Even worse, apparently only a single base had all the supplies for it. That was a single point of failure that, when struck, caused the failure of the entire supply mission.
You’d think the Navy would be a little better prepared. Here I thought redundancy was an important part of military conduct and operations.
Prior to this clown show, the Navy was. Logistics has been THE biggest thing about the US military that has set it apart from the rest of the world, for the last 80+ years.
That’s gone down the shitter with these buffoons in charge. That’s what happens when you put an alcoholic TV host in charge of the military.
What’s the quote? Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics?
There’s that one and “Tactics win battles, logistics wins wars”.
As long as you keep people fed, clothed and moderately comfortable, they’ll fight anyone, anywhere for you.
The US military as a whole was basically a logistics company that shot people. That was the main thing that kept the United States such a high rate military power.
Then they replaced a General who understood that with a Former Major who thinks the Army runs on testosterone and crusader rhetoric and now everyone’s surprised everything has gone to shit?
Yeah, the logistics behind the military were honestly staggering. There was an old joke about how the US military could get a fully operational (built, supplied, and staffed with trained crew) McDonalds anywhere in the planet within 48 hours. Except that it wasn’t really a joke. If the military wanted to, they probably could.
The sheer scale behind the military’s logistics was so vast that people have trouble comprehending it. The same way people have trouble wrapping their mind around how big a billion of something is. Conceptually they may know how big it is, but actually putting it into practice is too large for any one person to truly comprehend. It’s the old “a million seconds is 11 days, a billion seconds is almost 32 years” problem, where the human brain simply isn’t designed to comprehend the sheer scale of something that large in a realistic way. Every comparison we make ends up with people devolving back into concepts in order to keep track of it in their mind.
And we’ve seen all of it begin to unravel in only a few years, because the POTUS has surrounded himself by Yes Men instead of competent leaders. It’s the same way so many despots and dictators have historically been brought low… They surround themselves in Yes Men, and nobody wants to be the one to break the bad news. So the leader is kept blissfully ignorant, while everything crumbles around them. And then they’re shocked when they have angry mobs and/or a coup d’état.
It wasn’t a joke. During the initial invasion of Afghanistan, one of the first pieces of infrastructure was a self-contained Burger King truck. Airdropped in on a C-130.
Even way back, one of the biggest things during the Pacific Theater in WWII was the fact that the US had three ships dedicated just to transporting frozen and refrigerated foods, so that the troops had fresh food. The ships colloquially became known as ice cream barges because they had the capability to make a ton of ice cream. The Americans in the Pacific were eating fresh meat and ice cream, while the Japanese soldiers were eating shitty rations. It was a major morale killer for the Imperial Japanese.
Dammit, you dropped the two pieces of trivia I wanted to! hehe
The only other one I can think of is also from WWII, where the Germans became aware that Americans were sending things like birthday cakes to their soldiers - that would arrive before spoiling, indicating how good the supply chain was, and no only for weapons, but enough room for personal items like that.
Yeah that was a huge part of it.
What modern Republicans would call a “waste” was a major form of power projection.
It was a signal. “We are so strong that we can send our troops shit like cake to keep them happy and fed. You’re eating slop and wearing torn boots. We’ve already won.”
Not only did it boost American troops morale, but it crushed the enemy morale.
An enemy that feels they’ve already lost because of the massive machine coming towards them is easier to beat than a motivated enemy that can smell the incompetence from a mile away.
It’s like the old anecdote about Kruschev seeing full grocery stores and realizing how far the US was ahead.
Now we know the food was full of HFCS and slowly killing the people. All those regime changes that are necessary for the bases around the globe are likewise a hidden dept.
You lot sound dissapointed that us troups have low moral and don’t have ice cream 🤔
I never joined the military and I can acquire iced sweets anytime I want
When did they airdrop one? Only picture I can find is one rolling off the back of a landed C-17. Airdropping stuff is far more fun.
I’m not trying to be overly pedantic but we deploy Burger Kings from. AC-130s. Not Mc trash
(We actually do use C-17 Globemaster III cargo planes to deliver containerized burger kings though)
From a C-130 perhaps although I think it was a C-17, not an AC-130
And we’ve seen all of it begin to unravel in only a few years, because the POTUS has surrounded himself by Yes Men instead of competent leaders.
POTUS can be impeached. The problem is either much bigger or it’s a ploy.
Do you really think he’s going to be impeached?
