Now that we've discussed why America's military is falling apart (getting older but not wiser). Let's discuss how. Specifically, which wheels are falling off. Planes, ships, and ground forces, it's all depreciating into dust.

What we've discussed is that the American military, like the American economy in general, is a Ponzi scheme. It pays off old liabilities with new growth. In this case, it keeps covering up failed wars with new failing wars. It keeps covering up horrendous procurement with more horrendous procurement. It's a shell game which can no longer manufacture shells reliably.

Now America's con wars are getting closer and closer together and bleeding into one. Whereas it took them 20 years to get kicked out of Afghanistan, Yemen has defeated them in a matter of months. Whereas once they were fighting the poorest people on Earth, now they have united China, Russia, and Iran against them, 'younger' militaries with far more resources and wealth than America. None of these people actually want to fight or take over the world, they just want to be left in peace, but America has chosen violence. But grandpa genocide just doesn't have the gumption anymore. The soulless are willing, but the body is weak. The old war machine can't handle it what's demanded of it. The wheels are coming off as we speak. If we consider the American war machine as a trishaw, the three wheels of air, naval, and land dominance are all deflated and the whole thing is just careening violently before the final destination: financial cliff.

Planes

Let's start with planes.

Antony Blinken—America's dead-eyed genocide whisperer—rides a custom Boeing 737. I include this in America's war fleet because Blinken sure as hell ain't making peace. Blinken's 737 has been grounded multiple times, once with an oxygen leak when meeting oligarchs in Davos, and again with 'mechanical problems' while meeting vassals in Europe. Blinken has had to drive and his staff had to—the horror—fly commercial, separated by only a curtain from the peasants. This is emblematic of the state of the American war machine in general.

America's military aircraft are not looking much better. A 2018 investigative report by Military Times found that “Accidents involving all of the military’s manned fighter, bomber, helicopter and cargo warplanes rose nearly 40 percent from fiscal years 2013 to 2017. It’s doubled for some aircraft, like the Navy and Marine Corps’ F/A-18 Hornets and Super Hornets. At least 133 service members were killed in those fiscal year 2013-2017 mishaps, according to data obtained by Military Times.”

In response to this report Defence Secretary (and Theranos board member) James Mattis sat in the hot seat and gave some order. He ordered 80% readiness for the F-35, F-22, F-16 and F-18 aircraft. That order went about as well as Theranos's blood testing machines. It didn't work at all.

In 2019, the vestigial Government Accountability Office said, “We found that none of these aircraft had achieved the 80 percent mission capable goal, when mission capable rate data are averaged for each day in fiscal year 2019.” For 2021, the numbers for the F-35 and F-22 were 69% and 51%; worse and getting worser.

It's not that American airships crash which is, honestly, a good thing for the world. It's that America can't fight a war at a 60% readiness which quickly degrades to 0% in their own war games. Some of the maintenance requirements of American planes are just insane. Take the B-2 stealth bomber:

The B-2 requires 119 hours of maintenance for every hour flown. The B-1 and B-52 need just 60 and 53 hours, respectively. Adding to the B-2s cost further is the need for specialized, $5 million per unit, air-conditioned hangars (used to preserve the B2’s stealth properties) that are large enough to accommodate the B2s 172-foot wingspan.

Is this a bomber or a prima donna? It's not just that the US military runs at a loss, it's that it's so fragile that it loses wars. That is also, of course, a good thing for the world. Even the mightiest power, that saw fit to reign down death with invisible impunity, gets laid low by its own hubris and sheer age. This is the great power of Allah in the end. They take everyone back in the end, without exception. Every being that lives must die, human or djinn (re: engine). Even if you're the world's biggest asshole, nothing but Allah can save you in the end. And America surely isn't on the side of God, it's the Great Shaytan, now with clipped wings.

