“Western governments have become acutely aware of the problems of this financial imbalance in the counterinsurgency context, when they found themselves using weapons costing $70,000, sometimes fired from aircraft that cost $30,000 an hour to fly, to destroy a Toyota pick-up vehicle that might be optimistically valued at $10,000,” the report went on. “Missiles costing (much) less than half a million pounds [$642,000] a unit could at least disable a British aircraft carrier that costs more than £3 billion [$3.9 billion]. Indeed, a salvo of ten such missiles would cost less than $5 million.”
The British report is in response to America’s Third Offset Strategy , the Pentagon’s search for ways to maintain U.S. military superiority amid the rise of asymmetric warfare. The ability of a missile or a computer virus to destroy or disable expensive Cold War–era weapons like aircraft carriers or tanks, or the satellites and computer networks that support them, has left U.S. planners grappling with how to devise new capabilities while rendering older weapons less vulnerable.
But what makes the RUSI report particularly interesting is the nation that authored it. With one-twelfth the defense budget of the United States, Britain can’t afford to lavish money on numerous projects like their cousins across the pond do. So, by necessity, the British study offers a particularly clear-eyed view of the situation.
For example, RUSI points out that the current situation should come as no surprise. The United States fielded stealth aircraft and cruise missiles more than twenty-five years ago. “It would be naive to expect that Russia and China are not where leading NATO states were three decades ago.”
Nor can the West count on technological superiority. American and British armed forces are configured to fight overseas, in expeditionary forces or in support of or allies. In contrast, Russia and China have chosen to focus on fighting near their home borders, such as eastern Europe Or the Southern side...
#ZA/SA
No comments:
Post a Comment