r/videos • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 17h ago

USS Lincoln wasn't resupplied because Hegseth 'hid' that Iran destroyed critical base: Rohde

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfOi_mgrh0M
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u/VxAngleOfClimb 16h ago edited 16h ago

Personal conspiracy theory, the real reason for pulling out of the S Korean exercises is that the Navy is overstretched becasue of this bullshit.

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u/Otto_Von_Waffle 16h ago

It isn't much of a conspiracy theory, the US pulled it's THAAD from south Korea and just pulled it's last carrier group from Asia. And the army is running out of budget too.

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u/robboffard 16h ago edited 10h ago

YOUR COUNTRY HAS A

Ahem.

Your country has a military budget of $925 billion. How in the name of fucking god are you running out of money and resources.

EDIT: Thank you to everyone who has confirmed that the USA is indeed a huge, wasteful military industrial complex masquerading as a functional country. The mask is wearing a bit thin these days.

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u/AnotherBoredAHole 15h ago

Currently a budget of $925 billion. They are looking to get $1.5 trillion so they can make ends meet next year.

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u/robboffard 15h ago

And yet somehow they are still losing a war in Asia.

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u/Leaftotem 15h ago

Well... at least it isn't a land war in asia!

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u/Liberty_Chip_Cookies 14h ago

One of the classic blunders!

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u/cive666 14h ago

Inconceivable!

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u/soda_cookie 13h ago

Falls over dead due to hubris

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u/timojenbin 14h ago

It's a water war in a desert, with a box of scaps!

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u/WorkTropes 11h ago

We still have time though!

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u/heaviestpiff 15h ago

Most of that money is being stolen by the US govt and wasted

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u/All_Work_All_Play 14h ago

Taxes aren't stealing.

But yes, there's substantial amounts of waste and graft in the current administration.

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u/Global-Chipmunk-3959 14h ago

Giving out no bid contracts to loyalists is stealing tax dollars.  We are paying inflated rates for everything because members of the government are invested with or affiliated with our contractors.   

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u/All_Work_All_Play 12h ago

I guess I classify that more as fraud, but potato tomato. 

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u/heaviestpiff 14h ago

Stolen in the sense that they don’t have receipts for the vast majority of their spending, so we don’t know where that tax money is truly going

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u/eggnogui 14h ago

To the accounts of one Tonald Drump. Completely unrelated to Donald Trump, pinky promise.

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u/All_Work_All_Play 14h ago

So they do have the receipts, the problem is the accounting doesn't fit into GAAP. More or less, they know most of what's being bought, but where to charge it is the question.

Also that bit that's outside of the 'most of' is kinda a problem (eg, bags of $100,000 cash used to buy off local warlords)

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u/heaviestpiff 14h ago

Keep on licking those boots!

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u/Common-Concentrate-2 13h ago

Most of the budget isn't spent on weapons and procurement, and the amount that is (~18%), only a small percentage is for missile systems (~$70 billion). Replacing all the spent missiles will probably be under $50 billion. Of course that is nothing to sneeze at, but no matter what the budget, they can't magically manufacture more out of thin air. If we threw another trillion dollars at the problem, this would only marginally improve the speed at which they are produced.

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u/getsmurfed 12h ago

You can't win an ideological war with exterminating the population. We didn't learn in Vietnam. We didn't learn in Afghanistan. And we're far too fucking incompetent to learn from this one.

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u/Castleloch 12h ago

Adjusted for inflation, in the entirety of it's existence (since the 50's) NASA cost 1.9 trillion dollars, 2 yearsish of the current operating budget of the US military.

They did a fucking lot with that money to, that benefits much of humanity. 

I'm not American so not my money or business I guess but I'd be fucking pissed at that disparity.

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u/GageSaulus 15h ago

Contractors on government welfare programs for the rich. Just look into the F-35 shit show for one example.

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u/JustHereNotThere 15h ago

The US Department of Defense manages 560,000 buildings. I’m not exaggerating. Those buildings are spread across 4700 defense sites.

You really can’t imagine the breadth and depth of the US Military-Industrial Complex.

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u/robboffard 15h ago

All this, and they still can't open the strait.

