In the first of this month’s several editorials on national defense, The New York Times (NYT) stated: 

The assessment shows … the Pentagon’s overreliance on expensive, vulnerable weapons as adversaries field cheap, technologically advanced ones … Despite ample warnings, military and political leaders trained in one set of assumptions, tactics and weapons fail to adapt to change. Whether it was the French army in 1940, stuck behind its defensive Maginot Line, or Russian armored formations in Ukraine in 2022, decimated by Javelin missiles, the result is devastating for the side that will not discard old concepts, adopt new weapons or rethink its way of war … To see where American defense dollars go, considered the USS. Gerald Ford, America’s latest aircraft carrier, which deployed for the first time in 2022 after more than a decade of construction and delays …The price tag: an estimated $13 billion. That figure does not include the billions of dollars on military aircraft carried by the Ford … Yet the Ford is fatally vulnerable to new forms of attack. China in recent years has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons, which can travel at five times the speed of sound and are difficult to intercept … Ultimately, a stronger US national security depend less on enormous new budgets than on wiser investment. Spending heavily on traditional symbols of might risk shortchanging the true sources of American strength: relentless innovation, rapid adaptability and willingness to discard old assumptions.

China, an asymmetric superpower

Providing some context for this interesting piece may be useful. Since the beginning of the millennium, China has sought to outsmart the United States’ military strength through a very particular strategy. A strategy that aimed at overcoming America’s technological advantages and much superior military budget by investing a huge amount of its resources in asymmetrical capabilities. As early as 2008, British political scientist and author Mark Leonard wrote about how China was attempting to become an “asymmetric superpower” beyond the realm of conventional military power.

Conscious that the Soviet Union had spent itself into bankruptcy by accepting a ruinous competition for military primacy with the US, China looked for cheaper ways to compete. As a result, it invested billions in an attempt to achieve a generational leap in military capabilities, capable of neutralizing and trumping America’s superior conventional forces. In other words, instead of rivaling the United States on its own game, it engaged it in a different game altogether.

This was the equivalent of what companies like Netflix, Uber, Airbnb or Spotify did in relation to the conventional economic sectors with which they competed. A best-selling 2016 novel by P.W. Singer and August Cole depicted how, through surprise and a wide array of asymmetric weapons, China defeated the superior forces of the United States.

In essence, these weapons have a dual focus. On the one hand, they emphasize long- and intermediate-range precision missiles and advanced targeting systems capable of penetrating battle network defenses. On the other hand, they aim at systems destruction warfare, able to cripple the US’ command, control, communication and intelligence battle network systems. The objective in both cases is to target the US’ soft spots with weapons priced at a fraction of the armaments or systems that they strive to destroy or render useless.

The whole notion of asymmetric weapons, indeed, is based on exploiting America’s military vulnerabilities (like its huge dependence on information highways or space satellites), while neutralizing its strengths (like its fleet of aircraft carriers). American strategist and expert on China, Michael Pillsbury, described this situation in graphic terms, stating that for two decades the Chinese had been developing arrows designed to find a singular target — the Achilles’s heel of the United States.

The US and its legacy weapons

To counter China’s emerging military threat, the Obama administration put in motion what it called the Defense Innovation Initiative. This was also known as the Third Offset Strategy, as it recalled two previous occasions in the 1950s and the 1970s when, thanks to its technological leaps, the US was able to overcome the challenges posed by the Soviet military.

Recognizing that the technological superiority that had been the foundation of US military dominance for years was not only eroding but also being challenged by China, the Pentagon identified a series of areas to prioritize. Among them were the following: Autonomous learning systems, human-machine collaborative decision-making, network-enabled autonomous weapons or high-speed projectiles.

