NATO Must Now Close the Weapons Divide – RedState

One factor every warfare, every battle, every conflict of arms brings us is insights into how to battle the next warfare – or, at least, we must always hope they do. There is an previous navy axiom that complains that we’re always training to battle the last warfare, and to a sure extent that’s true, but every warfare also brings with it alternatives to check new issues and to develop new techniques. In in 1991, in Operation Desert Storm, we discovered that stealth and precision-guided munitions have been great pressure multipliers. In more latest clashes, like the 2003 invasion of Iraq, we noticed the worth in high-tech, subtle weapons and automobiles, like the M1A2 tank, which is nearly invulnerable on the battlefield when going through other tanks.

Now, both the United States and Israel’s actions against Iran, as properly as the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian warfare, are exhibiting us one thing new: The use of low-cost, simply mass-produced weapons that may be deployed in large numbers. Like drone swarms.

NATO is now wanting at these developments with some alarm. Why? Because NATO forces aren’t properly geared up to counter them.

Days after NATO allies dedicated tens of billions of {dollars} to new air and missile defenses, the alliance’s top transformation commander warned that the West must essentially redesign its weapons and industrial base to face up to assaults at the scale now being demonstrated in Ukraine and the Middle East.

“Today, the math is not in favor of the West,” Adm. Pierre Vandier, NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Transformation (SACT), told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview following the alliance’s summit in Ankara, Turkey, in early July.

Math is fairly brutal. In World War II in Europe, Germany confronted a related downside. In that battle, the major offensive weapons on both sides have been armor and infantry. German armor was, arguably, superior to British and American armor, but American armor, primarily in the kind of the M4 Sherman tank, had the benefit of being cheaper, relying on mass-produced elements, and simpler to produce in large numbers. The German tanks have been subtle, but each one had to be constructed by expert craftsmen, and while they have been daunting while they labored, they did not work as properly.

There’s an previous saying that applies: In building armor, Germany was producing hand-made masterpieces, while America was doing the 1941-1945 equal of 3D-printing tanks.

That’s the model that NATO must be wanting at now: How to counter one thing like a drone swarm with another drone swarm.

Russia’s nightly barrages against Ukraine have uncovered an air-defense model designed for smaller numbers of incoming threats. The U.S.-Iran battle has concurrently intensified demand for the high-end interceptors needed to defeat ballistic missiles, including Patriots and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) that can not shortly get replaced.

“There is no way to produce 50,000 Patriots a year,” Vandier said. “We don’t have the supply chain, and it’s not worth doing that given the cost of the weapon.”

Instead, Vandier said NATO wants a layered combine of defenses: cheaper weapons that may be mass-produced to counter waves of drones, while preserving superior interceptors for ballistic missiles and other subtle threats.

So, now, NATO – and the United States – are confronted with the necessity, once again, of mass-producing cheaper and yet efficient interceptors.

Read More: First NATO Shootdown: Romanian F-16 Downs Rogue Drone

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Drones and the interceptors that deploy against them are now an inextricable half of warfare. They are low cost and straightforward to produce in large numbers, probably in large enough numbers to overwhelm any nation’s air defenses. And keep in mind, it is logistics, always logistics, that wins wars. Another previous navy saying applies: When finding out warfare, amateurs focus on techniques, while professionals examine logistics. In this battlespace, any nation that can mass-produce drone swarms the quickest and most steadily could have a enormous benefit.

That’s what NATO is going through, and the Pentagon had better be pondering about this, too.

Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth’s management, the warrior ethos is coming back to America’s navy.

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