation Epstein fury"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reactions_to_the_2026_Iran_war
It's amazing how a handful of people can cause the deaths and suffering of millions.. throughout history.
What the fuck is wrong with the human species and its tendency for self-destructive leader-worship??
An organised army is the most effective coercive tool that money can buy, so every nation has to have one otherwise it'd be crushed by foreign militarys. And an organised army requires a large group of people who obey orders rather than stopping to debate the wisdom or morality of them charging out to get shot or shoot some other people. An army has to obey orders in a hierarchical fashion to be effective.
That basically sets up an equilibrium where you have a small number of people who can cause the deaths and suffering of millions. To escape it there'd need to be an economic sweet spot where armies couldn't cost effectively coerce small groups of people. But that seems unlikely because the economies of scale to outfit an army favour large groups. We've been lucky enough so far in the modern era that a strong army requires supporting a thriving economy.
It's very simple, really: we're susceptible to indoctrination and brainwashing. That's what one of the main objectives of military training - throughout history.
The point is that before the era of modern weapons, many wars were a net positive for the winners. Much of our genome is inherited from successful conquerors, many of whom are long forgotten.
Starting wars has only been unequivocally negative for maybe the last 100 years. Not enough for an evolutionary change to manifest itself.
If you look at Taiwan history when the US gave PRC the UN seat and Nixon visited Beijing it was pretty much decided.
Taiwan is no West Berlin and everyone knows it.
I imagine elements in the Taiwanese govt are pushing a massive drone network to turn the nation into a porcupine.
3 generations of wealth poured into the most expensive military in recorded history - the reason that we don't have health care, clean energy, decent social safety nets and so many other things... and they can't even control a small stretch of water. What a waste.
The health care issue in the USA isn't due to lack of funding, the US spends more on health care per person than any other country, double that of many European countries with single payer systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...
The costs of medicare, medicaid and CHIP to tax payers are about what most Europeans pay in tax for universal health care, but then they also need to pay for health insurance for themselves.
As for controlling Hormuz, the US military absolutely could control Hormuz. I'm confident it's quite capable of it. It's that the US public wouldn't support the immense cost in lives and treasure it would take to do it, and maintain that control. No other military could even try, but the the USA could. It's not a matter of lack of military capacity.
Health insurance company margins are 3% to 5%. The book America’s Bitter Pill: Money, Politics, Back-Room Deals, and the Fight to Fix Our Broken Healthcare System (2015) by journalist Steven Brill blames mostly wasteful practices in hospitals, pharma and device manufacturers, government and corporate health administration costs.
US health insurance margins are thinner than European private insurance. Their administrative cost however are 9-10%, when in Europe (or really, France and Germany, I haven't looked elsewhere) they are 5-8%. The difference is probably in negotiating costs and audits. But that means that in total, for every 100 dollar paid, US insuree pay 4-10 dollar in efficiency+dividend that a European doesn't.
Thanks for the recommendation.
>No other military could even try
Iran military is trying alright.
You got me there.
I think it's worth pointing out that the US almost certainly could have taken control of the strait. But it would have required boats in the water and boots on the ground. But that puts many more lives at risk, would have been very unpopular (much moreso then the current war situation), etc.
You can't win a war purely through air superiority and bombs. That's not a new lesson but it's one the administration failed to learn through history and is apparently now failing to learn through practice).
What are we even talking about here? Controlling the strait? This actually means controlling so much land around the strait that Iran can't launch missiles or drones at ships. Essentially conquering all of Iran by ground invasion. The USA could do this, sure, but we don't want to because its too stupid even for us.
Just like how US conquered all of Vietnam and Afghanistan.
US would lose a land war with Iran. They’d lose it spectacularly too.
Soft power would have gone a long way towards furthering US interests in the Middle East. Unfortunately, it seems too late for that. By the time a new administration's diplomacy reverts the current antagonism and lack of trust, the dollar will have lost ground as the default reserve currency and financing US debt will become much more expensive than it is now, making military expenses prohibitive, but still a priority.
This is usually the point the economy is flipped around into a war-based economy where all output is directed to military equipment.
That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive
In previous conflicts the US military could get a lot done with bombs, but that's risky if you can't get air superiority and take out all enemy anti-air systems. Which is more difficult against an enemy who can shoot at your air bases and aircraft carriers. But those previous conflicts might have contributed to a false sense of security about required missile stockpiles
Doctrine never intended for these bombs to be used almost exclusively as means to wage wars. These are meant for strikes that need to be precise and carried in a short notice.
