This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
A shortage of Discipline
https://www.propublica.org/article/general-dynamics-artillery-factory-failed
I found the article quite engaging, see the botched circumcision they inflicted on some poor artillery shells:
https://www.propublica.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/IMG_0531_clean-1_maxHeight_3000_maxWidth_3000.jpg
The story starts during the early Ukraine war scramble for shells. All the disaster is appropriately foreshadowed. There was a non-engineering finance guy, Firat Gezen, running General Dynamics’ Ordnance and Tactical Systems business. Instead of replicating traditional artillery production methods, Gezen proposed ambitious robotics and new technologies for a new plant in Mesquite, Texas. He wants to bring in some Turkish contractor nobody's ever heard of, Repkon. (Firat Gezen is a Turkish name btw).
Naturally, there is no proper oversight or competition because the US is rushing to get more shells... Speed is the whole point.
Everything goes wrong.
Apparently bashing machinery with sledgehammers is OK if done sparingly for misalignment/seizing up. So not totally crazy. But done far in excess, obviously.
There's more to the story of course, a triumphant opening ceremony with fake plastic shells, toxic black smoke from machines that mysteriously weren't running during an OSHA inspection...
My conclusion is that much of US industry and especially the US MIC/govt sector is seriously undisciplined. The article goes on to describe how the US Army (as a collective that is, individuals do say ‘this is retarded’ but only anonymously for fear of retribution) closed ranks and denied anything is going wrong, or at least they personally aren’t to blame. Yet they spend $500 million on shells (sure, peanuts by US military standards) and get no shells. The first response was to pretend nothing is wrong and watch the plant blow through eight deadlines. When they realized something was wrong, they kept going anyway because it would be too legally painful to cancel the contract, let alone get any money back from the Turks. Let's not forget that 500 million represents some 750 lifetimes of American tax paid. Not peanuts to them!
And it's not an understandable issue like the F-35 radar software being underwhelming and needing upgrades. Software can be tricky, radars are sophisticated. However, 155mm shells really aren't that hard to make, it's WW2 technology! The last major innovation was the proximity fuse, circa 1944. There have been modest improvements since WW2 in fragmentation optimization and making safer explosives (less sensitive to shock during handling) but nothing too exciting. Furthermore, this is a severe issue. The US has two decades-old artillery shell factories in Scranton making 155mm shells (the metal part of the shell at least, they then go to another plant in Iowa for the explosives), this was supposed to be the third. This third factory was supposed to be 30% of monthly production and it didn’t come online. One out of three US 155mm shell factories is meeting production targets, the other Scranton factory is well behind targets and this factory hasn’t come online at all. If it were one in 20 factories failed spectacularly, then so be it. 2/3 failing is bad.
This failure also matches up with longstanding military performance issues like the Afghanistan war. The war was lost many years before the US pulled out but the generals kept lying to everyone saying things were fine. We were told that the Afghan National Army wouldn’t collapse like a paper bag. Nobody was sacked, let alone jailed or even fined for this dreadful performance. I think a mature civilization would conduct a large-scale military purge after losing a war to some quasi-literate goatherders with AKs and flip-flops backed by nobody after spending over $2 trillion on the war. If ever anyone should purge a military, surely it'd be after that? Even if the goal was unachievable and incoherent (which it was) then a sober response would be damage mitigation and early departure. Patriotic US generals should’ve leaked the secret reports showing that the war was a complete disaster, not been complicit in throwing good money after bad. But seemingly there were no generals whose patriotism outweighed their desire to avoid embarrassment or punishment.
Back to the artillery plant, there's no sign that Mr Gezen or anyone at all (maybe it's not Gezen's fault, though I think it is) is going to be publicly humiliated or severely punished in any way. How else can there be improvement? How can you train a system without a reward signal that discriminates between success and failure?
Furthermore, I'm sceptical of these narratives that the US is going to scale up munitions production to counter Russia or China. US military planning seems to be conducted on this very hazy level of 'we have the greatest military in the world and can surely win against forces specifically aiming to counter us' or 'there will always be enough munitions for this latest war' or 'we can run our fleet ragged covering a huge range of missions all the time', without sober prioritization. I think that US leaders assume that there’s some 140 IQ, trustworthy, patriotic Anglo-American sitting around comping at the bit to win any given war. All they need to do is remove the procedural shackles that exist for no particularly good reason and production will soar.
But the stultifying defence procurement system emerged to regulate the looting and grifting of the modern US military industrial base. It’s full of cliques, DEI and organized crime. Or if not ‘crime’ then deliberate incompetence, negligence and grifting. It’s enshittified. The shackles are load-bearing.
