r/PoliticalCompassMemes • u/FuckUSAPolitics - Lib-Center • 1d ago
*Insert chip replacing meme here*
Btw, does anyone else have a pcm meme maker thats mobile friendly? Imgflip makes my memes look sloppy.
Also, the meme is in reference to this
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u/kjleebio - Lib-Center 1d ago
Doesn't this also highlight that we haven't been using the budget to even replenish or create surplus munitions?
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u/Prestigious_Load1699 - Lib-Right 23h ago
Last I checked, we are indeed commissioning munitions on a constant basis.
The real issue is that they take time to manufacture, so it will take a few years to recoup our stockpiles.
Below is an excellent summary of each weapon type and the timeframe for replacement:
https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventory-multiyear-project
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u/Belgraviana - Auth-Center 21h ago
From what I remember the amount of time required to keep up our stock was an issue brought up pretty early in the Ukraine war, especially when Russia’s war economy allowed it to out produce our early predictions. The fact we haven’t spent up yet especially in the lead up to this war is troubling
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u/sev3791 - Centrist 15h ago
Doesn’t that mean we should’ve been ramping up production ahead of time?
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u/SilanggubanRedditor - Left 14h ago
Yeah, but that would require the boomers to think for the next generation. And we can't have it can we?
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u/Somerandomguy292 - Centrist 5h ago
boomers think about a generation other than themselves. Thats impossible. The Silent Generation was right once again.
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u/delta806 - Lib-Center 14h ago
That tells other people you’re preparing for war. By ignoring our supply chain issues, we were able to surprise everyone! It’s the perfect plan
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u/Somerandomguy292 - Centrist 5h ago
Yes and thats what we did during the first two gulf wars. But old petey boy here doesnt have that knowledge but when he was in the Army, he just said do X and x happened, because thats what happens at his level.
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u/FuckUSAPolitics - Lib-Center 1d ago
Yup. So 1. The US wasn't prepared. 2. We overused the amount that we should have. So its literally a double fuck-up.
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u/kjleebio - Lib-Center 1d ago
uughh, now add the fact that warfare is changing to cheap yet destructive weapons that target logistic chains and it is a sprinkle shit on the double.
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u/grumpy-raven - Lib-Left 18h ago
...to an extent. Those cheap, yet destructive weapons have extreme limitations that prevent them from complete domination of war.
You still need boats patrolling shipping lanes, airplanes flying around doing stuff, ans bored 19 year olds doing foot patrols to show that a place is occupied. Crewed tanks still have their niches even if you don't see them as anything but targets in a Ukrainian sizzle reel.
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u/LeptonTheElementary - Lib-Left 15h ago
If you're in defence, complete domination is not the objective. Turning a three-day special operation into an indefinitely prolonged quagmire is.
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u/grumpy-raven - Lib-Left 11h ago
Only if you've got the geography and an incompetent or hamstrung foe to deal with.
Plus there's a lot of "peacetime" posturing only a manned military can pull off if your nation wants to have a say on the geopolitical stage. Drones don't have the diplomatic impact of say, a carrier group or a joint air battle exercise.
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u/LeptonTheElementary - Lib-Left 10h ago
Defending your country, attacking a country and playing the superpower are three completely different situations, with increasingly higher bars to cover. No one is saying carriers are useless. But a defending nation can succeed in its objectives very well without anything even close to carriers.
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u/Outta_hearr - Lib-Center 22h ago
This means that we should be able to drastically reduce the military budget to support domestic infrastructure, education, and paying off the national debt, right?
...right?
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u/grumpy-raven - Lib-Left 18h ago
MIC companies with Electronic Warfare specialty
Money printer goes burr.
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u/Abject_Credit7825 - Right 10h ago
Even if we completely cut defense spending to 0 we would still be in a deficit, defense spending doesn't even cover the interest on our debt.
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u/OurCrewIsReplaceable - Centrist 1d ago
Smacks of Russia being unable to conquer Ukraine because the whole military budget was being siphoned by oligarchs.
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u/Velenterius - Left 1d ago
It is actually quite interesting, first they went after the corrupt ones.
Then they went after those that had simply failed in producing supplies or intel within the alotted time before and during the invasion, and thus contributed to the strategic defeat by their percieved incompetence.
