War is becoming an economic process, not a military one. Supply chains, resources, and economic resilience now determine who survives.
Both Japan and Germany lost the moment the US retooled Detroit to make tanks and ‘planes.
This has also always been true. A battle can be won with military tactics, sure, but a war is and always ha been an economic process.
Oh God, he’s discovered logistics. Candidly, we can look forward to plenty of screeds confusing it with logic.
Quantum logistics, or country-by-country logistics?
Hurrah – the up-vote returns! 🙂
An army marches on its stomach – Napoleon
Amateurs talk strategy, professionals talk logistics – some American general I can’t be bothered to look up.
War has always been about the supply chain as much as the fighting.
An army marches on its stomach – Napoleon
And he didn’t follow his own advice, which is why he’d lost Moscow before he even got there. Like most armies in history before him his approach was that the war shall feed itself (bellum se ipsum alet or in Napolean’s case La guerre doit se nourrir elle-même (thanks Wiki), which had been succesful in his previous campaigns and the Russians knew this.
The German commanding Russia’s army, Field Marshal Mikhail Kutuzov, had a scorched earth strategy when Napolean invaded. He refused to engage and destroyed all food and other supplies as he kept retreating. That and the long dry hot summer meant Napolean’s army was effectively defeated before he even got to Moscow as they were in no fit state to fight or face a Russian winter.
Omar Bradley allegedly
Well yes….
Which is why the cloggie armed forces are, in NATO context, mostly a large logistics organisation, whether it’s in goods, recon, or information liaising.
With sharp teeth… To get Stuff where it needs to be, and keep having it arriving.
Not the most glorious of jobs if you go for gung-ho Heroism, but one that is crucial for a military theatre.
And in modern military context where an enemy can project pewpew over 100 miles past the “frontline”… Very much Not Safe.. Which makes it all the trickier..
Pretty sure this has been understood since the first tribe to attack its neighbours realised that if they didn’t have more than one flint arrow head each they were going to be in trouble.
Maybe that’s why ‘they’ introduced cannibalism??
“Amateurs study tactics. Professionals study logistics”
Maybe he’s thinking of the Irish way of war – murdering civilians, their wives, and children. Burning them to death, if that’s convenient.
Yoss. Specifically, Japan lost when they attacked Pearl Harbor and it had the opposite strategic effect to what the Nips intended. That’s why the Japs kept trying to force a decisive sea battle like wot Tirpitz and Mahan dreamed of.
They knew they couldn’t outpace American shipbuilding, but they hoped they could out-sailor the roundeyes and demoralise them into accepting a Jap dominated Western Pacific.
Germany lost on 22nd June 1941, but this wasn’t apparent until the following year. Barbarossa failed for similar reasons. Catastrophic intelligence failure that led the OKW to underestimate USSR mobilisation by a factor of ten, vast industrial capacity beyond the Urals which the Germans couldn’t touch or didn’t know about, and the enormous natural resources Stalin could access whilst ze Germans were forced to do expensive, silly things such as liquefying coal.
Now the war on Iran is an economic process, mainly because Iran has weak military capability and most of it is already degraded. Lashing out at all their neighbours and closing the Strait is a desperation play. It’s an attempt to scare off the infidels with $200 oil. But the United States and Israel have a lot more capacity to absorb economic damage than Iran does. Americans are currently facing slightly more expensive petrol at the pumps – Iranians are facing hyperinflation (they just released a new 10 Million Rial note which is worth $7), significant material shortages of all types of war necessities, and an inability to keep paying, feeding and watering the army of street thugs the Islamic Revolution depends on.
Amazingly, the Western MSM is doing everything in its power to make you believe Iran might be winning, somehow. Sir Keir Starmer is doing the Dead Ayatollahs’ work by spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt over a war whose necessity was proven beyond any reasonable disagreement when Iran launched two ICBMs at the Chagos islands. Iran wasn’t supposed to have huge missiles that can reach 2,500 miles away and literally the only reason to build such a delivery vehicle is because you plan to put atomic warheads on them. The Jews were right all along and the apologists were dead wrong – Iran’s regime is a death cult which talks of “strategic martyrdom”. They were a ballhair away from a viable nuke, and years of negotiations just gave them time to keep enriching uranium. They’re rabid dogs and it’s time they were put down for everyone’s safety.