However, as it happened with many other initiatives representing the Obama legacy, this one began fading into oblivion after President Donald Trump’s arrival to power in 2017. As a result, the vision of significantly modernizing America’s military forces faded as well. This implied a return to the previous state of affairs, which still lingers today. In the words of managing partner of Shield Capital, Raj M. Shah, and former director at the National Security Council, Christopher M. Kirchhoff:

We stand at the precipice of an even more consequential revolution in military affairs today. A new way of war is bearing down on us. Artificial-intelligence-powered autonomous weapons are going global. And the US military is not ready for them … Yet, as this is happening, the Pentagon still overwhelmingly spends its dollars on legacy weapons systems. It continues to rely on an outmoded and costly technical production system to buy tanks, ships and aircraft carriers, that a new generation of weapons – autonomous and hypersonic – can demonstrably kill.

Indeed, as American journalist and political commentator Fareed Zakaria put it a few years ago, the United States’ defense budget not only remained wasteful and yet eternally expanding, but the real threats of the future, which required different strategies and spending, kept being skipped. Meanwhile, he said, Washington continued spending billions on aircraft carriers and tanks.

Two reasons may explain why Washington keeps investing in outmoded and costly legacy weapons. First, Congress’s pork barrel decisions: Legacy systems — such as aircraft carriers, fighter jets and tanks — are deliberately manufactured in key congressional districts around the country so that the argument over whether a weapons system is needed gets subsumed by the question of whether it produces jobs.

Second, the Pentagon’s heavy bureaucracy: The status quo command structure protects the labyrinthine inner workings of the Pentagon. Companies that want to sell to it must navigate more than 2,000 pages of the Federal Acquisition Regulation. Additionally, the military’s testing and approval systems can take up to a decade for new weapons systems. As a result, there is a tendency to adapt old weapons platforms rather than develop new ones.

Fighting the previous war

After Napoleon I, a military innovative genius, France always fought the previous war. That is, it entered the fight with the previous war in mind. The Maginot Line, mentioned by The NYT, is the best example of it. Because World War I was a trench war, the French prepared for the next conflict with Germany by building a vast trench system that covered most of the country. As a result, they were easily outmaneuvered and defeated by Germany’s blitzkrieg, a lightning mechanized offensive in which tanks and attack planes acted in coordination.

While the Germans were imaginative and creative in relation to warfare, France’s military (with the clear exception of General Charles de Gaulle) remained tied to the past. That is precisely the risk faced by the United States. The country, indeed, still relies on the instruments of conventional warfare that led it to win World War II: Aircraft carriers, tanks and planes.   

China’s anti-aircraft carriers’ missiles and its hypersonic missiles, costing just a few million dollars, can destroy the Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier, with a price tag of more than $13 billion (and the more than 65 F-35C air fighters that it carries within it, each at a cost of $107 million). Actually, it has been estimated that China could build over 1,200 DF-21D anti-aircraft missiles (capable of sinking an aircraft carrier at a range of over 1,500 miles) for the cost of the Gerald F. Ford.

Something similar could be said about continuing to build M1A2 Abrams tanks, costing  $8 million each, when, as proven in Ukraine, 300 Javelin stinger shots destroyed 280 Russian tanks. China’s equivalent to the Javelin, although with greater destructive capability, is the HJ-12, also known as the Red Arrow-12. Oblivious to its obsolescence, the Pentagon keeps building these legacy weapons.

Two additional factors

Two additional factors compound the situation described above. First, in all probability, a war with China would be fought in China’s neighborhood. In other words, where the bulk of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) — the largest in the world — is located, where  27 heavily armed Chinese artificial islands in the Paracel and Spratly archipelagos present themselves as an almost insurmountable barrier, and within range of China’s mighty rocket power. Second, a country like the US, whose armament industry has been receding for decades (facing limited and not easily replenishable stocks in several key areas), would be facing an industrial juggernaut like China.

According to The NYT:

By itself, the United States cannot keep up with China’s soaring industrial capacity, which translates directly into military might … By one count, it is acquiring advanced weapons systems and equipment five to six times faster than America is. One Chinese shipyard can build more than all American builders combined.

In order to prevail against such inauspicious odds, the United States’ military establishment would need relentless innovation, rapid adaptability and willingness to discard old assumptions. Seemingly, bygone qualities within it. As in the case of France in the 1930s, the United States appears to be approaching a potential war with China with the past world war as a frame of reference. If so, it would have already lost the incoming war.

[Kaitlyn Diana edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.