US Losses Fighting Iran: Signs Of Degradation

Aircraft Losses Are All Out Of Whack And Very Worrying

Hi All,

Certain things I find frustrating and other things I find stunning (in a depressing way). The inability of Americans to face the reality that the US military is showing signs of rot in its operational execution is definitely the latter. Americans like to boast about their military and often put it on a pedestal. Criticizing the military is therefore something that Americans are loathe to do—but in this case it is also dangerous and possibly destructive to the future of the country.

As argued in other places, there is evidence that the profound corruption and intellectual and organizational poverty of the Trump administration has percolated down to the military. It would certainly be surprising if it had not.

There have been numerous additional signs of this since I wrote this first piece in The Atlantic on this, a piece followed up here with this Substack.

The Rot Is Real And There Is More To It

Since then the evidence of rot has become far more compelling. US forces were dispatched without the right protection, did not have the right systems to protect themselves and, when it comes to equipment, has suffered losses worth many many billions of $’s.

As US AWACS aircraft listed as “damaged” by Iran during the war.

Here are just a short list of some of the examples of poor planning, logistics and overall war fighting.