Summary
The Trump administration fired Vice Adm. Shoshana Chatfield, the only woman on NATO’s military committee, reportedly due to past statements supporting diversity.
Chatfield, a decorated Navy pilot and Afghanistan veteran, appeared on a conservative “woke” watchlist targeting senior military officials who promoted DEI.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, leading the anti-DEI campaign, made the call, though it’s unclear if Trump directly ordered it.
Chatfield is the third top female officer dismissed under Trump. Critics warned the firings undermine military leadership and damage U.S. alliances.
The US military is not draft friendly. Far too much of our doctrine is built around “skilled” combat (e.g. maneuver warfare) and our superiority comes from technology which has a high cost per soldier (the NVGs that Scumbag Steve lost cost more than it would to rush him through boot camp…) and requires maintenance. And, if we move forward with the XM7, that means fewer bullets per soldier which means a greater need to actually aim (and be indoctrinated so that they will aim at the brown person rather than fire over their heads).
Obviously we can do a massive doctrine change. But “senior military” will gladly support efforts that remove competition so that they can get promoted into a woman’s place. They won’t support efforts that will make them look incompetent when (and it is “when”…) we actually use the military… or that will impact all those “totally friendly” gifts and vacations they get from the companies building this gear.
In the event of a land war against Canada? All bets are off and you can be damned sure there will be “patriotic” efforts for “new recruits” to buy their own AR-15s from Walmart before reporting to the trenches. But that will happen regardless of whether the pesky women and gays and brown people have been cleansed from the military first.
Everyone (rightfully) shat on how ill equipped the russian military was outside of their “elites”. And… there is a reason for that. You don’t give someone off the street optics that cost a down payment or two on their pickup truck. Partially because they will lose (or sell) it. Mostly because they won’t know how to use it. WW2/Vietnam era boot camp was basically “This is a gun. Point this end at the <ethnic slur>. Pull the trigger a few times to keep their heads down while someone competent does the rest”.
Small point of correction there - Walmart doesn’t sell AR-15s or any other similar semi-auto rifle, nor do they sell handguns. They pared back gun offerings in the last decade to only basic hunting stuff like shotguns, bolt-action rifles. They don’t even sell handgun ammo or “assault rifle” ammo now.
The specialty of the US military has always been logistics AFAIK. They’ll traditionally endlessly throw bodies and money at maintaining supply lines to uphold their own morale and wait for their enemy to surrender. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_cream_barge
Not sure how well that’ll work in the face of modern warfare, drones and sabotage seem more effective.
So basically Russia is doing but with more tech and supplies.
The drones need to be launched, and saboteurs deployed, near their targets. That means logistics.
Fucking up supply chains with brainless tariffs will massively damage logistics.