Short of deciding we suddenly don’t need a navy, there’s not as much space as one might think for cutting ‘fat’ from the budget. Even the Obama-era proposal for shrinking the budget still came out to 500 billion, and that was with cuts to the bone - and 10 years of inflation to adjust for.
There was an article a few days ago about how the soldiers stopped following some of their western training as it wasn’t working / appropriate for their situation.
I imagine there will also be some cross training where they update the American soldiers on what worked and didn’t work and why.
From what I heard that seemed to be mainly two factors where the situations were different than most conflicts the Western forces have been in in a good while.
Lack of air support. The air is still contested over Ukraine.
No offense Germany, but you gotta fix your military.
A lot of the Ukrainians complaining about poor training / equipment are the ones getting German gear it seems. That’s… okay. Some training is better than none, and Germany is sending good tanks / equipment after all. But Germany definitely is underperforming IMO given its economic level of output and overall strength of the country.
I’m not sure just how much the US spends on weapon testing, but I imagine it’s a bonkers number. And now they get an opportunity to test in a real environment, with some other country’s army to do much of the heavy lifting?
I do software dev and testing stuff is expensive. Real world testing is a particularly difficult and pricey thing to do. It’s not easy to simulate realistic usage and it’s super common to discover all sorts of issues only when something is used outside of controlled conditions. That’s why so many web products get the hug of death. It’s why Lemmy has had so many problems not just with scaling, but things like UX. It’s so easy to not realize even “obvious” problems when you don’t have a large number of real users.
Bonkers is right, and you’re absolutely correct. Another factor to the real world tests is the human experience. A soldier who’s fired real rounds downrange will be that little bit more quick and calm the next time shit hits the fan. Ivan keeps bashing his face against our dusty old armor systems and all they’re doing is feeding the sunflowers and seasoning Ukrainian grunts for battle. Once they start fielding all NATO munitions it’s gonna get real ugly for the Kremlin.
Better than defanging is real world testing.
What worked as expected, what didn’t, how we can make it better etc.
It’s not often you get to deploy these weapons.
What will happen to the US defense budget now that we know it’s unnecessary?
That was rhetorical by the way, I know it’s going to increase.
still necessary. russia isn’t the only potential adversary out there
Short of deciding we suddenly don’t need a navy, there’s not as much space as one might think for cutting ‘fat’ from the budget. Even the Obama-era proposal for shrinking the budget still came out to 500 billion, and that was with cuts to the bone - and 10 years of inflation to adjust for.
Watch the Ukranian drone ops teams taking contracts after this is all done. The Winged Hussars ride again! 🤘🏼💀
There was an article a few days ago about how the soldiers stopped following some of their western training as it wasn’t working / appropriate for their situation.
I imagine there will also be some cross training where they update the American soldiers on what worked and didn’t work and why.
From what I heard that seemed to be mainly two factors where the situations were different than most conflicts the Western forces have been in in a good while.
Lack of air support. The air is still contested over Ukraine.
Minefields everywhere
A lot of the Ukrainians complaining about poor training / equipment are the ones getting German gear it seems. That’s… okay. Some training is better than none, and Germany is sending good tanks / equipment after all. But Germany definitely is underperforming IMO given its economic level of output and overall strength of the country.
I mean, we kinda made sure of that, as a general collective global community? Considering, you know, “last time”? 😅😬
I’m not sure just how much the US spends on weapon testing, but I imagine it’s a bonkers number. And now they get an opportunity to test in a real environment, with some other country’s army to do much of the heavy lifting?
I do software dev and testing stuff is expensive. Real world testing is a particularly difficult and pricey thing to do. It’s not easy to simulate realistic usage and it’s super common to discover all sorts of issues only when something is used outside of controlled conditions. That’s why so many web products get the hug of death. It’s why Lemmy has had so many problems not just with scaling, but things like UX. It’s so easy to not realize even “obvious” problems when you don’t have a large number of real users.
I don’t often test, but when I do, it’s in prod.
Bonkers is right, and you’re absolutely correct. Another factor to the real world tests is the human experience. A soldier who’s fired real rounds downrange will be that little bit more quick and calm the next time shit hits the fan. Ivan keeps bashing his face against our dusty old armor systems and all they’re doing is feeding the sunflowers and seasoning Ukrainian grunts for battle. Once they start fielding all NATO munitions it’s gonna get real ugly for the Kremlin.
Well and its old equipment not stuff coming right off the line which would have to be decommissioned at cost at eol.