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Sometimes a “good enough” military technology can achieve victory over better military technologies. Such a fact probably gave very little comfort to the five-man crews of U.S. Sherman tanks who faced an uphill battle against more powerful German tanks during World War II. British tank crews gave Sherman tanks the unflattering nickname “Ronson” — a grim reference to the Ronson cigarette lighter’s ad slogan “lights first every time” and the unfortunate fact that Sherman tanks often burned after taking just one hit. But that did not stop the U.S. from supplying tens of thousands of Sherman tanks to U.S., British, Canadian and other Allied forces, tipping the scales against the smaller numbers of elite German tanks on World War II battlefields.
The armchair historian debate over the Sherman’s war legacy could blaze up once more with the new war film “Fury”, starring actor Brad Pitt as a U.S. tank commander leading a five-man Sherman crew deep within Germany in the closing days of World War II. Some historians and military history enthusiasts still scoff at the capabilities of Sherman tanks when compared with the German Panther and Tiger tanks that carried both more armor and more firepower. But the U.S. strategy of mass-producing a reliable tank in large numbers should not be underestimated, according to the book “Armored Thunderbolt: The U.S. Army Sherman in World War II” by Steven Zaloga, a military historian and senior analyst at the Teal Group Corporation. The tale of the Sherman tank’s road to victory represents a history lesson with implications for the future of warfare.
“In battle, quantity has a quality all its own,” Zaloga writes. “Warfare in the industrial age requires a careful balance between quality and quantity.”
“Overwhelming adversaries through greater numbers is a viable strategy for technology competition, and was used successfully by the United States in World War II,” writes Paul Scharre, a fellow at CNAS, in a preview for the new report titled “Robotics on the Battlefield Part II: The Coming Swarm.” ( http://www.cnas.org/sites/default/files/publications-pdf/CNAS_TheComingSwarm_Scharre.pdf )
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/lovesick-cyborg/2014/10/16/good-enough-us-tanks-won-wwii/#5465
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday November 13 2014, @03:21PM
U.S. debt as % of U.S. GDP: 72.5
Russia debt as % of Russian GDP: 12.2
Not to mention things cost only a fraction as much in Russia. We can't outproduce SHIT. Hell, if China shut down exports we couldn't produce any weapons at all. Where do you think everything from uniforms to flags to electronic parts to steel comes from?
This isn't 1945. Hell son, it isn't even 1980.
(Score: 1) by WillAdams on Thursday November 13 2014, @04:00PM
The debt thing is a good point, but isn't most U.S. debt held by the Social Security Administration? Couldn't we count on any countries which hold debt as dependable allies?
U.S. does produce a fair bit of goods even now --- there are still a number of firearms produced in the U.S. --- have to be 'cause of import restrictions. ``Gun production in US sets new record with 30 percent increase... more than 8.5 million guns were produced in 2012, compared to about 6.5 million in 2011'' http://rt.com/usa/gun-production-us-hits-record-150/ [rt.com]
Steel production: ``week ending November 8, 2014, domestic raw steel production was 1,839,000 net tons while the capability utilization rate was 76.5 percent.'' http://www.steel.org/About%20AISI/Statistics.aspx [steel.org]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 13 2014, @04:56PM
but isn't most U.S. debt held by the Social Security Administration?
That figure is for publicly held debt, not imaginary debt.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 13 2014, @05:06PM
It is not imaginary. US has "reinvested" the social security payments into general budget. That's where you have all these trillions (about 8-ish) of debt come from.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Friday November 14 2014, @04:53AM
This is an excellent discussion such as you never see anywhere else. It turns out that of the 17.6 trillion total, 5.06 trillion is in intragovernmental holdings, and the remaining 12.57 trillion is public debt.
Of the public debt, 5.95 trillion of it is held by foreign entites, 2.39 trillion is owned by the Federal Reserve, 0.79 trillion by state and local government, 1.1 trillion by mutual funds, 0.52 trillion by private pension funds, 0.37 trillion by banks, 0.27 trillion by insurance companies, 0.18 trillion by suckers holding the farcical US Savings Bonds, and the remaining 1.09 trillion by "others": individuals etc.
Source: Who Owns the U.S. National Debt? [about.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 14 2014, @05:25AM
It is not imaginary. US has "reinvested" the social security payments into general budget.
I couldn't help but notice the scare quotes on "reinvested". While I think that particular defense is rhetorically self-defeating (due to the vast and astounding ability of the US government to squander "reinvestment"), it turns out to be irrelevant to how Social Security actually operates.
What makes the debt imaginary is that the US doesn't have to honor it nor does that debt have anything to do with how Social Security or the US's bureaucracy operate. For the former observation, Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program that taps the US general fund to handle surpluses and deficits of Social Security. US Congress could explicitly restructure the entire program as such tomorrow, zeroing out the Social Security debt while doing so, without actually changing a thing.
For the latter, it doesn't matter if the US government owes Social Security nothing or a quadrillion dollars. Social Security has the same obligations no matter what games are played with the accounting books or how big the resulting numbers are.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Friday November 14 2014, @07:11AM
You're not seeing the full picture. Most of the US debt is in US dollars. Is Russia's debt mostly in russian rubles? Seems not: http://www.cbr.ru/eng/statistics/print.aspx?file=credit_statistics/debt_currency-compos_e.htm&pid=svs&sid=ITM_37529 [www.cbr.ru]
Who could possibly create huge amounts of US dollars if they need to? http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-23/fed-s-once-secret-data-compiled-by-bloomberg-released-to-public.html [bloomberg.com]
Not the Russians.
See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petrodollar [wikipedia.org]
If one day people preferred to trade stuff in another currency it will be much harder for the USA. But till then, the US can print its way out of economic problems - whenever they create dollars they transfer wealth from other countries that have positive amounts of US dollars.
When China sells their stuff to the USA they get lots of US dollars and having no easy place to put them, they promptly lend large amounts back to the USA. They are trying to buy stuff. But it's not so easy to buy stuff at those magnitudes: http://content.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1879866,00.html [time.com]
The US can make stuff if it has to - some manufacturing has come back onshore (but due to automation, often not many jobs are created). A significant proportion of Toyota cars are made in the USA.
The problem is the US is making super expensive low bang for the buck stuff like the F35. There are plenty of other signs are those in power are not interested in actual military effectiveness and more interested in other things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002#Aftermath [wikipedia.org]
The US should be making stuff that would be more effective in the real world: http://foxtrotalpha.jalopnik.com/what-america-can-learn-from-russias-cheap-but-deadly-t-1540829820 [jalopnik.com]
The parasitic load has become too high? ;)