>This doesn’t mean that tanks and other armored vehicles are obsolete on the battlefield...
The tank's problem is not anti-tank missiles by themselves. The same missiles would do a number on lighter platforms and infantry. Since armies want to attack and need to mass for it, there's a need for an attack platform. But tanks are highly visible while packing surprisingly little attack power. So the platform needs to evolve for the new needs. WW2 was also a period of rapid evolution, where both sides tried heavier and lighter tanks but in the end settled on 'medium' tanks.
I believe the same evolution would happen here. The medium tank just provides too little for its bulk. The tank will evolve back into two variants:
* A light vehicle, quite likely remotely or AI driven. Essentially a disposable glass cannon + detector. Enemy drones and infantry are welcome to expose their position by destroying these tanks. Or not and get detected anyway.
* A very heavy vehicle, for either specialized tasks (portable radar, combat ambulance, minesweeper etc.) or for tank-like outright breakthrough - which will require all the active defences etc. one can muster.
>>The tank's problem is not anti-tank missiles by themselves. The same missiles would do a number on lighter platforms and infantry.
Not really. Javelins and NLAWs can't directly target infantry, though they do have a dumbfire mode. But there's no guarantee the warhead would detonate correctly or take out all that many soldiers, because it's specifically designed to penetrate tank armor, not fragment or concuss. There's a "multipurpose warhead" that was later designed for the Javelin, but every MPWH you carry onto the battlefield is an ATGM you didn't.
Even targeting artillery is hit-or-miss, no pun intended. A towed piece has to be shot in dumbfire as well, has got enough greebles that you're not guaranteed a kill just from a direct dumbfire hit. A self-propelled piece certainly can be taken out by the Javelin, but now you're right back to saying exactly what Noah did - that Javelins are in fact the threat.
>> Since armies want to attack and need to mass for it, there's a need for an attack platform.
While this is half-correct about there being need, there's no reason to believe that the answer is "tanks". Why not air support? Why not drones? Why not Javelins and NLAWs? Ukraine is already pushing back into Russian-held territory using the latter two. It's totally conceivable that they'd be able to penetrate into Russia with them as well.
You're focusing too much on the "massed" and not enough on the "attack" part. Massed attacks in fact _didn't_ work in WWI; that was the entire problem with trench warfare, was it not? Armor was needed not because of its "massability", but because it provided the _penetration_ to get through entrenched defenses. Tanks only worked en masse later on in WWII because their armor allowed quick penetration; it's not like there's anything else about tanks such that if you massed them together without their penetration ability, they'd magically overcome an entrenched position (EG imagine if the driver and gunner were exposed to enemy fire: they'd be torn to shreds PDQ). This is precisely what we saw happen with the infamous "Column To Kyiv": Once the massed armor column ran out of fuel, it stopped being penetrative and just became a sitting duck.
Drones get you that penetration, but better. Switchblades can take out an enemy platoon or tank just like a tank cannon once could, from further away, without direct LOS, and all on a nice video camera that lets you guide it right on in without a million dollars' worth of fancy tank optics helping you make a shot you only have one chance at. And they're cheaper and easier to move around than tanks! They don't run out of fuel or get stuck in the mud, and they're not insane gas hogs that have to be refueled every few hours. As long as you can move a man around, and that man can carry a Switchblade, he can kill more, bigger, and better units than with his rifle alone.
Noah's only half right when he says that defense is heavily advantaged by this - specifically, he's right that a Ukraine-style defense can indeed be successful with drones and Javelins. But really, drones and Javelins simply advantage whoever has the sensor and logistics advantage. As long as you can (1) keep your soldiers properly supplied with drones and Javelins, (2) see the enemy, and (3) move your soldiers and supplies around the battlefield quickly enough, well, you're probably going to win. Surprise surprise, the West is handling the back end of the logistics part, OSINT is helping with #2, and the Ukrainians are managing not to fuck up the rest, so they're winning.
Drones and Javelins haven't frozen the battle space, they've merely expanded and decentralized it. We've already seen this in the air, which is another part of the Ukraine war you're not acknowledging here. MANPADs and AA missiles have basically prohibited most air power from being used in this conflict. Neither side has the stealth strike capacity to perform proper SEAD/DEAD, so they're just sticking to the ground. Essentially, the range that one would need to strike the enemy from is larger than the range of the airborne weapons platforms, so each side can only nibble/snipe at each other in the air for now, while they just carry on hoping that their ground forces counter enough AA to reopen the skies. Likewise, the expanded and decentralized battlefield doesn't mean tanks will never be useful or that the battlefield will stay frozen, it just means that until either side can eliminate the drone/Javelin threat, they're better off focusing on winning in that sphere of the conflict before relying on those tanks to do what they do best.
We don't need more or different tanks. We need Jeeps/Hummers, Javelins, Switchblades, NVGs, and fuel. I'm not saying there will _never_ be niches for tanks; that's stupid and narrow-minded, of course. But we shouldn't be spending billions of dollars on them anymore, or purchasing and maintaining them by the tens of thousands. As of today, they're a reserve/auxiliary unit, not the centerpiece. They're what we roll in when we know we've got the conflict mostly wrapped up, and just need to counter against a desperate enemy resorting to the sort of trench warfare that might cause us hiccups and indigestion. In that context, having two variants we rarely use will be more expensive than a reserve force of MBTs we rarely use. And we'll be spending a lot less money on all those lighter units than any enemy of ours who's foolish enough to rely on _his_ tens of thousands of tanks, all while being able to totally annihilate and embarrass his precious centerpiece force.
So, like I said, we're better off just buying a lot more Jeeps. Get soldiers to within drone/Javelin range, or a short march thereof, and pummel the enemy from afar until it's safe to move in and mop up.
Well, something more protective than Jeeps. Having infantry travel in an IFV/APC is still better as those protect infantry against most things that kill infantry (including artillery shrapnel/RPGs, bullets, etc.).
True, but eventually you have to get the infantry out and have them start shooting at people. RPGs and bullets still aren't the big killers, it's artillery. And the infantry already has a counter to artillery: drones, whether Switchblades or bigger. Artillery takes a while to set up, and isn't all that likely to hit a Jeep from 4-30km away without guided munitions. But those guided munitions require them to have forward observers who are just as stealthy/coverable as your own infantry.
That's why Jeeps worked so damned well in WWII - they were fast and could get people around to where they needed to be.
Overall, the core logic of the battlespace is "don't be seen". Artillery and armor are more easily seen. They can't hit infantry who are moving too fast for that.
Artillery doesn't doesn't have to take long to set up and can scoot. Self-propelled artillery has been around for a while now. Drones would be used to surveil. Artillery will also be protected with anti-air/anti-drone defenses. We'll see battles on land become more like carrier battles at sea but artillery will still exist because of range.
Yeah, I think what Ukraine demonstrates more than anything is that these aren't strict yes/no propositions, but rather different types of warfare will bleed into others based on the balance in certain spheres. Air, drones, artillery, armor, infantry, jeeps, etc., will all be used depending on what *can* be used in the current threat environment and how to address those threats. The resulting doctrine is that we shouldn't be sitting here obsessing about our own variety or lack thereof, but rather about how well we address the threat environment as it actually exists. As the Ukrainians have shown, if you can't do more with less, you aren't going to win anyways.