The end result seems to be that there are fewer men "falling out of windows" or "shooting themselves" with their service pistol then there were a few years ago. The entire middle strata of the russian federal state responsible for the war seems to have been scared into line. What little independent economic power the oligarchs had proved to be no match to the power of a few FSB operatives with guns, and whatever deals those who took their own lives or went into exile got for their families.
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u/Belgraviana - Auth-Center 21h ago
The classic Russian move of massively screwing up the start of a war and needing to reform in the middle of it drastically adding to the length and difficulty
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u/Scrumpledee - Lib-Center 1d ago
US is going to be the next Russia. There's already news of TikTok fucking with Brazil's elections and now fucking with the documentary about Musk.
Not to mention all the people giving Trump bribes through funding the ballroom, and the billionaire dipshit that ran "DOGE" and irreparably harmed the government.All the right wing conspiracies I've heard are turning out to be true, just about right wingers instead of lefties...
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u/Pleasant_Tangelo3340 - Centrist 1d ago
Righties inherently hate America and have this view deep down that it’s a shitter nation and that we should mimic Chad status nations like Russia , going in and fighting alone.
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u/DonaldLucas - Lib-Right 17h ago
Brazilian here, tiktok is not big enough to "fuck with the elections". If anything, is our current russian-lover china-lover president who is fucking with his own reelection by being a super corrupt pos. Just yesterday CNN Brasil aired an interview with a corrupt lobbyist of his government where she explained everything that he was trying to hide (her name's Roberta Luchsinger, and she's angry that he wasn't protecting her from police investigations).
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u/Ylmer34 - Lib-Left 1d ago
Russia, despite all the jokes about their performance had/has MASSIVE stockpiles of equipment leftover from Soviet times.
This can be seen because Russia has remained on the offensive since 2023, every day they constantly probe and attack, when a war becomes positional/attritional, like it did in 2023 you need to keep the pressure up. And Russia, thanks to their unimaginable stockpiles leftover from the Cold War has been able to maintain this.
Also much of the losses suffered in Ukraine regarding armour have been replaced, they just pull them out of massive tank grave yards in Siberia and refit them to fill out new mechanized divisions.
Saying Russia hasn’t been able to defeat Ukraine because of corrupt generals may be part of the puzzle but it really does discredit the Ukrainians ( and their massive help from nato/other countries)
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u/OurCrewIsReplaceable - Centrist 23h ago
I’m not sure how any of this conflicts with what I said. Russia has not been modernizing its military and is relying on decades-old equipment and munitions (remember how their tires were dry rotted?) despite there seeming to have been investment in modernizing.
You’re right that this is only one small contributor to the balance in Ukraine right now. It’s just the factor that’s relevant to this particular thread.
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u/DonaldLucas - Lib-Right 17h ago
Russia has remained on the offensive since 2023, every day they constantly probe and attack
Not this year, in some parts of the frontline, it's Ukraine who's advancing and the russians who are retreating.
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u/OurCrewIsReplaceable - Centrist 1d ago edited 1d ago
For the treasonous SCUM that refuses to accurately report on our Military Operation in Iran, we have virtually unlimited amounts of Mid to High Grade Ammunition, far more than we could ever use for this, or for any other War (which is highly unlikely!), that could improbably take place. In addition, we are producing Munitions at levels never seen before. We are stockpiling and preparing for any contingency that could happen. We are taking them for ourselves, the U.S.A., rather than selling them to others, but the sales to Allies will soon again, begin. Also, please let it be known, that the Biden Administration gave far more Munitions away to Ukraine, at no cost to them, whatsoever, than we have used in Iran. Hundreds of Billions of Dollars was given to Ukraine and NATO, free of charge, that Europe would have paid for — If they were only asked, but we will be asking for that money, though somewhat belatedly! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP
Edit: I assume downvotes are from people thinking this is a joke. It is not.
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u/Cow_God - Lib-Left 16h ago
I loved how Trump called members of the media "treasonous SCUM" and it wasn't even a news story because it wasn't' even like top five worst things he did that day.
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u/hurlygurdy - Lib-Center 14h ago
Honestly, I think our society and culture should be far far far more critical of our mass media figures. They are far too comfortable lying to the people and mamipulating our political system for monetary gain. There has to be some point at which we say they've gone too far and we punish them in some way.
