gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Marinetimes/status/1773000785984377205?t=aUrfWi1vMn2k3tIDrmkAIw&s=19

I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by best practices at the level of the individual soldier

BearsBearsBears posted:

Would love to see any documentation of on the comparative costs of using each type (instead of just acquiring the system). I can't find any myself.

atelier morgan posted:

i tried figuring out motor, chip and pcb production figures because i have a hunch the fpv drone proliferation situation wouldn't scale to a conflict larger than ukraine when civilian electronics markets can't supply you but holy poo poo is the electronics market capital-brained to the point where i'm having a hell of a time finding output in material terms rather than dollar terms

that and search engines are worthless ofc

e: i did find a little bit of us will lose ww3 in the attempt as it sure seems like the us department of commerce only uses dollars to define the size of the electronics companies supplying the us military

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

I'm reasonably sure there's one in Brassley's Land Systems' volume on Guns, Mortars and Rockets.

Solid fuel rockets and their launchers were cheaper than guns and shells. They could both be made from sheet metal, for example.

Some systems immediately post-war were the poor man's field artillery, similar to large calibre mortars, and were widely used by China and the USSR




But that's night and day compared to what rocket artillery means, and how much it costs, today.

FirstnameLastname posted:

an assembly line for towed artillery will always be smaller and less resource intensive compared to a line for sp artillery so when scaled up the towed artillery is always going to have the highest potential volume of fire per cost to manufacture

not even factoring in maintenance etc.

rocket artillery can concentrate fire in larger bursts and from further away but it's basically converting the labor/resources that would yield a larger overall amount of firepower across a larger timespan, and compressing/packaging it for specific use, rockets are burstier and have better packaging but they'll never be more economical because each shot fired has its own engine, fuel, guidance computers so across the span of an industrial war they'll always be relegated to a situational tool


if towed artillery actually went extinct it would be from something that made standard rifles extinct too bc they both fit in their niche for economic reasons more than anything, using all self propelled artillery or rockey artillery is a "why don't they build the whole plane out of the black box?" kinda thing

Dixon Chisholm posted:

name an extant country worth dying for.

poisonpill posted:

got a good source?

Pistol_Pete posted:

I'm just glad that I'm not one of the officers that has to figure out how you organise a war where any concentration of troops and equipment can be hit at any time, not just on the front lines.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

genericnick posted:

happy that they finally got their road cum railway

The Voice of Labor posted:

maybe pick a few areas where production figures and monetary figures are available, work out the yuan to output/dollar to output relation then use that to make an assumption on chip and motor production based on the dollar output

gradenko_2000 posted:

https://twitter.com/Marinetimes/status/1773000785984377205?t=aUrfWi1vMn2k3tIDrmkAIw&s=19

I don't think this is a problem that can be solved by best practices at the level of the individual soldier

Ignore_Me posted:

if that makes you happy check this out

https://www.drdo.gov.in/drdo/120-mm-penetration-cum-blast-pcb-and-thermobaric-tb-ammunition-mbt-arjun

FuzzySlippers posted:

isn’t chip production going to explode sometime in the next five to ten years as all the China efforts come online? I know there were lots of Western stories about how China will only ever be able to make simple whatever size chips (due to their feeble communist ingenuity) but they keep blowing past estimates and it’s clearly a strategic priority they are investing in.

I have wondered if some basic assumptions of the electronics and computer industries may change when China is flooding out product. There has been supply manipulation to maintain or increase prices that the Chinese seem unlikely to bother with. They’ll just keep amping up production. That would impact many things

www.cnn.com - Sat, 30 Mar 2024 posted:

Sweden became the newest member of NATO earlier this month, joining 31 nations in the security alliance, including the United States. Well, make that 49 of the 50 United States.

Because in a quirk of geography and history, Hawaii is not technically covered by the NATO pact.

If a foreign power attacked Hawaii – say the US Navy’s base at Pearl Harbor or the headquarters of the Indo-Pacific Command northwest of Honolulu – the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization would not be obligated to rise to the Aloha State’s defense.

“It’s the weirdest thing,” says David Santoro, president of the Pacific Forum think tank in Honolulu, who added that even most Hawaii residents have no idea their state is technically adrift of the alliance.

