peter Zeihan 2020

[LordsFire]

Gulf War 1 and 2 are more than 20 years ago. Duh. My Dad served during Gulf 1, and retired shortly after we started Iraq War II. That one was fought in 2003. It is now 2024. Just about everyone who was a pilot in Iraq II who did their 20 years is retired now.

You're acting like I said 'all those Pilots are still in service.'

That is not what I said. What I said is that the current leadership and teaching cadre are going to be people who have had actual combat experience from those times. You can certainly argue that it was not against a peer opponent, but the fact remains that it is still some kind of combat experience, and that's more than potential foes such as China have available to them.

You literally ignored the entire point of what I said. Why?

 

[Zachowon]

The entire US military has more fighting experience then any of our adversaries with the exception of Russia now but they are not doing so hot.

The difference between us and our adversaries is we train train train and train for war.
We lose war games

 

[stephen the barbarian]

These snarky comments of yours don't change this fact and makes it seem more like you have a petty grudge than any actual understanding of things.

the fastest way to bloody nose is underestimating the other guy.

The difference between us and our adversaries

is that at the end of the day their leaders won't throw away a victory to make their domestic opposition look bad.

 

[Zachowon]

the fastest way to bloody nose is underestimating the other guy.

is that at the end of the day their leaders won't throw away a victory to make their domestic opposition look bad.

Don't bet on it.
Russia sre using the war to make plenty of changes domestically.
China bas already thrown out thier economy so Xi can stay in power.
We are dealing with nations that will throw thier people and victory under the bus if they can keep power

 

[Emperor Tippy]

*may*
Pure hype. Even the very countries who shill these supposed carrier killer weapons put massive efforts into making their own, shittier carriers from scratch. So much for their belief in this technology.

As i said, numbers and tonnage do not matter much, tech capabilities on ship matter a lot now.
Tech is what makes most of a difference between a first rate missile destroyer and glorified coast guard ship (and the price difference between these, the hull may well be the same).
China (and SK and Japan) have a massive civilian shipbuilding sector, but the usefulness of that for military purposes is not as direct as some imply, it's outright impossible for Japan for example to suddenly decide to make their shipyards pump out quality navy ships instead of freighters and tankers, it's not WW2 anymore. They could make (subpar but functional) hulls, but where will they get so much of the radars, missiles, other sensors and a variety of other electronic crap to put on the hulls? Will they skip that and just put some guns on it? Congratulations, you have a coast guard ship, maybe some very poor third world country will buy it. But it won't be something you bring to a war in XXI century.

And if i'm wrong, well, SK and Japan are US allies against China after all, and they are the other 2 globally relevant shipbuilders...

They still lag, and carriers are almost as old as subs.

In civilian ships, not in warships, and the warships are of subpar quality. If they would start to just use civilian shipbuilding for the warships they quality would go down further. Steel is cheap, silicon is expensive, as i said, what's the point of more hulls if you don't have the means to equip and supply them as warships.

Japan has the second most powerful and capable blue water navy after the US, and is fully capable of building all of the fiddly bits that make a proper warship a proper warship. The nation actually best positioned to radically expand its naval forces relatively quickly is Japan. They have the know how, infrastructure, technology, and institutional knowledge. The US is pretty limited in the number of hulls it can build simply because the number of viable construction yards/slips is so much more limited.

 

[Marduk]

Japan has the second most powerful and capable blue water navy after the US, and is fully capable of building all of the fiddly bits that make a proper warship a proper warship. The nation actually best positioned to radically expand its naval forces relatively quickly is Japan.

Yeah, many people forget that Japan is a very serious player in world naval power, and is naturally forced to not favor the idea of China throwing its weight around the region much.

They have the know how, infrastructure, technology, and institutional knowledge. The US is pretty limited in the number of hulls it can build simply because the number of viable construction yards/slips is so much more limited.

I think US is bottlenecked by funding/staffing(also funding problem) than slips anyway(in long term also a funding problem). Overall the migration of shipbuilding out of all western countries probably has similar causes to all the other industrial outsourcing. It even went to the same places in the world much of other industry did.

 

[stephen the barbarian]

Don't bet on it.
Russia sre using the war to make plenty of changes domestically.
China bas already thrown out thier economy so Xi can stay in power.
We are dealing with nations that will throw thier people and victory under the bus if they can keep power

reading comprehension is not your forte, is it?
in both of the scenarios you bring up you have a dominant power wiping out opposition while trying there damnedest to win the war.
meanwhile, the us has lost 3 out of 4 major wars it's fought in the last 50 years because the DNC would rather stab an ally in the back than let a GOP president have credit for the win.

 

[Terthna]

The question is, does the US navy still have that level of training and skill? Or has it gotten complacent, suffering from poor training thanks to wokism and a lack of recruits? I’ve also heard stuff about how the US’s stock of motions has run low thanks to Ukraine.

Keep in mind; any amount of training would surpass China's by leaps and bounds, simply due to the fact that their soldiers do not train. The vast majority of their time is spent being brainwashed so that they'll follow any and all orders of the CCP without question, and marching in parades dedicated to the glory of the CCP.

