It didn’t end with a treaty. Or a bang.
Just silence. And then, suddenly, everything changed.
We built an army for a world that doesn’t exist anymore. That’s the argument Chris Brose makes on the latest episode of “Interesting Times.” He’s not some armchair theorist either. Brose ran policy for Condoleezza Rice. He advised John McCain. He wrote a book predicting exactly what’s happening right now. Today he runs Anduril a defense tech firm obsessed with autonomous warfare.
So ask yourself this: Do you really understand the constraints the Pentagon puts on autonomous weapons?
“It doesn’t say you’re not allowed to automate the kill chain.”
That’s the loophole. Or rather, the absence of a door.
For decades the United States operated under three dangerous assumptions.
First we would enter any conflict with total technological dominance.
Second that dominance would be unmatched.
Third the war would end fast.
We didn’t lose many planes. We didn’t lose ships. We shot very few missiles. So why build cheap ones? We built exquisite machines. Expensive ones. Hard to make. Even harder to replace.
Look at Ukraine now.
Look at the last four years in Eastern Europe. The script is different. Russia tried a sprint to Kyiv a Baghdad-style dash. Shock and awe.
It failed.
The front lines hardened. The battlefield became a problem of hide and seek. Artillery tubes became liabilities because you couldn’t hide them. Drones changed the calculus. Small ones handheld ones. One-way attack drones. You fly them in they spot the target and boom. Explosive payload. No pilot to bring home.
Ukraine survived on these. Not because of expensive stealth bombers but because of cheap drones that act like guided missiles. They find the target they hit the target they cost little enough to replace instantly.
Is the infantry dead? Not yet. Machines can take ground but can they hold it? Can a robot dig in and survive artillery? We don’t know. It seems hard.
Now look at Iran.
This isn’t Ukraine. We aren’t just sending aid and watching. We’re striking back. And the math is ugly.
Public reports say the US sank Iranian naval assets. Destroyed air defense grids. Hammered the military-industrial complex. Standard stuff for the American military. But Iran is still fighting. Why?
One-way attack drones.
Robotic boats choking the Strait of Hormuz. Cheap threats that close off regions. These aren’t futuristic concepts. They’re reality. The Pentagon knew Iran might use them. Did they prepare for the duration? Probably not.
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs says they have “sufficient” munitions. For what’s tasked now. Maybe.
“I will always want more.”
That’s Brose’s line. And he’s right to say it. Because the premise was always quick war. Quick victory. Decapitation. If the objective shifts? If the war drags on for months?
The stockpile vanishes.
During Operation Epic Fury alone the US fired about eight years’ worth of Tomahawk missile production. Just in the first few days. Eight years. In days.
That weapon is exquisite. It works miracles. It also takes a long time to build.
This goes back to that original sin. The belief that we’d never fight a protracted war against a peer. National defense strategies from decades ago were built on one major regional war. One theater. No duration specified but the implication was clear: we’d win before the bills arrived.
Are we ready for a major war? With China? With Russia?
In terms of munitions stockpiles the answer is no. It has been known for a long time we just chose not to look at the ledger.
The future of warfare isn’t coming. It is here. And it looks nothing like the army we trained. It looks like a swarm of cheap drones hunting in the mud while we worry about our shiny toys.