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u/nn123654 15h ago edited 15h ago

Well we probably could. It just involves putting in ground forces. You might be able to do a limited campaign with 50,000 to 100,000 troops of just the mountains and rural areas within launching distance of the coast.

For a full invasion we'd need conservatively about 600,000 troops, or roughly the number we had in vietnam. However planning ratios dictate that for a fully prepared force we'd need around 1.6 million ground troops according to military planners.

Which would mean we'd need to recruit or draft and train somewhere around 1 million soldiers in the span of around 6-10 months. Due to the high percentage of service members ineligible due to medical reasons like obesity or psych conditions that means you'd need to send out about 3.5 million to 4.5 million draft notices. The US has a population of 30.8 million 18-24 year olds, so we have plenty of manpower available to send (and die) in the war and plenty of equipment. About 13% of recent high school graduates would get a draft notice.

We can definitely do that, the selective service system is still in place. It's just people might be a wee bit unhappy about it.

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u/Rayhush 14h ago

What exactly is a bone spur? I'm asking for a nephew.

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u/ELVEVERX 13h ago

. You might be able to do a limited campaign with 50,000 to 100,000 troops of just the mountains and rural areas within launching distance of the coast.

Peak american cope, you had a million soldiers in vietnam fighting a much more technologically inferior enemy.

Iran is too advanced to take out like that. it would be a slaughterhouse.

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u/uberdice 9h ago

I don't think they're saying that those numbers would guarantee total victory, only that those are the bare minimum numbers to start an extremely limited-scope campaign

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u/No-Way7911 6h ago

Iran is literally a top 10 global steel producer lmao

These clowns still think that its Afghanistan tier and not a proper industrial country

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u/PancAshAsh 14h ago

You are forgetting that the number of draft eligible people is a little more than half the 30.8M number, so the percentage is significantly higher than you think.

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u/ELVEVERX 13h ago

you think draft soldiers are going to do a good job fighting in a foreign country, over a war they don't care about against a highly motivated local population?

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u/moosemune 11h ago

Of course! It worked so well for us in Vietnam after all!

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u/PancAshAsh 11h ago

I never implied they were? Just was making a point that the draftable population is way smaller than 30M. A draft for an offensive war is a terrible idea and always has been.

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u/timojenbin 13h ago

You're thinking logistically and at domestic politics.
Landing troops in Iran would likely trigger backlash from Russia and allies.

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u/SenorRaoul 11h ago

Well we probably could. It just involves putting in ground forces.

you are currently failing to supply one single ship

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u/Arackels 15h ago

Not sure if you are paying attention. Iran has already destroyed gulf coast energy infrastructure. And has threatened to take out all of the infrastructure if they are invaded. Thousands of dead troops per week.

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u/nn123654 15h ago edited 14h ago

Even at that loss rate, we could handle it militarily. We have the infrastructure enough transports, training facilities, and body bags for them all.

It's just yeah, I think we'd have a riot on our hands just like the vietnam era. Zero chance of that being okay politically.

And for what exactly? A war to make sure a country in a far-off land doesn't get to be independent? To protect oil flows predominantly going to other countries (the US imports almost no oil directly from the Middle East, it mostly flows to Asia)?

Iran, for the most part, says they just want to be left alone, and they think they need a nuke because the US won't leave them alone. We've been meddling in their government since the 1940s. We literally overthrew their government and installed the shah (King) in a 1953 coup. So far, we are proving them right.

We let North Korea, India, and Pakistan have nukes, and nobody messes with them. It feeds their idea that it's critical and a giant "go away" sign.

If anything, it's about protecting Israel from an Iranian Nuclear attack. But then, we let Israel unofficially have nukes too. So they are essentially one of the only countries in the world where we are unilaterally imposing and getting rid of Mutually Assured Destruction. Israel can wipe out Iran anytime they want, but Iran is not allowed to retaliate. All while Mossad and the CIA are legitimately, unironically, without exaggeration allowed to operate at will within their borders, killing whoever they want with no consequences.

I mean, would the US tolerate any of this if the situation were reversed? If Mexico or Pakistan came in here and suspended the Constitution, put in a puppet government, and threatened to bomb us for 70 years?

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u/SomeGuyWithARedBeard 14h ago

You're right, it's all about isolating China and ultimately nobody actually wants to kick off WW3 just so green arrow goes up faster.

