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[–] 13 points 2 weeks ago

When a metric becomes a goal.

Kegseth: "well how many missiles have you fired?"

General: "at Iran, sir?"

Kegsbreath: "spare me your womenly technobable soldier, just answer the question"

General: "1800, sir. About 19 years worth, sir."

K: "good, that sound like a lot."

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  • [–] 11 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    When the depth of their incompetence becomes more apparent over the coming years, people will not be able to believe it.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 weeks ago (6 children)

    Cost of a PAC-3/MSE is $4-5M, let's go with $4.5M * 1800 = $8,100,000,000 in defensive missiles alone.

    And the future ones will probably cost more because China has been lowering it's exports of rare earths

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago*

    In the interest of being factual I have to point out that it's not quite that bad. You're quoting the export price, but the US Military gets them for closer to $1M per because they funded the development of the system and have ongoing contracts for delivery.

    Still not great when you're spending a million a shot to intercept $20,000 dollar drones.

    The bigger issue though is production capacity. Raytheon can't just magically quadruple their output overnight. Patriot is an extremely complex device that requires skilled personnel and complex tooling to manufacture, as well as a LOT of safety procedures (it is a missile after all), in addition to the rare earth requirements you noted. Even if the US offers to start buying them at export price Raytheon can't just make that production capacity appear out of nowhere. And in order for them to scale up capacity they're going to want guarantees of ongoing purchases so that they don't just do a bunch of capex to meet a short term need.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 weeks ago (4 children)

    This is why maybe you don't want a publicly traded military industrial complex beholden only to shareholders; you end up with an expensive system that doesn't win wars and a systematically impoverished country that needs war to sustain itself.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 weeks ago (3 children)

    In all fairness to Raytheon, Patriot is incredibly good at what it does. The problem isn't the platform, the problem is that what it does is shoot down $80m combat aircraft. When that's your target, $1-5M a shot is cheap. And Patriot is deadly accurate. Ukraine has used it to basically neutralize the Russian airforce.

    The fault here is with US Military command, who point blank refused to take drones seriously while everyone else was working overtime to adapt to them. Ukraine actually offered to partner with the US on training and technology specifically to intercept shahed drones and the US turned them down.

    Now, we can only speculate as to why that is, and it's certainly possible that arms industry lobbyists wanted to avoid Ukrainian defence companies gaining any share of the US market. But that would only be speculation. I suspect it has far more to do with American arrogance; "What can little Ukraine teach us about war?"

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    Maybe you're right, but imagine you're a Raytheon executive watching the Pentagon spend millions of dollars a pop to shoot down thousands of Shaheds. You would call in sick, admitted for IV fluids after a near-fatal jizzing spree. Point being, they have to love how badly those weapons are being squandered.

    And yes, chief War Bro Hegseth has an arrogance issue. But he's only the latest paragraph in a story several decades long.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Oh, I never specifically claimed this was a Hegseth problem. Notice I said "American" arrogance. This problem has been going on much, much longer than the current electoral cycle.

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    I only name-checked him because I think he was the one in charge when Ukraine offered drone collaboration, you're correct about that.

    I think it's just the way with empires that haven't fully faded. Feels like the US is close to having its Spanish Armada moment, especially after they've run out of Patriot missiles.

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  • [–] 4 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    Given trump has said he wont give democratic states FEMA funds for el nino disasters, and weapons stockpiles are gone, now would be an ok time to withhold federal taxes and secede from the confederacy

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  • [–] 2 points 2 weeks ago

    Those things have an expiration date? How long can one of those sit on a shelf before you have to throw it out?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    Looking at the chart, it's the first 19 years, or the last 6 years. The delivery rate has significantly accelerated.

    Still a stupid war and an obvious example of the military industrial complex doing its thing, regardless of the waste of human life, unnecessary suffering, and the destruction of the environment. But hey, you can't sell more missiles until you've fired off the old ones, right?

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  • [–] 1 point 2 weeks ago

    DJI never stood a chance

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  • 11 comments in c/dataisbeautiful@lemmy.world view that post
    [–] 16 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

    We're gonna look very weak to China and Russia

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  • [–] 8 points 2 weeks ago
    [–] 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    What happened on 2019 that made them ramp up production?

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  • [–] 7 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    This graph insinuates that all these missiles were stockpiled since 2001.

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  • [–] 23 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

    It’s the end result that counts! The invasion and destruction of Iran was a terrific success, congrats to the White House, president Trump, vice president Vance, the GOP and Hegseth… and the US Americans: for making the world a safer place!!! 🇺🇸🏈🌎🇺🇸 And that little fellow Rubio.

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  • [–] 17 points 2 weeks ago (1 child)

    I can't tell if this is sarcasm and I don't like that.

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  • [–] 9 points 2 weeks ago*

    Poe's law is an adage of Internet culture which says that, without a clear indicator of the author's intent, any parodic or sarcastic expression of extreme views can be mistaken by some readers for a sincere expression of those views.

    This sums up a large part of what passes as political discourse online these days. Especially on a platform like this where people have no skin in the game about the utterances they're spewing out.

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