U.S. Empties Weapons Depots To Arm Ukraine - Sure Would Be Nice To Have The Stuff We Gave The Taliban Right About Now
The Peloponnesian War was the world war of the ancient Greek world. Athens and Sparta were locked in a decades-long struggle for supremacy among the Greek city-states. Athens seemed to be winning. Then at a crucial point in the contest, Athens took its eye off the main enemy and diverted its forces to a ruinous campaign in Sicily. It ended in disaster, and Athens, stripped of men, ships, and equipment ultimately succumbed to Sparta.
Are we repeating the mistake?
China is our principal enemy. Beijing is making increasingly aggressive statements about Taiwan and challenging the United States in the Pacific. We are struggling to reorient our forces and prepare for what may be a true shooting war in Asia in the near future.
And, even as the warning lights are blinking red, and analysts warn we might well lose a conflict with China, Joe Biden and his mandarins remain fixated on a conflict between Ukraine and Russia that should have been headed for the negotiating table long ago. Our money and our resources are flowing to Ukraine at the cost of our own preparedness. Should we do to war tomorrow with Communist China our own forces will find themselves woefully unprepared.
To date, the U.S. military has sent $27 billion worth of equipment and munitions to Ukraine. This has included over 1 million rounds of 155 mm howitzer ammunition, 8,500 Javelin anti-tank missiles, 32,000 anti-tank missiles of other types, 5,200 Excalibur precision 155 mm howitzer rounds, and at least 1,600 Stinger anti-aircraft missiles.
The Washington Post has noted that “[s]tocks of many key weapons and munitions are near exhaustion,” and cited a…CSIS report that concluded that “the U.S. defense industrial base is in pretty poor shape right now [and] we don’t make it past four or five days in a war game before we run out of precision missiles.” The National Defense Industrial Association (NDIA) has described the state of U.S. weapons stockpiles as “precarious.”
At the current rate of production, it will take us 13 years just to replace the Stinger missiles given to Ukraine so far. It will take 5 years to replace all the Javelin anti-tank missiles.
The gap between our ability to manufacture new weapons and munitions and the rate at which we are sending them to Ukraine is staggering. What we are sending is coming from stockpiles that were already dangerously low. War games have suggested that in a war with China, we would run out of long-range anti-ship missiles in a week.
The United States maintains prepositioned stockpiles of munitions all around the globe so that we can respond quickly to a variety of contingencies. All of these stockpiles are being drawn down as well. Munitions from depots in South Korea, Israel, Kuwait, and Germany have all been bundled up and sent off to Zelensky.
Should North Korea move south or a war with Iran erupt in the Middle East, our troops in those areas will find they are going to war without the ammunition and weapons they need to win.
All of this is being done without any real plan for replacing the munitions expended. The Pentagon is awarding contracts and talking in terms of buying new weapons, but it is largely ignoring the time factor and the window of opportunity our actions will afford our enemies, first and foremost the Chinese. For example, the reality is that the United States stopped making Stinger missiles in 2003. So, replacing those expended is not just a matter of ordering them. We have to stand up a brand new factory and begin the process of figuring out who, if anyone, retains the ability to make the necessary parts.
The number of Stingers sent to Ukraine so far equals the number given to all our allies abroad over the last twenty years.
This is not simply a matter of poor planning. What we are doing is deliberate and almost suicidal. We are face to face with the greatest enemy we have faced since the fall of the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party announces almost daily not just that it intends to bring Taiwan back under its control but that it is challenging the United States directly and intends to become the world’s preeminent power.
Meanwhile, we are effectively disarming. We are stripping our own forces of the tools they need to win a war with China knowing full well that it will take years, in some cases over a decade for us to replenish the war stocks we are giving away. As with so many decisions by this administration, we are left to wonder. Is this simply mind-boggling incompetence or are we looking at malfeasance?
Sure would be nice to have those billions of dollars worth of weapons and munitions we gave the Taliban right about now.
If this is true don’t the CIA and FBI have to be in on it also?
>>As with so many decisions by this administration, we are left to wonder. Is this simply mind-boggling incompetence or are we looking at malfeasance?
Door #2. Military stockpiles depleted. Energy production shut-down. Strategic petroleum reserve depleted. Vaccine mandates (including military personnel). ETC.
As Greg Hunter at USAWatchdog is known to say: It's all too stupid to be stupid.