The Marine Corps’s Massive Reforms to Fight China May Destroy Its Real Skills

Wednesday, July 22nd, 2020

While American forces were campaigning in the mountains of Afghanistan, the commanders of the PLA slowly shaped their military into the world’s premier counter-American military force, T. Greer notes:

The PLA realized that the U.S. military had grown accustomed to operating freely in the airspace and neighboring waters of its enemies. To counter this way of war, a terrific percentage of the Chinese defense budget has been directed to developing weapons that might challenge American control of the sea and air. The result: thousands of what are known as “anti-access” and “area denial” weapons whose range and precision create a death zone extending hundreds of miles from the Chinese coast. These precision weapons, launched from an ever-growing number of PLA Navy vessels, PLA Air Force craft, and PLA Rocket Force units, will make it impossible for traditional expeditionary forces — like the existing U.S. Marine Expeditionary Units — to get within striking range of any East Asian battlefield without risking destruction. When these long-range weapons are combined with the PLA’s air defense systems, sea mines, submarines, and electronic warfare and cyber-capabilities, the result is a gauntlet of fire that American expeditionary forces cannot be expected to securely traverse.

[...]

Recognizing that the Marines will not be able to pierce through enemy “weapons engagement zones” once hostilities begin, Berger proposes that the United States should have Marine Corps units stationed inside these zones before war begins. He envisions turning the islands of the West Pacific into small redoubts bristling with Marines.

These Marines will be armed to the teeth with long-range missiles and unmanned aircraft, each with the ability to target Chinese ships from hundreds of miles away. In Berger’s words, this “inside force” will “reverse the cost imposition that determined adversaries seek to impose” on American forces, putting the PLA Navy in the same desperate situation now faced by U.S. ships. This will enable the Marine Corps “to create a mutually contested space in the South or East China Seas if directed to do so.” The commandant believes that this new posture will have a powerful deterrent effect on Chinese decision-making. As the Marines’ new bases will exist inside the Chinese weapons engagement zone, they will be able to attack PLA platforms in the very first minutes of war.

To retool the U.S. Marine Corps as an “inside force” in the West Pacific, the commandant has directed the Marine Corps to ax many of its current capabilities. The Marine Corps’s cannon artillery (e.g., its howitzer batteries) are being reduced from 21 to five batteries, and its armor forces (e.g., its tank battalions) will be completely eliminated. The Marine Corps will also cut its helicopter squadrons and amphibious assault vehicle companies by a third and reduce the number of manned attack aircraft and logistics teams it can put into the field.

These changes reflect the sort of war Berger believes Marines must prepare to fight. Suppressing fire from cannon artillery and the mobility of Marines armor forces are cornerstones of the Corps’s maneuver warfare doctrine, a set of tactics the commandant thinks Marines will have little use for when the land battlespace is reduced to small Pacific islands. The cuts in the Corps’s aircraft, logistics teams, and amphibious vehicles likewise signify that the Marine Corps will be focusing on its new role as coastal artillery, not its traditional expertise in expeditionary campaigning or amphibious assault. The human resources and money — around $12 billion — that are now being spent on armor, cannon artillery, and the rest will instead be poured into long-range missiles, unmanned aircraft, and the education and training of Marines.

Comments

  1. Bob Sykes says:

    The new units will be small, immobile, and lightly armed, even with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missiles. It might also lack communications and networking. The deployment seems to be limited to the First Island chain, mainly the Philippines. Assuming it would actually work, you don’t need 186,000 Marines to do the job, some 5,000 to 10,000 would be more than adequate. This implies a big cut in personnel. Moreover, the envisioned role clearly is a SOCOM function, so the remaining Marines would be transferred to SOCOM.

    This is a plan to eliminate the US Marine Corps.

  2. ASM826 says:

    The Japanese military tried that “inside force” tactic in the 1930s. It made them easily isolated and easy to locate. It might not have made them easy to eliminate, but if you can surround them and you know generally where they are, you can leave them to starve.

  3. Kirk says:

    The last time the Marines tried this, I think it was called “Wake Island”. I don’t remember it working out so well…

  4. Gavin Longmuir says:

    Under what circumstances would the US ever want to get into a shooting war with China?

    Suppose China decided to take New Zealand — a country which is so full of virtue-signaling Lefties that it will not even allow US nuclear warships into its ports. Is ungrateful New Zealand worth the bones of a single US Marine?

    If China did make a military move on the far side of the Pacific, what would happen?

