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I also thought of u/Sir_Budington's comment when this article was posted to r/CredibleDefense: > The thing is that things like anti tank and ship missiles are

I also thought of u/Sir_Budington's comment when this article was posted to r/CredibleDefense: > The thing is that things like anti tank and ship missiles are primarily defensive weapons, not offensive ones. Sure, a Javelin can wreck a tank, but it’s not going to break through a front line. Sure, a harpoon can sink a ship, but it’s not going to project power halfway across the world. A Patriot missile can shoot down a plane, but it’s not going to target moving targets 100 miles behind enemy lines, or provide CAS. > Does this mean that in recent years that the power balance has swung in favour of defenders? Maybe. But that doesn’t mean you get rid of offensive capabilities.

ckozlowski 4y ago
Well said. To build on that, it also brings to mind a few of the more expert commentary on YouTube on "why the tank is not dead". Military History Visualized has a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY (There's others as well, and he references them) My overall take away from the Atlantic piece is that they've fallen into the same trap as much of the rest of the internet. Large platforms have not been rendered obsolete because of the advent of these weapons, just as they weren't during the 70s with the first large battles involving Anti-tank and Anti-Ship missiles. (The former has a number of well-cited examples, but for the latter, I call attention to the Battle of Latakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Latakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Latakia ) It's worth nothing as well that the Neptune AShM isn't really a revolutionary weapon, and is marginally improved over classes of AShMs developed in the 80s. It's notary comes from the fact that Ukraine essentially was able redevelop the capability of the old Kh-35, with modest improvements. It's not a next-gen missile such as a LRASM. Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been dormant for decades. I draw attention to the fact that these are older weapons. Drones are giving troops in the field better ability to target than ever before, but the fundamentals haven't changed and the same difficulties apply. WaPo had an exclusive stating that it was U.S. Intelligence that gave the Ukrainians the necessary info to find and target the Moskava with their missiles. The weapons themselves are just one part in long chain of capabilities. So that's where I think this piece misses much, because it's ignorant of some of the other elements of how all this comes together. The U.S. has been aware of China's long range precision fires for quite some time, and while they're worrysome, they're not terrified. To paraphrase a quote I heard, "a long kill chain provides plenty of opportunities to disrupt it along the way." And that's where the Russians have failed. Not because they're being surprised for the first time by these weapons (they invented many of the earliest examples themselves!) but because they're not fighting effectively. As some commentators have noted, the supporting elements that would defend against these weapons are not in place, the systems designed to counter them are not active/maintained (which was probably the case of the Moskava), and the intelligence/reconnaissance that would have identified and monitored these threats are not in place. All of this contributes to failure. The Russians are not getting wrecked by guided missiles because they're so high tech, they're getting wrecked because they're inept.
- fintechjock 4y ago
  > Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been dormant for decades. My understanding is that the U.S. sunsetted or reduced Javelin and Stinger production because of assumed air superiority in any potential conflict (COIN or near-peer). For all of their love of redundancy, do you think that they are overconfident in air superiority?
  - ckozlowski 4y ago
    Hard to say. My guess (and it's just a guess!) is that they didn't see the need to ramp up Stinger production as there were so many sitting around. (Javelin is a different question and I'll omit that one for now.) I hear the "they'll rely on air superiority" bit a lot, but haven't read anything official that suggests that it's actual policy. It might just be one of those things that went unsaid as priorities shifted elsewhere. I think the Ballistic Missile Defense debate sucked a lot of oxygen out of the need for ground-based aircraft defense. There's growing calls for more robust aircraft defense, both against fighter airplanes and drones, and it's getting some attention as you can read here: https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... I note though that these are short-range systems, and I haven't seen much new for longer range systems such as what some NATO countries are doing with NASAMS, and so it seems like things have been quiet in the U.S. for medium and upper tier (BMD being the exception.) I've long wondered if there's hesitance to overlap medium and upper tier defenses with counter-air operations because of the risk of blue-on-blue engagement (See the Persian Gulf War and Patriot), and that it might be there reason why there's so little development in this space. Deconflicting those two things sounds rather difficult to me, and given our lack of success to date, the U.S. might simply have strategized that - with a few exceptions - it's best to leave medium and high altitudes to aircraft and just not worry about shooting down your own pilots. But that's just a guess. It's an interesting question and one I'll be curious to see play out.
    - 4y ago
mhh__ 4y ago
This is also roughly Nicolas "The chieftain" Moran's argument for why the tank is still an important weapon.