Yep, literally all of it, including the Terriblegraph and Spectator. Because Iran hasn’t conceded, held free and fair elections and voted in someone akin to the LibDems within the first fortnight, the war is an abject failure. It is remarkable. Ditto all the stories claiming a million “tax dodging rich expats’ are demanding free airlifts home from the RAF, when the actual number is very close to zero.
As is often said, you don’t hate the media enough.
You’ve given me a thought. We sent Paddy Pantsdown to run Bosnia and Herzegovina. Postwar Iran would be an ideal joint posting for Ed Davey and Zack the breast whisperer.
You jest, of course, but Ed and Zack should never be let near any form of power.
Meanwhile, apparently Hypnotits has been whispering to Jolyon Maugham who was already a massive tit…
$200 oil just makes it economically viable to dig it up in the USA and two fingers up to the mullahs.
It would make it economically viable dig up in the UK, too, if we didn’t have Mad Ed in charge of our energy policy. But, like others on here, I don’t imagine Iran’s blockade of the Straits will last for months.
Any sane government would learn the less that we need far more energy independence and diversification of supply. Mad Ed will use it to double down on his net zero insanity.
The Green morons have, of course, done their best to stop us producing oil in Oz.
And have shut down most of our refineries. So we can’t just ignore the sanctions and buy our oil from Putin.
“Germany lost on 22nd June 1941, but this wasn’t apparent until the following year. Barbarossa failed for similar reasons. Catastrophic intelligence failure that led the OKW to underestimate USSR mobilisation by a factor of ten, vast industrial capacity beyond the Urals which the Germans couldn’t touch or didn’t know about, and the enormous natural resources Stalin could access whilst ze Germans were forced to do expensive, silly things such as liquefying coal.”
Yarp. Even with a large degree of Soviet incompetence, the numbers were at a different scale.
“The Jews were right all along and the apologists were dead wrong – Iran’s regime is a death cult which talks of “strategic martyrdom”.”
This is how everyone talks. ISIS are all “praise Allah” but it’s funny how a territorial gang behave just like territorial gang in LA, and are actually about the bitches and Benjamins. We never bothered trying to invade the Pyrenees and freeing it from Catholics but we did go after the good land of Aquitaine. It sounds better, maybe even acts as self-justification to say “God has told us to take this land” than “you know, I’d like to have more money”.
Iran aren’t especially bothered about Israel. We get that view because that’s what the news covers and the news doesn’t cover much of the situation in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen. I guess it’s easy for news people to fly to Israel, have an air-conditioned hotel, where Yemen is a shithole. Iran are involved in a regional conflict with Saudi Arabia over the dominance of the region with lots of proxy wars. Assad was being propped up by Iran and the forces against him were being backed by Saudi Arabia. Israel had links going back to the Shah of Iran, which is why the Ayatollahs hate them now.
My guess is that Iran would like a nuke to tip the balance, or to make it harder for someone to attack them. These guys might dress like Gandalf, and have religious names but they’re just as venal as any other politician.
Iran aren’t especially bothered about Israel
You couldn’t be more wrong.
This is a poor country with lots of internal problems that still spends a significant proportion of GDP on Hezbollah’s terrorist network.
They were building a nuke to nuke Israel.
NB – there’s no rational reason for this. Israel isn’t an existential threat to Iran.
But who needs rationality when they have Islam? Shia Islam in particular has strong Armageddon fantasies baked in and a desire to imminentise the eschaton to fulfil their prophecies of the Muad’dib.
When people tell you who they are, believe them. The Mullahs have been telling us for 50 years that they mean “Death to the West”, “Death to Israel”. They mean it. They’re not just Westerners in funny clothes, they’re a homicidal sand cult that thinks their God will reward them for murdering you.
And they were 95% of the way to a viable atomic warhead.
“This is a poor country with lots of internal problems that still spends a significant proportion of GDP on Hezbollah’s terrorist network.”
Hezbollah is about extending influence into Lebanon.
“They were building a nuke to nuke Israel.
