How strong is the US military? - Like for real, for real?

Lightsaber Dildo

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I hear it all the time from people from all all over the world. Everyone always has this assumption that the U.S. would dominate anyone who went up against them, but I'm having trouble comprehending the scale of "exactly" how big and bad the U.S. military complex is. Then you also have the redditors who say shit like "hurr the U.S. lost the vietnam war! they are actually not that strong!" which I don't believe.

I want to see some metrics, instances, or have evidence of just how destructive and mighty the U.S. is on its own, or what the U.S. has access to that makes them the king of the world when it comes to military strength. The obvious answer I can come up with in my ignorance, is nukes, but I think that's oversimplifying it. What else is there?
 
It really depends on how you are measuring. The US military has plenty of toys at its disposal that virtually no other military has, and if allowed to go full Mongol horde could probably exterminate the population of any country sans a great power like Russia and China in short order. With or without nukes.

The biggest misconception is people tend to conflate the political will to use these capabilities with their existence or lack thereof.

When it comes to tonnage of warships and number of aircraft it's certainly the largest, and when it comes to training budgets its DEFINITELY the largest. Manpower wise it fluctuates between second and third largest, but this is done by wonkey metrics due to countries like Eritrea and North Korea counting their entire population at times.
 
I want to see some metrics, instances, or have evidence of just how destructive and mighty the U.S. is on its own
We haven't gone full tilt against peer adversaries since the second World War, so it's impossible to say. Just look at the Ukraine situation to see how useful fancy weapons and military doctrine are the face of technology and tactics that no one counted on being so disruptive.

The most you can say is that we're a very large wealthy country with a lot of cutting-edge military tech and a large industrial base.
 
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Let's start with the Air Force:
Next is the US Navy:
And then there's the Army:
And this is far from an extensive list because we'd also have to include Marines and other auxiliary forces.

I was going to list all the equipment and how many we had, but the list was too long.
The answer is "lots."
 
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We haven't gone full tilt against peer adversaries since the second World War, so it's impossible to say. Just look at the Ukraine situation to see how useful fancy weapons and military doctrine are the face of technology and tactics that no one counted on being so disruptive.

The most you can say is that we're a very large wealthy country with a lot of cutting-edge military tech and a large industrial base.
Well... we came close to going full tilt once. Gulf War 1991. Nothing short of a act of God could have stopped us.
 
Well... we came close to going full tilt once. Gulf War 1991. Nothing short of a act of God could have stopped us.
It was over so quickly that we didn't have to concern ourselves with long-term production and logistics, which are vitally important factors in peer warfare. Hell, that's the primary attribute the US brought to the table in both world wars.

Plus it was 33 years ago. Even things we're acutely aware of have changed dramatically since then, much less things we'd be blindsided by in a real war.
 
whenever Russia would lie about their capabilities, america would go out and make their shit for real. America's navy is the second largest air force in the world. that should answer your question.
 
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