Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.
The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.
The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
It’s a bit odd as well as they then go into describing hybrid and gel systems that are both and neither respectively. But overall it’s a pretty informative article and I learned a lot.
Down at the bottom of the article it's revealed that Contrary Research (article host) is an investor in Galadyne and another of the discussed manufacturers. Galadyne is introduced as a company with a stake in the liquid propulsion angle that the article pushes. One of the authors is listed as CEO of Galadyne. Bit like an advertorial?
> Bit like an advertorial?
The author should have disclosed their affiliation more clearly at the top. But their arguments are solid, and I respect them putting their money where their mouth is.
Solid-fueled rockets should not be the backbone of our missile forces anymore. That doesn’t mean we get rid of them. But we should be adding mass-produced liquid-fueled missiles to the mix. And our entire rocket force shouldn’t be able to be nerfed by hitting one plant in Utah.
It's a good article. I learnt a lot.
> the frailty of US munitions stock
There's noting frail about it. It's just unable to support the insatiable appetite that every administration seems to have for dropping them on people.
Perhaps we need a "second source" for rationale, diplomacy, and the rule of law.
Exactly, the issue is not that the US produces too few missiles, it’s that it uses too many
We could also just not start wars and we wouldn't need to worry about missile production
Which is why Ukraine, today, doesn’t have to worry about missile and drone production.
America isn't Ukraine, we are a *massive country with a nuclear deterrent,* wedged between two massive oceans and two friendly countries.
Nobody is going to attack us unless we go out into the world creating enemies.
US of A has already created enemies.
See 9/11 for an example of "nobody is going to attack us" being false.
Could the nation slowly step back and generation-by-generation shed their national reputation such that they have no enemies? Maybe.
But that would take a while (generations) and is kind of the opposite of what has happened recently.
American security, and indeed the entire pax Americana has been predicated upon your country's network of global military bases and your carrier battle groups. This is what enables the USA to decisively influence any conflict anywhere on the globe.
Those bases would need to disappear in order for your comment to be true, and despite two thirds of your electorate who didn't vote against the future dementia ward patient currently in office, I don't think Americans are ready to accept a world where American foreign policy cannot be promulgated more or less at will, which is what isolationism would entail.
No, America's influence over its globe-spanning empire is predicated on that. That's not the same thing as it's national security. It would do just fine if it weren't the head of a global hegemony, although it might have to start living within its means.
Security-wise, two oceans, vassal neighbours and two thousand nuclear missiles have it covered.
Bwahahahhahahahahha
Wow
Perhaps Boris Johnson shouldn't have interfered with the peace process at the behest of the United States.
Anyways I'm sure the Ukrainian citizens enjoy being used as props to justify inhumane actions.
Anyone who describes hydrocarbon fuels and high-test peroxide oxidiser as a stable and proven combination is a charlatan trying to sell you something questionable. If you want a proven liquid fuel combination that works in missile environment conditions with well-behaved ignition, Hydrazine/UDMH+N2O4 is the king.
Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases; anyone making a sincere case for liquid fuels should be making it on the basis of munitions that are best designed around them (notably, of course, most of the long range cruise missiles that have received the most hand-wringing about stockpile depletion are already air-breathing jet-fueled). The actual stockpile issues wrt solid rocket fuel are high-performance SAM/ABM interceptors, and those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents.
> Solids are better from a storage and deployment standpoint in almost all cases
The article says this. Liquids are better from a production perspective. In the Cold War, storage and deployment dominated. That need isn’t gone today. But it’s supplanted in priority by the need to be able to rapidly produce these munitions.
> those would require complete redesigns to make liquid-fueled equivalents
Again, the article acknowledges this. It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online, and even then, we’d still be unfavorably production constrained compared to China.
The munitions that (1) are currently solid-fueled and (2) represent a stockpile depletion issue are all SAM/ABM interceptors. The only new liquid-fueled missiles worth the development effort are a liquid-fueled ramjet equivalent to the MBDA Meteor and air-breathing hypersonics.
> It’s saying we can do that faster than we can get another AP production facility online
Oh boy, have you seen how long SAM/ABM development takes? The critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6. Not yet-another-cruise-missile which is already liquid-fueled.
> critical munitions that actually need to be designed here would be liquid-fueled equivalents to THAAD, PAC-3, SM-2, SM-3, and SM-6
Correct. If we design it now we can build it at massive scale within a decade. If we stick to the current, broken model we might be able to 4x in the same timeline.
Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier than taking on additional operations and mechanical complexity for every single missile in combat theatres.
The article cites permitting and procurement snafus for why it's so hard to stand up new AP plants, but the same procurement process would apply for new liquid engine designs with all their moving parts, no?
> Solving a chemical manufacturing problem in the US has GOT to be easier
Why? We are currently scaling rocket-engine production for the launch industry. We aren’t doing the same for anything like AP. I don’t think anyone would blink at a well-resourced effort to build a new small-satellite launch vehicle in a couple years, for instance.
This has been known for awhile and it was widely rumored but never confirmed that critically low missile inventories were the primary reason for ending the 12 day war last year [1]. If so it makes the current great misadventure a startling miscalculation and I don't believe for a second the military wasn't aware of the issue and didn't advise the administration of such. As more evidence of this, US bases in the region were essentially abandoned because they couldn't be protected and the resulting damage will cost billions and takes years to replace, including at least one incredibly expensive THAAD radar [2][3]. As further evidence there are conflicting reports that THAAD systems were re-deployed from South Korea to the Middle East. US officials have denied this, which may be true on a technicality: possibly only munitions were moved. The point is the final bill for all this is already in the hundreds of billions.
What's clear here is that the US has a military designed for the Cold War, or possibly the first Gulf War, and Iran in particular has a military completely designed for this conflict. Strategic Air Doctrine has shown itself to be an expensive failure incapable of regime change or even suppressing the force projection of a vastly inferior military in a regional conflict.
Key evidence of all of this is that the US has depleted so many "stand off" munitions and, even now, carrier groups are deployed far from the Strait of Hormuz. Stand off munitions are more expensive, harder to replace, less plentiful and less capable (since a certain amount of the vehicle has to be devoted to propulsion). These are also the same munitions previously earmarked for a potential future conflict with China. It's also the exact ones talked about in this article.
The other are missile interceptors (also mentioned). In the 12 day war, interceptions by the Iron Dome and carrier groups (including THAAD) in the area were very high. By the end of Israel being attacked, interceptions had dropped to as low as 50%. This is more evidence that the IRGC were using more advanced missles, had learned from previous encounters and/or munitions for missile defence were running low. As further evidence of this, the US informed Switzerland that Patriot deliveries would be delayed indefinitely [4].
This is a war that was lost ovver 3 months ago at this point. We just seem to be pretending that's not the case and hoping it magically solves itself. The energy shock for all this hasn't even begun yet.
There are so many problems here that inform just why there's this missile crisis. That's barely scratching the surface, honestly. The entire military-industrial complex is designed to extract wealth from the government with the most expensive weapons programs possible. And if you ever hear any servicemen talk, none of it actually works. Even things like the vehicles break down constantly. Gone are the days of relatively cheap and famously reliable Jeeps, for example. The AK-47 was a workhorse of the Red Army too for a reason. We're incapable of building ships. We keep building deep water navies that nobody needs. Our ships are designed to operate in the Pacific or North Atlantic, not the Persian Gulf. It is a trillion dollar a year scam at this point.
Oh and speaking of capability, knowing something about this allows one to avoid silly theoreticals that could never happen. Most relevant here is there was a period when the media was asking "woudl the US invade?" The answer was always "no" because we can't. We don't have that military anymore.
As for other parts of the article, things like Titan II probably aren't such an issue because (luckily) we don't tend to expend ICBMs and MRBMs, nor do we need to expand our capacity and if we started using them, well we'd have much bigger problems. Tomahawks however are a huge problem.
I read once that every Congressional district, all 435 of them, are part of the military-industrial complex. It's designed this way so Congress will never vote to cut funding.
And what's humbled this entire thing are mass-produced $10,000 drones and relatively cheap (~$1M estimated) ballistic missiles in untouchable underground facilities that can be cheaply fired and those launchers are easily fixed.
[1]: https://www.csis.org/analysis/depleting-missile-defense-inte...
[2]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c2l2yl7r8r2o
[3]: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/4/30/us-military-equipme...
[4]: https://www.reuters.com/world/united-states-informs-switzerl...
Get some Totseans working on it
https://newtotse.com/oldtotse/en/bad_ideas/ka_fucking_boom/c...