    First, all the usual SJWs in the US would be out rioting in the streets in support of Communist China.

    Second, all the Walmarts would be empty as China cut off exports to the US.

    Then what is left of US industry would shut down for lack of Chinese parts. For all any of us know, Chinese supplies would be essential for the US even to make the ammunition thrown at Chinese forces.

    Victor Davis Hanson pointed out in his book “The Second World Wars” that German & Japanese defeat was inevitable because they were simply out-manned, out-produced, out-resourced by the combined forces of North America, the USSR, and the British Empire.

    That is a lesson anyone who wants a shooting war with China should remember. Today, China has 4 times the population of the US and most of the former US manufacturing capacity. The US has crippling Political Correctness and no reliable allies.

  5. Isegoria says:

    An alternative — or adjunct — might be putting Marines in submarines.

  6. Sam J. says:

    “…Berger proposes that the United States should have Marine Corps units stationed inside these zones before war begins. He envisions turning the islands of the West Pacific into small redoubts bristling with Marines…”

    That’s an exceptionally silly idea. I don’t fall in with the people who get all worked up about China’s artificial islands. In a real war they could be reduced to a vast smoldering cinder without too much trouble.

  7. RLVC says:

    The Marines are infantry delivered by ship. Barring a truly remarkable DEW anti-missile system, a ship loses to a hypersonic missile every time.

    Smaller autonomous missiles have obviated the usefulness of helicopter squadrons and made most manned aircraft a quaint curiosity.

    Technology has ended the Marines. Let’s see what $12B of long-range missiles looks like.

  8. Sam J. says:

    “…Technology has ended the Marines…”

    I don’t believe that. Now with the weapon systems we have now maybe but there’s no reason we can’t build astonishingly fast powered guns. Any missile going hypersonic speed will glow at a furious rate and if anything hits it it will disintegrate. Unfortunately Generals only care about expensive stuff that makes defense contractors lots of money but…it could be done.

    I often wonder why we don’t build small computerized defensive missiles to shoot out of planes and hit any missile shot at them. The plane has the high ground and the missile is going to be super visible with all that fuel used to get it in the air. I think in the future thinking that planes couldn’t stand up to missiles will be thought of as silly.

    We also need Marines for more than attacking China. We’re always going to need troops to go get our citizens when kidnapped or other small duties that need Men to shoot some other set of Men. And we will need aggressive Men to do so and that’s what the Marines are.

  9. Unicephalon40D says:

    Sam, that’s what SOCOM is for. Hostage rescue is among its core missions. When you need a small group of men to shoot other men, that’s who you call.

    You don’t call the Marines, unless you’re looking for Green Army Lite.

    The Marines are too big to handle the small stuff, too small to handle the big stuff, and technology has rendered them redundant. They’re really quite useless. I’m reminded of what Hitler once said, in his Table Talk. (Possibly apocryphal.)

    “The navy, on the contrary, has not changed, so to speak, since the first World War. There is something tragic in the fact that the battleship, that monument of human ingenuity, has lost its entire raison d’être because of the development of aviation. It reminds one of that marvel of technique and art which the armament of a knight and his horse—the cuirass and the caparison—used to be at the end of the Middle Ages.”

    He wasn’t right then, but now…

  10. Unicephalon40D says:

    As for:

    > “I often wonder why we don’t build small computerized defensive missiles to shoot out of planes and hit any missile shot at them.”

    Interestingly enough, this was just posted a moment ago:

    https://www.overtdefense.com/2020/07/24/raytheon-to-produce-air-launched-anti-missile-missile/

    But it is apparently not ready, and won’t be ready for a while. Besides, that sort of thing can easily be defeated with high-volume fire, which is China’s main strength.

  11. Gavin Longmuir says:

    “But it is apparently not ready, and won’t be ready for a while. Besides, that sort of thing can easily be defeated with high-volume fire, which is China’s main strength.”

    The really sad part is that, if the air-launched-anti-missile-missile is successful, it will almost certainly require Chinese-produced metals, Chinese-made computer chips, Chinese-made chemical fuel, and — by the time President Biden has done his thing — the software will probably come from a Chinese low-bidder. China does not have to defeat any US weapon with high-volume fire. All China will have to do is cease exporting critical parts to the US.

    This is the real problem. Previous Congresscritters (the finest money can buy) have left the US hopeless dependent on China for essentials, from military gear to medications to cell phones. But Hey! Free Trade, and all that. Everyone is always better off with (unilateral) Free Trade — or so they say.

