It's just funny that people can't stomach that their own ruling class is leading them down the primrose path so they have to go casting about for a foreign bogeyman who's making it happen, despite the fact that every major Western power has bent the knee to this action against Iran.
This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year. There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025. Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans. The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
>US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year.
Just a reminder that THAAD interceptor price is not due to material cost or difficulty to manufacture. Its approximately as expensive as gold per kilogram precisely because its made in such small numbers as part of a gold plated military contract.
They used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently. These operations, done without congressional approval, are wasting literal billions. Repositioning multiple carrier groups and spending lots of munitions isn’t cheap. And yet the administration thinks some alleged small scale Somalian fraud deserves all our attention.
If China was to attack Taiwan, now would be the time. The current world order is at least in part based around the notion of the US (and allies) having the military capacity to fight any plausible combination of foes at all times. That this military capacity was used in accordance to a set of rules with input from allies and partners made the system tolerable.
If the US lacks the munitions to fight all of these conflicts, and is unreliable to allies or foes leads to a high likelihood of conflict.
Why give munitions to an unreliable partner? why rely on an unreliable partner for munitions? the Japan/Australia/SK-US-EU/NATO alliance depends on the US being sensible and broadly aligned with the goals of the other countries.
Granted, patriot missiles are still manufactured across the alliance and I'm sure arms will be available for purchase.
There is so much BS on both sides of the aisle so it seems impossible to get a clear picture but didn't Iran prepare better than Venezuela in terms of deployment of Chinese radar and other security defenses? Seems like there has been no conversation whatsoever about Chinese defenses, were they bypassed again? If so, then China must be reassessing. (Again dont know whats real and whats fake anymore)
China is being very careful to provide enough support not to be seen as abandoning their trading partners/allies, while keeping the support at a low enough level to not get entangled in conflict or create expectations for future conflicts. They want to be able to paint this as "just business", in spite of any rhetoric they may publicly have. In some cases they'll help more in covert ways (Russia), while others they'll do the bare minimum (Venezuela).
So yes, China did give (note: sell) Iran some hardware, but it's not the most cutting edge tech China has, and it's not in sufficient quantity to make much of a difference.
The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
This sounds like a cop out. The second biggest loser of Iran being invaded is China. The US already took out Venezuela and now Iran. I know China has made excellent strides in renewables but they still depend on oil to fuel their over capacitized factories. Now they have lost their number 1 and number 2 supplier.
Combined with 25% youth unemployment things are looking more grim for China.
If any of this tech had any value it should have done something. Now people aren't even bashing it like they did in venezuela they just seem to be accepting that it is not worth talking about.
Like I said there is so much BS on both sides and well your argument isn't convincing: There is this cutting edge tech that no one has seen and no one knows anything about but just trust me China is saving it for the perfect moment. :/
>The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
We need to take a step back and reassess: is the hardware effective against the US or is it not? If it is not, then it is no better than a paperweight. Second place finishers are not with us any longer as the victor wrote the history books.
I'm starting to think maybe WW3 has already started and we are so bogged down in the day to day nonsense that many don't realize it yet.
VZ and IR constitutes like 15% of PRC oil, heavily discounted. 15% seems like a lot but keep in mind PRC imports more than they use for filling SPR - about 1B in storage, or 2-3 years of IR/VZ oil imports.
Meanwhile PRC imports oil primarily for transport that can be electrified. They produce 5mbd domestically, which covers industrial use (petchem), which can also be derived from coal, discount RU/VZ/IR oil simply cheaper. Ironically if oil prices rise past $80 PRC coal to olefin becomes profitable, that's a PRC unique techstack, it only makes their industry more competitive vs others.
25% youth unemployment is western cope stat - broad PRC unemployment is like 6%, i.e. youth find jobs, PRC youth simply gets to fuckarounditis at home until they decide enter workforce later because high home ownership and household savings rate - something US youths with student loans and paycheck to paycheck culture can't do.
> cutting edge tech ... have done something
It's just boring anti stealth / anti air tech where science is reasonably well understood. Which cannot be provided to VZ/IR vs US overmatch. But what can be done is preposition them for intel gathering vs US, i.e. PRC stealth radars likely gather telemetry on US stealth / order of battle / EW even if VZ/IR cannot integrate them into shooters effectively vs US air. Doing something including passive collection on US using premier assets in real scenario. If anything like past CENTCOM drama, there's PRC Type 815A's chilling in CENTCOM right now hoovering up intelligence.
> effective against the US or is it not?