ckozlowski 4y ago

Well said. To build on that, it also brings to mind a few of the more expert commentary on YouTube on "why the tank is not dead". Military History Visualized has a good video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPth_xqBXGY (There's others as well, and he references them) My overall take away from the Atlantic piece is that they've fallen into the same trap as much of the rest of the internet. Large platforms have not been rendered obsolete because of the advent of these weapons, just as they weren't during the 70s with the first large battles involving Anti-tank and Anti-Ship missiles. (The former has a number of well-cited examples, but for the latter, I call attention to the Battle of Latakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Latakia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Latakia ) It's worth nothing as well that the Neptune AShM isn't really a revolutionary weapon, and is marginally improved over classes of AShMs developed in the 80s. It's notary comes from the fact that Ukraine essentially was able redevelop the capability of the old Kh-35, with modest improvements. It's not a next-gen missile such as a LRASM. Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been dormant for decades. I draw attention to the fact that these are older weapons. Drones are giving troops in the field better ability to target than ever before, but the fundamentals haven't changed and the same difficulties apply. WaPo had an exclusive stating that it was U.S. Intelligence that gave the Ukrainians the necessary info to find and target the Moskava with their missiles. The weapons themselves are just one part in long chain of capabilities. So that's where I think this piece misses much, because it's ignorant of some of the other elements of how all this comes together. The U.S. has been aware of China's long range precision fires for quite some time, and while they're worrysome, they're not terrified. To paraphrase a quote I heard, "a long kill chain provides plenty of opportunities to disrupt it along the way." And that's where the Russians have failed. Not because they're being surprised for the first time by these weapons (they invented many of the earliest examples themselves!) but because they're not fighting effectively. As some commentators have noted, the supporting elements that would defend against these weapons are not in place, the systems designed to counter them are not active/maintained (which was probably the case of the Moskava), and the intelligence/reconnaissance that would have identified and monitored these threats are not in place. All of this contributes to failure. The Russians are not getting wrecked by guided missiles because they're so high tech, they're getting wrecked because they're inept.

fintechjock 4y ago
> Similarly, the Javelin, while effective and having gone through incremental upgrades, is not a wildly new weapon. It's been around for decades, and as we're finding along with the Stinger, the U.S. needs to reactivate the manufacturing to build them from scratch which has been dormant for decades. My understanding is that the U.S. sunsetted or reduced Javelin and Stinger production because of assumed air superiority in any potential conflict (COIN or near-peer). For all of their love of redundancy, do you think that they are overconfident in air superiority?
- ckozlowski 4y ago
  Hard to say. My guess (and it's just a guess!) is that they didn't see the need to ramp up Stinger production as there were so many sitting around. (Javelin is a different question and I'll omit that one for now.) I hear the "they'll rely on air superiority" bit a lot, but haven't read anything official that suggests that it's actual policy. It might just be one of those things that went unsaid as priorities shifted elsewhere. I think the Ballistic Missile Defense debate sucked a lot of oxygen out of the need for ground-based aircraft defense. There's growing calls for more robust aircraft defense, both against fighter airplanes and drones, and it's getting some attention as you can read here: https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalions-2024/ https://www.army-technology.com/news/us-ten-shorad-battalion... I note though that these are short-range systems, and I haven't seen much new for longer range systems such as what some NATO countries are doing with NASAMS, and so it seems like things have been quiet in the U.S. for medium and upper tier (BMD being the exception.) I've long wondered if there's hesitance to overlap medium and upper tier defenses with counter-air operations because of the risk of blue-on-blue engagement (See the Persian Gulf War and Patriot), and that it might be there reason why there's so little development in this space. Deconflicting those two things sounds rather difficult to me, and given our lack of success to date, the U.S. might simply have strategized that - with a few exceptions - it's best to leave medium and high altitudes to aircraft and just not worry about shooting down your own pilots. But that's just a guess. It's an interesting question and one I'll be curious to see play out.
  - 4y ago

mhh__ 4y ago

This is also roughly Nicolas "The chieftain" Moran's argument for why the tank is still an important weapon.