I don’t quite understand this conversation.
Like, he already has been impeached, right? Wasn’t it twice, even?
And it had the effect of splashing him with a little bit of water - oh boy he sure was a bit annoyed! Now that you two are discussing if he’s gonna be splashed with a little bit of water AGAIN, I have to ask - even if it’s trump, don’t y’all think that’s a bit cruel?
I would put an /s, but I’m a bit lost if this even is sarcasm, but let me make clear it’s in jest and not mean spirited :D
No. I think the elite is using Trump to manage the public discourse.
It’s all been propaganda lies. The whole time. The US military has lost every single engagement since world war 2. Every single one.
Panama? Granada?!?
Sorry, just… no.
Arguably won the first Iraq war, the one where there were clear goals that were achieved, and did not turn into a prolonged quagmire.
I suppose you could argue that it was just a setup for the second Iraq war, but that setup was also a bunch of lies.
The US military base in Bahrain was there for much longer than the administration. While it may have been sufficient for operations in Iraq, it makes absolutely no sense to supply an aircraft carrier operating outside the Persian Gulf from within the Persian Gulf… I don’t understand how any planners thought this made sense. They knew Iran could shut off or severely endanger passage of the Hormuz straight.
How could the base resupply the Lincoln even if it wasn’t destroyed? Did the US really have no logistical capabilities in the Arabian Sea? They have facilities in Djibouti and Oman.
I think we are letting Hegseth’s stupidity take the fall for a clear diplomatic or military planning failure.
They knew Bahrain was a problem and therefore moved operations to Diego Garcia, which is further away. Djibouti can be hit from Yemen, where the Iranian allied Houthis are after all. However then Diego Garcia was hit as well. They did not destroy too much, but the Navy moved logistics further away. However that would have pulled Lincoln out of combat range. Otherwise it would have to stay in place in range of Iranian missiles. Iran hitting an aircraft carrier would have been a massive issue.
So apparently they believed it was smarter to keep it in the fight, since Trump was going to end the war in a few days anyway since a few months now.
This is why the US used to avoid going to war with Iran. They knew it would turn into a shit show.
So apparently they believed it was smarter to keep it in the fight
They have 11 carriers in service and no other active war. West Coast to the gulf takes 40 days. Why not exchange the carrier?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_carriers_of_the_United_States_Navy
They do with George Washington coming from Japan to replace Lincoln. Bush has done the same for Ford. Nimitz is currently sailing around the Americas as a sort of good bye journey, as she will be replaced by Kennedy soon.
The rest is training or being maintained. Generally speaking warhsips are often ordered in multiples of three. One training, one being maintained and one deployed.
You’re right, it’s not Hegseths fault. It’s his fault + all the Republicans enabling the destruction of america + all of the dumbest people in charge, who’s only qualifying feature is making Trump richer.
I agree that it’s a fault with the process of military planning.
However, keep in mind that fascists etc. has the kind of leadership to ignore experts’ advice, an even override their existing processes.
So while we don’t actually know what exactly happened behind the scenes, it’s not unlikely that Hegseth had, metaphorically, a team of military experts telling him not to charge straight into the front of the machine gun positions, but he still told them to do it “for glory”. Or that this happened at a lower level, by “leaders” with the same mindset, that he put there.
That’s the thing. We have a base in Djibouti.
It’s a little farther and would have taken some of the focus off of AFRICOM, but would have been a regional base outside of Iran’s capability.
And Houthis are just across the strait. Seemingly whole thing depended on USA being undisputed top dog.
US military logistics cannot be dismantled in 10 months by political appointees. It’s literally designed with a chain of command to prevent that, and it’s certainly not because of budget either. The reality is that the US military has been a paper tiger only capable of fighting shepherds, poor people, school children, hospitals, and babies. The minute they try to fight anyone with a decent capability, they fall apart. And Iran is probably the most capable adversary the US has fought since the Third Reich.
Yes it absolutely can be.
A, he has fired over 100 senior officers in the chain of command with little to no notice or turnover and promoted up sycophants with no experience and the only requirement is pledging fealty to the king. My father-in-law was a logistics officer in the Marines. When he retired a decade ago, it was required that he have a full two-year turnover with the incoming officer to cover all of the logistical details for the MEF. They flat out wouldn’t approve his retirement with less notice than that. When the Log-O in my unit got their promotion notice, it was over a year before they pinned and moved to their next command because of the amount of turnover needed. And this was just battalion level. Under this idiot, turnover is a few weeks. If that.