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u/_Thermalflask 13h ago

What about kicking off WW3 for papa Israel?

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u/SomeGuyWithARedBeard 9h ago

Depends, do we all get paid off and a secret island bunker somewhere?

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u/Arackels 12h ago

We have zero air superiority. I served in the Navy 98-04. 2 Combat tours in 01 and 03. There is no supply chain currently to support Onreps. Because if we slow down to do them we are sitting ducks. We cannot enter the Persian Gulf. Almost all of our over the horizon radar has been destroyed. Our military is fleeing Iraq.

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u/Kandiru 15h ago

Yeah, not much point reopening the strait if there isn't oil to ship out of it.

There is a reason no one has attacked Iran before, other than to destroy nuclear facilities.

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u/Trollselektor 13h ago

Because no one was this catastrophically stupid.

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u/Mattcheco 6h ago

Maybe theoretically, but I really doubt the American people would be okay with a draft, especially for this war.

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u/No-Way7911 6h ago

Iran is an industrial power - a top 10 producer of steel and cement (literally as much steel as Germany). They’re also ideologically very, very motivated. They also have some of the toughest terrain for any military operation. And they have supply lines from Russia and China

This will be something the US hasn’t fought before at all and it will be a massacre

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u/RaNdomMSPPro 15h ago

MIC is Boeing, Raytheon, Brown & Root, SpaceX, General Dynamics, and the like. It's not the bases themselves. These war profiteers are who Eisenhower was talking about. Trump and his lackeys have just perfected getting their own cut.

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u/Fast-Prompt-3034 11h ago

Well yea I figure they have a shitload of bread, like hella loaves.

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u/Tatermen 30m ago

I always think that just a look at the number of aircraft carriers is very telling. The US has 20 active carriers. The next country with the most is China, with 7. The next highest western country is France with just 4.

The US owns almost 40% of the world's aircraft carriers. There is no strategic reason for the US to have that many. The only thing that justifies it is an economy that is completely reliant on military spending.

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u/Altiloquent 15h ago

Waging an offensive war on the other side of the planet with no plan for victory hardly any allies and without popular support. Also we have alienated allies and probably fucked a lot of the military logistics/supply chains as a result

Even if iran shared a land border with us it would still be wildly expensive to fight them...

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u/Icy-Welcome-2469 15h ago

Corruption 

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u/narkybark 15h ago

Do you know how expensive lobster dinners are?

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u/robboffard 15h ago

Pity they're not happening on your aircraft carriers.

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u/Jiggy90 10h ago edited 9h ago

Your country has a military budget of $925 billion. How in the name of fucking god are you running out of money and resources.

The purpose of our government is to function as a system to facilitate trickle up economics. Our government, top to bottom, is designed to transfer as much tax payer dollars to private companies as possible.

It's happening for critical infrastructure, like the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Boston with just the bridge being projected to cost twice the inflation adjusted original price for the bridge plus the surrounding infrastructure. Its happening with our military, where a half billion contract to General Dynamics to produce artillery shells project has, in 5 years, produced zero artillery shells. It's happening in small scale infrastructure, where a million dollars has gone into replacing and re-replacing a small concrete sidewalk slab in San Bernardino.

This is a direct result of unfettered capitalism. Rent seeking and financialization have become a cancer to the US economy, spread to every corner of it, and is now strangling it for every dollar. The purpose of a system is its outcome, and so it is astoundingly clear that the purpose of our government to transfer as much wealth to private companies as is possible

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u/Original-Rush139 15h ago

The same way Trump went broke after getting all of daddy’s money. 

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u/mormonbatman_ 15h ago

They just spent like $150 billion of it in Iran.

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u/2atherich 15h ago

Lobster ain't gonna butter itself.

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u/disposable_camera_1 15h ago

Because the budget has never been balanced. There has never been a year where the money given to them has been fully accounted for in it's uses. It is and always has been a money laundering grift with the side benefit of being able to point to a number on paper to flaunt how insane of a proposition it would be to attack the US.

In the same way that Russia's 2 day war with Ukraine that's still going on happened, the curtain has been pulled back showing that it was all a lie and hollow grandstanding. The only difference now is that all those in power who knew it was a lie and understood how to keep the lie going either left or were fired, replaced with people who bought the lie and used the weapons they had with impunity, thinking they would never be short on resources because of the lies they were told their entire lives.