  12. Sam J. says:

    We’ll have to agree to disagree I don’t think the Marines are of no use at all.

    Even if the sole purpose of the Marines to gather a group of Men who, want to be Marines. A bit of a self selecting group. We need Men like this and a place for them. These type Men make good fighters and in a pinch are good to send somewhere fast where you want action. That they are not given the equipment they need for this function is hardly their fault.

  13. Sam J. says:

    “…that sort of thing can easily be defeated with high-volume fire, which is China’s main strength…”

    It will always be cheaper to fire down than up. Up is expensive.

    A chunk of steel with a computer on the front and a tiny rocket on back makes a fine anti-missile missile. Missiles have to be delicate in order to be fired up rapidly.

    Let’s do some simple math. Say it takes 10 lbs. for an anti-missile missile. So you could substitute 100 of these for every 1000 lb. bomb. That’s a lot of missiles.

    A F-111 can carry 6 1000 lb bombs. So 600 anti-missile missiles.

    F/A-18F Super Hornet ten 1,000lb GBU-32 JDAM

    So 1000 anti-missile missiles.

    I bet they don’t have a 1000 anti-aircraft missiles in inventory.

    https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/11355/this-syria-bound-super-hornet-is-carrying-a-uniquely-massive-bomb-load

    One plan would be to send a remote controlled F-111 with ant-missile missiles and a bunch of HARM missiles or similar aircraft in first. Then follow with stealth.

  14. RLVC says:

    Sam, the trouble is this:

    An airplane or warship (h. “vehicle”) must successfully shoot down every missile ever encountered, of any size, whereas a missile must succeed just once.

    Moreover, under this new missile regime, a vehicle becomes merely a mobile missile silo with marginal strike utility proportional to the negative difference in delivery time with respect to ground- or submarine-based missiles (distance ÷ speed).

    Considering the unbelievable speed of the fastest missiles, this is not very great.

    Which is probably why the Russians’ new missiles piggyback ICBM.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avangard_(hypersonic_glide_vehicle)

    Expect to see more of this — missiles in missiles in missiles, like Russian doll.

    Possibly, missiles in missiles in missiles in missiles in missiles.

    The smallest will be very small.

    They will be capable of targeting individual humans — by the face.

    This is coming.

    You will see.

  15. Unicephalon40D says:

    Sam,

    The Marines haven’t been what you described in a LONG time. Decades! Today, that self-selected group of men is in SOCOM. The Marines have nearly as many retards and women as you’d expect of the regular Army.

    You wildly over-state American industrial capacity. By 2023, how many anti-missile-missiles do you think that Woke America will be able to build? And do you really expect that the Chinese aren’t, right now, building missiles about 20x more cheaply than we are? (If not more cheaply than that.) They’re building them a hell of a lot faster and in greater abundance, too.

    People who want war with China had better pray that it starts very soon. The longer the delay, the better China’s odds of swift victory. And, the longer the delay, the higher the odds that it goes nuclear, to everyone’s great detriment. For who could possibly expect the US to lose gracefully?

  16. Sam J. says:

    RLVC says,”Sam, the trouble is this:

    An airplane or warship (h. “vehicle”) must successfully shoot down every missile ever encountered, of any size, whereas a missile must succeed just once…”

    It’s very clear you are just quibbling. It’s obvious, I pointed it out, that you can have more than one plane and your whole argument rest on the idea that there is only one plane and that the Chinese have so many damn “expensive” missiles that they can afford to cover the whole damn battlefield with them. Just the shear amount of fuel, trucks, etc. to haul all these missiles around makes it improbable. One plane with 1000 anti-missile missiles and one, or more, with bombs should be a good match.

    You even in the same comment enforce my argument. If a ICBM can pick out individual humans as a target by face recognition then surely they can hit a thermally lit up like the sun missile.

    “…ICBM.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avangard_(hypersonic_glide_vehicle)

    They will be capable of targeting individual humans — by the face…”

    It’s a fact of nature that going down a gravity field is much easier than to go up and if missiles can hit airplanes then it’s not any sort of stretch to say anti-missiles can hit missiles. A missile s not any less visually “noisy” than a plane is, less maneuverable and most are really large. Here’s an old one.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ea/Sa6_1.jpg

    The cost to counter a hunk of steel with a ten dollar microcontroller and fins would be astronomical.