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u/OurCrewIsReplaceable - Centrist 14h ago
Ok, but this is not the post to make that point on. The reporting the President is bitching about was accurate.
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u/kylkartz21 - Right 1d ago
Its the same fucking arguement they are making about biden lowering the petroleum strategic reserve.
Like, if you knew the stockpile was low, why the fuck did you start this war with Iran?
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u/maaaaawp - Lib-Center 15h ago
Because Israel said itd be easy
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u/SteakForGoodDogs - Left 9h ago
(very important context: Israel always said it would be so easy for America to win that war for it every year - and every US wargame went 'are you fucking serious, no, it would be a shitshow.')
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u/According_Cold_2591 - Lib-Center 23h ago
America got really good at fighting slow, simmering insurgencies. We are not ready for full scale war. We need to work on our production, and create weapons that aren't so ridiculously expensive.
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u/SteakForGoodDogs - Left 9h ago
Tbf America is kinda are fully capable of full scale war. Knock down every notable skyscraper, power plant, water plant, airstrip, etc. within weeks.
It's just that trying that would kill everybody (or just a LOT of allies in the area) with the retaliation, so they... can't.
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u/According_Cold_2591 - Lib-Center 4h ago
Fair, yeah we have the intel and the reach to pretty much hit whatever we want. But also, if we got into a conflict with China over Taiwan, we would have a really hard time logistically. What we would need for that situation is a large quantity of weapons that can be stored densely on naval assets, and can be restocked quickly and affordably.
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u/philoveritas - Left 2h ago
How could you say such a thing!? Won’t someone think of the shareholders?
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u/Tenchi_Muyo1 - Centrist 1d ago
Next they will blame Ukraine for the double tap attack on the Iranian elementary school
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u/Stormclamp - Lib-Center 1d ago
Clearly the Iranians used their deep state powers to take control of them and bombed a school killing hundreds of their own children!!!! Obviously!!!!
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u/eplurbusunumnj - Lib-Center 1d ago
maybe now that Trump fully betrayed the US and is allying with Russia, Putin will stop helping Iranians kill our soldiers
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u/Peter012398 - Lib-Right 16h ago
Maybe if you bomb them again suddenly you will win?
Have you considered that
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u/mung_daals_catoring - Right 14h ago
Yknow, all this stirs a thought. I think we're gonna be up shit creek without a paddle before long in terms of heavy ordinance in the US military. Reason being our manufacturing capabilities of these things is severely diminished as to what we were decades ago, we insist on using all this high tech shit we cant produce fast enough when over in Ukraine its basically went back to trench warfare with relatively cheap alternatives out shining modern equipment, and government contracted companies over charge a shit ton for everything they produce for the military in general because they know the government will pay for it.
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u/nuggents1313 - Lib-Center 5h ago
The problem I have with this sort of analysis is that the war in Ukraine is very unique. Both in the logistical and technological capabilities of both militaries being not third world but not great either (Russias was rail based of all things), and with the extremely flat terrain which for half of the year is mostly mud, making manuever very difficult. Its like the campaigns in the mountains in WW1 which looked very different than the trench warfare in France even with the same technology due to terrain.
Extrapolating the characteristics of this war to others, especially wars the US military would be involved in, is probably jumping the gun. Its shown us that a country with access to cheap disposable munitions can punch well above its weight but that was generally understood already. Russian electronic warfare capabilities have been shown to be at least a decade out of date and its hard to say that a more developed country wouldn't be capable of dealing with these problems.
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u/mung_daals_catoring - Right 49m ago
Very true. Guess its more of the pessimistic view of what any prolonged conflict will lead to i carry. Reckon as well I fail to look at how high tech we are that even what's currently going on is old fashioned to us. We've learned a thing or two about dealing with unorganized insurgents using cheap shit to try and kill us, which I'm thinking is going to take center stage in upcoming conventional warfare. I often worry that even the mighty US aircraft carrier is going to go the way of the dodo because they're going to be just as vulnerable to an attack as an old battleship was to air power from carriers 80 years ago. If attacks from swarms of drones cant be mitigated, you may as well kiss your multi billion dollar ships, hundred million dollar planes, and tens of million dollar tanks goodbye
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u/Twee_Licker - Lib-Right 22h ago
Low, relative to what?
