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The U.S. Military is Unequipped for High-Intensity Combat
(nationalinterest.org)
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this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2023
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I highly doubt this. This is just an excuse to demand more funding for arms manufacturers.
The fact that making a profit is the main objective of arms manufactures is precisely why US military is ill equipped for high intensity combat. US arms manufacturers have incentive to produce expensive weapons that take a long time to manufacture and repair because that results in more funds being allocated to them. They also have an incentive to produce weapons in small volumes because the less they actually produce the lower their costs are.
Meanwhile, high intensity combat the kind of which we're seeing in Ukraine requires cheap weapons that are simple and reliable, and the ability to produce these weapons rapidly. This is basically the opposite of what US military industrial complex focuses on.
didn't the wehrmacht suffer from overly-engineered equipment that required maintenance and expertise to keep running?
They sure did, and then these same people went to US to design their weapons.
Their "indestructible" Tiger tank was famous for breaking the transmission all the time and being a pain to repair.
Soviet tanks were easy to fix.
USA itself also had that lesson once in the WW2, notice how (for famous example) submachine guns in the USA came from the original chicago piano to much simpler M1 and even that was too complicated so M3 was made. And even for the things that get more complicated like ships or planes, design and especially production was streamlined greatly, like building the 2700 liberty class vessels of which single ship took a month to build or 175 fletcher class destroyers. And note neither of those examples were really crap all served for decades after war.
USA weapon industry now is like gutter corner of Ferdinand Porsche brain, but greedier.