It likely is in volumes that negate US overmatch. There's a reason US/IL is trying to strangle IR's shit tier missile complex now - 12 days war and houthis have shown even garbage IR hardware is enough to simply overwhelm US+IL+co through densest ABM defense in the world, after PRC eastern theatre command. Everything we're seeing last couple years has basically validated PRC model once extrapolate scale to natural conclusions. Consider US vacated most of CENTCOM to avoid IR counter fire. PRC has magnitude more highend missiles, million+ drones, loitering munition for 1/2IC, is US going to bail Okinawa/Yokosuka/Busan etc vs PRC with more fires than US has produced interceptors, ever, how are US going defend 1IC security obligations if IR penetrating MENA with crippled/puny missile complex.
>effective against the US or is it not
As what was seen, see PRC tandem AShM tests a few years ago where they coordinated hypersonics launched from different sites to strike moving target at see, i.e. something US hasn't even demonstrated. What we see is US overmatch still effective against adversaries dramatically smaller with generations old hardware (because of course it is) but even those hardware, at limited scale is forcing US to adopt postures that would basically lead to defeat in westpac scenario. The fact that US has to preposition 1/3 of active fleet and airforce hardware for WEEKS vs minor adversaries fraction PRC size and fraction PRC tech/industrial output suggest US simply not capable of dealing PRC scale/tier adversary, that's without considering munition stockpile etc.
What people should think about is not how much US can stomp lighweight adversaries, but how much % of US force has to be committed to doing so.
All limited exchanges end in annihilation, parties are required to tit for tat the exchange and it's really easy to run out of targets when you are using nukes - forcing an escalation.
If Taiwan was invaded, the only military targets for the US are in close proximity to major population centers. The response would be nukes on US Naval bases (in close proximity to US population centers). This would rapidly escalate to a full exchange. Or China would just use their nukes to achieve all military objectives in Taiwan.
Neither China nor the US plan to invade each other, or engage in any non-limited conflict. There is no rational reason for either to ever use nukes.
You're forgetting that U.S. healthcare costs are also massively overblown compared to other western countries, due to the absence of proper collective bargaining. (And possibly even collusion between insurers and healthcare providers to rip off citizens and the government.)
Yep just like many things Americans are sure can't be done, universal healthcare has never been done anywhere in the world, ever. And healthcare everywhere costs what Americans are willing to pay (public and private money).
I don't think OP is talking about a specific war, but the overall cost to maintain such a capability and project force all over the world. At least that is what I perceive when people lament about lack of healthcare.
The United States military budget is now 1.5 trillion dollars per year.
The UK spends around £200bn a year on public healthcare that covers everyone, for a population around 1/5th the size. Scale that up and convert to USD and you’re still well under half the $3tn figure you quoted.
Universal healthcare is the norm in all of west / central europe, it's good quality, accessible for EVERYBODY (including the poors), and doctors still have great quality of life and are rich.
You guys are just getting f** by a mafia in the US and defending it for no factual reasons. Both by the military industrial complex AND the medical field btw.
archive link https://archive.is/usjGR
Interesting aspect: if the ammo is all used up in Iran, it can't be sold or given to Ukraine.
Tinfoil hat time?
You know who exports a lot of oil and gas NOT through the straight of hormuz?
Doesn't even matter if it's a direct effect, the increase in oil prices is/will be enough.
Brunei?
Nigeria.
It's just funny that people can't stomach that their own ruling class is leading them down the primrose path so they have to go casting about for a foreign bogeyman who's making it happen, despite the fact that every major Western power has bent the knee to this action against Iran.
This is reminding us something that we should never have forgotten - modern war has an insatiable demand for munitions.
To take just one example out of dozens, the US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year. There are plans to raise that number to 400 per year.
The Ukrainians were expending somewhere around 10,000 drones per day in mid 2025. Russian numbers are likely broadly similar.
Many historical conflicts have featured a substantial bottleneck on multiple munitions during ramp up. World War 1 had artillery shell crises across Britain, France, Russia, and Germany. World War II had similar, especially for the Russians and Germans. The US was short on ammo early in the Korean war.
Modern mechanized combat demands an insane manufacturing and logistics chain. It can burn through stockpiles incredibly fast, especially of high capability expensive munitions. War production levels are utterly unsustainable during peace time.
This is why peer and near-peer conflict is as much an economic and productive game as it is a military one. Shock and awe takes a tremendous amount of resources to accomplish at all, let alone sustain.
>US fired somewhere from 100 to 150 THAAD interceptors - about ¼ of the stockpile - during the 12 days war in 2025. We produce just under 100 per year.
Just a reminder that THAAD interceptor price is not due to material cost or difficulty to manufacture. Its approximately as expensive as gold per kilogram precisely because its made in such small numbers as part of a gold plated military contract.
Wait I was just told that the US was going to foster human warfighters, not wimpy logistics desk jockeys.
