Ep 054 "CG Excursion: The American Military Empire is in Terminal Collapse"

The trillions dollar fragile American military complex is in big trouble in big war.It doesn't work.Robotics and drones are the new "low tech" answer to the First World's exquisite military platforms that are over priced and have the same provenance of battleships planet-wide in January 1942.Autonomous targeting will become more and more relevant as the speed of munitions increases and the salvo competition costs are driven down.Hypervelocity munitions are here to stay.The life of the light infantryman will change significantly since for the first time in human history, the cost of hunting individual soldiers and small groups of soldiers in an effective fashion has reached a cost in concert with technology [I will treat this with more detail in a future episode on the end of the legacy infantryman].In my next podcast, we will discuss how to recover from the current collapse."Quantity has a quality all of its own." - Thomas A. Callaghan Jr.References:A Retrospective on RMA, 2000-2020.The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of AgeArmy Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech WarfareDaniel Bolger Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan WarsCraig Whitlock The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the WarMy Substack.Email at cgpodcast@pm.me.

Om Podcasten

An unauthorized podcast series peeking behind the curtain at the vast machinery and briar patch politics of fighting terrorism and insurgency and everything in between. I'm a "COINtra" and not a "COINdinista", the latter are the vast army of apparatchiks and apologists who fire the engines of Irregular Warfare (IW) planet-wide. We're the skeptics and doubters of all things IW and special operations. And we are a tiny sliver of the IW community. I have noticed a jarring gap in this part of the discussion and intend on filling the breach.Substack: Chasing Ghosts: An Irregular Warfare PodcastSmedley D. Butler Fellow for Military Affairs at the Libertarian InstituteChasing Ghosts Podcast on YouTubeI am an Amazon Affiliate.You can contact me at cgpodcast@pm.me