  17. Sam J. says:

    Unicephalon40D says,”Sam,

    The Marines haven’t been what you described in a LONG time. Decades!…”

    That’s hardly the Marines fault. My point is the same. Even if greatly reduced this can be changed but the long history of the Marines remains. To throw it away for some new shiny bauble is foolish. I’m not a Marine, have never been and have no relation to Marines I just recognize that they have a long history that can be useful. I mean “The few the proud the SOCOM!”

    Well just take half the resources from SOCOM and give them to the Marines and change their training to go back to what it was before. You could turn the whole thing around in a remarkably small time as their reputation would fit. People would be just living up to that which was.

  18. Sam J. says:

    The link put up by Unicephalon40D

    https://www.overtdefense.com/2020/07/24/raytheon-to-produce-air-launched-anti-missile-missile/

    talks about the program, Pye Wacket, that really got me thinking about this a while ago.

    With these saucer shaped missiles you could install them in a plane in the bomb bay. A launch slot adjacent to the bomb bay could fire them out from the back or front. If you had two cartridges in the bomb bay, one forward one more aft, full of different types of saucer missiles you could load into the launch slot whatever type for whatever mission. Think automated tape drive loading systems.

    One type could be air to ground bombs. Say 25 pound bombs, others air to air, others anti-missile. One saucer could be mated to another, the reason you have two separate cartridges to load into the launching slot, with the head saucer having the computing resources and the lagging part rocket motors. So you could chain rocket motors for range increase. This would be fast to load as it would be in one big removable cartridge. Firing from a slot would help with stealth.

  19. Freddo says:

    I have read suggestions that the attempt to focus the marine corps on hightech wizardry is more of an attempt to create nice consultancy gigs for high ranking officials than increasing the marines capabilities.

    The marine corps in its current form – or even in a future light-weapon form – sounds good to invade and capture port facilities on most of the South American and African coast, probably also much of Asia, as long as Americas carrier force is on hand to guarantee air supremacy. But any suggestions to land on a hostile Chinese coast are laughable. Can’t really judge whether the value of the (realistic) mission profile of the marine corps exceeds its costs.

    IMO an anti-missile-missiles solution suitable to be carried on a fighter airframe is an incredibly hard problem that would probably make people wish they could do something easy like building atom bombs with 1940 technology or a Moon mission with 1960 technology. Look at the performance of Patriot or THAAD which are very large platforms operating vs relatively large and predicatable targets.
    Replacing fighters by stealthy drone platforms sounds easier, but would probably be a no-go for political/policy reasons.

  20. RLVC says:

    Sam, you thoroughly misapprehend my point.

    Let us take your hypothetical missile-bearing airplane as a concrete example. If it is similar to the F-111, it costs $60 million per unit and its maximum speed, range, and altitude are 1,650 mph, 3,690 mi, and 66,000 ft, respectively.

    In contrast, the equally ancient Minuteman-II costs $7 million per unit and has maximum speed, range, and altitude of 2,284 mph, 7,000 mi, and 3,700,000 ft, respectively.

    Most significantly, you will notice the profound altitudinal difference. The missile is “firing down”. (Missiles in missiles in missiles…)

    And if you are willing to spend more, you can go much, much faster. For $50 million, Elon Musk will put 25 tons — i.e., about a dozen — of your favorite hypersonic glide vehicles into orbit.

    Orbit is the ultimate high ground.

    He who controls orbit will control the world.

  21. Sam J. says:

    “…IMO an anti-missile-missiles solution suitable to be carried on a fighter airframe is an incredibly hard problem that would probably make people wish they could do something easy like building atom bombs with 1940 technology or a Moon mission with 1960 technology…”

    I really don’t get this at all. How are they going to hide the vast amount of heat a rocket motor puts out to propel the rocket upwards? Please explain.

    Here’s a PIR that can sense the heat of a human from 20 meters or so for a pack of 5 for less than $10. I’m certainly not saying use these but even regular video camera CCD sensors can see infrared.

    https://www.amazon.com/DIYmall-HC-SR501-Motion-Infrared-Arduino/dp/B012ZZ4LPM/ref=pd_sbs_147_2/134-1578446-3203026?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B012ZZ4LPM&pd_rd_r=1f7ac409-f55a-4197-8b78-88880051a678&pd_rd_w=ZvSqN&pd_rd_wg=qBCvD&pf_rd_p=bdc67ba8-ab69-42ee-b8d8-8f5336b36a83&pf_rd_r=KKR43JM43FYRCHX2MF4Z&psc=1&refRID=KKR43JM43FYRCHX2MF4Z

    How are you going to hide the heat of this massive rocket?

