War after war after war. After war, after war.
And America keeps running out of munitions — whether supporting our allies, or ourselves.
The munitions shortfall crisis spares no branch of the armed forces, and no offensive or defensive capability.
Regardless of blame (and there is plenty to go around), the reason this managed decline is so tragic if not criminal is because the victims are those who swear an oath, don the uniform, and go to war for the rest of us.
Skimping in peacetime under false assumptions about the longevity or violence of war means vulnerability, exposure, and increased risk for injury or death for someone’s son or daughter on the battlefield later.
The sacred contract America makes with those in uniform, and their families, is that if we must go to war after all other options fail then we win and the enemy loses.
In other words: no fair fights. Should war start, America wants those in uniform to know we’ve done everything possible to make sure the enemy will die and you will live.
Persistent, knowable, and ever-expanding shortfalls of things that blow up is a violation of our duty to give troops every tool they need, at the moment they need it, to win decisively.
Not only is it shameful to not have bountiful stocks of bombs, missiles, rockets, mines, and artillery on hand before the war, but Washington fools no one but itself.
Beijing and Moscow and Tehran can (and do) count every single stock of every single weapon through every single open source on every single day.
The enemy who believes it can simply outlast our weeks-long stocks of precision missiles will actively seek to outlast America through mass and attrition.
Sadly it seems wars of mass precision, at range and at scale, are a feature of modern conflicts and not a bug.
