SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: The US launched its war of aggression on Iran on 28 February, only half a year ago. It is already suffering a significant if not critical shortage of key weapons systems

https://x.com/MouinRabbani/status/2095340261043843551

Mouin Rabbani

The United States was defeated in Vietnam. The US military was outfought by the Vietnamese, Washington eventually lost the will to continue the war, and it was ultimately compelled to withdraw its forces from the country.

One challenge the US army did not face in Vietnam was a shortage of men or materiel. Despite the saturation bombing of an entire country half a world away, every day for more than half a decade, and the deployment of more than half a million occupation forces within Vietnam at the height of the campaign, the supply of soldiers, and of the weapons and other supplies required to sustain the war and the US army of occupation, was never a significant issue.

The institutional degradation of the US military during the Vietnam War, described by a number of analysts as approaching collapse, had multiple causes. But these causes did not include either a lack of soldiers or a shortage of weaponry and other supplies. 

Significant resistance to conscription in opposition to the criminal war was politically significant, but did not affect the US military’s ability continue deploying and fighting. Nor did the US military’s war in Vietnam affect other deployments considered strategically vital, such as in Europe and South Korea.

That was then, this is now. The US launched its war of aggression on Iran on 28 February, only half a year ago. It is already suffering a significant if not critical shortage of key weapons systems, cannot sustain its previous levels of preparedness in other theaters, is no longer able to supply Ukraine with vital arms, and, as the saga of the USS Abraham Lincoln (and previously the USS Gerald Ford) demonstrates, is experiencing severe challenges maintaining deployments and supplying its forces.

The US military’s challenges can hardly be explained away by the end of conscription. There is no challenge the US military is experiencing that a trillion-dollar budget cannot resolve many times over. 

US taxpayers may want to question how their government and the Pentagon have been spending their tax dollars, and voters may want to question their elected representatives about how and why they have been allocating these gigantic sums.

The US military could have produced its current shortages and failures with only a tenth of its available budget.