    This seems much along the lines of RLVC criticisms where I say the attackers can carry 1000 anti-missile missiles on one airplane and he(“the magic happens here”) says I can only have one plane but the Chinese can have some ungodly infinite amount of missiles.

    “where would we build them.”

    Look here,

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

    I see with a quick count 68 semi-conductor manufacturing sites in the USA. Look for yourself.

    For some reason you people think everything the Chinese do is some sort of magic bullet but anything the US does is fraught with some sort of mindless peril and stupidity.

    If your going to criticize my ideas at least make some sort of rational effort.

    Explain exactly how you are going to hide the heat of a huge missile? I looked at a S-300 and it weighs at least 3,000 lbs. so it has at least 10,000 lb. thrust. That’s a hell of a lot of heat. How are you going to hide it?

  22. Freddo says:

    You won’t hear me claiming that the Chinese are very innovative, but the Wests focus on diversity is not helping things either.

    I foresee a lot of issues for the sensors. Clouds, snow and rain do a lot to hide heat signatures, esp. for missiles closing in at around 2 km/s. So thermal homing is out unless we expand the old adage to “don’t invade Russia or China in the winter”.
    Ground based missile systems can be supported by ground based radar guidance. The missile defense system not so much; the phased array radar of the fighter is largely forward looking.

    So we are looking for a 25 pound missile that can be launched/ejected from the airframe, acquire a target moving in at 2km/s, re-orient itself, accelerate on an intercept course, and then successfully engage that missile. Pretty nifty technology.

    You know what, I’m just going to load a stack of those wonder missiles on my ground launched missile and MIRV out when the fighter plane gets in the engagement range of those wonder missiles.

  23. Unicephalon40D says:

    “I see with a quick count 68 semi-conductor manufacturing sites in the USA.”

    What do you make of this?

    https://asiatimes.com/2020/07/intel-is-making-a-mockery-of-reshoring/

    “Intel’s chief executive Bob Swan yesterday told industry analysts that the former industry leader in chip manufacturing might quit the fabrication business altogether, outsourcing its designs to Taiwan or South Korea instead. The company’s shock announcement called into question US efforts to return critical manufacturing capacity to the United States, and came despite semiconductor industry lobbying to secure federal subsidies for chip production in the United States. Semiconductors are the building blocks of the digital economy, and America’s inability to slow the decline of onshore chip fabrication is a strategic liability of the highest order.

    “Swan’s demurral followed the announcement that Intel’s efforts to produce state-of-the-art 7-nanometer chips had hit a delay of one to two years. By that time Taiwan Semiconductor and Samsung will be fabricating 5-nanometer chips, with much higher transistor density and lower energy use. Intel’s 10-nanometer technology has just come into production, three years after target, and is already obsolete. Once the industry leader, Intel lacks the engineering expertise to stay ahead of Asian competition.”

    I honestly just don’t think that Woke America has the industrial capacity to fight a real war. Too reliant on imports. Supply chains too fragile.

  24. Sam J. says:

    Freddo,”What do you make of this?

    “Intel’s chief executive Bob Swan yesterday told industry analysts that the former industry leader in chip manufacturing might quit the fabrication business altogether…”

    I see it as an example of you trying to sidestep the fact that I easily found 68 semi-conductor manufacturing sites in the USA.

    I also see it, surprised you can’t see this, as an effort for Intel to get more subsidies.

    Since we’re playing the game this way I’ll try your approach.

    Corona starting in China means it will mutate there and all of them will die so we don’t need to fight them at all.

    Freddo says,”…I foresee a lot of issues for the sensors. Clouds, snow and rain do a lot to hide heat signatures, esp. for missiles…”

    Fair enough but microwave is shrinking also.

    See

    RCWL-0516 Microwave Radar Sensor

    https://www.newegg.com/p/295-0026-001J9?Item=9SIA7BF99V1032&nm_mc=KNC-MSNSearch&cm_mmc=KNC-MSNSearch-_-Server%20-%20Accessories-_-elekool-_-9SIA7BF99V1032&source=region&msclkid=3bfe60f63597125cb6a93fe89ee68185&gclid=CMiT5OCb7eoCFUwUgQodM-AHDw&gclsrc=ds

    .80 cents a piece and MIRV or not it’s still much easier to shoot down than up.

