https://archive.ph/Gf09m

The bottom-line is simple — the United States and NATO are not equipped, organized or trained to fight a peer force like Russia or China in a war of attrition. One of the biggest short-comings are the costly, fragile weapons that account for NATO’s supposedly premier means for pursuing a war. Take the F-35 joint fighter. This is a boondoggle and a turkey, but it has made Lockheed Martin shareholders wealthy. Matt Gaetz dissected the problems with the F-35 while grilling U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin:

Pretty much the US is weak, but pretending to be tough.

The United States excels at producing very expensive weapons — e.g., $13 billion aircraft carriers and $10 million Abrams tanks, which require 8 hours of maintenance for every hour of combat operations. Yet, these weapons systems are very vulnerable to inexpensive countermeasures, such as a drone or artillery shell disabling the Abrams tank.

The limits of U.S. military power, especially with respect to aircraft carriers, is on display right now in the Red Sea. Tiny, backwards Yemen has thwarted a U.S. and NATO combined operation to open the sea-lanes and shut down Yemen’s missile threat to commercial ships. After almost six months of Operation Prosperity Guardian, Yemen is still attacking ships.

Yep. After the current conflict, the limits of American military power are going to be apparent.