The enemy will also have drones. Air superiority is unlikely to prevent these drones from finding your Jeeps and blowing them up. That's both a lesser and bigger problem than blowing a tank up - a tank costs more but the crew has higher chances of survival. I however suggested a disposable 'light' system so that a drone blowing it up isn't a big problem at all (note that being cheap is a necessary part of being disposable).
There are inherent differences which make this comparison insufficient - there won't be a small number of 'carriers' (drones and drone stations are far cheaper), far more ways to hide at the surface and in general defender's advantage, the high ability of land forces to lay low without supplies, larger modern ranges, etc.
These differences matter - the Russian BTG is also an attempt to bring the carrier style of combat to land (where the BTG acts as spotter for artillery instead of drones). It turns out that spotting is good but it's not enough: the BTG doesn't have enough heft to clear all opposing forces. Its supply lines are killed by stragglers, and it can't take hard targets without too many losses. We need a force which can clear. This can be done by throwing a lot of infantry at it, I think vehicles can play a big role in limiting casualties and reducing infantry requirements.
Javelin and NLAW are hardly the only missiles around. Even the RPG has anti-personnel warheads, and if we take your suggestions no one will have much reason to stock any other warhead.
As for the problem of attacking, the issue is infantry can handle airpower with fortifications and dispersal. Airpower can degrade defenses but not beat them. Airpower also has a surprisingly bad record in dealing with drones.
The main assumption I have is that therefore the defender will always have someone with missiles and drones, which means we need a way to attack that has some resistance to these things, lest we suffer unfortunate losses. We need mass to ensure an advantage and be able to exploit success. Both of these considerations imply the light 'tanks'. The heavy system is more optional, but I'm sure armies with existing tank corps will try this as well.
Aside, in WW1, the problem was not mass attacks per se, but the inability of attackers to hold their positions since the method of attack made their position untenable in face of counter-attack (essentially wrecking the attacker's forward supply lines with artillery). Both sides did consider a defensive strategy for a while, only to find out that this wasn't an option - the defender would suffer similar losses in these attacks, without the ability to decide a favorable battle location.
This is a model of tank as aircraft carrier: a massively capable single point-of-failure, surrounded by a cloud of ultimately disposable defensive vehicles and systems.
It has all the same weaknesses: find a way through the defensive cloud, and you can take out the capability of the entire group.
Very well researched and thorough article Noah. War is definitely getting crazier, last year marked the first time an AI drone likely killed someone without being specifically directed to--scary concept for both morals and our future. I wrote a semi-viral piece on it if you're curious.
Great piece. Additional thought: Western armies must also further develop their ability to fight proxy wars. This means you can't send your own soldiers (nuclear risk with nuke-equipped countries), or just provide intel. You need to send equipment, that your ally can use.
Two aspects to be considered:
1. Be able to send a lot of light, easy-to-use equipment quickly. Javelins, NLAWs, Turkish drones etc are great because they are easy to use. But you need large stocks so you can send them quickly and still retain an ability to defend yourself. That's one reason France is not sending much to UKR (sigh).
2. Develop heavy equipment that can be used by your ally. We have seen with aircraft, or larger AA systems (Patriots etc.) that it's much harder than light equipment. Limited number of Migs or S-300 are available. You can't train foreign armies quickly for new equipment. So we would need to integrate the "easy-to-use" component in the design of this type of equipment.
One issue I can see right now is that we are producing these missles like aircraft, but we need to be able to produce them like cars (or like ammunition, which they are). Maybe a different procrment approach to pay for capacity to get much, much lower unit costs and the ability to ramp up to the order of 1000's of units a day.
In how many years? I was reading that US javelin production maxes out at 7k/yr, and lead time is 24 months for a batch of stingers. A typical automotive line is 1000/day.
Yes, currently, the US isn't producing a lot of Javelins, but again, Javelins are the top end of ATGMs. NLAWs (and even cheaper less capable ATGMs) can be produced in greater quantities.
These missiles are apparently quite effective but we need to caveat analysis of the Ukraine conflict. The war in Ukraine is happening under A very specific set of circumstances which may not prevail in other wars. So we cannot “over learn” the lessons of this fight.
We must be mindful that Ukraine has benefited from exceptional intelligence from the West, especially leading up to the Russian invasion.
Notwithstanding all this technology Russian forces have penetrated far into Ukrainian territory. The war has been very costly for Ukraine.
The bigger lesson is more one of training and logistics. A well trained and drilled force can compensate for poor planning and adapt on the fly. A military with capable logistics support would likely have performed better than Russia has to date.
That is true, but given the burn rate of fancy munitions with an under prepared competitor, the optionality of being able to keep up with that burn rate seems like an important capability to have. In will not be a lower burn rate with a more prepared competitor conditional on not losing immediately.
I think you have made a fair point but I am merely trying to caution against drawing broad conclusions from the Ukraine war and applying them to the US. We certainly need to study this conflict but be mindful of the very specific nature of it which is unlikely to be able to be replicated in other wars if, God forbid, we find our nation in another one.
Ukraine is fighting a defensive war of survival. It has massive sponsorship from both the EU and US. This war is fought between two nations which share a large border. I doubt America will be fighting any type of border war soon. The type of war and the aims of the combatants are also important to the technology which is employed.
On that I agree. There are a lot of overdrawn 'tanks are obsolete' type takes. However there some issues we can already draw some conclusions on, like the one I Commented on. Maybe the rate capability needs fine tuning or an improved model (more capable or easier to fabricate, tbc) but a gap is clear.
Your insights are CONSISTENTLY top-notch. While a bit philosophical, the march of technology has accompanied empowerment and decentralization whether OSINT, Wikipedia, etcetera. I think your thesis "War got Weird" is awesome!
The 09/11 attacks were remarkably low-cost and decentralized. I think the role of the videogame Flight Simulator is a working example. The most recent 75 years and the rise of the transistor has created an asymmetry wherein more and more power to help or harm flows to the individual. The technology is neutral as you state. I think the philosophical consideration is telling however. We are on an onward march to providing unprecedented power eventually to individuals (perhaps already). Capitalism has done this in a remarkably efficient and ruthless way. We rapidly come to a time when we must make wise choices about the human condition. While we are not there yet, the incremental cost of innovation is falling while our capital gains structures are rooted in the inflation of the 1970s. One of my favorite observations is that there COULD be more advancement in the next generation (25 years) than the last 20000 years. Society has to buckle up for that much disruption.
Treating a large subset of society unjustly and flowing the financial benefits of great technology to the few rapidly brings you to a point where the unjustly treated will have unprecedented power to disrupt at little or no cost. Working on the human condition before such a possible layer of unrest presents itself should be a priority for policy makers.
I am an optimist. I also believe that asymmetric power could become one of the largest challenges to a modern society that is PERCEIVED as unjust by even the SMALLEST minority. As innovation costs drive toward zero, you can realize perhaps (1) great CAGR for tech or (2) an age of plenty with the benefits distributed more uniformly. Doing both will require conpromise, insight and reform. The drone is a great example of the challenges both good and bad.
Seeing the various OSINT accounts has been interesting. I recommend a podcast called New Models where they interview an anon behind one of the bigger accounts. I find the space fascinating because an amateur can contribute such value.
I appreciate your summary. But it is not a new concept for warfighting.
The concept of network centric warfare has been a stated strategy in DoD starting in 1995. It was also referred to as Systems of Systems. My guess is it goes much further back. But when I worked in Boeing Phantom works in the 90's, we were actively developing new systems based on some of the concepts you outline above.