Burning Ships

As part of their charade of giving a shit, America was building a pier in Gaza, but they can't even get ships across the Atlantic. Like their Red Sea Fleet that slunk away in defeat, the Gaza Flotilla caught fire before they even got there. The aptly named John P. Bobo caught fire and had to turn around. The Bessen had some issue and never made it past the Azores. The Wilson Wharf never made it past the Canary Islands. The Lopez slowed down, indicating some issue, but made it in the end. These are not isolated issues. The USNS Buttons (a sister ship to Bobo and Lopez) caught fire a few weeks ago. The US Navy is literally on fire.

Maintenance problems like this are not acts of God. They are the inactions of men. The hilariously useless US Government Accountability Office has reports on how fucked every department of the military is. This is what they say about the Navy:

GAO reviewed key sustainment metrics for 10 ship classes and found that from fiscal years 2011 through 2021, these classes faced persistent and worsening sustainment challenges. Specifically, the number of maintenance cannibalizations (working parts removed and reused elsewhere due to parts shortages), casualty reports (reports of events that impair ships’ ability to do a primary mission), and days of maintenance delay (days beyond the scheduled end date for depot maintenance) have each increased, while steaming hours (the number of hours a ship is generally in an operating or training status) have decreased.

These seahorses are being ridden hard and put away wet. As an unnamed retired Army chief warrant officer said about the Bobo, Wilson Wharf, etc, “if those boats don't have multiple major mechanical failures—I mean 'dead in the water' mechanical failures—I will be shocked. They're horrendously maintained. I've got videos of these things falling apart.”

I'm giving you anecdotal examples, but these are not anecdotal problems. According to another (2022) GAO report, the Navy both has a huge maintenance backlog and doesn't know/lies about how big the problem actually is. As that report says:

The Navy understated the amount of its ship deferred depot maintenance in its 2021 financial reports by about $1.6 billion. The Navy reported only about $181 million in unfunded ship deferred maintenance in its 2021 annual financial report even though estimates it prepared for GAO show a nearly $1.8 billion backlog.

What the US government calls 'understated' is of course fraud. If any company underreports their liabilities by $1.6 billion, that's fraud. Of course no one at the top gives a damn because they're in on it. It's all Ponzi, all the way up, as we've discussed. Just look at the physical liabilities piling up on the Navy's books, and remember that—like my old, neglected car—these liabilities compound over time.

Compounding liability means that ships get harder and harder to fix every year until finally it's impossible. Then you have to decommission ships early. Thus the US Navy goes from degraded capacity to none at all.

As the GAO points out, poorly maintained ships eventually have to be scrapped, and the US doesn't really make ships anymore, and what they do make is expensive, over-budget, delayed, and completely unadapted to whatever it emerges onto, like a bleary-eyed Rip Van Winkle striding onto a modern battlefield with breeches and a breech-loader.

Defeat In The Red Sea

The US's fleet is big, but so were dinosaurs. Things change and suddenly you're not so well adapted anymore. In today's world, big aircraft carriers are just sitting ducks for drone swarms and cheap missiles. These things are hard to sink, but they're also hard to repair, making them a net liability. The US tried to develop smaller, littoral ships to counter threats like Iran, but Iran evolved during the delays, and these ships are now basically useless. America still has some formidable air power, but when it comes to naval power, they've completely lost it. They've lost the Red Sea, which is their 'Suez Crisis' moment.

America is of course an Empire (so invisible I call it White Empire) and its military also includes vassal states like the UK, France, and Germany. Many countries pay the military tax to America they call NATO, and offer troops to the imperial army whenever called, including to back up the genocide of Gaza. I'll include their ships cause it's all the same shit, end of the day. This is the state of the imperial Navy, getting beat by brave non-states like Yemen, easily.

Before ever doing anything useful, the $3.7 billion HMS Queen Elizabeth died like the useless person it was named after, saying, “routine pre-sailing checks yesterday identified an issue with a coupling on@HMSQNLZ starboard propeller shaft. As such, the ship will not sail on Sunday.” Elizabeth was unable to join the NATO war fleet to play. Its sister ship, the HMS Prince of Wales also could not keep its propeller on, and had broken down 18 months earlier. The UK and Europe in general are increasingly useless vassals. They're eager but completely useless.

The French FREMM frigate Alsace actually made it to the battlefield, but had to flee retreated from the Red Sea on April 4th. Tale betwixt legs to Toulon.

