The Ukrainians’ success highlights weaknesses in the U.S. arsenal:
Production lines for weapons like the Javelin and the Stinger were all but shut down. The GLSDB received a hard pass from the U.S. military services. To launch the Harpoon from land, the Department of Defense had to draft a whole new emergency requirement.
As analysts Stacie Pettyjohn and Becca Wasser concluded, the U.S. has been underinvesting in many munitions, including “anti-ship and area-effects weapons,” and is “not buying enough of these weapons” or “stockpiling enough precision-guided munitions (PGMs) for a protracted war.”
Why doesn’t the U.S. focus more on munitions? A large factor is armed force service identity — or how the Air Force, Navy, Army, Marines and Space Force associate weapons with their organizations’ identity.
The Navy identity, for example, centers on tradition and independent command at sea with a focus on aircraft carriers and submarines. In contrast, the Air Force, a relatively young service, is insecure about its independence and therefore advocates technology that emphasizes strategic air power, including bombers and (more recently) fighters.
The Army is often a late adopter of technology, advocating for personnel-heavy doctrine and armored platforms like tanks. In general, these service identities create a bias towards platforms (tanks, planes, ships) over munitions (missiles, bombs, rockets).
History is littered with examples of how service identity diverted attention away from munitions — both unintentionally and intentionally. For example, despite a proven combat record during World War I, an interwar U.S. Navy de-prioritized torpedoes and decimated their industrial capacity to produce the munitions. When World War II began, the Navy had only a limited number of outdated systems available.
The Air Force also famously sabotaged cruise missile testing during the 1970s, fearful it would jeopardize the B-1.
Besides the war stockpiles, there is the whole issue of the military itself and the industrial base.
Desert Storm happened 22 years ago. Neither the US military, nor that of any ally that participated, still exists. Various countries of the coalition have reduced their militaries by one-fourth to three quarters since then. No one has any warstocks. The UK, with an army of only 70,000 men, that only trains as small units, when they bother, can only put a single (1) mechanized brigade into Europe. And it would have great difficulty moving the brigade there and supplying in combat.
More importantly, neither the US nor any other NATO member has the industrial base to support a modern war. All that base was sold off to China, which just happens to be Russia’s ally.
Moreover, no one has s draft. A large war in Europe will require a conscript army. Does anyone believe that American and European youth will submit to a draft for Ukraine? Will we have press gangs?
When the author was a younger man, and first heard terms like “People’s Liberation Army Navy”, or “People’s Liberation Army Air Force”, they sounded strange and nonsensical to the ear.
Time and experience however, has never ceased to illustrate the wisdom of having a unified hierarchy with a dominant identity overall.
The multiplication of overlapping bureaus, all competing to have oars to stick in the water, more hands on the wheel, more seats in the committee, more committees to have seats in, is an ideal environment for the proliferation of Organization Man, but not ideal for civilized humans.
Authors — Jacquelyn Schneider, Hannah Dennis, Stacie Pettyjohn. Notice a pattern there?
There was a time when feminists argued that the world would be a better place when women played a larger role. Instead, women seem to be out & out war-mongers — from the above ivory tower/media types to political types such as Finland’s dancing queen and that woman who was UK Prime Minister for a couple of weeks.
What we need to is revise the draft laws. Women can do everything — therefore women should be conscripted for the wars they want to start, leaving the men to keep the home fires burning.
Gavin Longmuir: “What we need to is revise the draft laws. Women can do everything — therefore women should be conscripted for the wars they want to start, leaving the men to keep the home fires burning.”
As they say, Democrats are the real misogynists.
What is the “service identity” of the Donald’s Space Force? Does anyone know?