Is the United States ready for the next war? Is anyone?
I don't think so.
You might say that Ukraine and Russia, which are in the midst of a war in which both sides are holding their own, must therefore be ready for war. I disagree. Their war is being limited by the resources and manpower available to the two sides, and by the slow ramp-up from the three-day "special military operation" to something close to full-on war. They use their missiles and drones as soon as they get them, so they never build up the mass of weaponry that the US, China, and possibly many others might soon have to deploy at the onset of a new conflict.
Drones and missiles can be shot down. Iran recently attacked Israel with something like 120 ballistic missiles, 30 cruise missiles, and 170 drones, and with US help Israel was able to defend itself effectively. From this and other recent events we have learned that missile defense has gotten quite good, and the US and Israel in particular have weapons that can easily shoot down all the cruise and ballistic missiles in use around the world. The thing is, the weapons that can do this have to be far more sophisticated, and therefore far more expensive, that the missiles they are knocking out. The US seems to have called off its mission to defend merchant shipping in the Red Sea after, according to reports, expending a billion dollars' worth of missiles in two weeks. Not even the US or China can afford to manufacture modern anti-air missiles in the numbers necessary to stop an all-out attack. It was recently revealed that after a major investment in raising production, the US can only manufacture 45 Patriot PAC-3 missiles per month.
Last year a Pentagon official – the under-secretary for procurement, or some such person – was asked by a reporter why the US was not buying anti-drone guns. He said that the US has been researching drone defense for a decade, since our troops in Iraq and Syria are attacked with drones every month, and that the answer is electronic warfare. Well, maybe for drones launched by nebulous militias. But in Ukraine the electromagnetic spectrum is its own battlefield, and both side are constantly updating their systems to achieve some slight advantage. There are many videos of tanks with mounted EW systems being destroyed by drones.
Plus, EW only works if the drone depends on a radio connection with a human controller. Drones with simple AI systems already exist that allow them to do the last leg of their attack without guidance; the controller just points them toward a target and they can navigate their way down to hit it. Given the speed of advance in AI, fully autonomous drones will be here soon. (If they aren't already flying around Area 51.) And what if, instead of radar, the drone is connected to its controller by a fiber-optic line? These are being used in Ukraine, and while the first versions are clumsy and often fail when the fiber breaks, these examples are being thrown together in barely professional workshops, and the system can no doubt be improved. The combination of fiber optic connections and simple AI may soon render electromagnetic defenses close to useless.
I think the US and NATO are far behind the curve on these issues. Here is one example of what worries me, from a news story about the lessons of the Ukraine war.
“The first lesson we got out of there was the importance of anti-ship cruise missile defense, when the Slava got hit,” Director of Naval Intelligence Vice Adm. Karl Thomas said, likely referring to the April 2022 sinking of the Slava-class Moskva, which the US said was hit with Ukrainian Neptune cruise missiles.
Given that anti-ship cruise missiles were introduced in the 1970s, it seems bizarre that the danger they pose should have impressed the US Navy in 2022.
That same news story goes on to describe a competition the Army is holding for anti-drone systems, including a test in which the systems had to defend a command post against up to fifty attackers at once. After watching these demonstrations, the reporter concluded that "Flooding the battlefield with a large number of drones, especially those able to fly in a coordinated fashion, is a threat the U.S. military is still trying to address." And that was just fifty drones. What about 8,000?
Of course the best way to defeat any air or artillery attack is to destroy the systems before the attack is launched. Israel demonstrated thin on August 25 when they bombed the Hezbolla launchers (here, here, here) that were being positioned to launch a massive rocket attack. But Israel has excellent electronic and human intelligence in southern Lebanon, so we can't always rely on that, plus, again, what about the first day of the war?
Of course none of this is a scary as nuclear weapons. But it is plenty scary. I sincerely hope that the level of global saber-rattling eases off soon, because I do not think the world is ready for the kind of fury that our new technologies could easily unleash.
4 comments:
The US mindset is one of air superiority, and of long range warfare.
Drones are necessarily short range weapons. They present a problem on the front lines, but the US doesn't do a lot of front line warfare anymore. Instead, we prefer to do exactly what you suggest - destroy the enemy systems before they can be used. We invest a lot of resources into knowing the locations of high value targets like factories and munitions dumps, and then blowing them up with cruise missiles.
That isn't to say that we don't have a blind spot, but it does at least somewhat explain the blindspot. I think the military isn't terribly concerned with drone swarms because the thinking is that those drones swarms have to be deployed from somewhere and have to receive their orders from somewhere, so if you just blow up either of those locations with a guided missile, the swarm is neutralized.
The modern US military excels at blowing up infrastructure from the air. What it struggles with is boots on the ground occupations.
We blew up the Iraqi army's critical infrastructure from afar in Desert Storm, and removed their ability to make war on Kuwait, and thus succeeded. But then after 9/11, in both Afghanistan and Iraq, once there were no obvious infrastructure targets to go after, we sort of just threw some troops into hostile territory, failed to give them any meaningful objectives, and they just got shot at from the hills for years until we got bored and left.
I think so long as we avoid the kinds of conflicts we're bad at, we'll do well enough. If China tries to invade Taiwan, for example, our long range and air superiority will knock out their ability to conduct an overseas invasion, and drones won't play much of a role unless the Chinese land and make a beachhead somehow. But if we instead tried to invade and occupy a foreign area, drones would then become a nightmare to face.
This doesn't pertain directly to the issues John has posted about, but on the issue of how war may have changed: I've found it interesting that neither Russia nor Ukraine has enforced universal conscription. Both seem to have found it simply impossible politically. There was some talk about the Ukrainians starting that over the summer, but I haven't heard that anything's been done. Meanwhile, Israel seems still politically unable to touch a significant and rapidly growing portion of its youth population, that is, among the ultra-Orthodox--this, even though the Israeli supreme court was said over the summer to have ruled that it would be legal for the government to draft them.
My point is, I'm starting to wonder if we're not starting to see the effects of a global change that has drastically reduced the ability of many states--and note I'm including Russia and Israel, not just the decadent West--to call upon their populations. A percentage are everywhere, I'm sure, willing to fight--and in a country like China, that might amount to millions. But I wonder about WWII-style mobilizations. (North Korea, a country in many ways frozen in a mid-20th century model, would seem like an obvious exception.)
In something like a Taiwan battle, I can imagine a furiously violent and destructive initial exchange that leaves both sides unwilling to give up and yet unable to mobilize to continue in a decisive way.
@David-that's extremely interesting. It does seem that Russia is not willing to carry out the kind of massive mobilization that would be needed to crush Ukraine. (Girking complains about this all the time.) Back when European armies had conscription governments resolutely kept conscripts out of harm's way, relying on smaller, professional units to do any fighting. The Ukraine and Israel examples show that not even a major war changes these calculations. So, yeah, future wars might involve a lot more destruction with drones and missiles than infantry combat, and thus might all end in indecisive ways.
"Back when European armies had conscription governments resolutely kept conscripts out of harm's way, relying on smaller, professional units to do any fighting."
I presume you mean post-WWII?
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