As Russian forces steadily advance in the Kharkiv region, it is becoming ever more clear that the Ukraine war has been a disaster for the U.S. defense machine, and not just because our aid has failed to save Ukraine from retreat and possible defeat. More importantly, the war has pitilessly exposed our defense system’s deep, underlying, faults.
Critics have long maintained that our obsession with technologically complex weapons inevitably yields unreliable systems produced in limited numbers because of their predictably high cost. They are furthermore likely to fail in combat because of the military’s lack of interest in adequate testing (lest realistic tests reveal serious shortcomings and thereby threaten the budget.) The unforgiving operational test provided by the Ukraine war has shown that the critics were absolutely right. Successive “game changing” systems – such as the Switchblade drone, the M-1 Abrams tank, Patriot air defense missiles, the M777 howitzer, the Excalibur guided 155 mm artillery round, the HIMARS precision missile, GPS-guided bombs, and Skydio drones endowed with artificial intelligence, were all dispatched to “the fight,” as the military like to call it, with fanfare and high expectations. All were destined to fail for reasons rooted in the fundamental problems cited above. Läs artikel