If you have 10 targets and use atacms in all 10, there's something wrong in the decision making process or the strategy.
The fault in the decision process was starting this war in the first place. Everything follows from that.
> something wrong
like waging a war while insisting they aren't really waging a war and it's just a special military operation and as a side effect having effectively no access to a lot of the resources/means normally used
Air superiority was established fairly early on in the conflict. Flying F-15 and F-16s now. Not even stealth and they drop more than just missles - they carry bombs. B-52s weren’t sent in to carpet bomb the area of that’s what you mean.
US could indiscriminately drop dumb bombs but you would have a higher civilian casualty rate.
> Flying F-15 and F-16s now.
Except not really. If they were willing to risk sending many aircraft deep into Iranian airspace with SDBs and JDAMs they wouldn't be running out of ballistic missiles.
There have been 60-70 F15 and F16s operating in Iran (could be more just found via public sources).
And when an F-15E was shot down they got spooked. They're relying heavily on missiles because it doesn't cause a multiday story in the news when one is shot down on its way to the target (and because they're incapable of thinking more than one move ahead, and because it's not their money...).
You have the same issue with the conventional bombs and their guidance kits, which when delivered in contested areas are not usually cheaper.
The issue is general industrial capacity, not missiles specifically.
The issue is restraint, an all out bombing campaign with no regard for civilians or international condemnation would do the job in a month
> That's the one glaring weakness of relying too heavily on missiles. They are expensive and difficult to manufacture. And they have a limited shelf life, making stockpiles also expensive
I don't think so. This observation completely misses the root cause, and it ain't missiles.
Armed forces size their stockpiles in terms of their short term needs focused on rapid reaction and deterrence. The goal is to be able to react to immediate threats and then shift the economy to a war economy to supply the effort in economically efficient ways.
What failed this time is that the trump administration was hoping to attack Iran without having to declare war, effectively starting a war without preparing for the war.
The results are obvious: the peace time stockpile was depleted at a time where the country was not prepared to replenish it. Trump shifter the us armed forces to deplete their stockpile while avoiding the responsibility of supporting them in their mission by taking care of supplies.
And so they ran out of ammo.
There are further compounding factors such as a lack of plan and lack of exit strategy. But placing your military in a state where they spend their ammo without any plan to ressuply it... You will have the same problem if you replace hellfire missiles with sticks and stones.
Those are interesting points. The US military is optimised for limited strike "special military operations", which it does all the time, and deterrence. Neither of those require a super deep arsenal, just enough to complete a limited intervention, or blunt an initial assault. Initiating a long deep ongoing offensive campaign is a whole other thing the US never planned for.
This logic doesn't hold under closer scrutiny. The timeline to expand missile production is on the order of years. This isn't the 1940s anymore where you can convert every car factory into making tanks and missiles. The idea of a war economy is wildly outdated. Either you have enough stockpiled until your weapons manufacturers can scale their production, or you're just out of missiles. Being out after some weeks of a "military operation" is frankly a damning indictment of the US military's logistics and manufacturing.
"...deplete their stockpile while avoiding the responsibility of supporting them in their mission by taking care of supplies."
And blames Biden for this mess. "Oh... the cupboards were bare when I came back...". If you KNEW you were running low on supplies, why start a war? There's enough general answers to this, all revolving around his immaturity, lack of intelligence and the cult around him - the truth is somewhere in the middle of all that...
Did the US just have the same fate as Russia where they where feared for their military until they used it?
I think that's an unfair assessment. Depleting a stockpile of a particular munition (since missile strikes are less unpopular than a full-scale deployment) because of overreliance shows a particular strain, not a pervasive weakness.
So this is all solved when US troops waltz into Tehran?
Any day now.
It wouldn’t be the first war the USA loose against a smaller enemy. See Vietnam, Afghanistan, etc etc.
The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in. The USA's industrial output back in WWII was staggering, its enemies had little hope of victory given the sheer number of materiel that would eventually get deployed. Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
>The USA has never been defeated. It's never been taken over by force and forced to submit to a foreign power. War getting a little too expensive or politically unpopular for their tastes is not really a loss, and it implies nothing about their true capabilities.
Except for the capability to prevail in those conflicts.
On the other hand the US did prevail in Iraq, and often prevails in smaller interventions such as Kosovo, or various strikes on particular targets.
>Since then they've been voluntarily giving up much of that industrial advantage out of greed.