Trump will likely make the same mistakes as the Biden administration in loosening procurement rules and funding ‘looks good, doesn’t work’ high-tech quick fixes for the Iran War's munitions needs. More so, given they’ll be trying to make high-end weapons that are intrinsically complicated and expensive. And if anything, Trump pays less attention to detail than Biden.
The article tags on at the end how after the disaster with the Turks, they switched contractor to some small company ‘Deterrence’ that has no major manufacturing experience (they did some work with rifle primers, not heavy artillery). Deterrence plan to use AI to improve production. I don’t think AI is the right answer here in the short-term, the problem is human negligence, misalignment and greed. Adding more intelligence to a dysfunctional institution won't help that much, they might just use that intelligence to better conceal the dysfunction.
America is not some jihadist band in Nigeria where the marginal addition of supplemental intelligence goes a long way. The US can absolutely do far more complicated tasks than making a few artillery factories, yet struggles because the competent facets of US industry are working elsewhere on rocketry, AI, chips, cars, aircraft. They have capable management cultures. Other parts of US industry are totally undisciplined, they reach a privileged position like General Dynamics’ monopoly on shell production and then ossify. GD are the sole prime contractor, swooping in to buy up any competitors that emerge, then subcontracting out the actual work of production. This is profitable for General Dynamics but not a good outcome at all.
The US legal system is also excessively slow and costly. If the Pentagon had been able to quickly punish General Dynamics or Repkon for their incompetence then they wouldn’t have been so careless. But in reality everyone pays lawyers a lot of money for abstract legalistic box-ticking/form-filling that yields little justice. In this case, they couldn’t even do that because the Pentagon foolishly let production work begin before the contract was finalized. It’s like negotiating with devils – a moment of foolishness in a tough situation and you can be damned.
It’s also why I disfavour free-marketism. General Dynamics has incentives to adopt this rentier approach, they want to suck out money for free. Law and procedure alone can’t bind them, there are always ways to work around rules (and regulations have their own cost in slowing everything down). Powerful companies can lobby to get regulations made to defend them or promise cushy jobs for regulators after they retire. Genuine patriotism needs little binding or regulation.
"going to"? That's already happening:
I think it is correct to be skeptical of press releases. The primes have a history of delays, Congress might flinch at the cost at some point, no matter what the DoW wants, and the new kids on the block will undoubtably have teething problems. However, even if you are only looking at what's already been done:
So based on both orders and production, the DoW currently is scaling munitions procurement.
Of note, the DoW is pursuing a two-tier track, where they are fielding qualitative leaps (two-stage AAMs, torpedoes you can fire from countermeasures tubes to intercept enemy torpedoes) while at the same time reaching for "affordable mass" of cheap cruise and hypersonic missiles to overwhelm enemy defenses.
Ranger has already corrected your overall rosy outlook on our munitions production - we're very behind right now and totally unprepared for a major conflict. But clause here is pretty damning. Even in a drone-driven future, it's laughable to think that standard artillery won't be relevant.
Ranger shifted goalposts. Munitions production and munitions expenditures are two different things.
"Drones" as most people commonly think of them will barely be relevant in a war with China, and that's for the same reason that 155mm shells will barely be relevant in a war with China: they don't have any range to speak of. As the Japanese learned, the Pacific is very big.
The exception for both 155mm and drones in a war with China is for Taiwan because they will plausibly be fighting at the very short ranges that 155mm and FPV drones are relevant for if they get invaded.
Otherwise I invite you to take a look at a map and tell me exactly where the US Army will be shelling China from. The only plausible way to do that would be if the US conducts a REFORGER-style surge of troops to Taiwan. It's not impossible but for reasons I am happy to elaborate on I think it is fairly unlikely.
500 tomahawks a year is terrible too. That’s five months of Russian-level Ukraine war expenditure or about four hours of a war with China.
If they all hit, then the war will be over in four hours. (But note that Raytheon says they intend to scale up to 1,000/year.)
It's hard to tell how much is enough because a lot of it is about the timeframe (1/year is fine if you started building around the Jurassic period, for instance), effectiveness, intended target, delivery vehicle...much of which isn't know.
My thinking is that China's window is closing, but they have a respite with the Iran war. Right now it looks to me like that window is about five years, but that's a guesstimate and could change due to further actions by the United States or China or third parties.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I'm not a military historian, but looking at the blue parts of the globe and saying "Oop! Well, artillery won't be involved!" doesn't make sense.