    You’re still missing the big picture that firing down from a plane is a lot cheaper than firing huge anti-aircraft missiles due to advances in electronics. If the US wanted to save money and go with just thermal they could and just wait until the weather clears.

    You know castles were all the rage until…gunpowder. Things change.

    RLVC says,”…

    Orbit is the ultimate high ground.

    He who controls orbit will control the world…”

    Hey I said that first. I said it earlier but this is the earliest I saved the site I said it on

    https://www.unz.com/article/can-china-and-russia-squeeze-washington-out-of-eurasia/#comment-730922

    “..Sam, you thoroughly misapprehend my point…”

    NO because it wasn’t clear. You didn’t make it very clear as we were talking about a different subject. Planes vs. anti-aircraft missiles.

    “…F-111, it costs $60 million… Minuteman-II costs $7 million…”

    A F-111 is reusable. Missiles are not so cost could become an issue. Haven’t you been paying attention to what Musk is trying to do??? Reusing rockets. Lower cost. Let’s use your example and my earlier 10 lb. anti-missile missile. One plane with 1,000 anti-missile missiles and one plane with 10 10000 lb. bombs. So $120 million.

    Same payload, Minuteman II carries W59 nuke @ 550 pounds so $127 million and you can only use it once. Actually the numbers are much worse as a lot of the war head will be heat shield.

    You also left out cruise missiles and let’s not forget that firing ICBM’s at people could possibly make them think that it’s nuclear weapons and that could be a BIG problem.

  25. RLVC says:

    Sam,

    “The RLVC criticisms” are that the principle advantage you attribute to the missile-bearing airplane is in fact held by the missile-bearing missile, and, in this case, by a factor of fifty-six.

    Presumably, the image in your mind is that of a missile exiting a silo, flying vertically upwards a few tens of thousands of feet, and impacting an airplane, like flak from old WWII footage.

    In fact, you should imagine the missile exiting the silo, traveling upwards a few hundreds of thousands of feet before gradually arcing and disappearing over the horizon… then it flies a few thousand miles to its target and, on the way, drops off a few zero-emissions hypersonic glide missiles. (Missiles in missiles in missiles…)

    If the target is an airplane and the airplane and missile are both as previously described, the “main” rocket needn’t come within 3,634,000 feet — it will fly by sixty-nine miles directly above the airplane a few minutes after it has dropped its minimally guided payload on an intercepting trajectory. After all, the airplane’s operational altitude is 2% of the missile’s.

    So the anti-aircraft missiles will come from above.

    They will come from above, at Mach 25.

    The Russians claim that their gliders will travel at a speed of 19,000 mph. We are not talking about “astronomical” velocities here, but it is worth mentioning that velocity, not mass, is the dominant factor in the inertia of a moving body: an ordinary bullet accelerated to a sufficiently large fraction of c could wipe out Earth like grapeshot meeting a watermelon.

    Did Robert Oppenheimer, the self-proclaimed reinventer of nuclear devices, know about the meltglass and nanodiamonds at YDB?

    P.S. Internet casuals probably radically underestimate the separateness of the NatSec supply chain.

  26. Freddo says:

    The only thing missing from Intels announcement is how proud they are of getting rid of the toxic white engineering culture, and that management is confident that further diversity improvements will require Intel to also outsource its chip design division.

  27. Sam J. says:

    RLVC says,”…few thousand miles to its target and, on the way, drops off a few zero-emissions hypersonic glide missiles…So the anti-aircraft missiles will come from above.

    They will come from above, at Mach 25..”

    I have been accused of technological optimism but this takes the cake. Firing hypersonic missiles thousands of miles and hitting airplanes???

    First there is NO SUCH THING as non emitting hypersonic missiles. They are very hot. Very. Here’s a few links on the heating effects. This guys site is great.

    https://exrocketman.blogspot.com/2017/06/shock-impingement-heating-is-very.html

    https://exrocketman.blogspot.com/2017/07/heat-protection-is-key-to-hypersonic.html

    https://exrocketman.blogspot.com/2019/01/thermal-protection-trends-for-high.html

    Your going to have a hell of a time hitting a plane with hypersonic missiles.

    Also the tech you are referring to is well outside of what I’m talking about as the original article was on the marine corp. I was talking about Marine corp type equipment not the space force.

