Christian Brose suggested in his reading that the United States is not taking technological data and information serious towards the new future of military defense. In Brose’s point of view, he sees that the U.S is lacking behind in its military system, he argues that firstly, the U.S is stuck with the traditional system of weapons and platforms and only renews existing models. Secondly, he states that the U.S. holds the ideology that it would never be defeated by any opponent. However, the author asserted that while the U.S. was busy with the Middle East invasions, adversaries such as China and Russia have been advancing their weaponry systems, introducing advanced technology such as artificial intelligence, hypersonic sensors and ubiquitous sensors. He added that China is collecting data and information like it is collecting oil while the U.S. isn’t making the most out of its own. There is no doubt that the future will revolve around advanced technology and I agree with him on what he said that militaries that do embrace and adapt to technologies will dominate those that do not.[1]
The defense system in the U.S. has been elaborated in this reading by former secretary of defense Robert Gates, he mentioned that the budget plan is set for a time duration of 5 years and any changes are mostly unwelcomed, and this is because bureaucratic systems are dedicated to keep programs intact and funded, also companies that built the equipment’s wouldn’t want to change for a new plan because they are already profiting from traditional systems and also members in congress whom some would be accepting the transition and some would not.
Finally, he called on the United States to have a more transparent and find ways to get over the concept of no state can defeat it and to utilize data and technology in a better way. Also focusing on kill chains and. But what I don’t agree with the Christian on is when he claimed that autonomous weapons will do a better job on detecting targets and adversaries and then stated the ethical concerns. To me I found it very contradicting in the same paragraph to consider a “machine” to not have any sort of errors in its system and detect for instance the wrong people would that still be considered ethical? I don’t think so. One of the parts that I found interesting to me when he proposed the idea of having smaller swarms of intelligent systems that are distributed instead of heavy and fewer targets that can be easily determined by opponents.
[1]Christian Brose, “The New Revolution of Military Affairs” , May 2019
This is an interesting commentary, Fatema. Since I assume that you have no background in defense or national security, I was impressed how you used your common sense to sort through the issues raised in the Brose article. There is a saying in the defense community: “Generals fight the last war.” While this is not always true, it is certainly the case that both the military and civilian defense planners tend to want to stick with the systems and strategies they know, rather than to constantly innovate. And given the global reach and power of the US, it’s also very expensive to develop new systems. That said, it is true that the Chinese are pouring billions of dollars into modernizing their military, and there is a risk that they could “leapfrog” us. The problem, as I mentioned in class, is that defense contractors have cleverly spread their facilities across dozens of states. So every time it is proposed that certain out-moded systems be reduced or eliminated, the companies and Members of Congress cry foul. Given the budgetary problems facing our country, this problem must be addressed–and soon! –Professor Wallerstein