Posted on 12/07/2015 4:13:55 PM PST by Sergio
Last Thursday USA Today published a stunning article revealing that since August 2014 the U.S. Air Force has fired more than 20,000 bombs and missiles against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Iraq and Syria. The expenditure has, according to the article, depleted the Air Forces’ “stocks of munitions and prompting the service to scour depots around the world for more weapons and to find money to buy them.â€
The article included a comment by a defense industry consultant lamenting the fact Congress has “capped defense spending†leaving too few missiles in the inventory. Curiously, no one seems to be asking the much more fundamental question: why should Congress appropriate money to further increase missile stockpiles when the staggering expenditure hasn’t strategically dented the non-state enemy?
In fact, it may not simply be that we have failed to defeat ISIS. The strategic situation may be worse after the expenditure of 20,000 bombs than before the first struck its target. According to a report cited by the Associated Press this past summer, a multi-agency intelligence estimate suggested that the first year of bombing not only failed to accomplish strategic objectives, but saw the ISIS threat expand.
According to the article “intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the US can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.†If the situation were only that we were wasting billions of dollars on a failing strategy, it would be appalling. But there are second and third order effects at play few seem to consider which together place American national security at increasing risk.
At a time when every service chief is telling Congress that sequestration is killing readiness, the Department of Defense is now going to have to spend billions of those limited dollars to replace the missiles and bombs thus far expended, leaving even fewer dollars for readiness and training. But there is an additional consequence that should be given more consideration. The depletion of so many thousands of missiles leaves the US conventional forces with dangerously few in the event we face an unexpected conventional fight.
On August 1, 1990 anyone suggesting that in the foreseeable future the US would send half a million soldiers to fight in a full-on conventional war would have been dismissed as embarrassingly naive. Saddam Hussein grossly miscalculated the next day when he invaded Kuwait and in a day the unthinkable suddenly became probable. Given the tensions rising between Russia and the West and in the Asia Pacific with an increasingly aggressively China, the possibilities of unexpected conventional war cannot be dismissed.
If the US has launched 20,000 bombs and missiles against a non-state actor with no air force, navy, or modern army, how many might be required against a major world power with modern armed forces? What if an unexpected and unavoidable war were thrust on us in the near future? ISIS represents a legitimate terrorist threat, but is not an existential threat to the US. A war against either Russian and Chinese forces most assuredly would. How would the Department of Defense, Congress or the Administration explain to the American people that our armed forces couldn’t effectively blunt an enemy attack because we ran out of missiles?
Such a situation could be catastrophic for the United States and our interests abroad. In a time of zero sum defense dollars, it is crucial that Washington reassess its military strategy against ISIS. Hoping that we don’t get into a conventional fight in the near future while wasting limited resources on a failing strategy in the present puts our national security at unnecessary risk.
Daniel L. Davis is a widely published analyst on national security and foreign policy. He retired as a Lt. Col. after 21 years in the US Army, including four combat deployments. The views in these articles are those of the author alone and do not reflect the position of the US Government.
It would be hard for our President's successor to hurt our enemies if we have no ordnance to do it with.
I zero ..... BINGO !!!
Darn formatting, hopefully this version will be easier to read.
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Last Thursday USA Today published a stunning article revealing that since August 2014 the U.S. Air Force has fired more than 20,000 bombs and missiles against Islamic State (ISIS) targets in Iraq and Syria. The expenditure has, according to the article, depleted the Air Forces’ “stocks of munitions and prompting the service to scour depots around the world for more weapons and to find money to buy them.â€
The article included a comment by a defense industry consultant lamenting the fact Congress has “capped defense spending†leaving too few missiles in the inventory. Curiously, no one seems to be asking the much more fundamental question: why should Congress appropriate money to further increase missile stockpiles when the staggering expenditure hasn’t strategically dented the non-state enemy?
In fact, it may not simply be that we have failed to defeat ISIS. The strategic situation may be worse after the expenditure of 20,000 bombs than before the first struck its target. According to a report cited by the Associated Press this past summer, a multi-agency intelligence estimate suggested that the first year of bombing not only failed to accomplish strategic objectives, but saw the ISIS threat expand.
According to the article “intelligence analysts see the overall situation as a strategic stalemate: The Islamic State remains a well-funded extremist army able to replenish its ranks with foreign jihadis as quickly as the US can eliminate them. Meanwhile, the group has expanded to other countries, including Libya, Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula and Afghanistan.†If the situation were only that we were wasting billions of dollars on a failing strategy, it would be appalling. But there are second and third order effects at play few seem to consider which together place American national security at increasing risk.