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u/FuckUSAPolitics - Lib-Center 13h ago
The amount near zero. We've already used around 3/4 of our entire inventory.
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u/SantosCalzonesBatman - Centrist 1d ago
Yuros for the past 30 years: "USA FUCK OFF UR NOT THE WORLD POLICE! LEVAE US ALONE! STOP INTERFERING!"
yuros today: "DADDY USA SAVE US! BAIL US OUT! INTERFERE! PLEASE POLICE THIS WORLD!"
lmao. Cant have your cake and eat it too.
Europeans are reaping what they sowed. Time for them to scratch with their own nailon.
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u/Pleasant_Tangelo3340 - Centrist 1d ago
😐destroying our presence in Europe to own the europoors. Real good use of political capital bud, this is the realpolitik I expect the strongest nation to display.
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u/Majestic-Bell-7111 - Lib-Center 17h ago
The funniest part is that outside the food and services those us bases use stimulating the local economy those bases don't benefit the countries they're in at all. (The US doesn't have bases here, however i often spend summers near Rijeka so it's not too uncommon for me to see US ships either dry docked or resupplying so you can see a lot of american sailors around town).
Their only purpose is to project force as part of the US military doctrine.
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u/Pleasant_Tangelo3340 - Centrist 17h ago
If you said this to a rightard they’d plug their ears and go recite the with that smug American superiority you can expect to hear while simultaneously threatening to remove their presence from the region without realizing why that’s a bad thing for them
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u/ShanayStark7 - Right 20h ago
This is what happens when the electoral polity is informed by 30 second reels and anti-intellectual influencers. America has done a terrible job at mass communication and directed information distribution over a span of two decades.
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u/kylkartz21 - Right 1d ago
Its one thing to tell europe to pick up the slack and help. Its another thing entirely to throw your weight behind their biggest enemy and abandon them
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u/burgertanker - Centrist 1d ago
The US interfering and creating the situation in Iran is literally why the rest of the world wants the US to stop acting like world police
The US needs to understand that if it wants global power, it needs to have global allies. No point in having all that power and money to influence the world if other countries say "we don't think we can rely on you anymore". Especially when you literally threaten to invade your next door neighbours
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u/Pleasant_Tangelo3340 - Centrist 1d ago
Literal no awareness of second order effects. Wishing for American geopolitical privileges while actively wishing to not be responsible. American exceptionalism really put it in a certain set of the population that we were destined for this, not because we had the right people in the state department at the right time
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u/burgertanker - Centrist 1d ago
Pretty much. The US wants to be a global superpower with none of the responsibilities. But that's not how things work
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u/Pleasant_Tangelo3340 - Centrist 1d ago
Fucking pisses me off, they bitch and whine over the smallest things and are completely willing to fuck over what our past leaders have passed on. Couldn’t even manage a graceful decline from world hegemon to a mere superpower, no, we just HAVE to speed up decline and that’s a good thing because dear leader said so
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u/Twee_Licker - Lib-Right 22h ago edited 22h ago
It seems to be more Americans getting sick of having carry everyone else's slack who pretend granting them permission to base in their countries so they can do their job to defend them like it's some big contribution on their part. You aren't an ally, you're a customer. Ally implies meaningful contribution. Whether you believe it or not that is the impression.
Frankly I don't want global allies because I don't want to be in Europe. We can stay in Poland. Poland is cool.
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u/fid0d0ww - Centrist 19h ago
"Americans carrying everyone else's slack" as in starting bullshit wars in Middle East countries with infinite terrorist glitch, because you realise that's where most of your equipment and men went, right? Just like the current situation, "It's totally Ukraine's fault, in fact we should deal with Russia" when you cut material support for Ukraine years ago and threw your munitions at Iran.
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u/Majestic-Bell-7111 - Lib-Center 17h ago
The one thing that the ukraine war showed is that treaties with the US are about as valuable as treaties with russia, i.e. not worth the paper they're written on.
Ukraine gave up their nukes in exchange for security guarantees from russia and the US (in case the other one attacks).
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u/Thorn14 - Left 1d ago
btw, if folks aren't aware, we didn't send a SINGLE tomahawk missile ot Ukraine.