“People tend to assume Hawaii is part of the US and therefore it’s covered by NATO,” he says.

But, he concedes, the tip-off is in the alliance’s name – North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Hawaii is, of course, in the Pacific, and unlike California, Colorado or Alaska, the 50th state is not part of the continental US that reaches the North Atlantic Ocean on its eastern shores.

“The argument for not including Hawaii is simply that it’s not part of North America,” Santoro says.

The exception is spelled out in the Washington Treaty, the document that established NATO in 1949, a decade before Hawaii became a state.

While Article 5 of the treaty provides for collective self-defense in the event of a military attack on any member state, Article 6 limits the geographic scope of that.

“An armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America,” Article 6 says. It also says any island territories must be in the North Atlantic, north of the Tropic of Cancer.

A US State Department spokesperson confirmed that Hawaii is not covered by Article 5, but said Article 4, which says members will consult when “the territorial integrity, political independence or security” of any member is threatened, should cover any situation that could affect the 50th state.

The spokesperson also said any treaty amendment to include Hawaii would be unlikely to gain consensus because other members have territories outside of the boundaries set in Article 5.

For instance, NATO did not join founding member the United Kingdom’s 1982 war with Argentina after Argentine troops invaded the Falkland Islands, a disputed British territory in the South Atlantic.

NATO has not responded to a CNN request for comment.

## Hawaii, Guam, Taiwan and North Korea

Some experts say times have changed in the decades since the Washington Treaty was signed – and argue today’s political situation in the Indo-Pacific might require a rethink.

That’s because US military bases in Hawaii could play a vital role in both countering North Korean aggression as well as supporting any potential defense of Taiwan.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims the self-governing democratic island as its territory despite never having controlled it. Chinese leader Xi Jinping has made “reunification” with Taiwan a key part of his overarching goal to “rejuvenate” the nation by 2049.

While Chinese leaders have said they hope to take control of the island via peaceful means, they have not ruled out doing so by force — and have ramped up military intimidation of the island in recent years.

The Taiwan Relations Act obligates Washington to provide weaponry for the island’s defense, and US President Joe Biden has suggested he would use US military personnel to defend it in the event of a Chinese invasion (though White House officials have said the US policy to leave that question ambiguous has not changed).

A 2022 wargame scenario run by the Center for a New American Security played out with China attacking US command and control installations in Hawaii as part of its war to take Taiwan by force.

John Hemmings, senior director of the Indo-Pacific Foreign and Security Policy Program at the Pacific Forum, says Hawaii’s exclusion from NATO removes “an element of deterrence” when it comes to the possibility of a Chinese strike on Hawaii in support of any potential Taiwan campaign.

Leaving Hawaii out lets Beijing know that NATO’s European members potentially have a bit of an “escape clause” when it comes to defending US territory in such a hypothetical situation, he says.

“Why would we not put that element of deterrence at our disposal?” Hemmings says. “Why would we leave that off the table if it would actually stop (China) from an invasion of Taiwan?”

Hawaii’s strategic importance also has deep historical significance for the US. “This is where Pearl Harbor happened. This is where we were attacked that brought us into the Second World War, and – by the way – this is what also led to us to help liberate France,” he says.

“For Americans there is a direct link between this state and our involvement in the Second World War and ultimately our help in contributing to the victory over the Axis (the alliance of Nazi Germany, Japan and Italy).”

Hemmings also makes an argument for Guam, the US Pacific island territory some 3,000 miles farther west than Hawaii, to be included in NATO’s umbrella.

The island, which has long been a focal point of North Korean saber rattling, is home to Andersen Air Force Base, from which the US can launch its B-1, B-2 and B-52 bombers across the Indo-Pacific.

Hemmings likens Guam’s exclusion from NATO to how the US left the Korean Peninsula outside of a line it drew across the Pacific to deter the Soviet Union and China from spreading communism in January 1950. Five months after the so-called Acheson Line was drawn, the Korean War began.

“The adversary feels emboldened to carry out military conflict and you end up having a war anyway,” Hemmings says.

