U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday his tariff policy was aimed at promoting the domestic manufacturing of tanks and technology products, not sneakers and T-shirts.
Speaking to reporters before boarding Air Force One in New Jersey, Trump said he agreed with comments from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on April 29 that the U.S. does not necessarily need a “booming textile industry” - comments that drew criticism from the National Council of Textile Organizations.
“We’re not looking to make sneakers and T-shirts. We want to make military equipment. We want to make big things. We want to make, do the AI thing,” Trump said.
“I’m not looking to make T-shirts, to be honest. I’m not looking to make socks. We can do that very well in other locations. We are looking to do chips and computers and lots of other things, and tanks and ships,” Trump said.
One drone can take out a tank these days. Granted those are Russian designed tanks. But just thinking how my thought of what a tank could do has evaporated watching probably 100 YouTube videos of this happening.
They are taking out some US-made ones, harder, but still not justifying the cost of a tank even remotely.
Tanks are obsolete in the old sense.
This isn’t true. Tanks role in doctrine has changed. How the US would fight with drones on the field is completely different than how Ukraine or Russia are fighting.
“How the US would” would be subject to rapid change in real conditions before it adapts its doctrine to modern warfare. Since it’s the US with plenty of money in the defense and powerful companies that desperately want to test new and more efficient ways at solving problems, yeah it would.
However right now what’s known of US drones and approaches seems to be kinda expensive garbage. Good thing is that such relatively close engagements are secondary for its doctrine.
Current US doctrine relies on controlling the skies. Still right now there’s no credible threat to US air dominance. If the US has air dominance, drones in their current form are a bug attacking a tractor. Look up videos on how the US air campaign worked during Gulf War 1 and see the sheer number of assets that were on station for months waiting for the order to attack. Any enemy would be utterly exhausted by the time any attack started and the force and speed of violence would keep drones down to local threats.
That’s also not counting any drone countermeasures the US currently has and could mass deploy.
I think the US use of expensive drones is just different to what we’re seeing in Ukraine. They’re fitting into a different space than FPV drones, which isn’t bad, it’s just different.
Gulf War 1 is either just as relevant as yesterday or not relevant at all. It was a bit of a demonstrative beating.
I know, but the recent India-Pakistan contact seems to have shown that modern ways to reach those expensive assets are available to many more countries than when this doctrine was adopted. Which means that very expensive planes might sometimes be shot down, and the system disrupted.
Ukraine reaches Moscow suburbs with drones. It has almost become realistic for a hypothetical Muslim country with oil to reach something like Austin, Texas with drones. With some stages involved, maybe with recharging\refueling drones, maybe using fixed-wing drones that can glide will make more sense for such, maybe even launched from naval drones as small carriers. The point is, this has become possible. Not bug attacking a tractor, more like a host of termites attacking a tractor and it’s not good for its driver if they reach him.
The long-term outcome of Gulf War 2 demonstrated the limitations of Gulf War 1. If you don’t have any idea of what the desired end state should be, military superiority does you very little good.
In other words, the Powell doctrine still applies, and the cost of ignoring it (as in GW2) can be hundreds of thousands of people’s lives.
I think that’s a bit far fetched. You don’t need to have something fly from Tripoli to hit the US, just send operatives here, and have them launch the attacks from the US. You could be a mile away and never get caught, hypothetically speaking.
I still think US doctrine from GW1 applies, simply because drone use is already being implemented into the current chain of command. I have a few friends that are on the RnD side of things and the non classified drone stuff they’ve talked about to me is exceptionally impressive, and augments current doctrine rather than upending it.
OK, admittedly I don’t really know a thing other than what I read, and it would make sense.
BTW, yes, launches from Russian territory much closer to targets Ukrainians do too.
You wouldn’t even need something that big, man.
I was in college during GWOT and part of the political science club. We had a ‘games theory’ session with the DHS rep in our state, where part of the class was reps for the government and part were a terrorist cell.
I was part of the latter, and our goal was ‘disrupt the state’ and half the people wanted a big 9-11 attack to happen. My suggestion was small teams and car bombs over the course of 3 days along the major highways in the state and intra city traffic would grind to a halt. That was what kept him up at night.
The same thing could be done at an even more effective scale with FPVs hypothetically.
russian tanks are designed for the ease of use and survivabulity of the tank, they are fast, weakly armored, big gun, have only 3 people (gunner, commander and driver) operating with an auto-loader for ammo, which means that all the loaded munition sits right under the people, and that’s why you see russian tanks go boom the instant something hits them
western tanks are designed for the survivability of the personnel, they are slower but with much more anti-tank defense, balistic shields, and have 4 people (gunner, loader, commander and driver), one more then the soviet tanks, because the extra man is the loader, which brings the ammo from the shielded munitions compartment to the gun, making it so that in the event of the tank blowing up, it just stops and breaks down but the troops inside are safe
For example:
Russian tank getting hit by a drone (watch the whole video, it has the drone’s pov as well)
Western tanks
That’s a bit of a simplification. IRL a western tank being hit often still means that the crew is dead. Especially now.
Also Soviet tanks’ auto-loader, I think, was there for better loading times, not ease of use. Soviet tanks were part of a doctrine where survivability wasn’t that important for either crew or tank, what mattered was achievable scale of production and deployment and firepower and speed. That’s initially, and later, well, better loading times still look good at maneuvers and the Soviet Union didn’t have much war until Afghanistan and its dissolution.
Anyway. Said western tank with its surviving crew will just be taken care of a bit later. Its crew won’t be able to get away, cause some drone will drop a grenade at them. It won’t be able to just sit in the tank, because enemy infantry will likely retrieve them, and breathing smoke is not good.
While the fact remains that a cheap drone kills an expensive tank.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge. Cheers
Tanks end up at the police station. The military doesn’t want them.
Those are generally APCs, thank god. I can only imagine the shit US cops would get up to with an actual tank