However, the most disturbing aspect of just how poorly the U.S. Army and Congress maintained our artillery shell supply chain was revealed by an internal U.S. Army document from 2021 detailing “foreign dependencies” on at least a dozen chemicals critical to manufacturing artillery shells that sourced from China and India

I wonder if some folks in China pondered whether they should be selling artillery materials to the americans and made th call that they'd never get within range of Chinese units.

You'd've thought that a Military-Industrial Complex would at least be good at doing the things that are in its name. Fancy that!

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 47 points 4 weeks ago

Preventing your enemy from developing their own supply chains by letting them use yours could actually be a workable strategy.

[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 30 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Making it irresistible to use yours, even. Reminds me of those mycelium that allow trees to share resources, but can also cut them off: the fungi giveth the nutrients of life, but the fungi can taketh away.

[-] featured@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 4 weeks ago

This is what the US and UN do with food aid. To paraphrase Sankara, real food aid isn’t grain and millet, it’s tractors and fertilizer. Just in China’s case they’re sabotaging empire, and in the former it’s in service of it

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[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 37 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

"Hm, could selling artillery components to america present a danger further down the line?"

Looks over at comically large pile of DF-21 hypersonic missiles

"Haha, nevermind. Forgot."

[-] JoeByeThen@hexbear.net 27 points 4 weeks ago

They focused too hard on the complex part.

[-] SoyViking@hexbear.net 40 points 4 weeks ago

Pff! Tankie Putinist propaganda!

Private enterprise and the profit motive ensures the optimal distribution of resources. It's basic economic science!

When the war comes, those executive yachts and private jets are going to crush Russia.

[-] lil_tank@hexbear.net 40 points 4 weeks ago

an existential war

Noooo Putin is le crazy dictator who just loves war!!

[-] ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net 39 points 4 weeks ago* (last edited 4 weeks ago)

Love it when planet-despoiling, nazi-loving baby incinerators try and tell me who my existential enemy is

[-] Flyberius@hexbear.net 38 points 4 weeks ago

I reached this conclusion ages ago from first principles. Libs are incredibly stupid people

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[-] InevitableSwing@hexbear.net 34 points 4 weeks ago

This is next level chutzpah.

Going into 2022 there was little doubt that the U.S. Army no longer believed artillery to be as central to the battlefield as it once was. [...] The $100,000 M982 Excalibur 155 mm precision guided rounds that the U.S. had been providing to Ukraine [have] largely been rendered ineffective by Russian jamming.

Tech really is a four letter word.