NB – there’s no rational reason for this. Israel isn’t an existential threat to Iran.”
It’s not about Israel. Why would the regime in Iran particularly care about nuking Israel? Put the religious woo to one side. In terms of power and money, what is the benefit? Is there oil in Israel? Could Israel invade and kick the Ayatollahs out?
This is about two groups that concern them. The United States, who they perceive as willing to intervene and bring about a revolution or coup, and Saudi Arabia who they see as the main rival for the region. Having a nuke is something they could threaten Saudi with (to gain power) or the USA (to deter attacks).
“When people tell you who they are, believe them.
Did the old Politburo believe in communism, or getting a nice dacha, zil lanes and a few girls from the Bolshoi to visit them?
“The Mullahs have been telling us for 50 years that they mean “Death to the West”, “Death to Israel”. They mean it.”
They’ve also said things like “these vile and ungodly Wahhabis, are like daggers which have always pierced the heart of the Muslims from the back” about the Saudis.
And I don’t think they’re like modern Westerners because their economy is closer to old tribes fighting over land, rather than being industrial societies.
Put the religious woo to one side. In terms of power and money, what is the benefit?
But the apocalyptic religious woo can’t be “put to one side”. Theology can be as much of an incentive as power and money.
If you believe that your fairy tale is correct and doing what it tells you gets you into heaven, then sure, that makes sense. Live like shit, or die for a cause to avoid eternal damnation is an incentive.
But how many people will actually do that? How many Jews in Israel are out there stoning prostitutes to death like it says they should in Deuteronomy?
Observe how people behave in the name of their God and then ask yourself if that has personal advantages. If not, then yes, it is being observant of their religion. Feeding the poor strikes me as holy. Stoning a prostitute to death and serving a life sentence strikes me as someone serious about their dedication to what is written in the Torah, that they will do something for God that benefits them not.
Someone invading another country, killing people, taking their land and the women is personally enriching, and I don’t think it’s cynical to suggest that “God told us to remove them from his land” is pretty convenient.
If you believe that your fairy tale is correct and doing what it tells you gets you into heaven, then sure, that makes sense.
And they do. That’s the whole point, and why this time it’s different.
But how many people will actually do that?
Lots. Everyone – adult or child – who has ever worn a suicide vest, for a start.
Let’s also not forget the Japs, who had a similar myth in WWII. They committed military suicide by the thousands.
“Lots. Everyone – adult or child – who has ever worn a suicide vest, for a start.”
That’s 130 people in 2020, the highest recent figure. There are 2 billion muslims in the world. Let’s take that down to just horny males that would like 72 virgins. So 130/500 million, or a number below 0.01%. Which isn’t exactly lots, is it? I’d say somewhere below 0.01% is retards, nutters and gullible twats.
Which is it? 99% of men don’t want to live in paradise with 72 unblemished lovelies or 99% of men don’t quite believe the sky fairy book?
“Let’s also not forget the Japs, who had a similar myth in WWII. They committed military suicide by the thousands.”
What, do you think they hopped and skipped to the Kamikaze recruitment centre rather than being bullied and threatened, welded into the aircraft?
Would you gladly get in a plane and die for some cunt in a palace?
Observe how people behave in the name of their God and then ask yourself if that has personal advantages. If not, then yes, it is being observant of their religion…
“Personal advantages” are not just power, money, etc. Muslim martyrs are promised 72 virgins in paradise; and jihadis have high status in their communities. Believing the religious woo involves such “personal advantages”, which are also compatible with the perceived material incentives of annihilating the jews – eg land. Motives can be mixed; and religious motives often can’t be reduced to material incentives.
A famous Hadith prophesies a final battle at the end of time between Muslims and Jews, where even stones and trees will call out to Muslims to “come and kill” the Jews hiding behind them. Many Hadiths identify Jews as “those who earned Allah’s anger”; and Mo cursed the jews and christians on his death bed.
Which is why these fuckers can’t have nukes. Ooops; the Pakis already do.
How many martyrs are there per year out of the 2 billion muslims? 10% of the population? 1%? 0.1%? It’s clearly far less than a majority. It’s a number that we might call utterly gullible retards. Like the sort of twats that joined the Jim Jones cult.