Warfighting and good grooming were said to be key.
If you don't have an industrial base, you don't have a military. Good thing we hollowed ours out to juice the S&P to 7000!
You’re saying the enemy doesn’t care about the Dow?
Lets say I'm on team regime change... aren't I also hoping someone we like somehow rises up and takes over that whole country too?
That seems unlikely.
If this is true, the real problem is why the US was so undersupplied in core munitions.
I think the real problem is that the US keeps attacking people at the behest of Israel and to the determent of US citizens.
It's not to the detriment of our ruling classes who have their hands on the actual levers of power.
They used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently. These operations, done without congressional approval, are wasting literal billions. Repositioning multiple carrier groups and spending lots of munitions isn’t cheap. And yet the administration thinks some alleged small scale Somalian fraud deserves all our attention.
If China was to attack Taiwan, now would be the time. The current world order is at least in part based around the notion of the US (and allies) having the military capacity to fight any plausible combination of foes at all times. That this military capacity was used in accordance to a set of rules with input from allies and partners made the system tolerable.
If the US lacks the munitions to fight all of these conflicts, and is unreliable to allies or foes leads to a high likelihood of conflict.
Pretty sure they’ll wait about 9 months. They have a schedule after all.
Would allies give the US munitions to stop that possible outcome?
Why give munitions to an unreliable partner? why rely on an unreliable partner for munitions? the Japan/Australia/SK-US-EU/NATO alliance depends on the US being sensible and broadly aligned with the goals of the other countries.
Granted, patriot missiles are still manufactured across the alliance and I'm sure arms will be available for purchase.
Fortunately, China just decided to fire most of their military leadership and replaced them with inexperienced, but loyal grunts.
Isn't that what the US did too?
I think this is only true if the United States takes armaments from the Pacific theater.
There is so much BS on both sides of the aisle so it seems impossible to get a clear picture but didn't Iran prepare better than Venezuela in terms of deployment of Chinese radar and other security defenses? Seems like there has been no conversation whatsoever about Chinese defenses, were they bypassed again? If so, then China must be reassessing. (Again dont know whats real and whats fake anymore)
China is being very careful to provide enough support not to be seen as abandoning their trading partners/allies, while keeping the support at a low enough level to not get entangled in conflict or create expectations for future conflicts. They want to be able to paint this as "just business", in spite of any rhetoric they may publicly have. In some cases they'll help more in covert ways (Russia), while others they'll do the bare minimum (Venezuela).
So yes, China did give (note: sell) Iran some hardware, but it's not the most cutting edge tech China has, and it's not in sufficient quantity to make much of a difference.
The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
This sounds like a cop out. The second biggest loser of Iran being invaded is China. The US already took out Venezuela and now Iran. I know China has made excellent strides in renewables but they still depend on oil to fuel their over capacitized factories. Now they have lost their number 1 and number 2 supplier.
Combined with 25% youth unemployment things are looking more grim for China.
If any of this tech had any value it should have done something. Now people aren't even bashing it like they did in venezuela they just seem to be accepting that it is not worth talking about.
Like I said there is so much BS on both sides and well your argument isn't convincing: There is this cutting edge tech that no one has seen and no one knows anything about but just trust me China is saving it for the perfect moment. :/
>The US is still ahead of China in a lot of military tech, even if the gap keeps getting narrower.
We need to take a step back and reassess: is the hardware effective against the US or is it not? If it is not, then it is no better than a paperweight. Second place finishers are not with us any longer as the victor wrote the history books.
I'm starting to think maybe WW3 has already started and we are so bogged down in the day to day nonsense that many don't realize it yet.
VZ and IR constitutes like 15% of PRC oil, heavily discounted. 15% seems like a lot but keep in mind PRC imports more than they use for filling SPR - about 1B in storage, or 2-3 years of IR/VZ oil imports.
Meanwhile PRC imports oil primarily for transport that can be electrified. They produce 5mbd domestically, which covers industrial use (petchem), which can also be derived from coal, discount RU/VZ/IR oil simply cheaper. Ironically if oil prices rise past $80 PRC coal to olefin becomes profitable, that's a PRC unique techstack, it only makes their industry more competitive vs others.
25% youth unemployment is western cope stat - broad PRC unemployment is like 6%, i.e. youth find jobs, PRC youth simply gets to fuckarounditis at home until they decide enter workforce later because high home ownership and household savings rate - something US youths with student loans and paycheck to paycheck culture can't do.