A simple notable example was JDAM. We added a GPS guidance system to a dumb bomb, and revolutionized war fighting. It took 10 years for the industry to grasp the transformation JDAM offered. Communication integration and digital telemetry transformed the strategy of war fighting. The first Gulf war estimated it would take 1M troops to take Baghdad. The second Gulf war did it with 150k troops. The difference was network centric warfare.
Through the 90s we ran a range of war games to rethink battle. We evaluated how cheaper technologies and better data integration would increase non-state actor threats. And how it would improve US capabilities. These efforts modified doctrine and force structure.
The GWOT accelerated the innovation. But the doctrine and strategy was in work years before the technology entered operation. We anticipated OSINT. We anticipated that WWIII would not be nuclear. It would be network centric. Kinetic, cyber and economic. In 1998 we were thinking of how to create a non-fiat currency that would invalidate ability to sanction (A doctrine concept before the technology of bitcoin). Stuxnet was operational in 2006.
I have been less involved in the industry over the last 10 years. My guess is the US military is well ahead of what you outline. They learned in the first Gulf war how to use OSINT, in the form of CNN, to judge the battle field. In general what we see in the public domain was developed over a 20-25 year period that involved a lot of war games, opps analysis modeling and evolution of doctrine.
Based on what I worked on in the 90s and 00s there is nothing shocking me about Ukraine's success. It is the difference between conventional and network centric warfare. Its proliferation will hopefully create a form of MAD as more army's access the technology.
I don't think tanks are going away because, while they're killable with the right tools, they still require the enemy to bring those tools with them, which imposes a cost. If you never play scissors, your enemy knows they never have to play rock. And infantry and drones are fragile, which makes them vulnerable to weapons that a tank can just ignore (shrapnel and small arms).
I suspect the answer is going to be not to remove the tank, but to push its defenses farther and farther out. Currently a tank is supported by having infantry sweep the area around it for antitank ambushes, but it might be that the tanks will need drone support as well to find ambushes from even farther away, or integrated radar to catch incoming drones. Once it knows it's not walking into instant death from ATGMs, the tank can push forwards and use its armor and firepower to deal with fortifications that the infantry can't handle.
This model sounds a bit like a naval carrier task force where a single fragile carrier has dozens of support craft mostly designed just to keep it alive so it can get to where it can deploy its overwhelming force.
I noted somewhere else in a Twitter thread that war on land will likely follow the evolution that war at sea made: For centuries, capital ships would try to find each other by sight and then slug it out like teams of heavyweight boxers trying to pummel the other side in to sunken wreckage (maneuvering for advantage, etc.)
When aircraft carriers and submarines came in to major usage, ships became mostly platforms for launching long-range strikes and a collection of anti-air/anti-sub defenses.
Land warfare will be similar with infantry (needed to clean up and occupy territory as well as suppressing guerillas) protected by anti-drone/anti-air/anti-missile defenses as well as armor) going against long-strike weapons while their side launches long-strike weapons on the enemy.
I’m not convinced by the argument that spending more is necessary. Arguing against it is obviously a poor political move right now, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right move for the country. The failures of Russia’s military against Ukraine, albeit with the US helping Ukraine, suggest that the US is probably over-prepared. China’s military is definitely stronger than Russia’s, but it still suggests that we can decrease our military spending. I really don’t understand why people see Russia being weak and say “oh no, we need to spend more on our military.”
As you mentioned, a lot of current technology like tanks is likely now obsolete. So if we need to prepare for new technologies, we can do so by cutting spending in the obsolete technologies.
Because the spending is not a one time event. With spending comes training, drilling, and the preservation of institutional knowledge. If US aid is a meaningful contribution the Ukrainian resistance (we have given some 5 Bn plus in aid since 1991, and lethal aid since 2019) then it is prudent to maintain and advance this readiness.
Historically, ceding to the pressure of curtailing military spending following a victory has been objectively disastrous, giving space for enemies to reach parity at a pace that would never have been possible if funding never was cut. Just the same it leads to a yo-yo effect in the spending which prevents a nation's military from ever reaching a state of consistent readiness or even competency.
Such optimism in defense strategy is exactly why the third republic fell in weeks as did nearly the rest of Europe; the peace dividend is a farce and intubating policy with it paradoxically leads only to wars anew.
That’s an argument for literally never decreasing defense spending, assuming you’d also say that you shouldn’t decrease defense spending when you’re losing a war.
At all times, there is some optimal amount for the US to spend on the military. (Assume you’re only thinking in post-inflation dollars.) After an event, the amount can either go up, down, or stay the same. After some events, the number obviously goes up, like after Pearl Harbor or after seeing the Soviet Union develop nuclear weapons. Presumably there must also be events that make it go down, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, unless you think ever economic resource of the USA should be spent on its military.
What about this war makes you think that the amount should be higher than it was before the war? Is Russia or China more dangerous than before? Or alternatively, were we just always too low and this is a good excuse?
It is an argument to never decrease defense spending beyond a *reasonable* point. That point being roughly defined as some dollar amount n which yields some degree of capabilities x which, when contrasted with the enemy's capabilities - y - yields a favorable degree of overmatch such that it is economically *and* societally infeasible for them to attack you.
The exact value of x being determined by how efficiently the state can convert spending into actionable military capacity which is a product of previous decade's spending and conflict (gained institutional knowledge, veterans -especially officers - which can be recalled into service or remain in the military industrial complex in an advisory or contractual role, etc.), state capacity, and the state's technological base among others.
Similarly, the ratio of x to y necessary to yield the desired deterrent effect is highly variable; if the enemy finds you so loathsome as to dedicate itself to the national cause of your eradication then it is infinite. Such a scenario is defined as a total war, and it is reasonable to stake that no realistically attainable value of n will ever yield the deterrent effect - in such a case it becomes very much is desirable to literally never decrease defense spending. This holds even when the defending country has a capacity to convert n to x far inferior than its adversary as there is a non zero chance it may degrade the enemy's capacity to convert n' to y by dragging the war out long enough. This strategy worked for Vietnam when combating France and the US, but not so much for example, for Finland in the Winter War. This is the logic of the lesser power and it is what Ukraine is pursuing.
This is not without fault of course, as it is a strategy reliant upon a gamble of winning a hopelessly outmatched war. It is often far more prudent to leverage a friendly - or sometimes merely non-adversarial - partner to be allied with/vassalized/subsumed by, thereby leveraging relying upon there capacity at the expense of some measure of sovereignty: this has been the calculus of NATO, CIS, Warsaw Pact, as well as countless confederations of city-states and petty fiefdoms of antiquity.
What has been more common in American history however is that some level of deterrence becomes necessary during peacetime amongst rational, moderate adversaries - that is to say disinterested in waging a total war - and this is where the complexity arises. As not only must the ratio x/y be so great as to make military action infeasible, but the ratio so unfavorable to potential adversaries so as to make any attempts at merely closing this gap similarly fruitless. Else, adversaries that were far behind become near-peers, near-peers become peers, peers become betters, and betters invade.