If we're talking a month-long, high-tech fight that ends decisively? Sure. How many wars, not games, work that way? We're discussing in this thread only one of the more recent quagmires we've gotten into, and one that stretched for 2 decades.
I think the general implicit argument for this is that a Taiwan conflict either (1) doesn't result in land battle (invasion), in which case large tube artillery is not tremendously useful, or (2) does have land combat, indicating a degradation of naval/air forces to the point where supply lines for artillery aren't necessarily available.
By the pound, anti-ship and anti-air weapons are probably more useful up front. There could be some role for tube artillery as anti-ship, but I'm not familiar with options there. Or that some weird middle ground appears where supply lines are still functional and there is a land war.
It'd be incredibly useful for Taiwan during the defense, but as you said, if it drags on long enough for production and resupply, it'd be because the war has taken on a different shape wherein tube artillery is useless.
One way of looking at it: I believe the Marines are no longer interested in tanks, but are very interested in being able to get missile batteries set up on islands/launch them from the amphib assault decks. Should tell you the sort of ranges/capabilities they expect to deal with.
More options
Context Copy link
I really do see the point, and of course logistically a tomahawk missile is nicer to have than an artillery shell for a given weight and volume.
I just think the chance of the war degrading into a sloshy grind where we're attempting to subjugate China and the difference in cost and un-jam-ability of traditional shells becomes more valuable than most people expect. Even America would have to start making choices based on effectiveness per dollar in that scenario.
A great historical analogue here is that the Gatling Gun, much like the drone, was going to end protracted conflict and supplant the infantryman's rifle. That didn't happen.
To be clear here - you're suggesting that a Taiwan conflict could end in a land invasion of Mainland China?
I believe a conflict with China - Taiwan or no - would eventually involve terrestrial warfare, yes.
More options
Context Copy link
There’s a good chance you would see significant ground combat in Vietnam, Korea, or any of the island nations of Southeast Asia, plus your regular island-hopping to secure supply lines and airfields. Probably would be a lot of ground fighting with India too, but I imagine the Indians could mostly handle that themselves.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I suppose it is true that a war with China could in theory last until continental drift made 155mm relevant again, yes, but if that happens I think we will have plenty of time to spin up production lines. Otherwise, the amount of time the war drags on doesn't really change the basic dynamics involved with the tyranny of distance, does it?
If that's not the scenario you are envisioning, please explain to me the scenario you envision US forces using 155mm against China in. If you're trying to get me to concede that my I was overstating the degree of unimportance of 155mm (which I agree can plausibly be used by forces on Taiwan in an invasion scenario – and indeed the US and Taiwan are working on joint 155mm production, I assume with this in mind – or obviously if the Korean peninsula heats up – which is not a foregone conclusion in the case of a war with China) then I will happily concede that may have very slightly overstated the irrelevance of 155mm. But if you think that it is an important production item for the US military in a China contingency specifically, I would very much like to know how you think it will be used.
It's not particularly unusual for the course of a naval war to be essentially decided in a single battle – this happened during both World Wars. This does not mean that the war is over after the battle, but the destruction of the Japanese carriers at Midway and the inability of the Germans to break out into the Atlantic at Jutland set the stage for the conclusion of the war. It's quite possible that any war over Taiwan would be decided in the course of 48 hours or so (if it is not, it's probably good for the US, as it means that the US qualitative advantage in submarines will likely become increasingly relevant.)
What is particularly weird is that the surface navy theatre of WW1 (the U-boat war was separate) was decided by a single battle that was a tactical draw.
More options
Context Copy link
Well, for example, going to war against Japan (an island!) involved heavy ground battle all through Burma.
Imagine, if you will, America objects to a Chinese blockade of Taiwan, or some other inciting incident. First, there is the problem of preventing the larger, closer power simply out producing you. Yes, you can bomb and so forth to some degree, but that requires resupply and avoiding AA defences and at some point I think it's likely that you're going to want to take and hold ground within China. If you can't, there is really only so much you can do. You don't necessarily get to say if you want to have a land war or not. Russia didn't want to need artillery in Ukraine.
Furthermore, not even credibly being able to do it then constrains all your options if you were ever to escalate, and both parties know it, so even capabilities that you never intend to deploy can be relevant.
I do not think that the United States would ever attempt to take and hold ground within China, both because China has effectively unlimited warm bodies to throw at the problem along interior lines and the United States does not have either of those things, and because if the war was going so badly that China was in serious danger of being occupied it would resort to nuclear weapons to prevent regime change.