American workers just don't want to do those jobs any more, at least not enough of them, and the country won't tolerate enough immigration to make up the shortfall domestically. There just aren't tens of millions of Americans sitting around waiting to take up manufacturing jobs. If citizens prefer to do other jobs, then non citizens have to do them, whether that's in the USA or outside it.
If you set out to achieve an objective, but the enemy prevents you from achieving that objective, you lost.
I wouldn't say they lost. They failed their strategic objectives, but they're still out there, intact and combat capable.
Losing is what happened to Germany after both World Wars.
I think you found a great way to never "lose" anything with this definition.
> failed their strategic objective
copium
> It's their relentless deindustrialization that will eventually do them in
Agree, China has already won, at this point a lot of the world sees them as a more sane option than USA as well which is a nuts timeline
America simply "failed their strategic objectives" in Vietnam?
It's laughable to use such a silly euphemism to imply America was not defeated! The North Vietnamese won. Get over it.
This was very quick though.
It turns out public money is more expensive these days. Debt is a more mainstreamly exposed problem.
https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/disp_textbook.cfm?smtid=2&...
"The estimated cost of the war in Vietnam during the Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon administrations was $176 billion."
Adjusted for inflation, that is $1,192 billion in 2026 dollars.
"The longest war in American history had significant economic effects both domestically and internationally in terms of what was spent on the war and what expenses had to be cut."
https://www.thecollector.com/vietnam-war-economic-effects/
Iran has been preparing for this war for almost 50 years, and they have more leverage than Vietnamese or Talebans had.
They have been preparing for 50 years yet lost all their leadership, nuclear facilities, ballistic missile manufacturing ecosystem and air defenses in minutes to days.
The US is not doing amazing in this war but no need to give the Iranians too much credit. The Iranians are expanding a lot of resources of their own as much as this war drags on.
It is still very early to say how a country will fare considering that it ran out of water and was on a verge of economic breakdown and revolt before fighting a prolonged war with economic blockade of its main export.
yesn't in case of Russia a lot of their military just "didn't work properly"/"was ineffective in a very fundamental way"
this wasn't the case for the US, their military did work and was effective in context of the specific think they where used for. It's just that the thing they where used for isn't effective in winning the kind of conflict the US did start.
while this is "just" the "non effective" part being some where else it is a very fundamental difference in the end
like to put it this way,
if weapons of mass destruction like nukes, bio weapons etc. would magically disappear an invasion and takeover of (part of mainland) Russia would be relatively viable (mainly by China, but others might want a slice, too).
on the other hand even without weapons of mass destruction trying to invade the mainland US still seems futile/to be a losing battle, no matter who tries it.
No, the opposite has happened with this war. Adversaries globally have seen the ability of the US and Israel to operate with near-impunity over Iran, and it has destroyed confidence in non-Western defence systems.
The big weakness is industrial capacity, but only China can exploit that at scale.
Apple and oranges comparison.
The Russo-Ukrainian war is a war of invasion.
The US-Iranian is more of an air superiority campaign.
If you want any take away lesson: don't attack countries that care about defending themselves. Not everyone is Iraq.
And don't underestimate the efficiency of asymmetric warfare.
North Korea has a bunch they're willing to sell. Russia is buying already so get 'em while they're hot.
I have been vaguely watching the Ukraine conflict over the past few years. From my distant and zero experience observations, it seems like missiles are extremely effective BUT also extremely limited. So you blow up that one building or SAM you targeted. Well done. What about the other 10,000 static targets? What about the guys with FPV drones and shoulder-launched anti-air now inside the rubble of the building you just destroyed? Send another XX-million USD missile to blow up the building you already blew up?
Feels like a determined adversary who is not easily cowed with a quick bit of "shock and awe" and armed with cheap, mobile winged/quad drones and man-portable guided anti-air/-tank missiles has totally changed the equation. Expensive limited missiles/planes/tanks/ships in smaller numbers seem kinda limited in their ability to get results in today's battlefield where there are FPV drones literally at every turn, and can be operated from literally a hole in the ground 15km away by people who aren't about to easily surrender.
It feels somewhat like the US doctrine has been to start with a "hit 'em hard" opening salvo of cruise/ballistic missiles and rockets etc and hope for immediate surrender. So far the lesson from Ukraine and Iran seems to be expect a big wave first attack or two and if you survive that initial push then suddenly the big super-power has no more cards left to play and it's down to men on the ground with hand-held weapons and drones. I wonder if people will look back at this era as a "WW1 moment" where the old ways of battle suddenly looked hopelessly out of date.
