i forgot to point out that even Gulf War 1 was not a true “win”, due to “No New Taxes” refusing to prosecute the war to it’s final conclusion.
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the Iraqi military was not even remotely capable of standing up to us, in either GW. but both exercises were rendered completely useless by dumbshit civilian leadership goal setting.
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the fact that we were doing this in “aid” of a muslim population was also incredibly stupid. muslims who had been in a muslim nation will never tolerate living under the rule of khaffir conqueror … no matter how many times we call ourselves “liberators”. therefore, the constant “insurrections” and IED bombings were a certainty, unless you’re willing to suppress and/or eradicate the muslims ruthlessly.
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if we’re not willing to do that, why are we there? to give Iran another proxy state?
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i’ve still not heard anyone ( in government ) talking seriously about shutting down Saudi funding of Islamic terrorism … innocently whistles
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given an unwillingness to eliminate the muslims, the only thing we could effectively do in the MENA would be to bull rush in a wipe out governments doing things we didn’t like, wag our fingers and tell them to be good boys, and leave.
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as to Dire Badger’s complaint about the quality of current staffing … this is a problem common to all peace time armies, that their officer corp gets over run with useless eater bureaucrats and desk jockies. this goes all the way back to the US Civil War, and is not a problem unique to the US. witness our European friend here.
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the question is whether or not the troops can hold the lines long enough for actually capable commandeers to start to rise to positions of authority once things go hot.
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but the military top brass,
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i never said that the brass wasn’t full of anti-American Feminist Critical Race Theory advocates.
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but that top brass is what the civilian leadership has been demanding since Bill Clinton.

I don’t want to come off as one of those ‘enlisted guys that hate officers’ tropes, So I will admit that the enlisted guys are every bit as bad as the officers.

Heck, I took plenty of shortcuts myself just because I had the brains to put on one boondocker at a time. I was absolutely NOT a leader, and yet I managed E6 BM before I got out with almost ridiculous ease, doing nothing more than handling PMS (Planned Maintenance scheduling) and occasionally sitting on a rifle or M60. I got one of the most prestigious technical awards (ESWS, Enlisted surface warfare specialist) the very first time I tried, without studying other than using the tiny bit of knowledge I gained from learning how to grease up a bow ramp and stern gate.

I sucked, but I had a very small amount of common sense. And that fact alone shot me up through the ranks of stupid effortlessly. Add to that the Navy’s ‘up or out’ policy, means that the US military of today is literally the embodiment of the Peter Principle. Getting chief or officer would have been a breeze even for a dumbshit like me, because the bar is as low as democrat morality. The only reason I got out was because I couldn’t stand the sort of people who were becoming ‘lifers’ by that point, because they were almost exclusively minority placeholders given awards simply for not acting like….what they were.

Call it “I would never join a club that would have me as a member’, but recognizing that my own easy rise was an indictment of the entire organization was enough for me to grab Obama’s ‘early retirement’ without question.

I still take my oath seriously, but today it has been warped right along with the constitution, and 99% of those that CLAIM to support the oath are happy to embrace the corrupted re-imagining of the constitution without question. I am an oath keeper, but the ‘Oath Keepers’ are no allies.

c – WHETHER the US .mil is CAPABLE of winning wars is an entirely separate issue from the larger problem, will the US .mil BE ALLOWED BY CIVILIAN LEADERSHIP to win a war?

That is a good point. Certainly there does appear to be significant pressure on people above the rank of Major, or equivalent, to basically have a mandatory lobotomy before they can get to serious rank in the military, precisely because civilian leadership doesn’t actually like or respect real warfighters.

d – “can the US military turn itself around” is a non-sequitur. the US military is doing what the civilian leadership has demanded of it, and “turning itself around” would require widespread action in direct opposition to explicit orders and Congressional funding requirements. ie – it would require actions which would be characterized as insurrection, coup de tat and/or treason. and there’s not a chance in hell civilian directives will change while wholesale voter fraud is permitted in Demonrat metro areas.

Well, more than that, the military leadership itself has let it be known that they considered the God-Emperor’s actions to try to expose the fraud in the 2020 election to be treasonous. So not only the civilian leadership, but the military top brass, is thoroughly compromised. Supposedly – and this could be fake news – Milley and the other Joint Chiefs strongly considered resigning in order to stop Trump from using the military to declare martial law and institute 6 months of rule-by-decree. I’m willing to believe it, because that is in keeping with Milley’s rather slimy character and with the fact that the God-Emperor quite inexplicably refused to cross the Potomac.

The takeaway from all of this is that America is doomed. Its last remaining useful institution, the military, has been co-opted and subverted. The only alternative now is armed insurrection – which I reckon will probably happen around 2025, at the rate things are going.

America has an army at least and I doubt they are as soft as Europe. If Rommel was alive today, he would go to Brussels and level down every building with bureaucrats and all the old farts that we call Generals today.

Yes he would – though, given that the German military of today has a rifle shortage, and their troops train with broomsticks, I do have to wonder how he’d accomplish that particular end.

