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.
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.
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