The truly fucked up part about this story is that the military doesn’t really buy missiles the way people think. They kind of lease them -until- they use them, at which point they have “bought it” for full price.
So we had 19 years worth of patriot missiles get added to the bill during this period. The military is loathe to use these things because of the high price tag. The budget people have to be freaking out.
Seriously? That would make this graph even more satisfying and also fucked up, like you said.
But hey- it worked. Oil crisis averted.
If you ever feel dumb, just remember that the self-coronated “geniuses of economics!” wasted billions on a failed war just to feel manly.
Do you suppose that it was the manufacturing capacity, or just Trump and Pete Kegsbreath being dumbasses and firing them indiscriminately? I mean, it’s both, but which would you say is the larger factor?
The manufacturing capacity is an issue, but the bigger issue is that all of the US’ capacity is built up around fighting a near parity enemy in a “traditional war” roughly like ww2 but with way more special forces.
Patriot missiles are meant to shoot down ballistic missiles and aircraft, not drones. They were expecting an enemy that could fire a couple of dozen missiles and fly some outdated planes, not an enemy that was launching thousands of toy airplanes with bombs strapped to them.
There’s no way anyone could’ve seen this coming.
It’s not like I read people talking about how obvious a problem this was, n some pop-sci robotics or engineering rag, as a kid in the 90s. (I mean it was “cheap missiles” back then, not drones, but there was never a good counter argument to that either.)
These are missile interceptors, so they’re launched reactively against incoming missile or drone attacks. The biggest problem for them is that the incoming missiles/drones are way cheaper per shot than the interceptors are (and the interceptors don’t even always hit their target either). The next biggest problem is that the US fundamentally lacks the manufacturing capacity to scale up production, because its entire MIC graft machine is built around extracting absurd amounts of money for just enough munitions to maintain the typical endless occupation with occasional airstrikes model the American empire has been following for the past 25 years.
Trump and the other clown are dumbasses for starting this shit, but the state of the war is thanks to Iranian doctrine and their level of preparations.
While I won’t denigrate the Iranians in this. They did build this doctrine straightforwardly around the US being a bunch of fucking dullars who haven’t updated their military strategy since 1984
USA did update its military strategy, but they tuned their military into colonial expeditionary corps to fight against poor and badly armed small countries. So anything looking remotely like a peer war is now a guaranteed failure.
No doubt, I didn’t mean to discount the Iranian doctrine. I’m just questioning if the usage of the missile probably could have been more judicial by the US clowns if they had two brain cells to rub together.
Nah, they either use them or don’t. They judt fundamentally aren’t suited to this job. But like, when you sre getting shot st you gotta do something right? We had screwed this up long ago in logistics so there is no good way to do it for us
“What? Line go up is always a good thing! Look how fast we’re closing the missile gap!”thank god our manufacturing capacity is shit.
Oh no! Let’s
STOP this STUPID War!Use DIFFERENT tactics!Spend BILLIONS of Tax Payer dollars to buy MORE!-EVERY US Politician!
I wonder what that inflection is around 2019/2020 where the production ramps up.
Pre-Donbas escalation, pre-Afghanistan withdrawal, just a point in the Trump 1 administration where he’d been antagonizing a bunch of relatively defenseless countries.
Arming up Ukraine for the upcoming war.
“someone who is good at the economy please help me budget this”
If I view this with my darkest doomer glasses, couldn’t this just be a way to clear out space in their warehouses for newer upgraded missiles?
With what productive capacity?
even our ghouls were never stupid enough to offshore military production
They were stupid enough to privatize it, though. All the investment in “new” capacity tends to just be scams.
I really hope so.
An example
A $469 million General Dynamics plant in Mesquite, Texas, opened in May 2024, has failed to produce any 155mm projectile parts due to untested machinery and design flaws.
If the peak of current military prowess is sticking bombs to toy planes, how much productive capacity do you really need?
Productive capacity is only partly how much physical stuff is lying around for assembly and quite a lot the ability to organize the logistics of assembly of all those components and the supply lines each component has, and so on and so forth. The USA basically lacks the ability to engage in this large scale organization at this point. Like, it’s going to cost them billions and take years to rebuild a bridge in Baltimore that China could salvage and erect in a couple of months.
50 year old missiles are outdated, 20 year old missiles are not. Any missile that is currently produced is not outdated. These missiles are used to protect israhell, they would not use anything but most expensive ones to do so. Outdated missiles are usually sent to Ukraine. Even if they were outdated, they are not garbage to be thrown away
I would hate if someone developed as effective weapon systems with stuff that you can order from temu
may the fall of the united states be grand!
Somebody should tell Trump “Elon is actually Ironman and he made the MMCS System - the Marvel Missile Cornucopia System System - so endless missiles. And the Pentagon has it and they’re gonna turn it on soon. Real, real soon.” Then Trump will repeat that in front of reporters.
He’d half remember it and say something even more incoherent. It would be so funny
Trump used 19 years worth of missiles, me and my congressmen never authorized it.
Which is why the War Powers Act was successfully invoked?
My congressman said it’s an illegal war but is mad about the diesel deal with Russia, because they help Iran “target American troops.” Iran has the right to defend itself!
He also says “Israel” is committing genocide, but keeps voting to send them “defensive” weapons.
Congress being involved will fix nothing
The Congress wants this war, but doesn’t want to bear any responsibility for it.
