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Friday, December 26, 2025

A sobering assessment of land warfare

The rise of long-range strike, drones, and cyber means that the old (safe) rear area is no more. Supply lines are now a front-line fight from start to finish. (Factories) Supply depots, railheads, ports, repair facilities, and fuel infrastructure are all high-priority targets. If an enemy cannot stop forward brigades, it will attempt to starve them. Analyses of modern logistics under fire emphasize that industrial capacity and resilient supply networks—not efficiency—determine strategic endurance.

An army for the future must be able to fight under conditions of intermittent resupply, contested and damaged infrastructure, disrupted and overloaded communications, and near-constant threats to supply lines. Planning and organization must prioritize resilience, redundancy, and regeneration rather than peacetime efficiency and timeliness.

Land warfare (now) favors armies that can fight dispersed but connected, decentralized but coordinated. Small units must be able to operate at will even when isolated or cut off. Junior leaders must be able to act without micromanagement. Commanders must know their communications will be lost and they must be able to exercise control while that loss is happening. Contemporary doctrinal analysis underscores exactly this requirement for decentralized command in contested environments.

This is a question of more than new radios or drones. It is...a cultural issue. The instinct for centralization, risk aversion, and procedural control stems from the experience of peacekeeping and counterinsurgency missions, not from the needs of a high-tech, fully contested battlespace.   -Source 

The way I read this is that when the US goes into its next "hot" war, the battlefield will extend from the front-lines to the transformer sitting on the power-pole outside your house or apartment block.

It will extend to the bridges crossing our rivers and the pipelines and refineries that refine and move oil and natural gas. The cell and fiber-optic networks will come under attack. Our marine ports and air transportation systems will come under attack.

Car-bombs and drive-by shootings will happen on a daily basis as high-value human targets are identified and "taken out". D.C. and Silicon Valley and Houston will become Moscow on steroids.

Today, if you don't know how to turn nutrient-dense ingredients like flour, lard, sugar, dried spaghetti rice and beans into edible food, you still have time to learn. When the supply chain takes a beating, among of the first things to fall off the back of the wagon will be bags-of-air (Doritos, potato chip, popped popcorn, breakfast cereals) and highly processed foods like hot-pockets, frozen pizzas and Jimmy Dean's sausage-egg croissants. I would also plan on bottled water imported from out-of-town soda-pop and iceberg lettuce to become rare/expensive. Plan accordingly.

11 comments:

  1. A strength of our American culture is the lack of class structure. Surely they have constructed classes but there is mobility. In other places, Europe, everyone maintaines there "place". Saw it in my German in-laws. Heard about it from my father's experience in WWII. In a crunch a PFC would stand up and take the lead. Roger

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  2. While true in WW2 Rodger that a PFC could lead from the front.

    I think Joe's comment is unlike so many of the Wars America has been in the next will look a lot more like Sherman's march across the South.

    IE the battlefield includes our Walmart parking lots, our water, sewer and power grids and so on.

    I'm inclined to think the unity of America at WAR of WW2 will not be repeated as Gimme Dats, undocumented immigrants (According to CNN) and various grifter class "legal immigrants" all scramble to GET THERES as supply chains and systems failures are occurring.

    Somebody said something about "A house divided cannot stand" and that's been true long before Civil War 1 occurred in America.

    Speaking of that, it's time for my generator testing @ 5 degrees F. Thanks Joe for the timely reminder.

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    1. Agreed. 70 here yesterday and today. Be freezing again as soon as the jet stream gets its act together. Roger

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    2. To Joe's point, had teenagers over for a game on television a few weeks ago. One kid announce that we were an "ingredient house" after a quick scout of our pantry. His and those like it will be up a creek. Roger

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  3. I am reminded of Kurt Schlichter's The Attack.

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  4. We all saw what happened during the "Great Toilet Paper Run" at the beginning of the Plandemic. Folks, that will be considered Little League in "the next war." PLEASE plan accordingly!!!

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    1. AMEN. If a TP shortage created that mess... What do you expect a shortage OR EVEN A RUMOR of a Food shortage will generate.

      Even a sweet Grandmother will be dangerous if her grandkid is crying how HUNGRY they are.

      Even shopping needs to be reevaluated as folks perceived to be well off enough to go buy crazy priced foods what does THEIR Homes have inside. Let alone the temptation to grab your paid for shopping cart with violence on the menu. Keeping the home secured 24-07 and shopping in an armed group like they had to in Rhodesia is likely.

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  5. Ukiestan has been edumacational... They got some drones with explosives to an airbase how many miles in-land enemy territory? Each asset destroyed was very valuable to their enemy. Extrapolate inside the US, and it gets ugly incredibly quick. All of this stuff can be remotely controlled over the internet and cellular networks. None of it is US military tech, either. Just POTS drones and jury-rigged bombs.

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  6. There will also be 'random' shootings of everyday people to 'terrorise' the populace into staying locked behind doors, effectively freezing the economy/production.

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  7. If/when someone takes a shot at the US, it will almost certainly begin with "deniable" cyber attack on utilities(water, gas, the grid). Depending on its effectiveness, that will guide them on the next step in this new mode of warfare which will almost certainly have all of the above nastiness. Sapper teams, random violence, and more misery for everybody. The US's size organized is a viable danger; unorganized, not so much.

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  8. The next war is never like the last one. And any military that can't adapt to this reality fails. Historically the US has not done well at being ready for what's coming....it spends too much time, money and effort getting ready for the previous war. The Pentagon has been give a front row seat to what future warfare will likely be. Question is have they been paying attention.

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