The US cannot credibly threaten to seize and hold territory inside of China (raids might be another thing, but realistically if attempted I expect that would look like DEVGRU derping around in the bushes with a laser designator or something, not anything kinetic) and procuring more 155mm shells does not change that. Furthermore, because the United States is in this dynamic attempting to preserve the status quo, it has no real need to take and hold territory. The US can credibly threaten to use nuclear weapons, and that's about it.
[Edit to add: I think that some of the militarized reefs and such are potentially open to ground assault. But that's very different from mainland China.]
This is the original meaning of "Never get involved in a land war in Asia".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Awkward counter-argument. The allied strategic interest in the Burma campaign wasn't to try and out-produce and then out-shoot Japan shell for shell, but to maximize the Japanese logistic costs as Japan's over-expansion made it vulnerable. If, say, the Americans had reallocated naval production to artillery shell production in order to bask in artillery overmatch, it would have been a really dunderheaded move.
Russia did, however, want to have a war against a contiguous neighbor in artillery range, which in turn gave artillery a ready application and logistical tail.
If you wanted to escalate a war against China, artillery would be pretty marginal. Before you could mass artillery in range, you'd have to overcome the Chinese investments in anti-access into the theater in the first place. If you could do that, then you could just shut down China's import routes, which artillery wouldn't be particularly relevant in doing.
This seems overly optimistic about the power of sea- and air-based warfare. I'm far from the first person to note that America is fundamentally a sea power and struggles to prevent sanction-busting on land. China is a land power. I'm not saying that America couldn't make life very annoying with a sea-based blockade, but as a guy on the far left of those bell curve memes, it seems to me that war often doesn't end up going the way you think it's going to go, and confidently saying you aren't going to need something is rarely a wise move.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ultimately we're at the point of a differing opinion. I apologize for using "laughable" in my original response to you, and see valid points here.
I think that, classically, even professional strategists tend to repeatedly underestimate certain components of warfare. Snipers are a good example, and artillery is another.
I'm fine with a differing opinion, and I 100% agree that artillery is under-appreciated. It's not glamorous and (ironically) is not expensive, but it remains extremely deadly.
However that doesn't get me to thinking it will be particularly important in a naval war.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
If you cram a 100000 geran jet class drones in a carrier with proper starlink overlords you can totally turn off Shanghai. Or Taipei. Or LA.
Most people think of FPV drones (or maybe, like, Predator drones) in the military context nowadays, I think. I agree that "drones" (low-cost cruise missiles) like LUCAS/Geran are likely to be relevant.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
The sorts of surveillance and missile drones (though likely not the particular model) we're using in Iran will definitely be relevant. So will a lot of "one-way attack drones". If the sort of anti-personnel drones used in Ukraine become relevant, we're already in deep trouble.
Yes, I agree. LUCAS seems relevant, for instance.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I get it, but standard artillery is essentially only relevant to a land war in Europe. We're already ~fighting a land war in Europe, and as much as I'd love to liberate Sweden, that's the only one happening in the theatre for the foreseeable future. Latam/Middle East/Africa, the opposing forces will not be competent/coherent enough for you to need conventional artillery (with the exception of Iran, which is geographically un-invadable anyway), and any China conflict is a purely air/naval one, unless you're expecting trench warfare in Taipei. The shell shortage is damning not because shells are universally critical munitions, but because of what it says about the rest of our military supply chain.
Aren’t 90% of casualties now from drones. Artillery is only relevant for exceptional expensive rounds and systems because they are otherwise stationary targets to drones that are way cheaper, more accurate, and longer range?
Not necessarily. Artillery is relevant when there are bigger things you want to explode, like proper infantry columns, tanks, and whatnot. That said, the cutting-edge of anti-tank artillery rounds is itself a drone. If you're dug in, shelling the area is a lot less effective.
In this context, drones are very sophisticated anti-personnel cruise missiles that operate in the same effective range as a mortar (that have some anti-tank usage as well; it's not hard to imagine sticking a Bonus "warhead" onto a drone, but it would be quite inefficient to do that because AI targeting and spotting is good enough and you have much better effective range with that).
That's fantastic for dug in positions and trench warfare, because you can just crash the explosive right into/on top of the enemy (and perhaps the only scenario in which a shotgun could be effective against such a weapon)- it just takes time and effort to do that right now because you have to have your guy sitting there driving the thing, and you have to spend money and drones to train him too.
I think that drone response is itself mostly going to be automated, but building those kinds of things takes time. Micro-caliber CIWS systems, EW systems listening for a drone lifting off prompting immediate and automated counterbattery fire, etc. They'll get there, they just aren't there now.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link