This is good for Anduril. The future of war is cheap, massed, intelligent drones. Its strategically fortunate for us to burn through all of this expensive, obsolete crap.
That's hard to believe. US with it's military spending should be able to join two large scale conflicts at the same time, not to have problem with a one minor conflict.
It’s easier to believe when missiles are the only strategy being used in the war…
It’s a clickbait article
It's easy to believe, it's hard to realize.
The conflict with Iran is only 'minor' in certain respects, it's a major air campaign otherwise, involving strategic bombing on par with the Iraq War 2 - or at least the initial period.
The US is bombing them from very far away places, the amount of logistical overhead is unthinkable.
These munitions cost a fortune in part because they are purchased in lower quantities, and yes, they have to be able to do a 10x-50x instant ramp up in order to be effective (aka capacity not inventory which is the strategic key).
It takes 2 years minimum to adjust an economy in that way and the US does not have good supply chains.
It's unlikely the US could hope to fight any kind of prolonged conflict with China 'in the area of Chinese territory' for very obvious reasons: they have the supply chains, 1 billion workers, and can turn them on a dime, and don't have 'far to go' to deploy weapons.
The US doesn't even have reliable ways of getting goods and materials into the theatre and has limited quantities of everything.
That said, there are still ways to defend Taiwan and/or to make an invasion futile - but 'broad conflict' ... nope.
> The US doesn't even have reliable ways of getting goods and materials into the theatre and has limited quantities of everything.
This is not true. US is known for the best logistics in the world.
US has 600 air refuelling aircraft and 40 naval supply ships.
US power is mostly strategic, it's 'Air Based' which gives the kind of instant leverage leaders like. It's 'Aircraft Carrier Based'.
The US doesn't have that same overwhelming ability otherwise.
You can't quite an Army overseas - it takes a different kind of logistics esp. in Pacific, one the US doesn't quite have the level of sophistication.
Don't get me wrong - 'it could' but would take a while to ramp up.
Never underestimate how much damage a single high-ranked idiot can inflict on its own ranks.
never underestimate the monetary inefficiency of the military industrial complex
That would be true if the money spent was actually optimized on output rather than expensive contractors, consultants, and third party profits. :(
America could theretically sustain other cheaper losses, like a few more F15s going down - but Trump is rightfully terrified of the political fallout of American pilots being capturred and torture videos showing up on Telegram.
They are not cheaper losses, because production capacity for those things is very limited.
Missiles are always easier to replace then platforms of any kind.
But yes - a single, lone captive could cause political devastation.
Im no military planner so Im not gonna get invested in this debate haha - and obviously a human death is a huge loss - but presumably you could drop a lot of bombs for each lost fighter, so the bang/buck (literally) would be better than with missiles.
Planes aircrew high fixed/operating cost - lower unit costs on strikes.
Missiles, more expensive - depending on.
Missiles are not 'rocket science' - pun intended. They're expensive because of the overhead of military industrial complex.
Russia is making ballistic missiles 'China style' - super fast, super cheap. Basically - much bigger than ATACMs, longer range, a bit less precise but vicious. Similar to Iran.
Paper tiger.
Venezuela thought the same thing. Keeping a full-scale deployment at arm's length, and 'only' targeting military targets with exhaustive use of precision missiles is poor strategy, but if a military victory were the US's only ambition the Iranian regime has no capability that could prevent its country from being turned into a smoldering parking lot.
Doctrine isn't the same as inability.
>if a military victory were the US's only ambition the Iranian regime has no capability that could prevent its country from being turned into a smoldering parking lot.
I read this and I wonder, "are we back to 2003 and Iraq?"
Incredible how little memory Americans have. Absolutely none. You just have no grasps on reality.
Don’t worry, they can still carpet bomb with high explosive and nuclear always remains an option lest you forget.
The US bombed North Vietnam into dust, but because they didn’t occupy it with ground forces they simply rebuilt and kept coming.
You can’t win a war with just air power.
In some ways yes, not in others.
That is a remarkably stupid thing to say about the US military.
"Minor" conflict? You really don't realize how much ressources Hesgeth has committed to this, and how much your president likes to make things go "boom".
See also: the number of strikes on boats in the Caribbean (with absolutely no result on drug trafficking).
For US, major conflict would be with China, perhaps with Russia. Not with Iran.
edit: this is the document I am talking about http://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022...
