Command & Couture
@burnafterbriefing
Moodboard of late empire. Friction is foreplay for the strategically inclined.
Every depot repair, missile casing, dry dock delay & bolt is now more expensive. Nothing says “fiscal discipline” like underfunding readiness while shopping for a fresh regional war in the energy price explosion aisle. Can’t fund tactical fireworks if you can’t afford the Fancy Feast, Peter. 7/7
High inflation quietly degrades military power. Flat budgets become real cuts, fuel/sustainment costs eat readiness, procurement buys shrink, construction and shipbuilding get delayed, fixed-price contracts squeeze suppliers & military pay loses ground. An Iranian readiness tax, if you will. 6/
Adversaries weaponize energy, food, shipping, fertilizer, debt, and commodity shocks. Inflation creates soft power vulnerabilities “your govt spends on foreign wars while you can’t afford food.” It also makes sanctions coalitions harder to sustain because the domestic cost of sanctions rises. 5/
Housing, childcare, food & transport costs rise faster than military/civilian pay. That matters for enlisted families, junior officers, fed civilians, contractors, cyber talent, engineers, logisticians, and medical personnel. Inflation pushes skilled labor to the private sector, always has. 4/
Fuel, tech labor, construction, shipbuilding, munitions, electronics & sustainment all inflate. Defense inflation splits from CPI in DoD’s weird grocery order: weapons systems, rare materials, microelectronics. HASC says inflation across DoD accounts outpacing non-defense inflation benchmarks. 3/
The defense topline rises 3–4% but inflation is 5–7%, DoD has less real buying power. Fewer parts, delayed maintenance, smaller procurement, stalled modernization & hard tradeoffs on readiness v. capability. The FY2025 DoD budget adjusted for inflation is lower than prior-year appropriations. 2/
If you think the current inflation spike is making that omelette dreadfully expensive, wait until you hear what it’s doing to national security capacity, capability stability, recruitment & retention, adversary leverage, and operational readiness. Cat tax to salve the sting. 1/
Annual pilgrimage to Philadelphia Brigade Park at Antietam after The World’s Most Miserable TDY™️ in the Buckeye State.
Ever find a picture of yourself from the 90s that made you want to apologize to your hair, your eyebrows, and your mother all at once?
An extra cold pillow tonight to the MD statey who pulled me over at Annapolis this afternoon and saw my accelerator enthusiasm was the result of Taylor Swift and an open sunroof, and did not sully my perf driving record. 💖🖖✨🌈
YOU GUISE I have a good friend who is a NASA aerospace engineer & PM, and we always talk space nerd stuff. I finally locked in my invite to Goddard in exchange for a batch of my chocolate chip cookies. Time to watch Contact for the 10000th time and start baking.
War never ends at redeployment. Early help is better. • Crisis: 988, Press 1 (Veterans/Mil), or text 838255 • Military OneSource 800-342-9647 • Military & Family Counseling Program (confidential) • Vet Centers (confidential) • TRICARE • inTransition Program (during moves/separation)
I do know invisible wounds often go unrecognized & unacknowledged, delaying care. With no institutional honesty, OUR honesty matters. If the organization wants to pretend these injuries are rare, private, or shameful, it guarantees underreporting & poor recovery. So the advocacy is ours to do. Now.
So what can we do? I don’t know. Moral injury isn’t fear-based trauma. Guilt, shame, anger, betrayal & value violation need different recognition & response. Pre-deployment ethical prep, leader language for civilian-harm scenarios, and AA processing. I don’t know if we have that now. We should.
We already struggle with treatment systems. Iran potentially intensifies exposures simultaneously, continuously. So the risk isn’t just “more PTSD.”Its earlier onset, wider distribution, possible symptom severity increase. A heavier load, carried sooner by an already burdened and stressed system.
In Iran, it can compound unaccounted. Sanctioned urban infrastructure targeting & civilian proximity = higher long-term psych burden. A media environment where operators become participants, observers, subjects of public narratives. Recognition AND distortion looping into trauma processing.
Iran changes the exposure profile. A persistent threat environment with missiles, drones, proxies, & multi-domain pressure; with no front line & no true “rear”. Continuous moral ambiguity with gray-zone operations means uncertainty is not tactical noise. It’s moral load. And moral load compounds.
We call this “moral injury”. (Read: Jonathan Shay). This isn’t neurobiological fear, it’s moral violation from civilian harm, killing under ambiguity, and witnessing what you cannot stop. This type of injury predicts PTSD, depression, and suicidality more strongly than fear exposure alone.
We also know that those adaptations accumulate cost. Empirically, combat exposure increases risk of PTSD (≈2–17%+), depression, substance use, long-term physical morbidity. War imprints on the body as well as memory & cognition. But it does something else too: it challenges prior moral bearings.
We know the baseline reality is that combat produces predictable adaptations: hypervigilance, sleep disruption, and emotional constriction. These are not human failures, but measurable, expected survival functions in lethal environments. Nervous system hyperarousal under threat is basic biology.
I’ve spent my career thinking about war & human systems. War doesn’t just kill, it rewires neurobiology, cognition, moral architecture. I want to talk about how this potentially looks different in Iran, with unique sustained stressors. This is rough; cats seemed insufficient. So, I added kittens.
Wtf, a ground stop of 5 seconds after an ATC zero? This is dumb. I’m going to the deck and watching my planes. 😠
I was planning to amuse myself with a glass of wine, some yacht rock, and ADSBexchange on my roofdeck tonight. Alas, the FAA has foiled my plans.
Sending snacks in exchange for pics of the coolest exhibits. Rah. ❤️
Best part of a workday on the Hill is the wandering around.