I'd suggest that being just extremely good at war might be not quite enough. Even being the best might be not enough. It would suggest a victory but it still mi

I'd suggest that being just extremely good at war might be not quite enough. Even being the best might be not enough. It would suggest a victory but it still might be too costly. Look at Ukraine-Russia war, for example. It seems with western support Ukraine's victory all but guaranteed but because of small margin of superiority the war is approaching a year, loss is counted in 5 figures for men and billions of dollars for property. Russia still seem to hope to win because it has advantage in certain areas (e.g. troop numbers, nukes). If USA barged in in the first weeks of the war and made full might of its military available to Ukraine there would be no war by now (or there would be WW3 but that's not the point). The more obvious military superiority the shorter any conflict would be or there would be no military conflict in the first place. In a way, it's cheaper to buy expensive F35s (providing jobs for those who build them and for those who shoot patriotic clips for election campaigns) and show how big your stick is than to be drawn into a war with F16s and just barely win it. Another aspect is that the technology has to actually improve and that's expensive. Russian propaganda, for instance, was peddling Russian military superiority for decades. Putin kept saying "no analogues" at every opportunity. But it was just propaganda. They were trying to do it on the cheap. On the field they actually resort to WW2 era equipment.