Our Military Is Built for the Wrong Century | Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

The 'exquisite' weapons trap

For decades, the Pentagon assumed wars would be short with minimal losses, building a force around scarce, expensive, hard-to-produce 'exquisite' systems like F-35s and aircraft carriers rather than mass-producible weapons.

Peer competitor reality

The US no longer enjoys uncontested military dominance; rivals like China and Russia have adapted to disrupt American warfare, ensuring future conflicts will feature high attrition of ships, planes, and satellites over prolonged periods.

Ukraine's attritional drone warfare

The conflict shifted to a grinding stalemate where cheap, hand-carried one-way attack drones—some human-piloted, some autonomous—became the primary killing tools, making traditional tube artillery too risky and solving the 'hider/finder' problem.

Iran's asymmetric resilience

Despite public claims of the US destroying Iran’s Navy and Air Force, Tehran continues projecting power and threatening the Strait of Hormuz using low-cost drones and robotic boats, prolonging the conflict far longer than anticipated.

Depleted high-end stockpiles

Opening operations against Iran reportedly consumed eight years of Tomahawk missile production, exposing critical shortfalls in munitions needed for protracted conflict and revealing these weapons as 'artisanal' luxury goods.

Spending without scaling

Over the past decade, spending on critical munitions like Patriot missiles tripled, yet production only increased 14-23%, highlighting a defense industrial base unable to surge output despite massive budget increases.

Kill chain automation permissions

Current Pentagon policy does not explicitly prohibit automating the kill chain, meaning autonomous systems are 'not not allowed' to identify and engage targets without specific human approval for each shot.

High-low capability mix

Future readiness requires balancing expensive 'exquisite' platforms with cheap, autonomous, mass-producible systems capable of replacing losses in prolonged, high-casualty conflicts against sophisticated adversaries.