Ashwin Varma

It’s sad too because the Undersecretary of R&D is like actually damn important. Malcolm Currie to this.

What are the subtle challenges? Eager to learn!

I mapped out the publicly disclosed supply chain for THAAD, PAC-3 interceptors, and it's incredibly small & brittle. There's like 2 major SRM fuel casting facilities in the country, to name one example. Surely we should build more of these facilities?

I still can’t freaking understand why can’t we make a lot of interceptors? Can we, and the DOD just doesn’t order enough? Is the bottleneck the seekers? The rocket motors? The attitude control systems / DACS

Rare L from Pape?

Why did this happen? In WW2 we had three publicly owned shipyards that were more or less as competent as the three big private companies?

😬

So how do we plan to not have our planes blown up on the ground in Guam lol? Just get them off the ground first and retreat backwards to bases farther away?

We did it for all the planes in WW2, and even for the engines, even though the engine makers were recalcitrant.

But it’s well known that the best way to get high production levels fast is to build production pools.

I don’t see why SM-2/3/6 production can’t be spread to multiple firms, rather than all being concentrated in Raytheon. Theres no way Raytheon hasn’t earned a reasonable return on its investments in developing the models (and should continue to do so for new R&D).

Hallelujah 🙏🙏 let’s get out of the sandbox!

How large of a stockpile do you think we should carry?

But I think we just have to produce more, and to do so we have to figure out how to incentivize the primes to invest more in capex. Better government procurement is a part of it, ofc.

The lack of ANY degree of selling this to the U.S. is insane.

Book?

What is wrong with the three levels of war concept?

I am shocked this is not already done.

What's the issue with U.S. air fleet, VLS, tc. in the mid-2030s?

Do you truly think they'd start moving actual transports and sealift across the straight before they are sure they'd neutralized the U.S. ability to do the shooting while they go? For D-Day we waited till Big Week and 1.5 years of CBO had worn the Luftwaffe to nothing

As in, why hard there but successful here? That’s my question :)

I think my baseline was our not so great job hunting missiles in ORR and related actions.

Yemen also just way harder terrain right? TEL hunting can be done better now but shit mission.

What’s actually going on? Wasn’t their IADS supposed to be reasonably effective? I’m seeing Reapers just happily minding their business!

The only saving grace appears to be that Iran’s Air Defense appears equally bad what with reports of reapers hut hanging out in Iranian airspace

I was hoping against intelligent thought that some professional in the room might prevail. Alas.

Dan Caine failed to save us

Figured. Add this article to the trash heap of WSJ defense articles. Just curious if the Houthi’s had higher EOIR capabilities than I expected.

Just JSOC being useless? @davidalman.bsky.social @mikeblack114.bsky.social

F-16 Pilot’s Narrow Escape in Missile Attack Shows Risks of a New Mideast War Near misses in Operation Rough Rider, the U.S. military operation that targeted Houthi rebels in Yemen, show the risks of using military force against even a small adversary.

Re: www.wsj.com/politics/nat... and the article being discussed here before, what are our thoughts on the Houthi air defense network described: "network to track American warplanes with observers, optics and infrared sensors whose intricacy U.S. officials didn’t entirely understand"