This is the logic of the hyperpower, and it is the only way to ensure that regional powers are unable to pose a meaningful (conventional ) threat, and near-peers must limit their ambitions to regional actions. It is why -ignoring domestic factors like inertia, pork, military entitlements, political sentiment et al - the US spends more the entire rest of the world combined in defense: it is 1) on the whole quite cheap for America to do so and 2) deters even the emergence of arms races and forces all but the most belligerent adversaries to achieve the (primarily economic) goals of war by way of the market instead of munitions as the alternative has been made prohibitively expensive.
All of this to say is that this war specifically, along with the surrounding geopolitical context, indicates that the American military's deterrent effect is waning so as to invite attempts at usurption at some scale for the first time in thirty years. If it is desirable then to stave off such attempts, the only military response that may be mounted is to call for increased spending domestically, as well as engage partners to do the same: some of whom have been for years, some of whom are beginning to now, and some of whom perhaps never will.
I don't think the argument is tanks are obsolete, it simply means they aren't the center piece of a succussful ground war. And what this war is proving is that it isn't the biggest army that wins, it's the smartest, plus home field is a powerful advantage (though one that comes with the downside of a lot of civilian casualties). 'Smart' also extends to both military strategy and weaponry deployed. The two are intermixed with each other and what your opponent fields.
So sure, if you are fighting a big, "dumb" enemy like Russia, this approach of cheap and smart warfare is working. Now think about other possible conflicts, such as defending Taiwan. There is no cheap and smart approach that will win that possible conflict. It will take many, many expensive AA and anti-missile systems, and forward projection of air power that is both land and sea based.
Javelines, Stingers and drones deployed en-mass literally in our front yards isn't a wholistic national defense strategy and this strategy would not be working against a military as advanced as the US. I also do not believe this strategy is forward projectable into Russia because then supply lines would be exposed, where now they are supported though the home field advantage.
This is where spending a good amount of money comes in - we need to be prepared to fight multiple different kinds of wars at any given point in time, we also don't want to rely on the 'advantages' of fighting them 'at home' and we need to keep up the R&D to continue to field the most advanced weaponry possible (eg having helicopters equipped with anti-heat seeking missile tech, etc).
Stuff like MANPADs, ATGMs, mobile anti-ship missiles would still be useful in a Taiwan war. A landing craft that meets a Javelin won't have a great chance of delivering troops to the shore.
In terms of smart, yes, the Ukraine war spells the death of the efficacy of top-down control armies. The armies with trained NCO corps who delegate tactics down to that level (or even Taliban-like insurgents who are motivated) will do better.
Sure, those type of infantry weapons will have their place, but the overall effectiveness of them drops against a more sophisticated and still larger opponent.
I mean, the US military won't ever be facing off against the US military (hopefully) or NATO allies. China may have less corruption and more top technology than Russia, but all indications is that it is also a top-down controlled force.
The top-down point is a good one, but it does then depend on how smart and adaptive the person/people at the top is/are. I'm pretty ignorant, but my hunch is the Xi and the CCP will be more flexible and adaptable than Putin.
Very interesting analysis. I would say however that when it comes down to it, war is fundamentally a battle of wills. The side with the greater will to win is likely to win. We are kind of seeing this now with Russia and Ukraine. Although there are technological considerations to take into account there is also the fact that in this fight the Ukrainians appear to be far more determined to win than the Russians. For them it is an existential war, whereas for Russia it is a war of accumulation or conquest and hence harder to have the same motivation.
Your point about diversification is good one, and terrifying here in Australia where we are signed up to buy 100 JSF F-35s, and our plan is to have no other fighter jets.
Certainly a country as small as Australia doesn't have the money to diversify something as costly as fighter jets. Not sure why it terrifies you, though. If Australia ever enters a war, it very likely would be as part of an alliance with other weaponry (unless you folks do something crazy like attack Indonesia).
Australia's purchase F-35 is an expensive mistake (as are most of our military purchases, it must be said).
I think it's a combination of a general inferiority complex, some sort of testosterone-driven big-gun fantasy, and an attempt to buy a greater chance of support from the US should it ever be needed.
I hope that Australia would not be the one doing the crazy attack thing, but our responsibility is to defend ourselves and our allies against someone else doing the same. And for that, a Ukrainian-style force seems like a much better option than a hundred planes we can't afford to equip, fly, or support.
And best that this force doesn't rely on allies coming to our defense: there are always other considerations that make that a fraught decision, as Ukraine has discovered.
It is a very good point and DoD is working to diversify its own supply chain with its many "Digital Engineering" and renewed standardized efforts have inducted many new contractors into the space which previously were locked out by cost barriers. However, the cost of producing weapons has always been and will always be high owing to its very nature - little about this can be done until nations that aren't the United States or China become willing again to invest in the technology sectors aligned with their defense apparatus (or at all).
Personally I reject the fears that this will result in any sort of arms race as today's spheres of influence are so rigid such that there is little strategic difference to, say, CIS in one NATO member purchasing American in lieu of developing there own. That this is not being done is largely a matter of domestic policy.
A lot clearly right here, I would just caveat with one or two things: one, we don’t actually know how the Ukrainians have been fighting. We know what gets posted to social media, which is a selective view with both intentional and unintentional biases. For instance, I’ve seen almost no close combat footage and yet that’s how you take territory in the end. We also haven’t seen Ukrainian forces having to take on dug-in Russian troops, but they’ve been unable to dislodge forces in the east since 2014. Trench warfare is the same as it ever was: infantry stand little chance approaching dug-in, concealed positions that have machineguns, prepared artillery, razor wire, and minefields. You can have all the rockets and drones you want but you can’t walk through machinegun fire. So we don’t know the whole story. But yeah, there’s a lot new here.
Trenches not really being built by Russia outside the Donbas stalemate. And you take territory by occupying it with infantry, but you don't need close combat for that to happen. Cut off supply lines, attrit, shell, and Russian forces will retreat to a more defensible posture if they don't want to be cut off. That's how the UA recently took back Trostyanets, for instance. The UA cut off all routes back to Russia from Trostyanets besides one and the remnants of the wrecked 4th Guards Tank Division decided to get the heck out of Dodge (leaving behind a lot of vehicles/equipment, some destroyed, some not) instead of staying to be completely annihilated. Hopefully, you realize that artillery (which the other side can't see) leads to the most casualties in modern warfare.
Finally, there is indeed close combat, but no, you don't see much footage of actual battles (though there are plenty) because soldiers in the middle of a firefight usually have more pressing concerns than taking videos. But you see a lot of aftermaths of firefights.
Would tech also tend to evolve in directions that would make it difficult or impossible to defend national command structures against comparatively low-cost decapitation strikes? If there is, or historically has been, some kind of informal agreement to not target national leadership, how long will that last in an environment in which it may increasingly be possible to start, and simultaneously end, a war by taking out the other side’s chief executive?
We haven’t seen it in this war but I suspect the crewed fighter plane will eventually go the same way as the tank has this time around - highly vulnerable to sophisticated missiles fired from far cheaper platforms that can be fielded in much larger quantities.
>This doesn’t mean that tanks and other armored vehicles are obsolete on the battlefield...
The tank's problem is not anti-tank missiles by themselves. The same missiles would do a number on lighter platforms and infantry. Since armies want to attack and need to mass for it, there's a need for an attack platform. But tanks are highly visible while packing surprisingly little attack power. So the platform needs to evolve for the new needs. WW2 was also a period of rapid evolution, where both sides tried heavier and lighter tanks but in the end settled on 'medium' tanks.