We only won World War II because we could produce our tanks faster than the Germans could destroy them and we could destroy their tanks faster than they could produce them. The Germany tanks were superior but our supply lines and manufacturing capacity are ultimately why we won. If we fought a large scale war today, we would be supply constrained by China and other 'rivals' who we can't rely on. We've outsourced everything in the name of efficiency, but have left ourselves spread incredibly thin and exposed huge weaknesses. Remember how fast supply chains broke down during the pandemic? Imagine how fast that breaks down for complex logistics needed to produce complex weapons... I think America is one war away from losing its 'super power' status and being diminished to a much lower status. Look at how we've already empowered Iran into an even more powerful adversary through this war/conflict.
And ships. We ended the war with none of the carriers we started out with.
Famously, of course, not at all the case, with Enterprise, Saratoga, and Ranger all surviving. Yes, losses of pre-war carriers were severe (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet, and Wasp).
Is that really true regarding what we know of WW2? I thought their designs had major flaws, not just the goldplating issues you mention. Besides, they mostly lost because they spend all their manpower and material on pointless incursions far away from their country.
German tank and aircraft design and logistics had their own issues that made things worse, but largely, the biggest issue was just not being capable of keeping up with American manufacturing and Russian willingness to throw bodies at the fight.
Just for context Allied tank production was 276k to the axis 67k. Most other production categories show similar ratios. Your tanks can be perfectly reliable, and superior in every way, but it will be hard to win a fight when you are outnumbered 4:1.
Even now, the emerging doctrine from Ukraine, and now Iran, is to fight using asymmetric production advantages. Ukraine is taking out multimillion dollar facilities and ships with five figure UAVs. Iran has depleted US air defense stocks costing billions with a few million dollars worth of drones powered by motorcycle engines.
Wars between great powers are won and lost on manufacturing base. The classic book on this topic is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_and_Fall_of_the_Great...
It is and isn't. I think even if the germans had switched to making mass quantities of Sherman or T42 style tanks, it would have failed because they had shortages things like labor and fuel. The allies essentially had huge industrial bases in the US and Russia that were safe from the threats of bombing and attacks. The entire German supply chain from the factories to field repair sites were constantly being attacked.
The German tanks were superior when functioning but quite a few of them were difficult to produce, maintain, and use. Do better armor and weapons really imply a superior tank if it requires significantly more maintenance and breaks down more often. And that's ignoring the issues were the sheer weight of the tanks meant that they couldn't cross certain bridges or function in certain terrain.
The allies only won WW2 because the Soviets and China expended millions of lives weakening the Nazis and Japan.
Note I'm saying Nazis and not Germany: there were plenty of Finnish, Polish and Ukrainian Nazi battalions as well. It would be amusing to watch the same forces lining up to take on the Russians yet again, save for the orange lunatic with nukes, currently installing a UFC cage on the White House lawns, making the world an even more dangerous place for the rest of us.
The UFC cage fight is itself is a sign that the US is already in rapid decline. Every empire collapse has been preceded by arrogant excess. The comparisons with the Roman stadiums and Caligula write themselves.
The US and its NATO vassals have already lost The Ukraine. They just haven't realised it yet.
Iran is beating the US strategically. Here I think some of the inner circle have realised it, but the real powers behind the throne just won't give up.
Given the misadventures the missiles are currently being used for, it seems like less of a crisis and more of a blessing that the US's capacity for self-destruction isn't unlimited.
Before discussing anything related to nuclear missiles *[Command and Control by Eric Schlosser](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Command_and_Control_(book)) should be required reading.
More missiles do not make the world safe, and due to human fallacy it almost always make us less safe.
> anything related to nuclear missiles
This article isn’t about nuclear-tipped missiles outside a historical context.
Well There’s Your Problem, a podcast with slides , covered this recently : https://youtu.be/NJAgvXH5H20?si=OLMJVhOPT40yzHDN
> Missile fuel is a binary: it can either be solid or liquid.
Lol what?! No, binary fuels have two components that are both neccesary for operation.
Also like commented elsewhere, peroxide fuels are... an adventurous choice
What these basic errors mean for the perception of the rest of the article is left as an exercise for the reader.
It’s a bit odd as well as they then go into describing hybrid and gel systems that are both and neither respectively. But overall it’s a pretty informative article and I learned a lot.
I think "missile fuel is a binary" is just a very inarticulate attempt to say "there are two types of missile fuel"
I think they meant like the odds are 50/50 - it either happens or it doesn’t (lol).
Turns out you can’t print rockets
https://www.nasa.gov/technology/tech-transfer-spinoffs/print...:
“Printed Engines Propel the Next Industrial Revolution“
yes, it's a bit harder an more involved than printing money. Best thing is not to squander them.