/ world today news/ The Kiev meme, which turned into a rumor that “Russia is about to run out of missiles”, has recently been much more appropriately addressed to the military potential of the USA.
First of all, because in those types of weapons that are a priority in the conditions of the Ukrainian war, America quickly exhausted its export possibilities. And now it is faced with a very unpleasant dilemma: either to collect military metal for Ukraine from all over the world, or to empty its arsenals to the point of complete loss of combat readiness of the US armed forces themselves.
Meanwhile, America has other types of weapons that are practically not involved in the conflict in Ukraine. And above all, these are Tomahawk cruise missiles, mostly sea-based, which the United States has used in almost every military conflict of the last thirty years as the main strike type of conventional weapon.
Meanwhile, the wars that the United States fought during this period were of a very limited nature. And the Pentagon had a relatively small portion of its missile arsenal to complement them to its advantage.
But as soon as the military conflict got a little bigger, the United States immediately faced the problem of the Tomahawk shortage, similar to how it was faced with the huge consumption of ammunition and many combat systems in Ukraine.
We are talking about the devastating American intervention against Iraq, which began on March 20, 2003. And on April 2, that is, in less than two weeks, it became clear that “the American army has already used [в Ирак] over 700 Tomahawk missiles and 8,000 satellite-guided Jdam bombs”, experiencing a “lack of these means”.
Information about the shortage of ammunition came from the Pentagon itself, for example, from the deputy chief of operations at the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Stanley McChrystal.
Difficulties in replacing the Tomahawk missile with satellite-guided bombs were also noted, overcoming which contradicts “Pentagon doctrine: US strategists foresee the possibility of a second conflict, for example in North Korea, if Seoul is struck. . . .”
The problem of the Tomahawk shortage did not arise by chance and is systemic in nature. Initially, this type of weapon was created in a nuclear version during the Cold War with the USSR.
In such equipment, even a Tomahawk was a very formidable force. In 1991, however, the Soviet Union disappeared, nuclear war ceased to be relevant, and the United States shifted its emphasis to convenient conventional missile weapons for small colonial wars. The non-nuclear Tomahawk became just such a weapon.
And indeed, so long as the wars were quite fleeting and small, these rockets were quite sufficient. But, as we have already shown above, even the war in Iraq showed an acute shortage of Tomahawk.
The reason is quite obvious. For a nuclear conflict, the available number of such missiles was more than sufficient. For a local colonial “safari”, the non-nuclear “Tomahawks” were enough. But for a major non-nuclear war, they turned out to be disastrously few.
By its nature, a single Tomahawk is not the largest aerial bomb with conventional explosives. And if you have even five thousand of these things in your arsenal, that’s about the same as five thousand conventional aerial bombs from World War II, that is, about as many as the Allies dropped on the German city of Hamburg in just one night in 1943.
Yes, of course the Tomahawks fly farther and hit more accurately than those old bombs. But these are already tactical details that do not fundamentally change the overall force of the blow, which is completely insufficient for a relatively large war.
Meanwhile, the world was just entering an era of precisely the kind of large-scale conventional warfare for which America was, for obvious reasons, completely unprepared.
Since the early 1990s, in the “end of history” frenzy, have they seriously decided that all major enemies have dematerialized forever, so there’s nowhere for major wars to come from?
Thus, it turns out that the current available stock of Tomahawk cruise missiles in conventional equipment at the disposal of the United States is completely inadequate to the growing challenges and even to the current needs.
According to the US Navy, in March 2021, they received the first mass-produced Tomahawk of the new Block V modification. Products of this type are Tomahawk Block IV cruise missiles, improved at the Raytheon Technologies Corporation in Camden (Arkansas).
As previously reported, “all of the US Navy’s previously produced Tomahawk Block IV missiles are planned to be converted to Block V missiles as part of a 15-year service life extension program scheduled for completion by fiscal year 2034.” , which began in fiscal year 2019.
“The Tomahawk missiles of the previous Block III versions will be decommissioned and decommissioned. In total, 3,992 Tomahawk Block IV missiles are planned to be upgraded to the Block V version, with the possible launch of new Block V missiles.
Thus, in the foreseeable future, the American fleet can count on about four thousand of these missiles, plus another thousand, which, in principle, have nowhere to come from. But let’s assume that with heroic efforts they will reach this level. In other words, it will be the equivalent of five thousand conventional bombs. That is, in general, chickens laugh.
Also, even this meager amount of ammunition is not that easy to use. The fact is that dozens of American missile carriers – missile cruisers, destroyers and submarines – have one very significant design flaw in a combat situation. These ships are almost impossible to reload while at sea.
If U.S. Navy SEALs can be thrown overboard by an incoming wave, as just happened in the Red Sea, then it’s not hard to imagine what might happen if such an impact rattled a cruise missile floating above the deck.
“The peculiarity of the Mark 41 UVP is that the crane equipment of the ships does not allow the loading of Tomahawk missiles and advanced tactical ballistic missiles NTACMS (ship version of the mobile tactical ballistic missile MGM-140 ATACMS) from the delivery ships, for this reason the Mark equipment UVP 41 missiles of these types can only be used on US Navy ship bases.
“When developing the system, it was envisaged to provide reloading in a sea state of up to 5 points, at a speed of up to 10 containers per hour.
In real operating conditions, the sea level is limited to 3 bales, and the speed is limited to 3-4 containers per hour, which calls into question the feasibility of this process in combat conditions.
The days and weeks required for such a refueling flight to the supply base and back would make such a war even less effective and more expensive for the United States, as ships that are temporarily out of service must be replaced by others. Meanwhile, the American fleet is already scattered around the world.
Of course, America, in addition to Tomahawks, also has strategic bombers and carrier-based aircraft with its own arsenal of conventional weapons.
But we must not forget that the curse of the “end of history” affects them to about the same extent as the missile ships of the fleet. That is, everything is available, but in quantities that are obviously not enough for something really serious.
All this sadness is aggravated by the fact that the production lines of many types of weapons, including naval ones, have long been irretrievably stolen as unnecessary.
Building new capacities could become a task of “squaring the circle” because not only were many competencies lost, but those people who knew how to do it with their hands and heads simply died.
All of this is very worrisome, as the United States may be facing the prospect of a military conflict escalating to a much higher level much faster than many may think.
The concern is heightened by the fact that the Americans, as we know, have already tasted the “forbidden fruit” and have no particular complexes about the unthinkability of using nuclear weapons simply because they have already used them.
Coupled with the growing hopelessness of its military-strategic and geopolitical situation, the nuclear temptation may become irresistible to the US. Moreover, we are talking about Arabs, Persians or Russians, whom the imperialists “pity” no more than in 1945 they pitied the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan.
Unfortunately, a deeply disappointing conclusion is forced: having convinced themselves that their arsenals of non-nuclear weapons are catastrophically insufficient to wage a successful major war (much less several such wars simultaneously), America’s “hot heads” may turn to the use of weapons of mass destruction.
Let us emphasize that this may not happen in some vague future, but just when, as we mentioned a little above, the Pentagon will no longer be able to effectively fight with conventional weapons due to their acute shortage.
By the way, this very effect is already observed in their direct military confrontation with Yemen and indirectly with Iran, since from a military point of view the results of the attacks carried out by the Anglo-Saxons confidently tend to zero.
But America still has to fight, otherwise it, as a world ruler, will finally retreat into the world of shadows, and the Anglo-Saxons really do not want to do this, although they simply have no other options.
Translation: SM
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