100% numerous people in the US military know that they’re sitting on extremely expensive ships/aircraft/vehicles that are with modern enough weaponry, easy to destroy. A question of whether they have the power, for enough time required, to fix the bloat
Difficult and expensive to develop, manufacturer, maintain. Trapped in service contracts with completely single source suppliers, no alternatives. If it wasn’t so expensive to maintain, even just the ammunition, maybe it wouldn’t be such a panic situation but well after pretty much constantly being at war since the countries inception, the US is sitting on an albatross of a military. Not just all the equipment but how much employment is tied to supporting the albatross. Albatross multiplied hard with Iraq and Afghanistan paired with all the tax cuts since Reagan. Without Afghanistan and Iraq, probably wouldn’t be so wallet concerned for for a good amount longer
Reading this stuff reminds me of earlier in the 2010s when Iranian weapon systems press releases were always met with mockery, I live in region with heavy military tech development companies. I had a feeling back then that progress is progress and eventually they’ll be at a point of close enough to make the risk calculation too high for the US to operate so far from production/maintenance compared to whatever country is the current target for invasion/bombings and their weapon sources. I think we’re getting to that point
Operate and lose equipment that cost a billion+ to make equipped with ammunition that are hundreds of thousands to millilions of dollars to resupply that also need to be serviced for extended periods of time and major parts replaced after only a few uses. Parts of the US intentionally let costs run away. Whether they thought the technolical advantage actually made a justifiable enough difference for the poor production rate and maintainability cost is another question