B, we are 19 months into this shit show. Not 10. And that ignores the 4 years of damage he did his first term that can’t be undone. You can’t fire officers and senior enlisted with 20+ years of experience and replace them with new ones in 4 years. The linear passage of time just doesn’t work like that.
Efficient logistics is the first thing to go with incompetent leadership. It’s the single most important and fragile piece of the military. And it’s seen not just in the military, but in the commercial side as well. Bad top-down leadership is the quickest way to destroy an organization.
Fair enough. I just didn’t think the military was so fragile that a single election could turn it from the world police into the keystone kops.
Entropy, my guy. It applies to everything, not just physics. Breaking things is and always will be vastly easier than building them up.
Maybe people engaging in such bravado laden claims without knowing the reality along with anyone reading this who didn’t know beforehand how fragile complex systems can be, even the US military - maybe everyone will think twice before letting a corrupt evil moron get elected just to “shake things up”.
Failure of the entire system is almost always is always at critical bottlenecks. Avoiding these bottlenecks is a key component of military and economic competency.
The U.S. military and economy has been declining for decades. Why? Consolidation of companies into mega-corporations. Less competition = more cost for less results. Less players also means more potential bottlenecks in the system.
It’s been being held together by a shoestring for decades now. It’s getting more and more unstable as time goes by. This is where gross incompetence at the leadership level can sink not just an industry but an entire nation.
It’s getting more and more unstable as time goes by.
Could it be that they are preparing for privatization and to outsource logistics to Amazon?
Thanks for the detailed explanation.
I feel like this applies to a lot of places, and I can draw parallels to prior workplaces where things were going downhill. If you don’t give your people what they need to do the job… It does not get done.
It applies to every interaction between two or more human beings.
This is precisely why in the anarchist world, the emphasis on positions of responsibility (as opposed to positions of power within a standard hierarchy) are so goddamn important and the one of the most misunderstood tenets.
You cannot perform long term planning without a long term view, and you cannot achieve a long term view, without looking from the needed vantage point for a long time.
Damn, I wish more people understood this.
So many people are short sighted.
Good write up. I assume corruption and theft are also taking a toll on the supply chain.
I really think the jagoffs in charge thought this would be just like the Venezuela situation where they could instantly topple the government and then run Iran like a client state.
I’m sure the original navy would have been, but they fired everyone and replaced them with yes men.
men he can get his hand on thier testosterone results.
We’re certainly paying for redundancy. If we’re not getting it then we should halve the budget.
It’s a good thing that the rape and murder filled terrorists are incompetent.
It’s quite something seeing one of the most powerful logistic operations in human history get run into the ground by idiots who think logistics is woke dei
turns out getting a tv presenter to run your military isn’t the master plan we all thought it was
I wonder if the teams behind games like Civilization are taking notes on all this. I like to imagine some of these headlines were tossed around in board meetings a decade+ ago, and turned down cause they were “too outlandish, no one would actually do” them
This already happens in civ. Its the I forgot to upgrade this unit problem.
I play Total War 3 Kingdoms and this is very much a problem. Managing supplies is so important for sieges. Sometimes you have to have a relief army for prolonged ones. If we knew we didn’t have enough apples in that region did they set up anything or did they bank on Iran rolling over?
With Ghandi going nuclear at every chance, I think they totally knew.
(Might be something everyone knows) The Nuclear Ghandi thing was a unsigned integer issue. His “war mongering” value reached zero, and lowering once more made it wrap around to max value and turn him into a lunatic.
This is probably one of the most shared pieces game lore, but it isn’t actually true! Sid Meier himself explained in his memoirs.
Civ 1 only has three aggresion levels, and Gandhi always stayed at the lowest one, like many others leaders. A programmer might have to correct me here, but the language the game was written in © doesn’t even have unsigned integers by default.
The myth probably spread out because it’s a fun story, and being nuked by Gandhi is just a funny memorable thing that stuck with people. I haven’t verified this, but he also has the Scientific trait, which means he’s likely to reach the nuclear tech before other Civs.
Seem that you are indeed right! Thanks for clearing that up!
