Empty arsenal, empty threat: how to fix America’s arms deficit

The Pentagon is starting to understand that the current arsenal of traditional and precision weapons is far too small to fight any prolonged war longer than a few days.

The exhaustion of key weapons such as Patriot and HIMARS missiles, shortages of 155mm ammunition, and lack of replacement radars and missile launch platforms, is illustration enough of the problem. The failure to protect US and allies‘ bases adequately against a second-tier threat such as Iran illustrates that current-day solutions don’t work.

The Russians and Chinese, plus the Iranians and even the lowly Houthis, have certainly figured out that the US and its allies face a serious problem. Today, any conflict in Europe or Asia would prove devastating for the United States.

On top of everything else, American weapons have become uber-expensive and hard to manufacture. A Patriot interceptor costs almost US$4 million per shot, and since two are required to knock out a single target with a high kill probability, it is unaffordable.

Meanwhile, America’s defense industrial base is primarily made up of five huge companies (Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Boeing), where each mammoth company is actually a glued-together series of acquisitions, many of which were not designed for mass production.

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