I believe the same evolution would happen here. The medium tank just provides too little for its bulk. The tank will evolve back into two variants:
* A light vehicle, quite likely remotely or AI driven. Essentially a disposable glass cannon + detector. Enemy drones and infantry are welcome to expose their position by destroying these tanks. Or not and get detected anyway.
* A very heavy vehicle, for either specialized tasks (portable radar, combat ambulance, minesweeper etc.) or for tank-like outright breakthrough - which will require all the active defences etc. one can muster.
>>The tank's problem is not anti-tank missiles by themselves. The same missiles would do a number on lighter platforms and infantry.
Not really. Javelins and NLAWs can't directly target infantry, though they do have a dumbfire mode. But there's no guarantee the warhead would detonate correctly or take out all that many soldiers, because it's specifically designed to penetrate tank armor, not fragment or concuss. There's a "multipurpose warhead" that was later designed for the Javelin, but every MPWH you carry onto the battlefield is an ATGM you didn't.
Even targeting artillery is hit-or-miss, no pun intended. A towed piece has to be shot in dumbfire as well, has got enough greebles that you're not guaranteed a kill just from a direct dumbfire hit. A self-propelled piece certainly can be taken out by the Javelin, but now you're right back to saying exactly what Noah did - that Javelins are in fact the threat.
>> Since armies want to attack and need to mass for it, there's a need for an attack platform.
While this is half-correct about there being need, there's no reason to believe that the answer is "tanks". Why not air support? Why not drones? Why not Javelins and NLAWs? Ukraine is already pushing back into Russian-held territory using the latter two. It's totally conceivable that they'd be able to penetrate into Russia with them as well.
You're focusing too much on the "massed" and not enough on the "attack" part. Massed attacks in fact _didn't_ work in WWI; that was the entire problem with trench warfare, was it not? Armor was needed not because of its "massability", but because it provided the _penetration_ to get through entrenched defenses. Tanks only worked en masse later on in WWII because their armor allowed quick penetration; it's not like there's anything else about tanks such that if you massed them together without their penetration ability, they'd magically overcome an entrenched position (EG imagine if the driver and gunner were exposed to enemy fire: they'd be torn to shreds PDQ). This is precisely what we saw happen with the infamous "Column To Kyiv": Once the massed armor column ran out of fuel, it stopped being penetrative and just became a sitting duck.
Drones get you that penetration, but better. Switchblades can take out an enemy platoon or tank just like a tank cannon once could, from further away, without direct LOS, and all on a nice video camera that lets you guide it right on in without a million dollars' worth of fancy tank optics helping you make a shot you only have one chance at. And they're cheaper and easier to move around than tanks! They don't run out of fuel or get stuck in the mud, and they're not insane gas hogs that have to be refueled every few hours. As long as you can move a man around, and that man can carry a Switchblade, he can kill more, bigger, and better units than with his rifle alone.
Noah's only half right when he says that defense is heavily advantaged by this - specifically, he's right that a Ukraine-style defense can indeed be successful with drones and Javelins. But really, drones and Javelins simply advantage whoever has the sensor and logistics advantage. As long as you can (1) keep your soldiers properly supplied with drones and Javelins, (2) see the enemy, and (3) move your soldiers and supplies around the battlefield quickly enough, well, you're probably going to win. Surprise surprise, the West is handling the back end of the logistics part, OSINT is helping with #2, and the Ukrainians are managing not to fuck up the rest, so they're winning.
Drones and Javelins haven't frozen the battle space, they've merely expanded and decentralized it. We've already seen this in the air, which is another part of the Ukraine war you're not acknowledging here. MANPADs and AA missiles have basically prohibited most air power from being used in this conflict. Neither side has the stealth strike capacity to perform proper SEAD/DEAD, so they're just sticking to the ground. Essentially, the range that one would need to strike the enemy from is larger than the range of the airborne weapons platforms, so each side can only nibble/snipe at each other in the air for now, while they just carry on hoping that their ground forces counter enough AA to reopen the skies. Likewise, the expanded and decentralized battlefield doesn't mean tanks will never be useful or that the battlefield will stay frozen, it just means that until either side can eliminate the drone/Javelin threat, they're better off focusing on winning in that sphere of the conflict before relying on those tanks to do what they do best.
We don't need more or different tanks. We need Jeeps/Hummers, Javelins, Switchblades, NVGs, and fuel. I'm not saying there will _never_ be niches for tanks; that's stupid and narrow-minded, of course. But we shouldn't be spending billions of dollars on them anymore, or purchasing and maintaining them by the tens of thousands. As of today, they're a reserve/auxiliary unit, not the centerpiece. They're what we roll in when we know we've got the conflict mostly wrapped up, and just need to counter against a desperate enemy resorting to the sort of trench warfare that might cause us hiccups and indigestion. In that context, having two variants we rarely use will be more expensive than a reserve force of MBTs we rarely use. And we'll be spending a lot less money on all those lighter units than any enemy of ours who's foolish enough to rely on _his_ tens of thousands of tanks, all while being able to totally annihilate and embarrass his precious centerpiece force.
So, like I said, we're better off just buying a lot more Jeeps. Get soldiers to within drone/Javelin range, or a short march thereof, and pummel the enemy from afar until it's safe to move in and mop up.
Well, something more protective than Jeeps. Having infantry travel in an IFV/APC is still better as those protect infantry against most things that kill infantry (including artillery shrapnel/RPGs, bullets, etc.).
True, but eventually you have to get the infantry out and have them start shooting at people. RPGs and bullets still aren't the big killers, it's artillery. And the infantry already has a counter to artillery: drones, whether Switchblades or bigger. Artillery takes a while to set up, and isn't all that likely to hit a Jeep from 4-30km away without guided munitions. But those guided munitions require them to have forward observers who are just as stealthy/coverable as your own infantry.
That's why Jeeps worked so damned well in WWII - they were fast and could get people around to where they needed to be.
Overall, the core logic of the battlespace is "don't be seen". Artillery and armor are more easily seen. They can't hit infantry who are moving too fast for that.
Artillery doesn't doesn't have to take long to set up and can scoot. Self-propelled artillery has been around for a while now. Drones would be used to surveil. Artillery will also be protected with anti-air/anti-drone defenses. We'll see battles on land become more like carrier battles at sea but artillery will still exist because of range.
Yeah, I think what Ukraine demonstrates more than anything is that these aren't strict yes/no propositions, but rather different types of warfare will bleed into others based on the balance in certain spheres. Air, drones, artillery, armor, infantry, jeeps, etc., will all be used depending on what *can* be used in the current threat environment and how to address those threats. The resulting doctrine is that we shouldn't be sitting here obsessing about our own variety or lack thereof, but rather about how well we address the threat environment as it actually exists. As the Ukrainians have shown, if you can't do more with less, you aren't going to win anyways.
Fair. Means that the new Marine Force Design 2030 plan to make it a different type of force than the Army (no tanks, for one) makes sense.
The enemy will also have drones. Air superiority is unlikely to prevent these drones from finding your Jeeps and blowing them up. That's both a lesser and bigger problem than blowing a tank up - a tank costs more but the crew has higher chances of survival. I however suggested a disposable 'light' system so that a drone blowing it up isn't a big problem at all (note that being cheap is a necessary part of being disposable).
Both sides will have drones and anti-drone defenses. It will be like WWII Pacific naval battles, but on land.