    Freddo says,”The only thing missing from Intels announcement is how proud they are of getting rid of the toxic white engineering culture…”

    Sigh. I agree with this. The people running our corporations (the Jews) are pieces of shit who want nothing but spreadsheet managers. They have no vision but the cheapest price. Asians are acting much as we did many years ago building their own civilization with vertical integration. I would be agreeable to a law passed that says that if a company uses any engineering or product built that they import that means the maximum CEO pay can only be 20 times the median employee pay at their company including contract and temporary employees. This would concentrate their minds a little. If they don’t want to raise wages or manufacture here then they can give their profits to the shareholders. If they make it all in the US then they could be paid whatever they wish. This would also include capital controls on banks funding any overseas manufacturing not related to raw materials. And yes it would be a nightmare but maybe drastic measures are called for. The Japanese managers are paid much like this but are afforded status in exchange.

    Maybe there are other alternatives but what I suggested gets right to the heart of the matter without tariffs. It puts the CEO’s in the same boat as the workers.

  28. RLVC says:

    Sam, have you noticed how I keep bringing up—

    (Missiles in missiles in missiles…)?

    Did you notice how I very explicitly explained that velocity is the dominant factor in the inertia (or kinetic energy) of a moving body?

    Two tons of mass to snipe forty tons is insane overkill. The Russians won’t be wasting their hypergliders on aircraft.

    In the future, there will probably be a role for unmanned aircraft as autonomously patrolling missile silos… but the aircraft will not be establishing or maintaining air supremacy, they will be sniping insurgents on the ground.

    Like Persian generals, you know.

    So I guess it really is the future.

    The question you have to ask yourself is this:

    Am I ready for off-world vehicles not made on this Earth?

  29. RLVC says:

    x86 is toast and everyone knows it.

    Sorry, nerds.

    If only Intel had taken more RISCs.

  30. Sam J. says:

    RLVC says,”…Did you notice how I very explicitly explained that velocity is the dominant factor in the inertia (or kinetic energy) of a moving body?…”

    It’s not like everyone here doesn’t already know this but there are big problems with speed. Seeing through the plasma in front of the missile being one of them. There are many others. If we’re just obsessed with kinetic energy better to go slower and then fire off shaped charges when near. LOTS OF SPEED and you don’t have to burn so much fuel. There was a anti-tank weapon that did this. Can’t remember the name.

    RLVC says,”…Am I ready for off-world vehicles not made on this Earth?”

    Here we go with the latest round of Jew propaganda. Aliens!

    There’s no doubt in my mind that we can make some sort of inertia drive that does not expel matter like a rocket but it’s too classified to actually use it until…doomsday or the Jews start losing.

    Now the idea that ALIENS! have the tech to come all the way from other stars but they are so stupid that the Air Force can shoot them down or that radar make them go haywire and they crash land in some corn field is THE DUMBEST THING EVER. Any damn fool can see aliens with the sort of tech to go star hopping would have some serious nano-tech where they could make probes tiny and most likely damn near invisible so that they could study us in any sort of detail they could possibly want without crashing in corn fields and being captured by the Army or whoever.

    This means the whole thing is a big psy-ops full of bullshit of the biggest quantity ever. Ever.

    Just how long have we had genetic engineering and what could have been engineered by ruthless psychopathic assholes by this time? So even if some humanoid looking alien lands in a anti-gravity ship in Washington DC I will immediately know it’s all a big ass lie. My advice to anyone who sees aliens is to attack them immediately as they are up to no good and are not really aliens.

  31. Sam J. says:

    RLVC says,”…x86 is toast and everyone knows it.”

    x86 is RISC internally or so I’ve been told. Intel is screwing up.

    Brian Matthew Krzanich CEO,”…In January 2015, he announced Intel’s $300 million Diversity in Technology initiative to support the company’s goal to achieve full representation of women and underrepresented minorities in Intel’s U.S. workforce by 2020, and accelerate diversity and inclusion across the technology industry at large…”

    There you go.

  32. RLVC says:

    Maybe there’s a reason, but I don’t see why the “parent” missiles can’t guide their “children”. Or some other such arrangement. Ask a rocket scientist. What’s obvious is the inevitability of total missile air supremacy.

    x86, or so I’ve been told, is an archaic monstrosity of cruft upon cruft upon cruft, infinitely layered. Casual sources call it CISC and lay the blame of its accumulating failures at the feet of its prohibitive complexity, thermal scaling problems, and wreckers.

    The thing about the ayyys is that it has been 75 years and the story has been essentially consistent the whole time. Think of how much everything else has changed — everything. The commons technology, economy, culture, and even to a significant extent the biological people themselves are radically altered… to the point that it almost qualifies as in situ replacement.

