Is the U.S. Ready for the Next War?

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1. A growing consensus of defense experts holds that the United States is dangerously unprepared for the conflicts it might face. In the past, the country’s opponents were likely to be terrorist groups or states with armies far smaller than ours. Now, defense planners must contend with considerably different threats. On the one hand, there is the prospect of insurgent groups that can field swarms of cheap and mass-produced armed drones. On the other hand, there is the rise of China—a “peer competitor,” which by some measures has surpassed the U.S. as a military force.

   The U.S.’s modern procurement system favors expensive, highly sophisticated weapons, usually made in small numbers over the course of years. On top of that, many essential components of American weapons are outsourced to adversaries. In 2024, Govini, a software company hired by the Pentagon, traced supply chains for weapons and found that nearly 45,000 suppliers were based in China. “In the event of a conflict, the Chinese could cut us off,” a senior vice-president at Govini said. The combination of limited production capacity and expensive weapons sometimes limits the government’s options. “We are not moving fast enough,” a former Pentagon official said. Read Dexter Filkins’s full report: [https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/21/is-the-us-ready-for-the-next-war](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2025/07/21/is-the-us-ready-for-the-next-war)

2. You can be mostly ready for the next war, like the US seem to be, and still lose it. China’s translation of a strategic goal is easy (snap Taiwan). The US scenario to counter it would be uneasy. Same problem for Ukraine, actually.

3. The World has no idea what a conventional war between two super powers would even look like… It would be complex, rapid, evolving and have power grid attacks, cyber warfare, space based weapons, hypersonic, interceptors, drone swarms, tens of thousands of cruise missiles, and every other aspect of warfare conventional or not seen in the past 100 years. Its something the mind could not comprehend. direct Casualties in the low billions, Millions would die of starvation in countries that would have nothing to do with the war. Diseases would spread, Rolling power outages as global connected markets and grids fail.

   I could keep that paragraph going and going and keep thinking of new horrors. Its something no one is prepared for, especially when there is a nuclear ending

4. The US has never been ready for any next war so I feel pretty confident saying the answer to this is “no.”

5. Agree with the sentiment mostly, but I feel like the United State’s intelligence agencies have been prepping for conflict like this for a while. We won’t be caught blindsided like Russia was. Our execution of said preparation I think will be flawed

6. Most established powers historically prepare for the last war or asymmetrical conflict they are familiar with. No plan survives contact with the enemy. The millennium challenge, though flawed, gave a glimpse into other possibilities. Elsewhere on reddit I got lost in a conversation about how many drones a typical US destroyer could defend against before running out of CIWS ammo. Still can’t find an answer to that question. I’m sure somebody has already put great thought into that.

7. The point about military procurement shifting to super expensive precision weapons systems is interesting. Assuming we had to, do we even have the domestic manufacturing base to support a ww2-style rearmament drive? I wonder if the concern is essentially – “Yeah, virtually no one on earth can withstand a full initial assault by the US…but if they ever manage to, we fundamentally lack the ability to sustain a war of attrition and that’s our Achilles heel.”

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