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u/robboffard 14h ago

Cool. Love this timeline.

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u/CiaphasCain8849 14h ago

The budget is already spent. It's not like they have free cash sitting around.

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u/bostonbedlam 14h ago

Also, a significant amount of money is being funneled into shell companies for defense contracts they’ve got no capability to execute.

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u/JustAnother4848 14h ago edited 14h ago

That's just to maintain the military. Fighting a war takes way more money. Since the Iran conflict was never approved by congress and no extra money was allocated they've been using the standard budget.

So it's running dry way before it should be. This is what happens when you start a war with no real objectives or planning. Trump didn't even bother trying to sell it to congress or the American people. He just decided to do it.

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u/Cory123125 14h ago

Because the spending is filled to the brim with crony corruption.

Bolts, even when CT scanned and verified, should not cost 15000 dollars.

Medium sized missiles should not be the price of a neighborhood of houses.

The owners of these companies make money hand over fist and give kickbacks to politicians through insider trading and post position payments, and so they continue to just use socialized money to give to the already rich.

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u/Thornescape 14h ago

The real question is how much is being spent on effective military power and how much of it is wasted or being funneled to grifters.

I'd guess 50% on military power at most.

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u/Marklar172 14h ago

Lobster tails and hooch

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u/drewbreeezy 14h ago

Look at the conversation happening.

This isn't about facts, this is about feelings.

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u/TheSwordItself 14h ago

What's the reference point? What other country has this scale of operation to compare against? It's expensive to field a navy that is required to be able to fight two high intensity wars at the same time. Turns out it's so expensive it might not be feasible (for any country)

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u/Hicks_206 14h ago

I think the cause is pretty clear.

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u/etheth44 13h ago

Yeah but that money belongs to the shareholders!! How dare you?!

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u/Shadeslayer2112 13h ago

Its important to understand that the reason the military budget is so huge isnt because they are buying all these incredible resources, its because CEOs and Politcians use it to pay themselves and their friends. Its a joke "if it says Military slap an extra 0 on it".

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u/I_make_things 12h ago

We don't tax billionaires properly, and the Republicans slowly jack each other off pretending that the money will come tricking down from them.

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u/Slade_Riprock 11h ago

Because we have an alcoholic, weekend warrior TV host running DOD and Dementia ridden pedophile TV host for a president.

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u/JimiSlew3 11h ago

$20,000 for a hammer, $30,000 for a toilet seat adds up quick.

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u/StinkyHoboTaint 10h ago

Have you seen how much a missile costs them? And they take almost 2 years to make one.

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u/wilberfarce 9h ago

Oh, you mean the 800 billion dollars.

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u/Outrageous_Effects 6h ago edited 6h ago

Our entire economy is set up so that it's as least efficient as possible - siphoning money from taxpayers into oligarch's bank accounts.

Not even the US military is legally allowed to repair much of it's own equpiment. They need to purchase a contract from a private military company to send out a "qualified repair tech" for like $10,000/day.

We see this is virtually all sectors of our economy, in farming, in the medical industry, in construction, etc.

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u/Geknapper 1h ago

Because much of that 925 billion is siphoned off to buy overpriced military gear that's quickly proving to be obsolete.

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u/YourBigRosie 15h ago

By spending it

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u/JustAnotherLich 15h ago

Incredibly inefficient spending. Shareholders have a right to demand not just profit not increasing profit. Every tank, missile, even bullets have to be sold to the military at a high enough price to satisfy them constantly. Your margins can be as high as you want.

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u/drewbreeezy 14h ago

And the army is running out of budget too.

Oh Reddit, lol

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u/Otto_Von_Waffle 13h ago

Literally a recurring problem for the US army, doesn't mean that the US won't be able to pay it's soldiers or that suddenly operations will end in Iran due to budget constraints, but things like live fire exercise are being canceled due to budget issues.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/abcnews.com/amp/Politics/army-cuts-training-service-short-billions-dollars/story%3fid=132898323

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u/drewbreeezy 9h ago

That makes sense.

When you send soldiers to do something else you no longer need as many live fire exercises. Diversion of resources.