I’ve seen this movie before

Bad Habits and Bad Assumptions Begat Bad Outcomes

History is full of examples of exceptionally professional militaries who learned bad habits after long periods of overmatching opponents. Their effective habits of the recent past created significant problems when faced with more competent opponents.

A classic example was the British Army, set in its ways after decades of colonial policing actions, marched sharply in to a meat grinder during the Boer Wars. Even after that experience and the changes they brought, it took awhile to adjust to the hard lessons of wrong assumptions when the world exploded a dozen years later in 1914.

With the fall of the Soviet Union, we entered our own period of excessive overmatch with extended low-boil conflicts – with a few momentary big flare-ups – for a few decades. Some tough military fights on the tactical level, but nothing nearing even a near-peer conflict.

As we moved through these decades, we’ve built our military around a few assumptions about access and capability, from the electromagnetic spectrum to access to land bases. As we move in to the third decade of the 21st Century, are these force-multiplying features becoming a bug?

In an article mostly focused on the book, “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare,” written by Christian Brose, David Ignatius at The Washington Post brings in to general conversation what those in the military have whispered to each other over beers for years.

Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down.

“Many U.S. forces would be rendered deaf, dumb and blind,” writes Brose. We have become so vulnerable, he argues because we’ve lost sight of the essential requirement of military power — the “kill chain” of his title — which means seeing threats and taking quick, decisive action to stop them.

How did this happen? It wasn’t an intelligence failure, or a malign Pentagon and Congress, or lack of money, or insufficient technological prowess. No, it was simply bureaucratic inertia compounded by entrenched interests.

Question everything.

Re-validate all your assumptions.

You are missing something. You/we/I always do.

These are things I am in full alignment with the author on. His conclusions? That is another thing;

Brose argues that it’s time for a radical rethink. Rather than building weapons for an outmoded strategy of projecting power, we should instead be arming ourselves in an effort to “deny China military dominance.” That means many cheap, autonomous weapons at the edge of the perimeter, rather than a few exquisite ones that are vulnerable to attack.

These smart systems exist: The Air Force’s unmanned XQ-58A, known as the “Valkyrie,” is nearly as capable as a fighter but costs about 45 times less than an F-35; the Navy’s Extra-Large Unmanned Underwater Vehicle, known as the “Orca,” is 300 times less costly than a $3.2 billion Virginia-class attack submarine. But these robots don’t have a lobby to rival the giant defense contractors.

No, I’ve seen this movie before. This is the technologists/futurists false horizon. This is the same pool the “Revolution in Military Affairs,” “Transformationalism” and “Leaping Generations” came from that put us on the back foot today.

We should test a lot. Develop a lot, but we need to build today and invest today with what we need to fight in 5-yrs, 10-yrs down the road. Experiment with what may come in 20-30 years, which we are, but if we are to fight China in 5-years, it will be with what can displace water and create shadows on the ramp – and are proven performers – now. We should have the best of what is real, and be the best using what exists now.

We need to adjust with what we have now, and work for a better future.

No more ignoring the now while betting on the come; we’ve already lost our shirt over and over with that thinking. Doing more of it won’t get different results.

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