Big War Toys Make Us Weak, according to John Arquilla, who says that “the Pentagon’s big platforms [aren't] merely the wrong weapon systems to fight present and future wars, but [are] actually likely to bring defeat,” because they just put more people in harm’s way from smart, precision-targeted weapons:
The lessons there include: how many British submarines did it take to pen up the entire Argentine navy? Two. Simultaneously, the Exocet missile proved the slow-moving capital ship’s vulnerability. Today, the Chinese aren’t developing aircraft carrier battle groups, but brilliant sea-going mines that know how to maneuver, supersonic anti-ship missiles — which means the Falklands War on steroids — and super-cavitation torpedoes, which create a bubble of air in front of the torpedo, letting them move at hundreds of knots per hour. The Chinese have an explicit “swarming” doctrine that can best be characterized as sea power without a navy. In this new naval antagonism that’s emerging, our potential enemies are not trying to emulate what we’re doing. Instead, they’re innovating in very thoughtful, effective ways…