The U.S. Army's Race to Catch Up in a World of Deadly Drones

4 months ago (nytimes.com)

> Gen. Randy George, the Army’s chief of staff, was touting the brigade’s success to Congress. The training exercise demonstrated that the Army’s formations were “capable of rapidly improving their lethality,” he told lawmakers.

After seeing the US military response to IEDs, I can't imagine US forces deployed on foreign soil will be able to rapidly improve in the field.

I wonder how many drones can be manufactured in the US right now compared to China. Drones over boats seems ... bad.

It is remarkable how slow the DoW has been to adapt to new threats and opportunities. If generals were evaluated and accountable for war fighting performance, I suspect things would be exponentially faster.

  • The military tests itself against "peer adversaries" but defined to be opponents that play by the same rules as the US, with a sprinkling of lessons learned from the last war. Any actual adversary won't "follow the script".

    > The Red [enemy] force, led by retired Marine Corps Lieutenant General Paul K. Van Riper, used numerous asymmetrical tactics unanticipated by the Blue force, resulting in initial major successes. Over the course of the simulation, heavy constraints were placed on the Red force's ability to free-play "to the point where the end state was scripted",[4] resulting in a Blue victory.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millennium_Challenge_2002