When I was in the army, most of the soldiers would take a good look at the officers, shake their heads in disbelief and wonder if these people were actually capable of leading us to war if it ever happened.

Oh that’s been the age-old complaint of the rank-and-file going all the way back to the Roman Republic. The difference, of course, is that back then, the Romans had serious discipline and physical fitness requirements that made their legions the roughest, toughest, most dangerous heavy infantry around – their LINE infantry could march 40Km in a single day. And their officers had to endure similar levels of discipline and conditioning – it wasn’t an easy ride for them.

These days, though, I don’t blame sergeants and petty officers for looking at their brand-spanking-new lieutenants and wondering what the hell kind of nonsense they’re teaching at the military academies.

If I was American, I wouldn’t worry so much. Europe is the most fragile in my opinion.

Yeah, but remember that Europe gets away with much of its relaxed lifestyle precisely because of the American defensive umbrella. The moment that the myth of American might shatters conclusively, which it absolutely will the next time that the Americans tussle with either the Russians or the Chinese, then Europe’s ability to maintain internal cohesion will decline rapidly as well.

The moment that the US Army or Navy loses a real slugging match against a tough opponent, NATO’s viability goes straight out the window. Which means no common defence budget for America’s allies. Which means that the entire globohomo empire splits apart.

As far as I’m concerned, that can’t happen soon enough. The EU needs to be destroyed, and the failure of American military power would greatly hasten that.

Thank you for the extensive and insightful comments. I too agree that the US military is too far gone to be turned around without a full torch-and-burn approach.

The Navy is definitely done, judging by what that article says – it is sclerotic, hide-bound, and totally risk-averse. The Air Force is blowing its wad on ridiculously stupid Joint Strike Flying Pianos and horribly expensive “stealth” bombers and can’t fight against a real technologically sophisticated enemy because its planes won’t stay in the sky. The Marines were the foremost warfighting arm of the US military, but even they have gone woke, with the predictable lowering of standards and readiness that comes with it.

I cannot speak for LTC Kratman, but I suspect that he would argue that the Army is done as well. They’ve implemented CrossFit as their physical fitness programme, in modified form, which really says all that we need to know about whether or not they can fight.

So, yeah, the US military is DONE.

First, Down periscope is one of my favorite movies. despite a huge number of impossible flaws that could only work in a comedy movie. Kelsey’s character has no place on a Naval Vessel, no matter how amusing he is. The female character reinforced the fact that no woman should ever be on a warfighting vessel, especially a submarine…. it was pure comedy, nothing more.
There are a lot of other decent comedy military movies too, but Down Periscope is as much a comedy as Hot Shots, with slightly less ridiculous humor.The same amount of unrealism, though.

No, I joined in ’89, and the class of…I guess…. ’91? was probably the last actual boot camp. After that, they eliminated fitness standards, cycling, and virtually any real training for joining an actual military force. Literally, fat girls were coming out of coot camp crying when they hit their ship because they didn’t like the boat ride. The ‘crossing the line’ ceremony turned into a circle-jerk kumbaya, and black idiots could literally get promotions for doing some of the most retarded things I have ever seen sailors do… and sailors are known for some dumb stuff (not as bad as the Marines, though)
I have watched first class DC petty officers put their fire teams in PLASTIC emergency oxygen masks to fight fire drills, with core-fram plastic shoes. And NOBODY noticed but me, and fought against me when I forced the whole damned team out of the drill. I was actually sent to mast for ‘disrupting the training’.
And that is one of maybe a hundred incidents of intolerable lack of anything resembling common sense I observed when I was in. Training is supposed to make up for a lack of brains, not encourage it.
Our Military hasn’t been capable of winning wars since the 70’s…. because the officers on-site have absolutely zero responsibility. Your average 8 year 0-4 is expected to wait for orders from suits and politicians for even the most minor of evolutions. a War CANNOT be won that way.
No. It cannot be turned around. We would require carrera-esque restructuring and a complete elimination of the entire officer corps and the vast majority of the enlisted corps…. and to be fair, even the GEAR would need to be almost completely replaced. Not with ‘new and improved’ equipment, but with stuff that actually WORKS, no matter how old the design.
There are likely a few decent officers, but they are surrounded and dominated by possib ly the worst officer corps in existence. If the officer corps were restructured, they would have to be eliminated along with the rest, because it’s like 1 baby in a hundred miles of bathwater, and except for a few NCO’s, there’s almost no one left COMPETENT to judge whether an existing officer is competent.

People used to be promoted by merit, but now it’s just a cushy office job while climbing the military ranks passively and waiting for a comfortable retirement.

When I was in the army, most of the soldiers would take a good look at the officers, shake their heads in disbelief and wonder if these people were actually capable of leading us to war if it ever happened. Mind you, the soldiers themselves me included, had zero confidence in their abilities to fight.

If I was American, I wouldn’t worry so much. Europe is the most fragile in my opinion.