At a time when every service chief is telling Congress that sequestration is killing readiness, the Department of Defense is now going to have to spend billions of those limited dollars to replace the missiles and bombs thus far expended, leaving even fewer dollars for readiness and training. But there is an additional consequence that should be given more consideration. The depletion of so many thousands of missiles leaves the US conventional forces with dangerously few in the event we face an unexpected conventional fight.
On August 1, 1990 anyone suggesting that in the foreseeable future the US would send half a million soldiers to fight in a full-on conventional war would have been dismissed as embarrassingly naive. Saddam Hussein grossly miscalculated the next day when he invaded Kuwait and in a day the unthinkable suddenly became probable. Given the tensions rising between Russia and the West and in the Asia Pacific with an increasingly aggressively China, the possibilities of unexpected conventional war cannot be dismissed.
If the US has launched 20,000 bombs and missiles against a non-state actor with no air force, navy, or modern army, how many might be required against a major world power with modern armed forces? What if an unexpected and unavoidable war were thrust on us in the near future? ISIS represents a legitimate terrorist threat, but is not an existential threat to the US. A war against either Russian and Chinese forces most assuredly would. How would the Department of Defense, Congress or the Administration explain to the American people that our armed forces couldn’t effectively blunt an enemy attack because we ran out of missiles?
Such a situation could be catastrophic for the United States and our interests abroad. In a time of zero sum defense dollars, it is crucial that Washington reassess its military strategy against ISIS. Hoping that we don’t get into a conventional fight in the near future while wasting limited resources on a failing strategy in the present puts our national security at unnecessary risk.
Daniel L. Davis is a widely published analyst on national security and foreign policy. He retired as a Lt. Col. after 21 years in the US Army, including four combat deployments. The views in these articles are those of the author alone and do not reflect the position of the US Government.
I'm sure our Muslim friends will want to help us with these efforts.
how many did those 20,000 kill? Or were they dropped on empty vehicles and buildings?
Wonder where congressional republicans were as this was unfolding? They had to have known.
Otraiter has our military squandering high tech ordnance on tents and vacant latrines at a mil or so a pop.
“It would be hard for our President’s successor to hurt our enemies if we have no ordnance to do it with. “
Clinton also ran the inventory out of bullets and bombs. Shorty after GWB was elected his office called the CEO’s of the bullets and bomb companies. He requested they go to 24 hour shifts and make as much ordinance as possible. (We got a memo to this effect from General Dynamic’s CEO.) The presidents did and, as promised, the new president negotiated contracts after he was in office that satisfied the military and the companies.
bingo
How is it possible to use up 20,000 precision weapons and do so little damage?
I spent five years on active duty in the Marine Infantry. Then I served another fifteen years flying F-4’s in the Marines and A-7’s in the ANG.
That doesn’t make me brilliant; however...
Even I know that aviation, like artillery; like armor; like etc., is a supporting arm.
Keyword: Supporting.
In spite of what the USAF might like you to believe; unless you are nuking Hiroshima after four long years of warfare; air-power doesn’t win wars.
Guys with rifles and bayonets win wars, and artillery, armor, air-power and etc. support them in that endeavor.
Our politicians mostly range between naive and treasonous, and our Flag Officers are mostly politicians in uniform.
We may never win another war. If we do, it will be because, “there is a rifle behind every blade of grass”.
Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.
We may be low on JDAMs but there are probably a million dumb mk-82s out there and they make a hell of a mess when you drop 80 at a time.
It could lead to surrender of whoever the enemy is this week. I bet we don’t have a plan for that.
This is the Johnson administration selecting truck parking lots for bombings while ignoring the ships and trains bringing the weapons of war.
Of course if you use enough nukes the war will end. It’s better if nobody else has any.
Thanks for your service.
See my post #11.
Plus:
1. Refusal by the Obama/Jarrett Regime to target effectively. (Because they are actually supporting the other guys)
2. No US boots-on-the-ground to direct air-strikes and to exploit the situation militarily after the air-strikes.
3. We are enamored with high-technology and are probably using the wrong type of weapons (expensive, high-tech, 21st century missiles against 14th century guerrilla fighters).
4. Democrats are in charge, and that means the US must lose this war and damage our military as possible.
Ah, but aren’t we winning if WE shoot a $200,000.00 photo-guided missile from a 1.5 million dollar drone from a 1.5 billion dollar headquarters building ... at a $1,000.00 dollar used pickup truck with a 150.00 dollar driver on a dirt road?
After all, Obola says we are winning the war, and ISIS is contained to the New World and the Old World and the Third World.
quiet = quite
My question as well. How much of that ordinance blew up nothing but sand fleas? Sunday night’s lecture shows that there is no hope.
Easy.
Put one precision-guided bomb on each of the four corner tent-pegs of an empty tent.
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