What better place than a National Defense Industrial Association confab to announce a new program in which "multiple thousands" of drones will be unleashed across land, sea, and sky "to counter the PLA’s [People’s Liberation Army’s] mass with mass of our own, but ours will be harder to plan for, harder to hit and harder to beat.”
It rings a bit like science fiction but to a roomful of defense executives, Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks' words on Monday must have been music to their ears. A lot of dollar signs. Especially when Adm. John Aquilino, head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, joined in and told the NDIA "Emerging Technologies for Defense" audience that there could be as many 1,000 drones deployed in 24 hours — “Here’s a metric for me: 1,000 targets for 24 hours.”
At which point Hicks signaled that might be just the baseline. "We’ll also aim to replicate and inculcate how we will achieve that goal, so we can scale whatever’s relevant in the future again and again and again. Easier said than done? You bet. But we’re going to do it,” she said.
Welcome to the second era of the drone war, the first being during the U.S. Global War on Terror, where drones like the MQ Reaper were primarily used for surveillance and manhunting. It was billed as an "evolution" in targeted conflict in which the government promised "cleaner" war with fewer civilian deaths and American boots on the ground. Today's era is about "meshing" both surveillance and lethal action with a pronouncement of drones, all shapes and sizes, and not just the big expensive ones. This is being tested and improved everyday with tens of thousands of drones on both sides in Ukraine and now the Pentagon is promising the next level of that for its coming war with China.
"While both combatants entered the war with drones, there has been a Cambrian explosion in missions and types of drones over the past 18 months," gushed retired Australian army major general Mick Ryan in an article on Monday. "Just as the Cambrian period saw the most intense period of evolution in history, so too has the Ukraine War spawned a rapid evolution in these machines."
Ryan says the swarming of drones across the battlespace has resulted in "an extraordinary increase in the visibility of events on and beyond the battlefield." This allows for "the speed of decision and action" and "the precision of engagements on the battlefield, as well as against strategic targets." He also notes while Ukraine has been credited with advancing its drone technology more rapidly, its still losing in the ballpark of 10,000 UAVs a month.
The U.S. not only wants to replicate this (the project is literally called "Replicator") for a future war, but it welcomes the challenge of ramping up an industrial base that is already struggling to fulfill orders to send promised U.S. weapons to Ukraine for its current war.
To succeed in this, Hicks said the initiative has the full backing of the Secretary of the Defense and Defense Innovation Unit. It will require working with “non-traditional and traditional defense companies,” and that Congress “has the opportunity to be a key enabler in getting capabilities to the warfighter at speed and scale.” Read: give us more money and less red tape.
Getting Congress on board won't be difficult. First, point out the amazing opportunities of drone swarms, just like major general Ryan did in his op-ed. Next, explain, like Hicks does, that China is gaining on us. It's most important asset is "mass" she said. “More ships. More missiles. More people.” The DoD must snap into action to challenge that.
“We must ensure the PRC [People’s Republic of China] leadership wakes up every day, considers the risks of aggression, and concludes, ‘today is not the day’ – and not just today, but every day, between now and 2027, now and 2035, now and 2049, and beyond,” she said.
Then, ensure that their friends in the defense industry will be happy as most of the top five contractors have been seeding pieces of every major project in their districts for years, not to mention the $33 million in campaign contributions (in the 2022 cycle alone).
It's a win-win for everyone, at least in the military industrial complex, especially when you can talk like Adm. Aquilino, straight out of a Tom Clancy novel. Well, sort of: "Operational concepts that we are working through are going to help amplify our advantages in this theater…there’s a term, hellscape, that we use.”
I'm sure the term is being used by a lot of folks right now, aside from the uniformed high hats at the JW Marriott in Washington D.C., starting of course, with people on the ground in southern and eastern Ukraine. I guess it differs in meaning based on who is actually creating the "hellscape," and how.
