The American Missile Crisis(research.contrary.com) |
The American Missile Crisis(research.contrary.com) |
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
More like putting their mouth where their money is.
Aren't they selling their product?
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/30/us-military-equipme...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-informs-switzerl...
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.
“Printed Engines Propel the Next Industrial Revolution“
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
The whole point of the war for the Nazis was to conquer new land in the east (and destroy the bolshewists). They initially did not wanted to have war with UK or France or US. They wanted to fight with them against the inferiors. It was a racist war - the aryans against the slavs - to establish the right place for the aryans as rulers (it was also not so much about "german", it was about race).
Also it was not just the US fighting and winning against them - I believe there was another power to first capture Berlin (that also was good at mass producing).
And technically it was mixed. Some german designs were quite good, reliable and mass producible, others overcomplicated and too heavy. I doubt the war can be reduced to this question, nazi germany had enough weapons and its war industry was working full power, it was just so stupid to get itself into a war on all fronts (and for example declare war on the US in solidarity with Japan, but did not demand Japan to declare war on soviet untion in return).
If I'm not mistaken, one of the factors behind their Eastern Front collapsing was how their tanks suffered major design flaws, from failing to start in cold weather and their electrical components being vulnerable to rodents.
Also, their inability to mass produce their tanks is a critical design flaw.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
> The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine.
What are you on about here. NATO never owned it, but member countries helped it. Except USA big NATO countries are still helping it.
It is fascinating that EU countries became "vassals" when they went against USA wish in a major way. No one called them vassals when they were allies, the word is thrown around when they visibly diverge. Trying to stir emotions?
> Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf.
Nearly every type of ship in the USN has spent considerable deployment time in the Persian Gulf. They are absolutely "designed" for deployment there. What "prevents" their deployment there is that it does not make tactical or strategic sense to put highly capable warships during a war in a tiny waterway when said warship is capable and effective at operating from outside said tiny waterway. Put a CBG in the Persian Gulf and it becomes just about as expensive to defend as an air base on land (much more so, given the logistics involved). That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
> Rising ocean temperatures will change operating environments in every theater. But planning for specific effects requires first understanding the fundamental dynamics of warming seas. Two key indicators are the average sea surface temperature and the number of extreme-temperature sea surface events called marine heat waves.1 (See sidebar.)
> These conditions will affect four major aspects of Navy operations at sea: crew, equipment operability, ship maintenance, and environmental intelligence.
and (emphasis added)
> Carrier strike groups have reported environmental challenges while operating in the Arabian Gulf, Persian Gulf, and Gulf of Oman. Firsthand accounts from sailors describe crew members unable to stop sweating on the flight deck or in engineering spaces.
and
> As sea surface temperatures climb, ships will require more maintenance. Higher temperatures accelerate corrosion of ship hulls and ballast tanks and can lead to increased biofouling along the hull and in heat exchangers.
As for:
> That same CBG operating in the Indian Ocean against the same targets has tens of thousands of square miles in which to operate and avoid detection and attack, and never need to fire a missile in self-defense.
That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs. [1]: https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2026/january/navy...
Not entirely sure what the THAAD successor is though. F-22 successor is already flying, albeit not publicly.
[1]: https://news.lockheedmartin.com/2026-05-21-New-Lockheed-Mart...
[2]: https://www.l3harris.com/all-capabilities/next-generation-in...
[3]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/rebuilding-us-missile-inventor...
Russia also build some tanks while being invaded, ~90k at the end of the war outcompeting german output at 3:1 (I suppose they are included in your allied 276k number?)
Can you elaborate on what you believe to have been this "peace process" you speak of?
Even today, when the Kremlin is begging for the Ukraine war to go away, they are bombing civilians and Kiev and threatening Armenia with a war of invasion.
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
> That's just another way of saying what I said: they can't operate at close range and must instead use stand off weapons instead of, say, gravity bombs.
It really isn't. Outside of rare cases where mid-air refueling is unavailable, standoff weapons are used to reduce exposure to enemy air defense, not to increase range. Your airwing uses exactly the same gravity bombs to strike a target 10 miles from the carrier as they do at 50 miles or 100 miles or 200 miles.
https://walton.uark.edu/clc/posts/when-supply-chain-is-the-b...
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
Sure. But the hard part of SAM/ABM doesn’t need to be in the propulsion for many use cases, e.g. those where heightened readiness states are predictable. We’re using storable missiles for use cases where that storability isn’t adding any value.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
You need to take a moment and think about your "vassal states" argument. May I remind you that at the peak of the cold war the US had a hostile country plant their nukes right at the doorstop of the US in one of those neighbors who not so long before was a vassal state?
See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false.
Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe.
But that would take a while (generations) without any guarantee and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
This is basically what the UK did after WWII. We’d have to be honest that a fall in relative living standards would probably accompany such a move. (Counterpoint: the Nordic countries.)
Even in the 19th century the US was sucked into Europe's wars - the war of 1812 was essentially the American theater of the Napoleanic war - US merchants were attacked trying to trade with France/Europe, the US Navy tried to protect them saying "we're neutral let us trade" and Britain said "there's no such thing as neutral" and sent armies. Over time foreign powers got more wary of fighting the US but we still got dragged into European and Pacific wars (WWI, WWII), in large part because we kept trading with our European and Asian partners.