> cutting edge tech ... have done something
It's just boring anti stealth / anti air tech where science is reasonably well understood. Which cannot be provided to VZ/IR vs US overmatch. But what can be done is preposition them for intel gathering vs US, i.e. PRC stealth radars likely gather telemetry on US stealth / order of battle / EW even if VZ/IR cannot integrate them into shooters effectively vs US air. Doing something including passive collection on US using premier assets in real scenario. If anything like past CENTCOM drama, there's PRC Type 815A's chilling in CENTCOM right now hoovering up intelligence.
> effective against the US or is it not?
It likely is in volumes that negate US overmatch. There's a reason US/IL is trying to strangle IR's shit tier missile complex now - 12 days war and houthis have shown even garbage IR hardware is enough to simply overwhelm US+IL+co through densest ABM defense in the world, after PRC eastern theatre command. Everything we're seeing last couple years has basically validated PRC model once extrapolate scale to natural conclusions. Consider US vacated most of CENTCOM to avoid IR counter fire. PRC has magnitude more highend missiles, million+ drones, loitering munition for 1/2IC, is US going to bail Okinawa/Yokosuka/Busan etc vs PRC with more fires than US has produced interceptors, ever, how are US going defend 1IC security obligations if IR penetrating MENA with crippled/puny missile complex.
>effective against the US or is it not
As what was seen, see PRC tandem AShM tests a few years ago where they coordinated hypersonics launched from different sites to strike moving target at see, i.e. something US hasn't even demonstrated. What we see is US overmatch still effective against adversaries dramatically smaller with generations old hardware (because of course it is) but even those hardware, at limited scale is forcing US to adopt postures that would basically lead to defeat in westpac scenario. The fact that US has to preposition 1/3 of active fleet and airforce hardware for WEEKS vs minor adversaries fraction PRC size and fraction PRC tech/industrial output suggest US simply not capable of dealing PRC scale/tier adversary, that's without considering munition stockpile etc.
What people should think about is not how much US can stomp lighweight adversaries, but how much % of US force has to be committed to doing so.
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All limited exchanges end in annihilation, parties are required to tit for tat the exchange and it's really easy to run out of targets when you are using nukes - forcing an escalation.
If Taiwan was invaded, the only military targets for the US are in close proximity to major population centers. The response would be nukes on US Naval bases (in close proximity to US population centers). This would rapidly escalate to a full exchange. Or China would just use their nukes to achieve all military objectives in Taiwan.
Neither China nor the US plan to invade each other, or engage in any non-limited conflict. There is no rational reason for either to ever use nukes.
Ah, such good thought to talk about nukes so lightly. Do not underestimate the number of nukes needed to obliterate a country with 1.3 billion people.
>used up a lot of the remaining tomahawk inventory apparently
4000 in stockpiles, they shot maybe couple hundred in one day. Could sustain for 2 weeks at this pace.
We could have had healthcare.
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US healthcare costs on the order of $3T per year.
The Iraq war cost about $2T over a decade.
You could have about 10% subsidized healthcare, which I would obviously argue is better than pointless war killing tons of people.
But you couldn't just "have healthcare".
You're forgetting that U.S. healthcare costs are also massively overblown compared to other western countries, due to the absence of proper collective bargaining. (And possibly even collusion between insurers and healthcare providers to rip off citizens and the government.)
That has nothing to do with the Department of Defense / War, or its budget.
It does with the root comment though, it's all just piss poor politics :-)
Yep just like many things Americans are sure can't be done, universal healthcare has never been done anywhere in the world, ever. And healthcare everywhere costs what Americans are willing to pay (public and private money).
See also: not having daily mass shootings.
I don't think OP is talking about a specific war, but the overall cost to maintain such a capability and project force all over the world. At least that is what I perceive when people lament about lack of healthcare.
The United States military budget is now 1.5 trillion dollars per year.
Sure, we could just not have a military and hold hands with Russia and China and everyone else.
We wouldn't need healthcare.
We'd just be dead.
Of course it might cost a lot less if we didn't need to pay for unprovoked attacks on countries like Venezuela and Iran.
The UK spends around £200bn a year on public healthcare that covers everyone, for a population around 1/5th the size. Scale that up and convert to USD and you’re still well under half the $3tn figure you quoted.
You also can't see a doctor in the UK unless you're effectively dying, and doctors make about 1/5th what they do in the US after taxes.
You could get similar costs in the US for a similar system.
Doctors in the US aren't going to just accept making way less money.
Good luck getting it done.
> You also can't see a doctor in the UK unless you're effectively dying
This is not true.
I don't know where that narrative comes from, but man, is it getting old.
You have no idea of what you are talking about.
Universal healthcare is the norm in all of west / central europe, it's good quality, accessible for EVERYBODY (including the poors), and doctors still have great quality of life and are rich.
You guys are just getting f** by a mafia in the US and defending it for no factual reasons. Both by the military industrial complex AND the medical field btw.
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