The Pacific Forum’s Santoro also mentions Guam should be included under the NATO umbrella. “Strategically, Guam absolutely matters a lot more than Hawaii,” he says.

Other analysts argue that were such a hypothetical attack to take place on Hawaii, or Guam, the deep and abiding ties that bind the US and its democratic allies would be substantially more significant in countries’ decision-making than a technicality in the NATO treaty.

In the event of an attack, “I would expect … the United States to try to put together a coalition of the willing involving primarily – but certainly not exclusively – regional allies,” says Luis Simon, a director of the Research Centre for Security, Diplomacy and Strategy at the Brussels School of Governance in Belgium.

Simon cites the alliance’s strong and immediate response after the 9/11 attacks, the only time in its 74-year history that NATO has triggered the collective self-defense mechanism under Article 5.

“But Washington actually chose to channel its response through a coalition of the willing, and not through NATO Command,” he says. “I suspect we’d see a similar reaction in the case of an attack on either Guam or Hawaii, with the US wanting to retain full military control over (the response) and diplomatic flexibility.”

Simon also says he doesn’t see any real daylight between NATO members and their commitment to the US and the alliance.

NATO is a bedrock of the transatlantic democratic community. The US and other NATO members have touted unprecedented unity among the alliance in the face of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. And NATO has also hardened its shared rhetoric on China in recent years, vowing to address what they describe as the “systemic challenges” Beijing poses.

“I personally have little doubt they would be ready to provide different forms of assistance in case of an attack against US sovereign territory, including individually and through multilateral venues like the (European Union) or NATO,” he says.

FuzzySlippers posted:

isn’t chip production going to explode sometime in the next five to ten years as all the China efforts come online? I know there were lots of Western stories about how China will only ever be able to make simple whatever size chips (due to their feeble communist ingenuity) but they keep blowing past estimates and it’s clearly a strategic priority they are investing in.

I have wondered if some basic assumptions of the electronics and computer industries may change when China is flooding out product. There has been supply manipulation to maintain or increase prices that the Chinese seem unlikely to bother with. They’ll just keep amping up production. That would impact many things

The Oldest Man posted:

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/02/poison-portal-us-and-uk-could-send-nuclear-waste-to-australia-under-aukus-inquiry-told

Lol
Lmao

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Australian naval policy has never been good, which is bizarre for an island nation. Historically bad naval decision making.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Australian naval policy has never been good, which is bizarre for an island nation. Historically bad naval decision making.

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Perfidious albion, consumed by furious envy of its continental island possession that is 32x times its size, could never let that self-sufficiency develop. Imagine if they built some boats?

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

The American inferiority complex after WW2 is one of the stranger things in recent history. It’s like an even more deranged version of Roman Philhellenism following the Macedonian Wars, but … replacing the legions with the phalanx as well?

dead gay comedy forums posted:

Perfidious albion, consumed by furious envy of its continental island possession that is 32x times its size, could never let that self-sufficiency develop. Imagine if they built some boats?

Delta-Wye posted:

imagine learning all the wrong lessons from the battle of kursk from the losers and the haters, distilling it for two generations, and then loving it up all over again a few miles down the road 80 years later

Nothus posted:

Just rubbing their faces in their vassal status

quote:

But Russia’s economic resilience in the face of supposedly devastating sanctions is only one reflection of a great transformation of world trade. China’s exports to the Global South doubled during the past three years and China now exports more to the South than to developed markets. China’s unprecedented exporting success, in turn, stems from the rapid automation of Chinese industry, which now installs more industrial robots per year than the rest of the world combined.

This is evident, I added, in China’s newfound dominance in the world automotive market but it also has critical military implications. China claims that it has automated plants that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day—not impossible given that it can manufacture 1,000 EVs a day, or thousands of 5G base stations.

The implication is that China can produce the equivalent of America’s inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles in a week while American defense contractors take years to assemble them by hand.

DJJIB-DJDCT posted:

Australian naval policy has never been good, which is bizarre for an island nation. Historically bad naval decision making lmao.

crepeface posted:

lol yep. we're crawling around on all 4s being led around on a leash

Dixon Chisholm posted:

name an extant country worth dying for.

Dixon Chisholm posted:

name an extant country worth dying for.