The commander of the ship stated that the Yemeni Armed Forces “do not hesitate to use drones and ballistic missiles in a very surprising and striking manner.” He added, “It has been a long time since we dealt with this level of weapons and violence. The Houthis are perfecting their technique. The more they fire, the more accurate they become.”

The Commander told Le Figaro: “All combat equipment was used on board the frigate, from the Aster missile to machine guns,” noting that the cost of each Aster is $2 million. (Resistance News Network)

I am reminded of a possibly apocryphal tale about the Chinese nobility before Genghis Khan. The Jin became more and more obsessed with archery as an art form, shooting through silk and other effete bullshit. Then the Mongolians just rode hard and shot fast and defeated them. That's what I think about these colonial vassals, basically throwing Lamborghinis and Ferraris at rebellious peasants. They're completely outclassed and, frankly, their own worst enemy. They're too soft for this shit. It's not just the Alsace, the Danish Esbern Snare and the British destroyer HMS Richmond have also retreated. America tried to organize a colonizer reunion, but they couldn't organize a piss up in a brewery.

America just made things worse for themselves after launching Operation Prosperity Guardian. Their military objective was to open the sea for genocidal states, but now it's even more closed. Now 'Israeli' shipping is blocked from both the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean, and all imperial shipping is badly constipated. Just look at the results:

If you look at the graph of transits, Yemen was only mildly affecting trade by targeting 'Israeli' ships, as is their duty under the genocide convention. Then the Americans turned the Red Sea into a war zone, made shipping worse for themselves, and had to give up and sue for peace. To which Yemen said no, until the genocide stops. Which leaves the Empire at a loss. They've got these expensive ships which are already falling apart, and which have to go all the way back to America to reload. And they can't get the brave and principled Yemenis to budge. America has lost the Red Sea because they wouldn't give up a genocide. That's how cheaply they threw away naval power.

Defeat On The Ground

The surest sign that America has been defeated on the ground is that they don't show up. They hide behind proxies and propaganda, but are simply two scared to put (official) boots on the ground themselves. This is a far-cry from the invading forces of just the early 2000s.

Now America is losing proxy wars in Palestine and Ukraine after pulling its last troops out of Afghanistan. It has never been able to field an army in open combat against the Russians, and it can't physically hold the Middle East anymore. It's even getting kicked out of Africa. This is a defeated army, in what I call a long retreat for decades now. They're throwing vassals in front of themselves—like the Nazi Germans with the Romanians—but America is in retreat, make no doubt about it. From Palestine, to Ukraine, to Taiwan, the Americans talk a lot of shit, but they don't show up. They have lost ground power entirely.

The problem starts in the 1970s, when Vietnam beat America's conscript army so bad they could never field one again. Now the Army is a 'volunteer' force, but all the debt slavery can't fill the ranks fast enough.

Pentagon officials have noted in recent years that the military recruiting environment is among the worst in U.S. history. Only about 23% of Americans between the ages of 17 to 24 qualify for military service, fewer than previous generations, according to Defense Department data. Among them, only about 9% has shown interest in the military, the data shows. (Stripes)

According to a Pentagon report, “77 percent of young Americans do not qualify for military service without a waiver due to being overweight, drug use, or mental or physical problems” (via). The US military has to face both physical depreciation and public unappreciation. Nobody wants to die for shareholders. Nobody wants to buy into the Ponzi anymore.

All that's left is whatever corrupted proxy will die for them, and chief amongst these is 'Israel'. 'Israel' is America's favored colony, the recipient of the most 'defense' money and the staging ground for human testing of weapons. The crown jewel of the crown jewel is 'Israel's' air defenses, which are the best the US has to offer. They communicate how the US is able to protect ground, and bomb whoever they want. But that equation is shattered now.

In its retaliatory attack on April 14th, Iran broke the most formidable air defenses in Empire, those around occupied Palestine. It was a surgical hit, meant to send a message, not killing people on purpose. My favorite bit was that Iran hitting the officers’ swimming pool at Nevatim Air Base. “The message being: if you don’t dial back, we can do serious damage” (The Cradle). The international equivalent of putting a horse's head in their bed. The natives are no longer deterred, and they have a younger, better military. The shell game is done.