 

[Zachowon]

reading comprehension is not your forte, is it?
in both of the scenarios you bring up you have a dominant power wiping out opposition while trying there damnedest to win the war.
meanwhile, the us has lost 3 out of 4 major wars it's fought in the last 50 years because the DNC would rather stab an ally in the back than let a GOP president have credit for the win.

The last 4 major wars, Korea, Vietnam, Gulf War 1 and I guess GWOT?
GWOT was going to end in 2021 no matter what. At least in A-stan. With Trumo having planned for April may, and Biden went back on it.

Vietnam was also going to be a shit show because it ended up on Nixon yes, but he was doing a horrible job at it.

Korea ended due to Ike making a cease fire happen.

Gulf War 1 and 3 are technically both over and we're GOP

 

[JagerIV]

You're acting like I said 'all those Pilots are still in service.'

That is not what I said. What I said is that the current leadership and teaching cadre are going to be people who have had actual combat experience from those times. You can certainly argue that it was not against a peer opponent, but the fact remains that it is still some kind of combat experience, and that's more than potential foes such as China have available to them.

You literally ignored the entire point of what I said. Why?

You asked why I didn't consider those as part of the experience in the last 20 years. I answered. The fact that there was combat more than 20 years ago was irrelevant to your question. Now its just a question of how much more valuable the most senior leadership having some combat experience in much, much different war is. At this point, probably not a whole lot more than just generally being able to read the case studies, which is how most of the serving people will interact with it.

Now, as I previously said, the US is much better at preserving lessons learned and applying those case studies, and we do a lot of exercises.

 

[LordsFire]

You asked why I didn't consider those as part of the experience in the last 20 years. I answered.

No, I did not. What I asked was this:

Can you think of anything between now and then that might have carried that experience in running Carrier operations forward into the present?

You replied with this:

In the last 20 years besides running exercises? Not particularly. I guess there's ISIS, but I'm not sure how much that really counts more than just running exercises.

Bringing '20 years' as a number into it is you, not me.

At this point, it's pretty clear that you're successively tripling down on confirmation bias, especially given the nonsense about radars and the like you were posting on the War College thread.

Now its just a question of how much more valuable the most senior leadership having some combat experience in much, much different war is. At this point, probably not a whole lot more than just generally being able to read the case studies, which is how most of the serving people will interact with it.

And here we really get to the crux of the issue.

'At this point, probably not'

The vast majority of your arguments rest on assumptions that you're just casually making. Assumptions, which always are favorable to your position, and generally have little to no contact with reality.

For your information, 'any kind of actual combat experience at all' makes a lot of difference, compared to none at all, and especially with carrier operations.

What happens when the worst case scenario isn't 'bad performance review after exercise,' but 'people die because you fail to provide air support?'

What happens when you're loading real bombs, not dummy munitions?

How does the crew hold up when they know it's the real deal, rather than just another exercise?

Can your crew look back and say 'I've done the real deal before, I know how I'll respond, I can have confidence in my skills and composure under pressure'?


What happens when the report card is 'did you get people killed?' not 'What is politically convenient to party leadership?'


These things are crucial, and the fact that you think you can just hand-wave them away as 'not a whole lot more than just generally being able to read the case studies, which is how most of the serving people will interact with it' shows how utterly disconnected you are from the realities of war.

And yes, the current crop of low and mid level crew in the USN mostly won't have that experience, but the high-ranking leadership, Captains, XOs, Chief Petty Officers, the people training those lower-level crew, they do have that experience, they know personally how to best prepare the crew for it, and they will stand up under the pressure of combat, setting the example to their subordinates.

This is one of the most important things in a competent military.

 

[Zachowon]

An NCO Corp that will make sure the current troops are ready for combat

 

[Bacle]

Yeah, many people forget that Japan is a very serious player in world naval power, and is naturally forced to not favor the idea of China throwing its weight around the region much.

I think US is bottlenecked by funding/staffing(also funding problem) than slips anyway(in long term also a funding problem). Overall the migration of shipbuilding out of all western countries probably has similar causes to all the other industrial outsourcing. It even went to the same places in the world much of other industry did.

What the US shipping and shipyard industry need is for the Jones Act to go away.

Hard to keep a WW2 level of shipbuilding when a lot of the small yards involved have shutdown because the US shipbuilding industry as a whole has been gutted.

 

[Poe]

What the US shipping and shipyard industry need is for the Jones Act to go away.

Hard to keep a WW2 level of shipbuilding when a lot of the small yards involved have shutdown because the US shipbuilding industry as a whole has been gutted.

Unless I'm missing something obvious, the jones act enforces carrying of cargo on US built ships. If anything it's probably the reason we have any capacity left at all. If that was gone jackass elites would have outsourced all cargo shipping to foreigners years ago

 

[Bacle]

Unless I'm missing something obvious, the jones act enforces carrying of cargo on US built ships. If anything it's probably the reason we have any capacity left at all. If that was gone jackass elites would have outsourced all cargo shipping to foreigners years ago

This does not take into account foreign shipyards, which have undercut most US civie yards, and doesn't account for the fact that the Jones Act means that unless a ship is built in the US, it cannot go from one US port to another, without first hitting a foreign port.

