You probably could pack more propaganda in. Remember Battleship?
Anyway, yeah. This is an epidemic. It's often really, really glaring in Hollywood movies.
2014's Godzilla was something I actually enjoyed - with the exception of its out-of-place fixation on a """""realistic""""" American military. IE a bunch of guys who were probably direct army-to-acting in parts. And of course, America's army also happens to have jurisdiction basically everywhere. There was a funny juxtaposition to having the American military glorified and in this GI Joe kind of way to tick off DoD boxes while otherwise the film portrays the military as gung ho fucktards who attempt to nuke San Francisco. This entire event is portrayed with heroic dignity as though it was just an honest mistake that maybe wouldn't have been the wrong thing to do - and this atmosphere was probably created to keep the message of military futility above jarhead comprehension level.
Did happen to see the same movie in the OP, though. Which is weird. It was someone else's choice. The entire series is shit, to the best of my knowledge. In all but superficial details, the Bellas also come off as a prep group - which raises so many questions for me just because I really and truly am mystified that preps even exist. Where the fuck do they live?
Asher Rogers
It's a mixture of a lot of factors. The US has enjoyed technological superiority over its rivals for the better part of a century, but now China and Russia (among others) are reaching technological parity. That means that not only are all those fancy ships, jets, and missiles are growing strategically weaker by the day.
A major example is the Gerald Ford supercarrier. Russia and China both have been developing cruise missiles specifically to sink those ships. It's the sort of strategy that would make Sun Tsu proud. One of these CMs costs about 150k to make, so someone crunch the numbers and tell us how many CMs can be made for the cost of a single Ford at the tun of $11.5B+. A single carrier can get swarmed with these missiles, and all it takes is one or two at the waterline to fuck the carrier.
So if active defenses can't protect these ships, their only option is to deploy beyond the range of these missile batteries. This means that the manned jets the military insists on using have to carry more fuel, and subsequently fewer bombs. Deploying further out means a greater likelihood of detection and deterrence or interception, driving up costs of repair, retrieval, redeployment, etc, all for proportionally less damage.
And this is just one of the almost innumerable problems the American military is facing without a clear recourse. This situation is a major contributor in American bellicosity, because in a straight on fight with a power of equal parity, it's extremely unlikely that they'll be able to come out on top all on their own.
Everything, when empires make a mistake it's fatal. Burgerland made theirs in the 2000s and now cascading imperial failures will break them within a decade at most
Mason Cook
Nevermind that US Army is the most neglected branch, that still uses Cold War era tech, because they can't be used to protect porky's hegemony.
Landon Williams
The Army is just a meat shield to protect the actually important air and naval bases. They don't need modern weapons in order to soak up enemy bullets.
Perhaps someone more knowledgeable can enlighten me, but isn't that the main role of the US Army in Iraq/Afghanistan? They either sit around and protect a strategic point or are on patrol, and if they come into contact with something they think would look cool blowing up an enemy, they call in air support to flatten everything in the general area of where they believe them to be.
Aside from that, isn't their main utility in house/street clearing, while all the combat heavy-lifting is done by armor/aircraft? If you don't care about "hearts and minds" then why bother clearing a house when you can just flatten it?
Bentley Reyes
It can be fatal, but not always, or at least not always right away. It depends on the circumstances surrounding that empire, how much error they can absorb, and the scope and nature of those errors.
Justin Powell
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Ryan Evans
In many ways it kind of is. Priorities and policies change from administration to administration, voting cycle to voting cycle, and relative to whatever economic interests happen to dominate at the time. It's not like they're the Spaceballs, but it makes it difficult to craft or maintain long-term, coherent policy.
It's difficult to tell what will be the actual "fatal mistake." Augustus Caesar establishing the principate seemed like a good idea at the time. It ended almost a century of civil war and sequential dictatorship and ushered in an era of relatively unprecedented prosperity and peace. 450 years later, the system he had set up ended up tearing itself apart and plunging the formerly vibrant and vigorous empire into a millennium of stagnation, fragmentation, and internecine warfare.