There are inherent differences which make this comparison insufficient - there won't be a small number of 'carriers' (drones and drone stations are far cheaper), far more ways to hide at the surface and in general defender's advantage, the high ability of land forces to lay low without supplies, larger modern ranges, etc.
These differences matter - the Russian BTG is also an attempt to bring the carrier style of combat to land (where the BTG acts as spotter for artillery instead of drones). It turns out that spotting is good but it's not enough: the BTG doesn't have enough heft to clear all opposing forces. Its supply lines are killed by stragglers, and it can't take hard targets without too many losses. We need a force which can clear. This can be done by throwing a lot of infantry at it, I think vehicles can play a big role in limiting casualties and reducing infantry requirements.
Javelin and NLAW are hardly the only missiles around. Even the RPG has anti-personnel warheads, and if we take your suggestions no one will have much reason to stock any other warhead.
As for the problem of attacking, the issue is infantry can handle airpower with fortifications and dispersal. Airpower can degrade defenses but not beat them. Airpower also has a surprisingly bad record in dealing with drones.
The main assumption I have is that therefore the defender will always have someone with missiles and drones, which means we need a way to attack that has some resistance to these things, lest we suffer unfortunate losses. We need mass to ensure an advantage and be able to exploit success. Both of these considerations imply the light 'tanks'. The heavy system is more optional, but I'm sure armies with existing tank corps will try this as well.
Aside, in WW1, the problem was not mass attacks per se, but the inability of attackers to hold their positions since the method of attack made their position untenable in face of counter-attack (essentially wrecking the attacker's forward supply lines with artillery). Both sides did consider a defensive strategy for a while, only to find out that this wasn't an option - the defender would suffer similar losses in these attacks, without the ability to decide a favorable battle location.
This is a model of tank as aircraft carrier: a massively capable single point-of-failure, surrounded by a cloud of ultimately disposable defensive vehicles and systems.
It has all the same weaknesses: find a way through the defensive cloud, and you can take out the capability of the entire group.
I don't see how the comparison applies at all.
The main idea is a _disposable_ system, which isn't anything like a carrier at all.
The other idea is the classic frontline breakthrough system, which carries simply don't do given the very different nature of naval combat.
Very well researched and thorough article Noah. War is definitely getting crazier, last year marked the first time an AI drone likely killed someone without being specifically directed to--scary concept for both morals and our future. I wrote a semi-viral piece on it if you're curious.
Keep up the great work!
Thanks!
Great piece. Additional thought: Western armies must also further develop their ability to fight proxy wars. This means you can't send your own soldiers (nuclear risk with nuke-equipped countries), or just provide intel. You need to send equipment, that your ally can use.
Two aspects to be considered:
1. Be able to send a lot of light, easy-to-use equipment quickly. Javelins, NLAWs, Turkish drones etc are great because they are easy to use. But you need large stocks so you can send them quickly and still retain an ability to defend yourself. That's one reason France is not sending much to UKR (sigh).
2. Develop heavy equipment that can be used by your ally. We have seen with aircraft, or larger AA systems (Patriots etc.) that it's much harder than light equipment. Limited number of Migs or S-300 are available. You can't train foreign armies quickly for new equipment. So we would need to integrate the "easy-to-use" component in the design of this type of equipment.
One issue I can see right now is that we are producing these missles like aircraft, but we need to be able to produce them like cars (or like ammunition, which they are). Maybe a different procrment approach to pay for capacity to get much, much lower unit costs and the ability to ramp up to the order of 1000's of units a day.
??? They seem to be mass produced. Maybe not the Javelin (which is the top-end of ATGMs) but France has produced over 100K ATGMs, for instance.
In how many years? I was reading that US javelin production maxes out at 7k/yr, and lead time is 24 months for a batch of stingers. A typical automotive line is 1000/day.
Yes, currently, the US isn't producing a lot of Javelins, but again, Javelins are the top end of ATGMs. NLAWs (and even cheaper less capable ATGMs) can be produced in greater quantities.
Jesse,
These missiles are apparently quite effective but we need to caveat analysis of the Ukraine conflict. The war in Ukraine is happening under A very specific set of circumstances which may not prevail in other wars. So we cannot “over learn” the lessons of this fight.
We must be mindful that Ukraine has benefited from exceptional intelligence from the West, especially leading up to the Russian invasion.
Notwithstanding all this technology Russian forces have penetrated far into Ukrainian territory. The war has been very costly for Ukraine.
The bigger lesson is more one of training and logistics. A well trained and drilled force can compensate for poor planning and adapt on the fly. A military with capable logistics support would likely have performed better than Russia has to date.
Technology is one of many factors in this war.
That is true, but given the burn rate of fancy munitions with an under prepared competitor, the optionality of being able to keep up with that burn rate seems like an important capability to have. In will not be a lower burn rate with a more prepared competitor conditional on not losing immediately.
Jesse,
I think you have made a fair point but I am merely trying to caution against drawing broad conclusions from the Ukraine war and applying them to the US. We certainly need to study this conflict but be mindful of the very specific nature of it which is unlikely to be able to be replicated in other wars if, God forbid, we find our nation in another one.
Ukraine is fighting a defensive war of survival. It has massive sponsorship from both the EU and US. This war is fought between two nations which share a large border. I doubt America will be fighting any type of border war soon. The type of war and the aims of the combatants are also important to the technology which is employed.
On that I agree. There are a lot of overdrawn 'tanks are obsolete' type takes. However there some issues we can already draw some conclusions on, like the one I Commented on. Maybe the rate capability needs fine tuning or an improved model (more capable or easier to fabricate, tbc) but a gap is clear.
Your insights are CONSISTENTLY top-notch. While a bit philosophical, the march of technology has accompanied empowerment and decentralization whether OSINT, Wikipedia, etcetera. I think your thesis "War got Weird" is awesome!
The 09/11 attacks were remarkably low-cost and decentralized. I think the role of the videogame Flight Simulator is a working example. The most recent 75 years and the rise of the transistor has created an asymmetry wherein more and more power to help or harm flows to the individual. The technology is neutral as you state. I think the philosophical consideration is telling however. We are on an onward march to providing unprecedented power eventually to individuals (perhaps already). Capitalism has done this in a remarkably efficient and ruthless way. We rapidly come to a time when we must make wise choices about the human condition. While we are not there yet, the incremental cost of innovation is falling while our capital gains structures are rooted in the inflation of the 1970s. One of my favorite observations is that there COULD be more advancement in the next generation (25 years) than the last 20000 years. Society has to buckle up for that much disruption.
Treating a large subset of society unjustly and flowing the financial benefits of great technology to the few rapidly brings you to a point where the unjustly treated will have unprecedented power to disrupt at little or no cost. Working on the human condition before such a possible layer of unrest presents itself should be a priority for policy makers.
I am an optimist. I also believe that asymmetric power could become one of the largest challenges to a modern society that is PERCEIVED as unjust by even the SMALLEST minority. As innovation costs drive toward zero, you can realize perhaps (1) great CAGR for tech or (2) an age of plenty with the benefits distributed more uniformly. Doing both will require conpromise, insight and reform. The drone is a great example of the challenges both good and bad.
Thanks!!!
Good article Noah, one minor quibble. The nature of conflict never changes, just it’s character.
https://warontherocks.com/2014/01/understanding-wars-enduring-nature-alongside-its-changing-character/
Seeing the various OSINT accounts has been interesting. I recommend a podcast called New Models where they interview an anon behind one of the bigger accounts. I find the space fascinating because an amateur can contribute such value.