To quote the relevant parts:
… It’s the fact that none of it is true. The overflow error never happened at all. It is true that Gandhi would—eventually—use nukes when India was at war, just like any civilization in the game, and at the time this did strike a lot of players as odd. […] Since all leaders used the same basic diplomacy script […] But at no point did a democratic score change, or any value approaching 255, come into it. That kind of bug comes from something called unsigned characters, which are […] not something I used for the leader traits. Brian Reynolds wrote Civ II in C++, and he didn’t use them, either. […] Gandhi’s military aggressiveness score remained at 1 throughout the game. […]
Pretty sure C has had unsigned ints from the start, but who knows what data type they actually used. It was the 90s so using small data types where possible was common, aggression could’ve been a short, a char, etc. Also I think C programmers like using enums and that’s a valid use case for enum (low, med, high)
Does it assume int is signed if you don’t specify?
In c or c++ 'int" is signed.
This phenomenon is called integer overflow.
Underflow, but close enough
I don’t think it’s wrong to call it integer overflow, as that covers wrap around in either direction. I don’t think there is any mention of “integer underflow” in any IEEE standard.
There is however mention of arithmetic underflow, but that relates to a precision issue with floating point numbers, and not negative wrap around. (See IEEE 754).
It’s still understood what one might mean by integer underflow. But if anything, I’d say it’s a further specification of a type of integer overflow, and certainly not a necessary distinction.
He has redundancy of course, plan B (Bacardi), plan C (Captain Morgan)…
D: Daiquiri
E: Ever-clear
F: Fireball
G: Goldschläger
H: High Noon
J: Jägermeister
K: Karkov
L: Light Beer
M: Midori
N: Negroni
Honestly I thought he just forgot
Alcoholic blackout, no less
he has a glamour room in the pentagon all to himself, and strapping men where he tests thier testosterone levels.
He tests their testosterone levels by cupping their balls, and feeling their weight. RFK Jr. taught them how to do it, he’s been doing it for years. They had a late night session in the Oval Office, where they all practiced it on each other. Stephen “PeeWee Himmler” Miller had the smallest balls, tiny really, and he cried when they all made fun of his mini pee pee. Good times, good times…
Just forgot he could airdrop supplies instead?
The GoT season 8 Daenarys approach to warfare
Backup excuses:
“This is the War Department not the Supplies Department.”
“We had to avert a potentially disastrous Liberal Media panic.”
“Hey, look over there - illegal Mexicans!”This is so stupid. This fucking guy never should have been anywhere near in charge. Cant someone convince him to get in a shoddy submarine near the titantic?
if you seen his military career, he was f-up. apparently as a infantry officer he was suppose to go to ranger school in order to train for command positions if they wanted to advanced thier careers, his own command doesnt trust him and deemed him a threat.
Holy shit. This somehow explains so much.
So he listed the base locations in group chat that included Iran?
Probably.
Weird that your adversaries would know to do this after letting our adversaries access your top secret files
Iran didn’t have to pull any secret intelligence here. The bases where always sitting ducks. Hegseth’s biggest mistake was falling for the propaganda. The modern US military is a decorative facade set up to enrich contractors and keep otherwise troublesome youth’s off the streets, under no circumstances should it ever be used to fight wars.
And I don’t doubt that the USA could spin themselves up as the most powerful military force again, really quickly… But they haven’t. They are engaging in an arms length war with the attitude of “everything is fine, nothing has changed”
In order to do that you have to have the ability to manufacture your weapons entirely at home, at scale. We dont just not do that, we actively made it bureacratically impossible to do in order to allow a small group of very wealthy businesses have exclusive manufacuring rights to thse very advanced weapon systems. Hell some of our best most powerful weapons are a subscription service.
russia and china both provided intelligence to iran, also allowed them access to spy satellite data.
It’s almost like he was picked for his lack of experience and low self-esteem. Bye america, it was a good run (although there is still time, but still not much serious movement).
Bye america, it was a good run
Was it though?
I guess it depends on what we’re rating.
For rich white christian men who owned land and slaves it was good. For everyone else, we got fucked over.
Just watch Hegseth preen and pour for the camera and it’s pretty clear he belongs as an idol singer or stripper.
How is this something he can cause by “hiding a fact”? Does it take Trump’s signature to resupply that ship?
they arnt reporitng all those bases that are destroyed, its a bad look on republican supporters, and would be “future cannon fodder”.
Critical support.
Does this guy push testosterone because he’s a big enough pussy that he’s afraid to tell the people that a base got destroyed?