It might actually be for the best to stress the system in this way. It's not practical to keep a military based only around "stockpiles" that you're scared to use up. Modern combat looks like long wars of attrition where two countries compete to see who can burn through more missiles so you need to keep the actual supply chain active.
Hopefully they're able to learn lessons from Ukraine as well and pivot towards cheaper missiles and autonomous vehicles
What is there even to say about this? Where does one even begin?
Okay, let's start.
- A country, even as big as the US, is strictly, evidently, not exceptional.
- The US lost the majority of the wars it joined/started in the last 100 years and came home every time trying to sell it as a victory despite not achieving their war goals.
- You may have weapons or power of some kind, but every move you make costs you some kind of currency: time, material, energy, credibility, goodwill. You may have large amounts, but they're never infinite.
- Acts of raw destruction as mean towards a goal is often not ideal: change and control are "constructive" concepts, while bombs can only offer you guaranteed chaos. You MIGHT be able to steer that chaos afterwards, but it's not guaranteed and numbers do not simply improve your position here. (see: Iraq, etc.)
No - the Iran war is a total strategic failure, but the US is very obviously 'exceptional' - I'm not saying necessarily admirable, or more moral etc but it is hugely 'stand out' in terms of capabilities. That's just a fact of reality irrespective of all of the political and moral context.
- The US did not 'lose' the majority of the wars it started - it won most of them, and arguably failed to achieve strategic objectives in some.
- "Acts of raw destruction as mean towards a goal is often not ideal " - this is a misrepresentation of US doctrine for decades. Even in Vietnam the US did not pursue 'full war' and refused to do strategic bombing in North Vietnam for a decade. As soon as Nixon did (op: Linebacker) - basically, the US 'won' right away. They decimated N. Vietnamese ability in a very material way. Were that strategy to have been undertaken in 1967, the war would have had a completely different outcome, probably more like Korean detente.
- US is very careful in their campaigns, there are chains of authority, externalizations are always assessed. The rules of engagement may shift a but - but it's false to suggest it's 'arbitrarily destructive' in targeting, it's generally minimal.
If you want to see what 'destructive' is, just look at Russian engagement in Ukraine, or Assad in Syria, or Saudi in Yemen. They don't care what they hit, it's a totally different environment.
To this day Iran's Oil Infrastructure remains intact. Just let that sink in.
All of this is outside of any moral or whatever other consideration - it's just 'what it is'.
The 'important note' here is that 'Power Has Limits' and that's truly the defining characterization of this war. This is not 'America is not capable' is that 'capabilities have limits' - and they become very obvious in difficult ways if power is applied poorly.
The Generals 100% warned Trump of all of this - this conflict is not a military failure in that sense, this is predictable. It's the political apparatus pushing the boundaries. The Generals would have none of this.
>If you want to see what 'destructive' is, just look at Russian engagement in Ukraine, or Assad in Syria, or Saudi in Yemen. They don't care what they hit, it's a totally different environment.
Show us the difference with Vietnam (and Cambodia).
And the Caribbean.
> Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. - Dwight D. Eisenhower 1953
Eisenhower would be considered a woke commie by today's administration
That fools running a country who turfed out military experience for loyalty were completely blind to what they were doing? I had no idea that running out of missiles was a distinct possibility until Spencer Ackerman started beating that drum in his newsletter around the start of the conflict. Forever Wars (along with the pieces he links to) has been an eye opening read.
US adversary countries have to love everything that is happening. If you’re China you win by doing nothing, just let the US administration pillage the country
One begins by looking at the sources which the article dies not substantiate.
This nation is sitting ducks? The only reason we don't have Red Dawn is nobody wants this nation idiots.
It bodes well for Europeans when the Americans begin their invasion of Denmark, at the very least. Not great for a potential Russia-USA war and Taiwan wouldn't get as much support if the Chinese invade would also be difficult, though.
The title says "virtually all" but the first paragraph says "much". The actual stockpile is probably larger than this news report would make it seem. It would be convenient for Trump and his Russia-loving cronies if it would appear that the USA has no more weapons to support Ukraine with, of course.
Many advanced NATO weapons being difficult to produce and only being available in small quantities is something that has been discussed before, I don't think that's news. The rate at which they're being spammed without much result at Iran is, but that's hardly surprising given the current people in charge.
"Play stupid games, win stupid prizes", international relations edition.
America is not happy when it is not at war. There has to be an enemy. The old WOT had finally run out of steam; people are coming out of college who were born after 9/11. Venezuela (and Latin America generally) made a good enemy for a while, but they were too easily defeated. But Iran? America has wanted a rematch since Jimmy Carter.