I appreciate your summary. But it is not a new concept for warfighting.
The concept of network centric warfare has been a stated strategy in DoD starting in 1995. It was also referred to as Systems of Systems. My guess is it goes much further back. But when I worked in Boeing Phantom works in the 90's, we were actively developing new systems based on some of the concepts you outline above.
A simple notable example was JDAM. We added a GPS guidance system to a dumb bomb, and revolutionized war fighting. It took 10 years for the industry to grasp the transformation JDAM offered. Communication integration and digital telemetry transformed the strategy of war fighting. The first Gulf war estimated it would take 1M troops to take Baghdad. The second Gulf war did it with 150k troops. The difference was network centric warfare.
Through the 90s we ran a range of war games to rethink battle. We evaluated how cheaper technologies and better data integration would increase non-state actor threats. And how it would improve US capabilities. These efforts modified doctrine and force structure.
The GWOT accelerated the innovation. But the doctrine and strategy was in work years before the technology entered operation. We anticipated OSINT. We anticipated that WWIII would not be nuclear. It would be network centric. Kinetic, cyber and economic. In 1998 we were thinking of how to create a non-fiat currency that would invalidate ability to sanction (A doctrine concept before the technology of bitcoin). Stuxnet was operational in 2006.
I have been less involved in the industry over the last 10 years. My guess is the US military is well ahead of what you outline. They learned in the first Gulf war how to use OSINT, in the form of CNN, to judge the battle field. In general what we see in the public domain was developed over a 20-25 year period that involved a lot of war games, opps analysis modeling and evolution of doctrine.
Based on what I worked on in the 90s and 00s there is nothing shocking me about Ukraine's success. It is the difference between conventional and network centric warfare. Its proliferation will hopefully create a form of MAD as more army's access the technology.
I don't think tanks are going away because, while they're killable with the right tools, they still require the enemy to bring those tools with them, which imposes a cost. If you never play scissors, your enemy knows they never have to play rock. And infantry and drones are fragile, which makes them vulnerable to weapons that a tank can just ignore (shrapnel and small arms).
I suspect the answer is going to be not to remove the tank, but to push its defenses farther and farther out. Currently a tank is supported by having infantry sweep the area around it for antitank ambushes, but it might be that the tanks will need drone support as well to find ambushes from even farther away, or integrated radar to catch incoming drones. Once it knows it's not walking into instant death from ATGMs, the tank can push forwards and use its armor and firepower to deal with fortifications that the infantry can't handle.
This model sounds a bit like a naval carrier task force where a single fragile carrier has dozens of support craft mostly designed just to keep it alive so it can get to where it can deploy its overwhelming force.
I noted somewhere else in a Twitter thread that war on land will likely follow the evolution that war at sea made: For centuries, capital ships would try to find each other by sight and then slug it out like teams of heavyweight boxers trying to pummel the other side in to sunken wreckage (maneuvering for advantage, etc.)
When aircraft carriers and submarines came in to major usage, ships became mostly platforms for launching long-range strikes and a collection of anti-air/anti-sub defenses.
Land warfare will be similar with infantry (needed to clean up and occupy territory as well as suppressing guerillas) protected by anti-drone/anti-air/anti-missile defenses as well as armor) going against long-strike weapons while their side launches long-strike weapons on the enemy.
I’m not convinced by the argument that spending more is necessary. Arguing against it is obviously a poor political move right now, but that doesn’t mean that it’s the right move for the country. The failures of Russia’s military against Ukraine, albeit with the US helping Ukraine, suggest that the US is probably over-prepared. China’s military is definitely stronger than Russia’s, but it still suggests that we can decrease our military spending. I really don’t understand why people see Russia being weak and say “oh no, we need to spend more on our military.”
As you mentioned, a lot of current technology like tanks is likely now obsolete. So if we need to prepare for new technologies, we can do so by cutting spending in the obsolete technologies.
Because the spending is not a one time event. With spending comes training, drilling, and the preservation of institutional knowledge. If US aid is a meaningful contribution the Ukrainian resistance (we have given some 5 Bn plus in aid since 1991, and lethal aid since 2019) then it is prudent to maintain and advance this readiness.
Historically, ceding to the pressure of curtailing military spending following a victory has been objectively disastrous, giving space for enemies to reach parity at a pace that would never have been possible if funding never was cut. Just the same it leads to a yo-yo effect in the spending which prevents a nation's military from ever reaching a state of consistent readiness or even competency.
Such optimism in defense strategy is exactly why the third republic fell in weeks as did nearly the rest of Europe; the peace dividend is a farce and intubating policy with it paradoxically leads only to wars anew.
That’s an argument for literally never decreasing defense spending, assuming you’d also say that you shouldn’t decrease defense spending when you’re losing a war.
At all times, there is some optimal amount for the US to spend on the military. (Assume you’re only thinking in post-inflation dollars.) After an event, the amount can either go up, down, or stay the same. After some events, the number obviously goes up, like after Pearl Harbor or after seeing the Soviet Union develop nuclear weapons. Presumably there must also be events that make it go down, like the collapse of the Soviet Union, unless you think ever economic resource of the USA should be spent on its military.
What about this war makes you think that the amount should be higher than it was before the war? Is Russia or China more dangerous than before? Or alternatively, were we just always too low and this is a good excuse?
It is an argument to never decrease defense spending beyond a *reasonable* point. That point being roughly defined as some dollar amount n which yields some degree of capabilities x which, when contrasted with the enemy's capabilities - y - yields a favorable degree of overmatch such that it is economically *and* societally infeasible for them to attack you.
The exact value of x being determined by how efficiently the state can convert spending into actionable military capacity which is a product of previous decade's spending and conflict (gained institutional knowledge, veterans -especially officers - which can be recalled into service or remain in the military industrial complex in an advisory or contractual role, etc.), state capacity, and the state's technological base among others.
Similarly, the ratio of x to y necessary to yield the desired deterrent effect is highly variable; if the enemy finds you so loathsome as to dedicate itself to the national cause of your eradication then it is infinite. Such a scenario is defined as a total war, and it is reasonable to stake that no realistically attainable value of n will ever yield the deterrent effect - in such a case it becomes very much is desirable to literally never decrease defense spending. This holds even when the defending country has a capacity to convert n to x far inferior than its adversary as there is a non zero chance it may degrade the enemy's capacity to convert n' to y by dragging the war out long enough. This strategy worked for Vietnam when combating France and the US, but not so much for example, for Finland in the Winter War. This is the logic of the lesser power and it is what Ukraine is pursuing.
This is not without fault of course, as it is a strategy reliant upon a gamble of winning a hopelessly outmatched war. It is often far more prudent to leverage a friendly - or sometimes merely non-adversarial - partner to be allied with/vassalized/subsumed by, thereby leveraging relying upon there capacity at the expense of some measure of sovereignty: this has been the calculus of NATO, CIS, Warsaw Pact, as well as countless confederations of city-states and petty fiefdoms of antiquity.
What has been more common in American history however is that some level of deterrence becomes necessary during peacetime amongst rational, moderate adversaries - that is to say disinterested in waging a total war - and this is where the complexity arises. As not only must the ratio x/y be so great as to make military action infeasible, but the ratio so unfavorable to potential adversaries so as to make any attempts at merely closing this gap similarly fruitless. Else, adversaries that were far behind become near-peers, near-peers become peers, peers become betters, and betters invade.
