Quietly The US Military Was Loosing Its Edge its MOJO~ After Iran, Everyone Knows It
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| Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times |
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On paper, the war in Iran should not be much of a contest. The United States spends around $1 trillion a year on its military, more than 100 times as much as Iran. That money buys a vastly larger Air Force and Navy, as well as advanced weapons technologies that Iranian generals can only dream about.
In the war’s early days, the mismatch played out as one might expect. American forces destroyed much of the Iranian military. Now, however, the contest looks less one-sided. Iran has taken control of the Strait of Hormuz, and its missiles and drones still threaten America’s allies in the region. While President Trump seems eager for a negotiated truce, Iran’s leaders do not. Somehow, the weaker nation is in the stronger negotiating position.
That reality exposes the vulnerabilities in the American way of war. Tactical success has not yielded victory. Mr. Trump’s recklessness in conducting the war is one reason. But the problem is bigger than any single commander in chief. The United States has left itself unprepared for modern war.
America has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on ships and planes that are good at defeating competitors’ ships and planes but ineffective against cheaper, mass-produced weapons. The American economy does not have the industrial capacity to produce enough of the weapons and equipment it does need. And the country has struggled to fix these problems because of a sclerotic government and a consolidated defense industry that resists change.
Three months before Mr. Trump attacked Iran, we warned that the United States was at risk of being overmatched in the wars of the future. The last two months have shown that alarm was justified. The war in Iran, unwise as it is, should serve as a warning about the rising threats to American security and an incentive to fix them.
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“Never in recorded history has a nation’s military been so quickly and effectively neutralized,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth claimed on March 26. The next day, Iran launched a drone and missile attack on an American base in Saudi Arabia that wounded more than a dozen service members, destroyed a radar surveillance plane and damaged at least two refueling tankers.
The immediate debunking of Mr. Hegseth’s bombast points to the reform agenda that America’s military needs. There are four main priorities.
First, the United States needs to invest in counter-drone technologies, like those that Ukraine has developed in its war against Russia. The lack of such defenses is one reason that the vaunted U.S. Navy has been unable to prevent the closure of a vital waterway, the Strait of Hormuz.
Second, the United States needs more of its own cheap, disposable weapons like one-way attack drones and unmanned ships. Although much of the war in Ukraine has been fought by mass-produced drones, the Pentagon is pouring money into much more complex equipment, including pilotless “wingmen” that can fly alongside a piloted plane.
Third, the country needs larger and more flexible industrial capacity. Until recently, a single factory made all of America’s Tomahawk cruise missiles, and there is a constant shortage of Patriot missile interceptors. Congress should pass laws that help the private sector build up its manufacturing capacity. The Pentagon, for its part, needs to stop buying so many of its weapons from just five big weapons makers and start betting on dynamic tech companies that can quickly adapt.
Lastly, the United States needs to collaborate with other industrialized democracies. Mr. Trump’s pleas for help in reopening the Strait of Hormuz from the very allies he spurned at the start of the war is just the latest proof that America can’t go it alone. In the years ahead, keeping pace with China’s economic and military expansion will require collaborating with like-minded democracies.
All of these steps are not merely about winning the next war. They also can help prevent it — by making our enemies believe they would lose any war they start.
Instead, the war in Iran has provided a road map for any country that wants to resist the United States in the future, including Russia and North Korea. For China, the country with the greatest potential to challenge American military might, the war validates its focus on new forms of warfare such as drones and cyber and space power.
The picture for the American military is not entirely grim. The Iran war has shown that it has an astonishing ability to find and destroy enemy targets. In the conflict’s first six weeks, the U.S. military hit over 13,000 military and industrial targets. American losses in the war, while tragic, have been limited, considering the scale of the attack and Iran’s resources: at least 13 service members killed and more than 300 wounded.
Mr. Trump has made some positive moves toward military reform. His administration has taken several steps to break the hold of major contractors on the supply of weapons to the Pentagon and has pressured some of them to increase production of much-needed missiles. The Army secretary, Daniel P. Driscoll, has moved to cancel outdated and failing programs.
But Mr. Trump’s chaotic, destructive approach to governance has undercut much of this progress. He ordered an expensive new fleet, the “Trump class” battleships, even though they are vulnerable to air attack. Mr. Hegseth has fired a cadre of reformers and is feuding with Mr. Driscoll. In April, the administration proposed a $1.5 trillion budget that is likely to amplify our shortcomings rather than building on our strengths.
The good news is that Congress, the administration and the Pentagon can all now see our military shortcomings. The bad news is that our adversaries can see them too. Washington can no longer just talk about reforming the military. It has to do it, or risk making the disappointments in the Iran war become a preview of far worse.
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