Shelling Out

Artillery is the god of war, and America simply can't produce it anymore. They're running out of shells and missiles, AKA big bullets. There's a Chris Rock joke that goes, “You don't need no gun control. You know what you need? Bullet control. I think all bullets should cost $5000. You know why? If a bullet cost $5000 there'd be no more innocent bystanders.” America has inadvertently created this situation on a global scale.

Look at the 2024 Department of War budget request. For all their big guns, they have a tiny amount of 'bullets'. In 2023, they produced 230 Patriot Missiles, 125 Standard Missiles, 40 Hellfire, and 34 Tomahawks. There's no more zeros after these numbers, that's it. They would run through their yearly production of most munitions within a few weeks of hot war. This is a joke.

America has emptied out all the imperial cupboards into the living room of Ukrainians. Americans say that they've degraded the Russian Army and 'got a good deal on it' (dead Ukrainians are worth nothing to them). However, like so much out of Empire, every accusation is a confession. Empire is running out of bullets itself, while Russia is a humming war economy. Russia can actually make shells, while America can just make pledges. America keeps printing money to chase non-existent resources, trying to avoid reality. They're outgunned and out-bulleted in Ukraine, and that's just one rebellion they're facing.

America's biggest guns of all are also firing blanks. America is still relying on 50-year-old Minuteman missiles for its ground nuclear deterrent, and it can't rely on them anymore. As Admiral Charles Richard, head of U.S. Strategic Command has said:

“We can't do it at all. ... That thing is so old that, in some cases, the drawings don't exist anymore [to guide upgrades],” Richard said in a Zoom conference sponsored by the Defense Writers Group. Where the drawings do exist, “they're like six generations behind the industry standard,” he said, adding that there are also no technicians who fully understand them. “They're not alive anymore.”

The Sentinel, the replacement for the Minuteman, is another case of made-up money chasing non-existent resources across unending delays. These newfangled missiles cost $162 million each, ballooning to a program cost of $131.5 billion (!), and they're not even close to existing. They're, in fact, closer to being cancelled. You can really appreciate America's massive depreciation problem here. They have to bankrupt themselves to not even break even. They have to spend trillions more to get less capacity. All of these programs would return them to less missile capability than they had 50 years ago. And they can't even do it.

The US military budget has long been a shell game where they hid decaying infrastructure under imaginary new shit, and now the jig is up. Like a human being at the end of their life, they incur the highest costs on care at the end, for the worst results. American hegemony is in hospice now.

Unauditable

America is extra fucked because they don't even know how fucked they are. The Pentagon has failed six audits in a row and the unaccountability flows downwards. “A full half of the Defense Department’s assets still don’t meet auditing standards.” As I read the GAO reports, one of the things that stands out is what a total fraud the military is.

As the GAO says about the Navy, besides lying about its liabilities, “the Navy
is not fully or accurately tracking other metrics—operational availability and matériel availability—that the Department of Defense and the Navy have determined are key to assessing ship effectiveness despite a prior GAO recommendation to do so.”

Sun Tzu said, “Know the enemy; know yourself, and you will meet with no danger in a hundred battles. If you do not know the enemy, but you know yourself, then you will win and lose by turns. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will lose every battle, certainly.” America believes its propaganda about its enemies being weak and its propaganda about itself being strong. In truth, they can't survive an audit and they can't survive first contact with a real enemy. They're bound to lose.

The State Of The Union Army

The state of the union army is not good. Besides losing every war for decades, America's weapons are getting old and rusty and its young men are overweight or uninterested. Their ships are catching fire and their planes are crashing to the ground. And it all costs far more to replace than they can afford, and they'd need to rebuild it with a manufacturing base that doesn't exist anymore. America would literally need China's support to attack China. It's a non-starter. The mandate of heaven is withdrawn, because of massive accounting fraud. America's military is falling apart. It's just running on propaganda now.