If I genuinely believed a book telling me that I’d get 72 virgins, I’d be a martyr. That’s more virgins I’m going to get now. I’d do it tomorrow. Not waiting around. So why aren’t all these sincere believers, except at the sort of rate that we’d call a rounding error?
“Did the old Politburo believe in communism……..”
Amazingly enough, yes. The rest was a bonus, but they absolutely were true believers.
Nah – as someone who has lived and worked a lot in the Middle East and personally confronted some of the lunatics I can confirm that a significant (enough) number of them really do believe all the shit they say.
+100, Steve.
Amazingly, the Western MSM is doing everything in its power to make you believe Iran might be winning…
Yes. Except it’s not amazing: it’s just bog-standard TDS.
“vast industrial capacity beyond the Urals which the Germans couldn’t touch or didn’t know about”
What, you mean the vast acreage of stuff the Americans shipped them?
The Germans knew about the Urals, and that most of the factories were on the west side. The blitzkrieg was to capture those factories before they could be moved to the east side.
But the enormous amounts of everything the Americans shipped to the USSR (even at the expense of their own people and the British) made the difference. Especially the trucks, which meant the Russians could concentrate on making tanks.
Yes, the MSM (not just the Western ones, you should see what’s coming out of Russia) are trying to pull another one.
What, you mean the vast acreage of stuff the Americans shipped them?
No, I mean the vast acreages of factory space Stalin sent East when the USSR was still allied with Germany.
The Germans knew about the Urals, and that most of the factories were on the west side. The blitzkrieg was to capture those factories before they could be moved to the east side.
What they didn’t know was how much industrial capacity the USSR had in 1941, how much of it had been moved east beyond the range of the Luftwaffe, and how effective Soviet weapons could be (the T-34 was a shock, Russians were meant to be white monkeys who would collapse as soon as a German kicked the door in).
German intelligence failures were on the numbers. They had no idea how many men, tanks and tubes the USSR already had in service, and badly misunderestimated how much war materiel Soviet factories could churn out.
The Krauts still thought it was the 1920’s, when the Red Army was ineffectual due to purges and Russia was a lot less industrialised
The US and Britain provided huge support to the USSR, but the Krauts had already bitten off more than they could chew in 1941. If America hadn’t joined the war, the USSR and Britain would still have won. But it would have been a Total Stalin Victory – a vast, open air gulag extending from Porto to Vladivostok.
Probably the biggest US contribution was teaching them how to do production line manufacturing well, which ramped up the numbers.
Arguably (and depending on the model), the Panzers were better, probably had better trained crew, but the Russians were making 3 times as many T-34s by 1943. It didn’t matter that they had huge losses with them, they could still beat the Panzers.
And yeah, not where they would have stopped, but I certainly think they’d have taken all of Germany and Austria.
Panzers weren’t superior to T-34s. In 1941, the T-34 was superior to every tank in German service. It was an excellent design for the era and the sloped armour was a major breakthrough.
By the time the Krauts upgunned and uparmoured their tanks, it was 1943 and they no longer had the production capacity or manpower to win the war.
The T-34 was also economically superior to all models of German tank it faced because it was designed to be simple, cheap and fast to build, and easy to repair. Panzers were more expensive, more complicated, and the later heavy models in particular were very unreliable. However, Germans had radio sets in all their tanks and Russians didn’t – that was a significant tactical advantage for better trained Panzer crews, particularly in the earlier phases of the war in the East.
Without the United States Army, who would have stopped the Reds from simply marching west after the defeat of Germany? The British Army wasn’t anywhere near big enough to stop them. It would have been a stroll to the Atlantic.
Sloped armor was not a major breakthrough.
And the T34 was shit to operate. And you are talking about the t34 on paper anyway – what was actually shove out the factory door was mostly shit. Missing seals, optics, ‘streamlining production’.
Sloped armor was not a major breakthrough.
Every military historian disagrees with your novel theory.
And the T34 was shit to operate. And you are talking about the t34 on paper anyway – what was actually shove out the factory door was mostly shit. Missing seals, optics, ‘streamlining production’.
Now do late model Panzers built by slaves whilst the US and Britain bombed the shite out of Germany.
