How the US Operates 750 Military Bases Around the World: Misconception of American Military Weakness and the Huge Scale of the American Military Complex

I often hear about the weakness of the American military, with people even saying the US would not be able to handle Russia alone. That’s a misunderstanding of military power. I have written many times that EU NATO forces alone, without US help, could obliterate Russia in a matter of days. The West has problems with supplying Ukraine with ammunition not because we don’t possess ammunition or lack the capacity to produce it, but because almost our whole military production is focused on air weapons like aircraft missiles and bombs.

To remedy this issue, the West created ground weapons that can utilize air weapons. Examples are ground-to-air launchers utilizing air-to-air missiles like NASAMS, and bombs designed to be dropped from planes now adapted to be shot as rockets from the ground like GLSDB. All that is because, as I wrote before, Western military doctrine is air-based. We don’t have enough artillery shells because the Western military decided that air weapons like bombs and rockets are more efficient.

I explained this before, but basically, if you have an artillery shell that weighs, let’s say, 50 kg, around half of it will be explosive required to propel the artillery warhead to the target. In contrast, if it’s a bomb, almost 100% of its weight can be spent on warhead explosives to destroy the target since it will be propelled to the target by a plane. Since our doctrine is based on air superiority and air support, it assumes planes will be in the air anyway, making bombs more efficient than artillery. That’s why it may look like Russia has better military production capacity, but it’s only because their doctrine assumes not having air superiority, while ours is based on it. While Russia beats the West in the production of artillery, we produce more bombs and missiles that can’t be utilized in Ukraine. The West needs to scramble to gather artillery shells while we sit on massive stockpiles of air-to-air and air-to-ground weapons which can’t be utilized in Ukraine.

I wrote before that even if we would use only EU NATO armies against Russia, it would be like the Highway of Death. The only reason this is not happening now is because the West is afraid of Russia’s nuclear potential. The West fears that if Western air forces attack Russia and start to obliterate their army, Russia will take it as an existential threat and use nuclear weapons. Logically, they would not use all their nukes; they would use tactical nukes on Ukraine or even on their own territory in a defensive posture, hoping it will stop the Western air offensive.

People are trying to assess the military power of the US while even the Pentagon doesn’t know how many military bases the US has.

29:07

“After the 9/11 attacks on the US in 2001, Guantanamo Bay’s original purpose as an overseas US Naval Base in the Caribbean region was transformed. When President George W. Bush issued an executive military order that enabled foreign nationals suspected of being involved with the attacks to be arrested and held indefinitely without any charges and without any legal mechanism of challenging their imprisonment. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, in December 2001, the US Department of Justice claimed that since Guantanamo Bay wasn’t really a part of US territory and was theoretically Cuban land leased to the US government, the principle of habeas corpus, the legal recourse against unlawful detention, did not apply there. As a result, in early 2002, the US military set up a prison camp within Guantanamo Bay to detain hundreds of suspected Al-Qaeda members and affiliates and Taliban fighters who had mostly been captured during the US invasion of Afghanistan.”

How not to love the West and US as the good guys, the defenders of democracy. Haha

32:08

“Foreign countries that are known to have hosted CIA black sites include Afghanistan, Thailand, Morocco, Romania, Poland, and Lithuania. Besides these countries, one of the most likely other locations for a CIA black site was on a small remote island in the middle of the Indian Ocean, home to arguably America’s number one most controversial overseas military base in the world, Diego Garcia.”

Unfortunately, I would argue that while this video is good, I would not trust the rest of the war coverage from this channel. However, this video shows the scope of the US military that is not often shown.

Here you have video explaining what I was saying about military.

50:28

“The new Army long-range weapon systems raise some questions, particularly about what they mean for the traditional relationship between the Air Force and the Army. Blowing up targets at extremely long range is arguably part of the Air Force’s traditional purview. Some in the Air Force have raised questions about the Army’s desire to get into the long-range strike game.

For example, one USAF Lieutenant-General is quoted as saying, “If the Air Force can do something – long-range strike maybe – one of the services doesn’t have to do it.” He also said in the CRS report, “All of us investing in a single area in just a slightly different way, it’s just not going to be affordable.” This relatively diplomatic statement is what you might expect from someone still on active duty. For more pointed comments, you usually have to look to retired personnel: “It’s ridiculous to be quite candid, it is an encroachment on roles and missions. The services need to adhere to their core competencies. And the US Army reaching out to develop weapon systems that operate at 1,000-mile range truly is an encroachment.”

The logic is that the USAF already has a great ability to strike targets at long distances, so the Army should focus on what it does best rather than building strategic-range munitions. Air-delivered fire has many advantages, for example, jets are far faster and more mobile than trucks, making it easier to move them around and concentrate them against specific points. Air-delivered weapons also allow for larger warheads with more impact, and you can strike heavily and hard at significant distances using a comparatively cheap weapon system. Plus, the Air Force has many mature capabilities in this area.

We can compare PrSM to an air-launched cruise missile like the AGM-158. Compared to PrSM, the AGM-158 has a significantly larger warhead, and in its longest-range version, the AGM-158D outranges not just the PrSM but also the mid-range capability Tomahawks. The AGM-158 is currently being procured at a rate of about 550 per year for a cost of between 1.2 and 1.7 million US dollars per missile. PrSM, meanwhile, is budgeted to produce about 110 in fiscal year 2024 at a cost of about 2.7 million dollars per missile. While these costs may come down with mass production and improvements, the USAF’s point remains valid.

However, ground-launched systems have their advantages. They are relatively easy to conceal and dig in, making them harder to locate and knock out than an air base. They are also cheaper to develop and easier to deploy. Fixed-wing aircraft can only forward deploy where there is a high-quality air base with appropriate facilities to support and maintain them. Ground-based systems are simpler: take the trucks with the missiles on the back and the various support vehicles, transport them to where they are needed, set up a camouflaged firing position, and they are good to go.”

The West has military capabilities, but they are connected to air force and air superiority, which can’t be used in Ukraine. Not because we wouldn’t be able to secure air superiority in Ukraine, but because Ukraine alone cannot secure it, and our air force intervention could be seen as an existential threat to Russia, potentially triggering the use of a tactical nuke to stop our air force and start negotiations.

Even the Pentagon doesn’t know how strong the American military truly is. So, don’t underestimate it! Also remember the US military is not really working for the US but it works for the Capitalist system and international corporations so as Matt Taibbi named it “blood-sucking vampire squid” which is our system and our ruler.