It was made with the intent to boost and protect US shipbuilders way back, but completely ignored people could just buy ships from foreign sources and bypass US yards completely, so it had the actual effect of gutting US civie shipbuilding and the shipyard workforces.

 

[JagerIV]

No, I did not. What I asked was this:


You replied with this:

Bringing '20 years' as a number into it is you, not me.

At this point, it's pretty clear that you're successively tripling down on confirmation bias, especially given the nonsense about radars and the like you were posting on the War College thread.

And here we really get to the crux of the issue.

'At this point, probably not'

The vast majority of your arguments rest on assumptions that you're just casually making. Assumptions, which always are favorable to your position, and generally have little to no contact with reality.

For your information, 'any kind of actual combat experience at all' makes a lot of difference, compared to none at all, and especially with carrier operations.

What happens when the worst case scenario isn't 'bad performance review after exercise,' but 'people die because you fail to provide air support?'

What happens when you're loading real bombs, not dummy munitions?

How does the crew hold up when they know it's the real deal, rather than just another exercise?

Can your crew look back and say 'I've done the real deal before, I know how I'll respond, I can have confidence in my skills and composure under pressure'?


What happens when the report card is 'did you get people killed?' not 'What is politically convenient to party leadership?'


These things are crucial, and the fact that you think you can just hand-wave them away as 'not a whole lot more than just generally being able to read the case studies, which is how most of the serving people will interact with it' shows how utterly disconnected you are from the realities of war.

And yes, the current crop of low and mid level crew in the USN mostly won't have that experience, but the high-ranking leadership, Captains, XOs, Chief Petty Officers, the people training those lower-level crew, they do have that experience, they know personally how to best prepare the crew for it, and they will stand up under the pressure of combat, setting the example to their subordinates.

This is one of the most important things in a competent military.

Fair enough, the 20 years was Zachowon's point below.

Yes, and I've already said the US is better than others for holding onto that experience and lessons learned.

Otherwise, its just you insisting its extremely important. I'm less sure of how important it actually is. Especially in a situation where were discussing theoretical performance at some point in the next 20-30 years.

Edit: I guess Peter's predictions are closer to the next 10 years, recalling. At which point China's ability to do opposed Carrier operation is totally dependent upon if WWIII happens in the next 10 years. If that doesn't happen, then China would just have to do naval operations against pirates and 3rd world countries, where the need to do Carrier operations excelently is low, and if WWIII is in 20-30 years, China probably will have Carrier experience against Somalia or something by then, closing the combat experiance gap.

At which point it all comes down to actual quality of training and institution, which is what I personally think this all comes down to in the end anyways.

 

[Marduk]

What the US shipping and shipyard industry need is for the Jones Act to go away.

Hard to keep a WW2 level of shipbuilding when a lot of the small yards involved have shutdown because the US shipbuilding industry as a whole has been gutted.

Won't help much with that, it would help with optimizing logistics a lot, but shipbuilding?
For that, you would need a more Asian approach to labor and environmental regulations. Starting with getting steel industry back, if you can make reasonably priced steel then you can begin to think of market competitive shipbuilding. Europe doesn't have an equivalent of Jones Act, had several major shipbuilders, now mostly dead like US ones too.

 

[Bacle]

Won't help much with that, it would help with optimizing logistics a lot, but shipbuilding?
For that, you would need a more Asian approach to labor and environmental regulations. Starting with getting steel industry back, if you can make reasonably priced steel then you can begin to think of market competitive shipbuilding. Europe doesn't have an equivalent of Jones Act, had several major shipbuilders, now mostly dead like US ones too.

Shipyard might be able to get protection from the EPA if they are at least partly DoD operations.

If every shipyard can now get DoD funding, even for small drone boats, it would do a lot to reverse the trend and protect the shipyards from frivolous lawsuits by radical greenies.

 

[Marduk]

Shipyard might be able to get protection from the EPA if they are at least partly DoD operations.

If every shipyard can now get DoD funding, even for small drone boats, it would do a lot to reverse the trend and protect the shipyards from frivolous lawsuits by radical greenies.

Again, will they also get protection from labor costs and will their vital suppliers like steel makers also get it, and in the scale of civilian, rather than military shipbuilding, aka orders of magnitude bigger?

 

[Bacle]

Again, will they also get protection from labor costs and will their vital suppliers like steel makers also get it, and in the scale of civilian, rather than military shipbuilding, aka orders of magnitude bigger?

They can, if the cost are partly off-set by DoD funding.

The steel is actually not the really hard part to source, the US still has several serious steel mills in operation.

Though most of them are inland, and the steel would need to be shipped to the yard, instead of smelted in the same town or region.

An increase in the demand for ship-grade steel would also likely help boost the US metallurgical industry into higher gear as well.