The T-34 didn’t invent sloped armor. It wasn’t even the first vehicle to use it.
Hence – it wasn’t a major breakthrough.
And no, every major military historian agrees with me.
The thing about sloped armor is that its not magic. Its all about effective thickness. Sloped armor gets you more effective thickness for a given thickness of material. But it requires *more* surface area to cover so the weight is actually the same.
No magic ‘deflection’ or anything that couldn’t be gotten by angling your vehicle in relation to whoever is shooting at you.
Thanks for explaining how sloped armour works, I never would have guessed.
Sloped armor WAS a major breakthrough. But the French had used in in 1935. Even Di Vinci sketches had it. CSS Virginia had it in 1862.
T34 was shit to operate
T34 had shit operators. Americans, Brits and Germans had driven cars. Soviet schleps who had never driven anything were conscripted to drive tanks. There were serious problems with the T-34, but it got by. I wouldn’t call it a great tank, but it was effective.
And yet “housing minister” Steve Reed insists there’s no evidence Iranian missiles could reach London. Remarkable.
Housing minister? Do we have anybody left at the MOD?
Makes sense; haven’t they turned all our military bases into refugee housing?
What he said was that the he wasn’t aware of any evidence of Iranian missile could reach London not that there wan’t any, at least in the version I heard.
I think the technical term is plausible deniability when he turns out to be wrong because why would the housing minister be even involved in any such discussions let alone given access to secret intelligence assessments?
If the SoS for Defence denied it then perhaps we should take note.
There’s one valid reason to own a big liquid fuelled rocket system, and that’s to put satellites in orbit. Iran does have (or has had) some space capability, and the Khorramshar was their launch vehicle.
But as we remember from the Space Race, if you can put a satellite into orbit you can loft a payload across continents…
Yarp as we remember from the space race, space programmes are just ICBM development projects with a civilian cover story. Joe Stalin wasn’t that interested in science, he was very interested in power. A rocket capable of lofting a satellite can loft a warhead towards Tel Aviv or London. Wernher warned us.
Why does an impoverished country running out of fresh water due to their own catastrophic mismanagement of the land need space launch capacity?
They don’t, natch.
Iran is like a rabid dog that would run through barbed wire and broken glass just for the chance to bite you before it expires. I can’t believe they have defenders in the West, but I shouldn’t be so surprised after the suicidal idiocy of morons supporting “Palestine”. All the UK and Europe had to do was send a small token force to Hormuz to keep the sea lanes open and calm international shippers. Uncle Sam would do all the heavy lifting. They refused to help our only important ally in a time of crisis, and there will be unpleasant consequences coming NATO’s way for that. Which of course, they’ll be terribly surprised by and cry that Orange Man BAAAAAD.
All the UK and Europe had to do was send a small token force to Hormuz to keep the sea lanes open and calm international shippers. Uncle Sam would do all the heavy lifting. They refused to help our only important ally in a time of crisis, and there will be unpleasant consequences coming NATO’s way for that.
We need to do that not least because the USA doesn’t need the Straights to be open anywhere near as much as we do. Same goes for the Suez Canal.
We might not have wanted this war at this time but it was going to happen in the not very distant future. I’ve heard from a couple of podcasts I trust, one never Trumpers, that Iran was on track to have enough ballistic missiles to overwhelm the defences in all the neighbouring states and Isreal. Once they were in that position this sort of attack would have been close to impossible and Iran would have become the regional hegemon.
“There is never a right time to do something like this but there is a time when it is too late.” – Friedrich Merz
Pearl Harbor *was* the decisive sea battle their strategy wanted.
The problem is that they didn’t understand how to followup when the enemy was 10,000 miles away – they destroyed the fleet but couldn’t capitalize on it. The American Navy was used to (and designed for) deploying across the Pacific, the Japanese fleet not.
So that gave us the respite to rebuild. And it was also a sort of ‘Dreadnought moment’ – the Japanese had destroyed a bunch of increasingly irrelevant gun ships giving us the chance to rebuild with carriers.
A fair number of the ships that were bombed at Pearl Harbour were repaired and took part in later operations. According to Claude:
“It’s a remarkable story of salvage and resilience. Twenty-one American ships were damaged or lost in the attack, of which all but three were repaired and returned to service — so 18 out of 21 made it back into the fight.
