The trillions dollar fragile American military complex is in big trouble in big war. It doesn't work. Robotics and drones are the new "low tech" answer to the First World's exquisite military platforms that are over priced and have the same provenance of battleships planet-wide in January 1942. Autonomous targeting will become more and more relevant as the speed of munitions increases and the salvo competition costs are driven down. Hypervelocity munitions are here to stay. The life of the light infantryman will change significantly since for the first time in human history, the cost of hunting individual soldiers and small groups of soldiers in an effective fashion has reached a cost in concert with technology [I will treat this with more detail in a future episode on the end of the legacy infantryman]. In my next podcast, we will discuss how to recover from the current collapse. "Quantity has a quality all of its own." - Thomas A. Callaghan Jr. References: A Retrospective on RMA, 2000-2020. The Russian Reconnaissance Fire Complex Comes of Age Army Futures Command Concept for Fires 2028 Christian Brose The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare Daniel Bolger Why We Lost: A General's Inside Account of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars Craig Whitlock The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of the War My Substack. Email at
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