In case you’ve missed most of the last 2 years, there have been several excellent examples of Western Technology on display that really must leave the rest of the world both a little bit in awe and at the same time wanting to buy some.

I’m speaking of the capabilities of some of our radars and missiles which, in the form of the Patriot in Ukraine, and then the Standard Missile (SM-3 and SM-6) in the Red Sea, and then the Patriot, SM-3, SM-6 and the Arrow – Iron Dome system of systems in Israel, have demonstrated a remarkable ability to shoot down drones, and missiles, even in several cases apparently shooting down hypersonic missiles.

All in all, very impressive. And for those who thought they might readily defeat a carrier battle group at sea, this should, if they are thinking about it, at least give them pause… Things may not be quite as easy as all that.

All to the good, right? Conventional weapons with these amazing capabilities. Deterrence without nuclear weapons…

Well, no. As it turns out, it’s not quite that simple.

First, there’s the issue of cost. Using numbers from the DOD Comptroller’s last release (2022) on program acquisitions, reveals some interesting numbers. Patriot missiles, depending on the variant, cost from $2 million to $4 million each. The SM-3 has 2 variants, one that costs a bit over $10 million per missile, one that costs more than $30 million per missile.

But the cost isn’t the real problem, it’s the production numbers. If you’ve been following the war in Ukraine you’ll know that production numbers are a real issue. Raytheon is working overtime to increase production to 650 Patriot missiles per year, and they are back-ordered for well more than 1,000 as missiles keep being sent to Ukraine (and fired) and other countries worry about their now dwindling stockpiles, as donated missiles arrive in Kiev. The SM-3’s and SM-6s are even harder to produce, with production runs well under 100 per year.

And these aren’t the only production problems the US faces.

US aircraft carriers are, arguably, the envy of the world. But the current Ford class carrier is taking 7 years to build, compared to 4 years for Nimitz class carriers. USS Ford has been commissioned and has deployed once, the second hull is supposed to be commissioned next year (8 years after the keel was laid), and the 3rd hull will be commissioned no earlier than 2029, 3 hulls in 21 years.

US ship construction (and maintenance) is years behind where it should be, and we seem to be making no progress in solving this problem.

The US Air Force average age of airframes is down slightly since it peaked in 2020 at more than 30 years per airframe, but 8 different airframes have average ages over 50 years, and among fighters, F-15Cs average 36 years, F-15Es 28 years, F-16 30 years; the average fighter aircraft is over 28 years old, and the Air Force is buying fewer aircraft per year than it needs to reduce that average.

And while we’re 26 months into the war in Ukraine, with no end in sight, and fully 2 years after the realization that everyone needs to produce a good deal more ammunition than any of the major staffs had anticipated (which suggests another set of problems), yet we still haven’t managed to increase monthly ammunition production to the desired level, and public comments suggest those levels won’t be reached before the end of 2024 or early 2025 – 3 years after that war started.

The point is that any meaningful strategy of maintaining deterrence of both Russia and China, as well as regional “bad actors” such as Iran, with a preponderance of highly capable conventional forces – is something that we cannot sustain with our current industrial base. Whether in fact we can do it at all is open to debate, given the capability of Communist China, with its command economy and substantially lower labor costs, to out-produce US shipyards and US foundries, as well as a great deal of electronic components.

And while there might be ways to “catch up,” how much more can the US spend on national security in the current political environment, especially given the many problems the DOD procurement process continues to demonstrate?

Which leaves the US where?

First, we need to recognize that we’re in strategic competition with 4 countries who wish us ill: China, Russia, Iran and North Korea. We may not want to call it war, but, as the Bard observed, a rose by any other name smells as sweet. They all see us in a Cold War like confrontation; only some in the US insist this isn’t so, though we seem to be waking to the idea vis-a-vis Russia.

Second, as to the suggestions that we need not be in a Cold War, or that this or that leader didn’t want this, that no longer matters. We’ve arrived at this position and we need to deal with it.

Third, as long as there are nuclear weapons, this is going to be so. Countries with substantially different world views are going to rub up against each other. If they are fairly large countries, that friction can lead to conflict. If they have nuclear weapons that friction can lead to nuclear brinksmanship. Henry Kissinger, in one of his clearest moments, observed that ‘nuclear weapons can’t be uninvented.’

Where this all leads is back to Eisenhower’s policy. In 1953, partly as a result of the Korean War, US defense spending was more than 14% of GDP. It was still at 9% in 1960. Eisenhower recognized that nuclear deterrence was needed to help reduce that huge level of spending. We need to recognize that fact again. It is time to put theater nuclear weapons back into our force structure until such time as our conventional forces have recovered to the point that, as a combination of technology and numbers, deterrence can be maintained without them.

In the meantime, we need to spend the money on research and development to improve the capabilities of our systems to defeat any drone, cruise missile, ballistic missile, or hypersonic missile, so that there is such poor probability of success that any attack would fail. Until that day arrives, we need to rebuild our nuclear umbrella, and embrace the fact that we’re in a Cold War with China, Russia, Iran and North Korea, and will be for the foreseeable future.

Copyright 2024 Arrias
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