The three that were lost for good were:
∙ USS Arizona — destroyed when a bomb detonated her forward magazine, killing 1,177 men. She remains on the harbour floor as a memorial.
∙ USS Oklahoma — capsized and, although eventually righted and refloated, was too badly damaged to return to service.
∙ USS Utah — a converted target ship, also beyond repair; her hull also remains in the harbour.”
TBF it took a couple of years to repair some.
Also the aircraft carriers stationed there were out at sea at the time of the attack. OK, this was in the days when the balance between big guns and floating airstrips was a bit more fluid, but if you’re launching an attack from your own aircraft carriers, I would have thought nailing the opponents would have been a high priority.
The Pearl Harbour attack has to count as the biggest war time own goal ever. Proxy wars, blockades and stuff were already happening but that was very much the “hold my beer” moment that totally screwed the Japanese strategy.
Yes, but…
Marx turned it into a political process. Lenin, and then the Bomb, turned it into a cultural process. Islamism redoubles that.
The USSR and China sought to undermine the West by undermining its culture, with progressivism. Islamism does the same and adds colonisation and religious domination to the mix. These processes are more effective than economics because they cannot be fought militarily or with economics.
V good points re the culture wars, Norman. if you look back at progressive movements of the late 20th century, from liberation theology, through ‘anti-colonialism’ (ie blame whitey) and even the anti-apartheid movement, they often originated in Soviet propaganda. China surely continues this work and Islamism pushes it a step further.
Interestingly, the ideal solution to all these problems (past and present) would be to string up the Western progressives who are useful idiots for totalitarianism…. If Britain didn’t have an Establishment which insisted on open borders, benefits and more than equal rights for foreigners, big government and hate speech laws to quell dissent, Islam would not be a problem.
Yup. Before Marxism, wars were essentially military struggles for land and resources, more often than not carried out between comparable cultures. The European wars were all like that. They ended up being economic wars, as Tim points out.
Really, only the wars between Islam and everyone else were culture wars, and that hasn’t changed.
The Bomb is significant. If you can’t confront your opponent militarily because of MAD then you’re going to have to do something else. Economics failed the commies because their economics fail and ours beat them, so they changed to direct but covert means of making the West’s societies collapse. All well documented. The Chinks are still at it by subverting the universities, etc.
The resurgence of Islamism is just business as usual for those fuckers, but this time drastically facilitated by commie-funded Progressivism.
None of this can be fought with economics. That’s why we’re probably fucked. Trump knows this, which is why he’s clamped down on immigration and is bombing the fuck out of the mullahs.
This post reminds me of the clown who went on X and declared he’d just looked at a map and seen that Iran was mountainous so there’s no way Israel and the USA could win.
I had it bookmarked and it’s gone so I presume he deleted the post after all the comments pointing out that the Israelis and Americans can also read maps.
Earlier on this afternoon I saw a C-130 Hercules overhead London, flying south, transponder off. A few days ago I saw several on the radar, all staging through Prestwick, flying south. They were KC-130s, able to flight-refuel helicopters, enabling them to undertake long-range missions. Interesting.
Good Lord, do we still have kit like that?
And can get it airborne?
Don’t these people have a Pride march to attend?
They’re American, probably Marines. We have no means of refuelling choppers that I know of, and no more Hercs, either. I doubt A400s can do it, and anyway none of our choppers have refuelling probes.
He’s only a thousand years behind the times.
OT but related …
this is worth a read. Iran miscalculated and lost the Arab street, its only support is in Paris, London and a couple of US cities.
https://www.zinebriboua.com/?utm_source=navbar&utm_medium=web
Very good. Let’s see how it plays out. Iran really damaging oil or desalination installations will be the test.
On another note, I’ve randomly discoered that French International Criminal Court (ICC) judge Nicolas Guillou, sanctioned by Trump in August because of the court’s warrant for Netanyahu, says he has been cut off from basic financial and digital services.
He can no longer use Amazon, Airbnb…
The Union beat the Confederacy along these lines. Probably earlier examples of this insight.