(A bipartisan problem, mostly, but propped up by pro-war media. The only people against it are a few Democrats, almost all of whom are women)
Time to send in the ground troops. Nothing bad can happen. /s
With stories like this you always have to ask “Who are the sources?”
“People who are familiar with this matter” is doing a lot of work.
This reeks of laundering lies.
Not sure why anyone has a taste for the kind of butch, chest-pounding performative foreign policy we have these days. Not only does it not work, it's dangerous to national security.
Does this mean that from now on bombings will happen with dumb bombs and that we can expect way more Iranian casualties? Otherwise this seems incorrect.
>The U.S. Army has used up
So not the US. There is also the Navy, Air Force etc
Borderline clickbait
Same way Russia ran out of missiles 3 years ago?
> “U.S. has used…”
Missing the ‘has’ part for “present perfect tense”, e.g. “a past action with present relevance”.
In an ongoing war.
> A fourth person familiar with the matter said that while Central Command — which oversees U.S. forces in the Middle East — has nearly used up the land-based missiles it had before the war began, it has been able to reload from U.S. military supplies elsewhere in the world.
The title seems fairy inaccurate
It also says they declined to say how many the US has left. And saying “person familiar with the matter” is doing a lot of work. It could be anyone with no direct information. This is what laundering a bogus story looks like.
I don’t think the title is inaccurate and robbing Peter to pay Paul isn’t the military flex Pete Hesgeth may think it is. Anyone who has ever slept under a too-small comforter knows how this will go.
Moving resources within an organization isn't exactly robbing.
All the expensive planes are falling out of the sky too. It seems like some weird plan to unwind the US ever since Obama left office.
There’s no growth or hope. It’s all bad news, war, and rumors of war - and all reads like a bad WWE script.
Just seems like a coordinated effort to destroy from within since about ~2016 or at least act out this play of America in Decline
Whatever, would be way better if they celebrate collaboration and forward thinking again.
Mainly because it’s just so boring under Trump - this should have been a 4 year show
The article is about the Army (not the Navy or Air Force for example)
The headline is inaccurate, as the article actually says that the US Army has used nearly all of its long-range precision missiles, referring to ATACMS and PCM.
First, those are short- to medium-range weapons.
Second, the USAF and USN hold most of the US's long-range precision weaponry, the only real exception being the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), which is not yet fielded.
It's a good job their allies will defend them then if their ammo is low - this isn't sarcasm, it's the point of NATO, but hey if Trump still wants to pull out of that alliance...
To no farking effect - Iran is still as bellicose as ever.
This is already the lifeline Europe is using to save its auto industry from the electric... the US is next. Just need to open up competitive bidding for the production of these components. Licensing patriot production to Ukraine will be a good start... S. Korea next
yeah, let's start all to produce more weapons. What could possible go wrong. What about this? The USA just go home, nobody is going to invade them.
there is a lot of money to be made, building more of them :(
Trump is like Al Capone - just dumber.
There is not really any strategy here in place that makes sense from an US point of view. There is a strategy in place that may make sense for Netanyahu (e. g. remain in power) but this is not a US strategic point of view. Trump seems to be the most easily influenced roleplaying as "president". People need to follow the money trail here - that would explain the whole situation right now best.
The strategy was to get Epstein off of everyone’s mind. And if it cost over $40billion and counting then it was deemed worth it, because the president comes first, that how’s our president thinks, me first, and our politicians, party first, our lobby second and the oligarchs third.
Americans living in their bubble might be unable to see from a perspective, but from outside is quite apparent that American-Israeli conflict against Iran will long outlive both Trump and Netanjahu. Hopefully that was the last dumb thing and decision they made.
I like how China and Russia are mentioned as adversaries that the US might be less likely to deter with their dwindling supply of long-range munition, but the country that so helpfully received all that supply and is the reason for the stockpile being minimal right now, isn't mentioned as an adversary that could take advantage of this.
Think Ukraine is the reason the US is low on missiles? Do the numbers actually support that? The numbers don’t seem to support that. From a very cursory search, offensive missiles seem to be around 2:1 Iran. And that’s just raw numbers; someone other than me who might do a little moral editorializing would point out the use in Ukraine was to fight off an illegal invasion while the most effective strike in Iran killed a hundred schoolgirls.
Ukraine will take advantage of low PrSM stock ... how?