This is the logic of the hyperpower, and it is the only way to ensure that regional powers are unable to pose a meaningful (conventional ) threat, and near-peers must limit their ambitions to regional actions. It is why -ignoring domestic factors like inertia, pork, military entitlements, political sentiment et al - the US spends more the entire rest of the world combined in defense: it is 1) on the whole quite cheap for America to do so and 2) deters even the emergence of arms races and forces all but the most belligerent adversaries to achieve the (primarily economic) goals of war by way of the market instead of munitions as the alternative has been made prohibitively expensive.
All of this to say is that this war specifically, along with the surrounding geopolitical context, indicates that the American military's deterrent effect is waning so as to invite attempts at usurption at some scale for the first time in thirty years. If it is desirable then to stave off such attempts, the only military response that may be mounted is to call for increased spending domestically, as well as engage partners to do the same: some of whom have been for years, some of whom are beginning to now, and some of whom perhaps never will.
I don't think the argument is tanks are obsolete, it simply means they aren't the center piece of a succussful ground war. And what this war is proving is that it isn't the biggest army that wins, it's the smartest, plus home field is a powerful advantage (though one that comes with the downside of a lot of civilian casualties). 'Smart' also extends to both military strategy and weaponry deployed. The two are intermixed with each other and what your opponent fields.
So sure, if you are fighting a big, "dumb" enemy like Russia, this approach of cheap and smart warfare is working. Now think about other possible conflicts, such as defending Taiwan. There is no cheap and smart approach that will win that possible conflict. It will take many, many expensive AA and anti-missile systems, and forward projection of air power that is both land and sea based.
Javelines, Stingers and drones deployed en-mass literally in our front yards isn't a wholistic national defense strategy and this strategy would not be working against a military as advanced as the US. I also do not believe this strategy is forward projectable into Russia because then supply lines would be exposed, where now they are supported though the home field advantage.
This is where spending a good amount of money comes in - we need to be prepared to fight multiple different kinds of wars at any given point in time, we also don't want to rely on the 'advantages' of fighting them 'at home' and we need to keep up the R&D to continue to field the most advanced weaponry possible (eg having helicopters equipped with anti-heat seeking missile tech, etc).
Stuff like MANPADs, ATGMs, mobile anti-ship missiles would still be useful in a Taiwan war. A landing craft that meets a Javelin won't have a great chance of delivering troops to the shore.
In terms of smart, yes, the Ukraine war spells the death of the efficacy of top-down control armies. The armies with trained NCO corps who delegate tactics down to that level (or even Taliban-like insurgents who are motivated) will do better.
Sure, those type of infantry weapons will have their place, but the overall effectiveness of them drops against a more sophisticated and still larger opponent.
I mean, the US military won't ever be facing off against the US military (hopefully) or NATO allies. China may have less corruption and more top technology than Russia, but all indications is that it is also a top-down controlled force.
The top-down point is a good one, but it does then depend on how smart and adaptive the person/people at the top is/are. I'm pretty ignorant, but my hunch is the Xi and the CCP will be more flexible and adaptable than Putin.
Possible, but the feedback loop would always be longer than small units making tactical decisions.
Very interesting analysis. I would say however that when it comes down to it, war is fundamentally a battle of wills. The side with the greater will to win is likely to win. We are kind of seeing this now with Russia and Ukraine. Although there are technological considerations to take into account there is also the fact that in this fight the Ukrainians appear to be far more determined to win than the Russians. For them it is an existential war, whereas for Russia it is a war of accumulation or conquest and hence harder to have the same motivation.
Your point about diversification is good one, and terrifying here in Australia where we are signed up to buy 100 JSF F-35s, and our plan is to have no other fighter jets.
Certainly a country as small as Australia doesn't have the money to diversify something as costly as fighter jets. Not sure why it terrifies you, though. If Australia ever enters a war, it very likely would be as part of an alliance with other weaponry (unless you folks do something crazy like attack Indonesia).
Australia's purchase F-35 is an expensive mistake (as are most of our military purchases, it must be said).
I think it's a combination of a general inferiority complex, some sort of testosterone-driven big-gun fantasy, and an attempt to buy a greater chance of support from the US should it ever be needed.
I hope that Australia would not be the one doing the crazy attack thing, but our responsibility is to defend ourselves and our allies against someone else doing the same. And for that, a Ukrainian-style force seems like a much better option than a hundred planes we can't afford to equip, fly, or support.
And best that this force doesn't rely on allies coming to our defense: there are always other considerations that make that a fraught decision, as Ukraine has discovered.
It is a very good point and DoD is working to diversify its own supply chain with its many "Digital Engineering" and renewed standardized efforts have inducted many new contractors into the space which previously were locked out by cost barriers. However, the cost of producing weapons has always been and will always be high owing to its very nature - little about this can be done until nations that aren't the United States or China become willing again to invest in the technology sectors aligned with their defense apparatus (or at all).
Personally I reject the fears that this will result in any sort of arms race as today's spheres of influence are so rigid such that there is little strategic difference to, say, CIS in one NATO member purchasing American in lieu of developing there own. That this is not being done is largely a matter of domestic policy.
A lot clearly right here, I would just caveat with one or two things: one, we don’t actually know how the Ukrainians have been fighting. We know what gets posted to social media, which is a selective view with both intentional and unintentional biases. For instance, I’ve seen almost no close combat footage and yet that’s how you take territory in the end. We also haven’t seen Ukrainian forces having to take on dug-in Russian troops, but they’ve been unable to dislodge forces in the east since 2014. Trench warfare is the same as it ever was: infantry stand little chance approaching dug-in, concealed positions that have machineguns, prepared artillery, razor wire, and minefields. You can have all the rockets and drones you want but you can’t walk through machinegun fire. So we don’t know the whole story. But yeah, there’s a lot new here.
Trenches not really being built by Russia outside the Donbas stalemate. And you take territory by occupying it with infantry, but you don't need close combat for that to happen. Cut off supply lines, attrit, shell, and Russian forces will retreat to a more defensible posture if they don't want to be cut off. That's how the UA recently took back Trostyanets, for instance. The UA cut off all routes back to Russia from Trostyanets besides one and the remnants of the wrecked 4th Guards Tank Division decided to get the heck out of Dodge (leaving behind a lot of vehicles/equipment, some destroyed, some not) instead of staying to be completely annihilated. Hopefully, you realize that artillery (which the other side can't see) leads to the most casualties in modern warfare.
Finally, there is indeed close combat, but no, you don't see much footage of actual battles (though there are plenty) because soldiers in the middle of a firefight usually have more pressing concerns than taking videos. But you see a lot of aftermaths of firefights.
Would tech also tend to evolve in directions that would make it difficult or impossible to defend national command structures against comparatively low-cost decapitation strikes? If there is, or historically has been, some kind of informal agreement to not target national leadership, how long will that last in an environment in which it may increasingly be possible to start, and simultaneously end, a war by taking out the other side’s chief executive?
We haven’t seen it in this war but I suspect the crewed fighter plane will eventually go the same way as the tank has this time around - highly vulnerable to sophisticated missiles fired from far cheaper platforms that can be fielded in much larger quantities.