We’ve seen from this conflict that a lot of our defense budget is being wasted. We blow huge amounts on DEI programs, fancy gold plated weapons systems that ain’t all that when the shooting starts and doubtless other boondoggles.
Meanwhile we lack jamming, hypersonic missiles, surge capacity (shocking that Russia is easily outproducing the entire west in artillery shells, anti-tank missiles, etc etc, and we don’t have anywhere near enough frigates and destroyers in the navy.
We need to massively reallocate resources toward plugging these gaps and others like chip production, rare earths, electronics components, shipyards, etc. That will mean a lot of contractors need to be thrown out of their jobs and a lot of companies that produce weapons need to make the less sexy, less glamorous and no doubt lower margin meat and potatoes things that win actual wars against peer competitors.
We need to build more drones. We should be building motherships to host drones.
Aircraft carriers are already obsolete. We're building USS John F. Kennedy. It costs $12.8 billion.
The problem with that is Iran could build 1,000 drones to overwhelm one of our aircraft carriers and we cannot shoot down all the drones.
But but inventory is a waste of money. We need to stick with Just In Time and get contractors to build new ships in under a week.
Agree, sadly.
Shoot, we can't even beat goatherds with rifles after a 20-year campaign.