![Following a largely preordained election, Vladimir Putin was sworn in last week for another six-year term as president of Russia. Putin’s victory has, of course, been met with accusations of fraud and political interference, factors that help explain his 87.3% vote share. If this continuation of Putin’s 24-year-long hold on power makes one thing clear, it’s that he and his regime will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future. But, as his war in Ukraine continues with no clear end in sight, what is less clear is how Washington plans to deal with this reality. Experts say Washington needs to start projecting a long-term strategy toward Russia and its war in Ukraine, wielding its political leverage to apply pressure on Putin and push for more diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict. Only by looking beyond short-term solutions can Washington realistically move the needle in Ukraine. Since Russia’s full-scale invasion, the U.S. has focused on getting aid to Ukraine to help it win back all of its pre-2014 territory, a goal complicated by Kyiv’s systemic shortages of munitions and manpower. But that response neglects a more strategic approach to the war, according to Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who spoke in a recent panel hosted by Carnegie. “There is a vortex of emergency planning that people have been, unfortunately, sucked into for the better part of two years since the intelligence first arrived in the fall of 2021,” Weiss said. “And so the urgent crowds out the strategic.” Historian Stephen Kotkin, for his part, says preserving Ukraine’s sovereignty is critical. However, the apparent focus on regaining territory, pushed by the U.S., is misguided. “Wars are never about regaining territory. It's about the capacity to fight and the will to fight. And if Russia has the capacity to fight and Ukraine takes back territory, Russia won't stop fighting,” Kotkin said in a podcast on the Wall Street Journal. And it appears Russia does have the capacity. The number of troops and weapons at Russia’s disposal far exceeds Ukraine’s, and Russian leaders spend twice as much on defense as their Ukrainian counterparts. Ukraine will need a continuous supply of aid from the West to continue to match up to Russia. And while aid to Ukraine is important, Kotkin says, so is a clear plan for determining the preferred outcome of the war. The U.S. may be better served by using the significant political leverage it has over Russia to shape a long-term outcome in its favor. George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft, says that Russia’s primary concerns and interests do not end with Ukraine. Moscow is fundamentally concerned about the NATO alliance and the threat it may pose to Russian internal stability. Negotiations and dialogue about the bounds and limits of NATO and Russia’s powers, therefore, are critical to the broader conflict. This is a process that is not possible without the U.S. and Europe. “That means by definition, we have some leverage,” Beebe says. To this point, Kotkin says the strength of the U.S. and its allies lies in their political influence — where they are much more powerful than Russia — rather than on the battlefield. Leveraging this influence will be a necessary tool in reaching an agreement that is favorable to the West’s interests, “one that protects the United States, protects its allies in Europe, that preserves an independent Ukraine, but also respects Russia's core security interests there.” In Kotkin’s view, this would mean pushing for an armistice that ends the fighting on the ground and preserves Ukrainian sovereignty, meaning not legally acknowledging Russia’s possession of the territory they have taken during the war. Then, negotiations can proceed. Beebe adds that a treaty on how conventional forces can be used in Europe will be important, one that establishes limits on where and how militaries can be deployed. “[Russia] need[s] some understanding with the West about what we're all going to agree to rule out in terms of interference in the other's domestic affairs,” Beebe said. Critical to these objectives is dialogue with Putin, which Beebe says Washington has not done enough to facilitate. U.S. officials have stated publicly that they do not plan to meet with Putin. The U.S. rejected Putin’s most statements of his willingness to negotiate, which he expressed in an interview with Tucker Carlson in February, citing skepticism that Putin has any genuine intentions of ending the war. “Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine,” a spokesperson for the White House’s National Security Council said in response. But neither side has been open to serious communication. Biden and Putin haven’t met to engage in meaningful talks about the war since it began, their last meeting taking place before the war began in the summer of 2021 in Geneva. Weiss says the U.S. should make it clear that those lines of communication are open. “Any strategy that involves diplomatic outreach also has to be sort of undergirded by serious resolve and a sense that we're not we're not going anywhere,” Weiss said. An end to the war will be critical to long-term global stability. Russia will remain a significant player on the world stage, Beebe explains, considering it is the world’s largest nuclear power and a leading energy producer. It is therefore ultimately in the U.S. and Europe’s interests to reach a relationship “that combines competitive and cooperative elements, and where we find a way to manage our differences and make sure that they don't spiral into very dangerous military confrontation,” he says. As two major global superpowers, the U.S. and Russia need to find a way to share the world. Only genuine, long-term planning can ensure that Washington will be able to shape that future in its best interests.](https://responsiblestatecraft.org/media-library/following-a-largely-preordained-election-vladimir-putin-was-sworn-in-last-week-for-another-six-year-term-as-president-of-russia.jpg?id=34283894&width=600&height=600&quality=90&coordinates=483%2C0%2C483%2C0)
