Discussion
I am wondering about the US' actual military power. It's looking to me, someone who reads the news but has no deep expertise, that the US is mostly very powerful because it's got a full stack of everything, but somehow painted itself into a corner wrt a number of critical components.
It can't build Frigates anymore, or air tankers, it's missile interceptors are good, but not as good as the French ones (and drones...)
@iinavpov Quibble: the US Navy used to use "Frigate" to mean something completely different to European navies—and I'm not sure they still don't use it that way (originally back in the 1800s they were fast shipping raiders, and by the 1950s they'd evolved into something like a light cruiser).
Also, there's a new off-the-shelf AWACS they could buy—the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail—but Hegseth cancelled it last year because Space Force or something. (The rest of NATO is still on board.)
@cstross
Yes, I meant frigates in the European sense.
The wedgetail is another case in point: the bombardier-swedish airborne radar, I expect, will become the mainstay now, because the US can't be trusted to complete/support programmes.
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