    Hell, the mass historical understanding of WWII is completely different.

    But the ayyy story… just the same.

    That’s why I’m calling it now:

    The ayyys recovered at Roswell were newlyweds on their honeymoon, out for a pleasure cruise around the galaxy.

  33. Harry Jones says:

    The 80386 was a breakthrough at the time. But the world moves on.

    I don’t miss floppies, not even a little bit. Or CRT screens. I don’t expect I’ll miss hard drives much.

  34. Dave says:

    “Orbit is the ultimate high ground. He who controls orbit will control the world.”

    The problem with orbit is that it takes a lot of energy to attain, and once there, the enemy can see you and plot your path weeks in advance. It also takes a great deal of energy to drop a projectile on a target that is not directly under your orbital track.

    Far better to have ICBMs that can hit any location on Earth in 20 minutes, but they have to be mobile and concealed (e.g. submarines) or they’re sitting ducks.

    Modern warfare is all offense, no defense. Anything the enemy knows the exact location of will be destroyed in minutes.

  35. Harry Jones says:

    Dave, what bothers me about ICBMs is they can be shot down with lasers… from orbit. Never mind the orbital track. If the orbit’s high enough and you have enough satellites, that’s a non-issue.

    Puncture the rocket during the boost phase. If that fails, ablate the heat shield while it’s ballistic.

  36. Sam J. says:

    Harry Jones says,”…what bothers me about ICBMs is they can be shot down with lasers…”

    I bet for the foreseeable future you would be better off with some sort of kinetic kill. Remember “brilliant pebbles”? Lasers get too damn hot and there’s no way to bleed the heat easily in Space. Of course covering low earth orbit with either would be very aggressive. Might trigger a response that no one would like.

  37. Gavin Longmuir says:

    Back to the main issue: Under what circumstances would the US consider getting into a shooting war with its essential supplier China?

    Wretchard (Richard Fernandez) once shared the beginning of a novel he was thinking about. The story went roughly that China’s navy was acting provocatively around some islands claimed by the Philippines, resulting in the deaths of some Filipinos. The Philippines Air Force responded and with an unexpected/unintended lucky shot sank the Chinese aircraft carrier. China replied by nuking Manila.

    Take that scenario. Would the US respond militarily against China? My guess is — No! Certainly not under a President Biden, and Chinese-controlled Nancy Pelosi would anyway immediately cut off funding for the US military. Substitute Tokyo or Taipei and the answer would be the same — no US military response. Strongly worded diplomatic letter in French — for sure!

    Realistically, the US is not going to get into a shooting war with China, unless China did something really stupid directly against the US, like sink a US aircraft carrier. That would probably rapidly lead to a general nuclear exchange, which would be unfortunate and would not serve anyone’s interests.

    Focusing the Marines on contested landings in China is beyond dumb.

  38. RLVC says:

    “Under what circumstances would the US consider getting into a shooting war with its essential supplier China?”

    Wars don’t start because someone accidentally sneezed.

    They start because of long-term, well-understood, vital interests.

    The future of humanity hangs in the balance.

    Four years.

    Any.

  39. Gavin Longmuir says:

    RLVC: “Wars don’t start because someone accidentally sneezed.”

    See “Franz Ferdinand”.

  40. RLVC says:

    Some have speculated that the Great War was merely an aftershock of the establishment of the Federal Reserve in America.

    Fortunately for everyone, war changes the conversation.

    Long live the Federal Reserve.

  41. Harry Jones says:

    Gavin and RLVC: there are proximate causes and there are root causes, and lots of confusion about both.

    The US got into World War I against the express wishes of its political establishment. This happens sometimes in a democracy. If China invades Taiwan, how will the American voters respond?

    Also, is it over in Hong Kong?

    The surest way to lose a war is to surrender.

  42. Sam J. says:

    Dave says,”…The problem with orbit is that it takes a lot of energy to attain…”

    The energy to reach orbit is the same as a flight from Los Angles to Australia.

    “…It also takes a great deal of energy to drop a projectile on a target that is not directly under your orbital track…”

    Lifting bodies. We have lots of data on this.

    “…Far better to have ICBMs that can hit any location on Earth in 20 minutes, but they have to be mobile and concealed (e.g. submarines) or they’re sitting ducks…”

    Not a bad idea and they could be put in regular truck trailers like those all over the US in the millions if we had a gnome.

    https://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/russia/gnome.htm

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