Something that's worried me for years is that the US military is more interested in protecting it's legacy systems than it is in fighting the next war. We laugh at corruption in Russian and Chinese military procurement without realizing that we have our own version. Mark me as unconvinced that our billion dollar aircraft carriers could survive a 21st century missle/drone attack or that our military is forward thinking enough to have a solution to drone attacks against civilian aircraft. But we have lots of people thinking about funding more legacy systems because, well, that's where their money comes from.
The Ford aircraft carrier is over $13 billion now. It will probably be sunk in the first 2 seconds of a war with China by their carrier-killer missiles. The US military industrial complex is obviously and almost justifiably from a share holder value perspective only concerned with bigger and more expensive kit. It's Congress and the military officers that need to keep that in check. But, too much special interests lobbying and general officers that retire to work for Boeing and Lockheed that make doing the right thing difficult.
General Dynamics owns ship building. What is to say they have not built in counter measures. Unfortunately all the tech in the world did not stop som senior chiefs from installing private star net or what ever Elon’s system is called on a destroyer. Compromising thousands of lives. Human is weak link
Lockheed expects to make $70 billion in sales revenue from the F-35 this year. So yes, they do make a profit. But the US gov doesn't see that (except for taxes):
We can't produce enough to fill the contracts we have. Will that cover the trillion dollars? I don't know. Honestly, I'd rather have another aircraft carrier and F-18s. Especially if we could figure out how to get a few F-15EX to be carrier deployable.
One of the biggest problems is that we keep saying just "drones" or just "UAVs". I do it too. All the time. It's convenient. But it's confusing.
The US DoD has a classification for UAVs. From small to large. So does NATO. Sadly... the classification is based ONLY on size.
For NATO the Class I drone is what we think of when we think of DJI or most crowd sourced drones in Ukraine. The small ones. But even this doesn't tell us much.
What's it's role? How is it crewed/piloted?
There needs to be better naming conventions for this stuff.
I think this issue contributes to bad commentary and reporting. You skillfully point out Breedlove missing the point. Sadly... we have no precision on the point he's making. Because all we have to go on is that he's talking about drones.
Surely he must know that the small UAVs in Ukraine were 50% intel and recon innovation and 50% lack of ammo innovation. But it was 100% lack of ground based ammo that kicked the crowd sourcing and "million drones" initiatives into place. So, Phillip Breedlove's point can at best only be 50% correct. You can make the argument that air dominance will give you good IR. But, that ignores about a million factors. Like time over target. Availability. Most of all... cost. None of this goes away even with air dominance.
Zero line IR will forever be the job of small UAVs. Sorry air forces of the world. Sure, yeah you can get a great birds eye view of it. And that has value. But troop movements with in 50-100 km of the front and other time sensitive intel will never again be the job of a manned aircraft.
Agree. We can't always delineate "ISR drone, quadcopter, baba yaga...." and we just say drone. For a more in-depth conversation we would have to break it out. I agree with your assessment on tactical ISR. All drones, all the time. The US Army attempted to get national-level imagery down to the tactical level. It was a failure. Now it's all quad/Mavic.
Something that's worried me for years is that the US military is more interested in protecting it's legacy systems than it is in fighting the next war. We laugh at corruption in Russian and Chinese military procurement without realizing that we have our own version. Mark me as unconvinced that our billion dollar aircraft carriers could survive a 21st century missle/drone attack or that our military is forward thinking enough to have a solution to drone attacks against civilian aircraft. But we have lots of people thinking about funding more legacy systems because, well, that's where their money comes from.
The Ford aircraft carrier is over $13 billion now. It will probably be sunk in the first 2 seconds of a war with China by their carrier-killer missiles. The US military industrial complex is obviously and almost justifiably from a share holder value perspective only concerned with bigger and more expensive kit. It's Congress and the military officers that need to keep that in check. But, too much special interests lobbying and general officers that retire to work for Boeing and Lockheed that make doing the right thing difficult.
General Dynamics owns ship building. What is to say they have not built in counter measures. Unfortunately all the tech in the world did not stop som senior chiefs from installing private star net or what ever Elon’s system is called on a destroyer. Compromising thousands of lives. Human is weak link
2 Trillion on a conventional system seems exorbinate.. is there any return to be counted on that? ie: sales to other countries of F-35's?
Lockheed expects to make $70 billion in sales revenue from the F-35 this year. So yes, they do make a profit. But the US gov doesn't see that (except for taxes):
https://www.reuters.com/business/aerospace-defense/lockheed-martin-lifts-2024-sales-target-fighter-jet-missile-demand-2024-07-23/
We can't produce enough to fill the contracts we have. Will that cover the trillion dollars? I don't know. Honestly, I'd rather have another aircraft carrier and F-18s. Especially if we could figure out how to get a few F-15EX to be carrier deployable.
There are estimates that Lockheed might make $2 trillion over the life of the F-35. I can't find a reliable source on that, though.
One of the biggest problems is that we keep saying just "drones" or just "UAVs". I do it too. All the time. It's convenient. But it's confusing.
The US DoD has a classification for UAVs. From small to large. So does NATO. Sadly... the classification is based ONLY on size.
For NATO the Class I drone is what we think of when we think of DJI or most crowd sourced drones in Ukraine. The small ones. But even this doesn't tell us much.
What's it's role? How is it crewed/piloted?
There needs to be better naming conventions for this stuff.
I think this issue contributes to bad commentary and reporting. You skillfully point out Breedlove missing the point. Sadly... we have no precision on the point he's making. Because all we have to go on is that he's talking about drones.
Surely he must know that the small UAVs in Ukraine were 50% intel and recon innovation and 50% lack of ammo innovation. But it was 100% lack of ground based ammo that kicked the crowd sourcing and "million drones" initiatives into place. So, Phillip Breedlove's point can at best only be 50% correct. You can make the argument that air dominance will give you good IR. But, that ignores about a million factors. Like time over target. Availability. Most of all... cost. None of this goes away even with air dominance.
Zero line IR will forever be the job of small UAVs. Sorry air forces of the world. Sure, yeah you can get a great birds eye view of it. And that has value. But troop movements with in 50-100 km of the front and other time sensitive intel will never again be the job of a manned aircraft.
PS: here is my very flawed attempt to bring attention to and contribute to solving the UAV naming convention problem. https://researchingukraine.substack.com/p/uas-uav-drone-cruise-missile-whats
Agree. We can't always delineate "ISR drone, quadcopter, baba yaga...." and we just say drone. For a more in-depth conversation we would have to break it out. I agree with your assessment on tactical ISR. All drones, all the time. The US Army attempted to get national-level imagery down to the tactical level. It was a failure. Now it's all quad/Mavic.
great analysis again this week Anthony! Thanks so much for the time and research you put into these newsletters!!
Thanks, Gordie!