What weapons development projects do we actually need?

I’m not a “pacifist” in any meaningful sense - I despise war, but accept that it must occasionally be waged, and the United States must retain the capacity to win it. Nor am I an isolationist - I accept that America’s interests are global, and so our ability to project military power must be more-or-less global in scope. Thus, I would never seriously propose eliminating the carrier fleet (for example).

But the fact is that we just don’t fight against technologically advanced states any more. The Europeans are our allies, and we have no foreseeable basis for conflict with them. China is our trading partner, scrupulously non-revanchist (except for Taiwan), and nuclear-armed. Russia’s the only nation on Earth that could pose an existential threat to the United States, thanks to her remaining nuclear stockpile - but we pose precisely the same threat to them, and so war seems extremely unlikely. (After all, we never fought the Soviets, and they had a compelling ideological motive for war that the Russian Federation lacks).

So, leaving out our allies and states whose nuclear arsenals make war impractical, the only folks left are really marginal military players - places that face a huge technological gap, and (most important) don’t really have much of a prospect of closing that gap. Iran, for example, is unlikely to develop a fighter that can go toe-to-toe even with our older planes in service, let alone field an air force of such beasts. And Iran is probably at the high end of technical sophistication for the countries we might realistically wage war on.

So, given that we have this unassailable technical edge over anyone we might actually fight with - to what extent do we still need to invest resources in developing new weapons systems? To put it another way, which of our weapons are “good enough” that we can basically say we’re “done” developing them for the foreseeable future?

I’d suggest that fighter planes would probably top the list. We very rarely dogfight, and it’s fantastically unlikely we’d dogfight with anyone who has (a) planes on parity with ours as well as (b) a comparable training regimen. (I believe Pakistan has some fairly modern planes, but faces the same problem as most poorer states; training pilots is expensive work.)

Tanks are probably another good example - if you’re not NATO, Israel, China or Russia, you’re probably fielding ex-Soviet garbage.

On the other hand, I think there are some technologies that absolutely warrant further development. Foremost among them would be those relating to logistics - anything that make it easier to ship men and material quickly to hot spots is well worth doing. Cargo planes, ships, and so on. And of course, drone technology is hot - the ability to make things go “boom” with precision and without risk to American lives will continue to be valuable.

Big picture - with the exception of drones and perhaps one or two other weapons systems, I don’t see a lot of need to make the “sharp end” of the American military any sharper. We’re already as good as we need to be at making rubble bounce. On the other hand, the non-sexy logistical and cargo-hauling stuff will almost always be worth improving, especially since we continue to have global interests - and the better we are at moving resources around, the fewer of those resources we need. (You don’t need big garrisons everywhere if you can send troops wherever on an as-needed basis).

While you raise some excellent points, the biggest problem with military technology is unforseen consequences.

As an example–the UH-60 Blackhawk has several state of the art systems designed to minimize and disperse the radiated heat of its engines to better enable it to dodge state of the art shoulder-fired IR seeking surface-to-air missiles. Absolutely none of those systems were worthwhile in Mogadishu against a threat composed of vast numbers of cheap unguided rockets.

Hence, continuous development is fairly necessary. While we can certainly draw back research on platforms to perform specific missions (long-range interception, for example, should probably be backburnered), a low-technology enemy could discover a way to neutralize conventional stealth with cheap pre-existing equipment tomorrow–stranger things have happened.

All of them, because they’re cool.

Drones, drones, drones.
And anything that makes infantry groups better able to fight urban battles.

I want a weapons system that enables me to blow shit up with my mind.

There was a huge technological gap between Britain and the United States when compared to Japan back in 1860. In less than 40 years Japan became a major power in the Pacific and by the 1930s they rivaled the power of both Britain and the United States. Just because we have a technological edge today does not mean that edge will exist 20, 30 or 50 years into the future. Therefore it’s best to stay ahead of the curve rather than play catch up later.

The trouble is trying to predict the future and focusing your research and development (and resources of course) down that path. What do we ACTUALLY need? No one really knows since no one really knows what the future has in store.

Maybe it is or maybe it isn’t. There is, again, no way to know for sure. We COULD get into a shooting war with just about anyone, depending on the circumstances. How likely is that? Only marginally less likely than the US getting into a real, full on shooting war with Iran.

True, Iran is unlikely to develop a 4th generation fighter, but they could always buy one from someone else who hasn’t stopped development. The French make fine air craft, for instance, and it’s conceivable that Iran in the future (or someone else who confronts the US) could buy from them. Or the Chinese, who are also close to Iran, and export military hardware. Or the Russians still make decent stuff and still continue to develop weapons systems and to export military hardware. You just never know. What is known is that it’s better to completely outclass your opponents if you DO have to use military force. It’s always better to give than receive, when it comes to military confrontation, and the US has a lot of experience in our past with trying to economize our military expenditures to the lowest levels we can, because, well, who is going to attack us or poses a real ‘existential’ threat to the US?? I’m fairly confident that, if asked, all of the US soldiers who have ever been thrown away because they had hopelessly obsolete equipment or doctrine in the various conflicts we have been drawn into would say that it would have been better if we just spent a bit more money, time and thought on keeping our systems up to date…hell, ahead of the curve is even better, as that tends to get a lot less of your soldiers killed if they are thrown into combat by our public and political masters.

That’s a really good question. How many F-22’s do we really need? I think that on the development side, we should keep pushing the envelop…it’s never ‘good enough’ or ‘done’ because things change, and there are many other players in this game. Some of them are friendly, some are neutral and some are hostile, but that doesn’t matter because even if they are friendly there is nothing to say that someone else might not get their toys in the future…or that they will always BE friendly towards the US.

The thing is, the past is not always a predictor of the future. Just because we haven’t had a lot of equal dog fights lately does not mean that this is the way things will always be, especially if you were to say ‘well, things are good enough now…we can just stop and stay where we are’. If we did that in the early 70’s, say, then the first Iraq war would have had a different outcome, since things might have been a bit more even. If we were flying F-4’s and using M-60 tanks as the backbone of our military then the Migs and T-72’s the Iraqi’s had would have possibly been more effective…and we would have taken a lot more losses. We probably would have still won, in the end, but it wouldn’t have been so decisive…which might have shown some level of weakness, which might have had some consequences later on down the line. Of course, it also might have prevented us from thinking we were all powerful and could do anything, and caused our civilian leadership to play games with trying to see how little force they could use to conquer another country, but I think on balance it’s better for the US to be perceived as too powerful than not powerful enough.

The Chinese and Russians (as well as countries like Israel) continue to develop very good tanks, and the Chinese and Russians export them, so this isn’t necessarily true. Besides, tanks are useful in more than tank on tank type combat, and having a tank that is perceived to be nearly invulnerable (like the M1-A1/2 are) is definitely a huge tactical advantage. I think we should try and develop new tanks that are, perhaps, less heavily armored but get a tad better gas mileage…not for any ecological reason but because they are easier to transport and don’t require the huge logistical tail we need right now to sustain operations.

Anyway, going to cut it off there. I think that we should focus more on information systems and information distribution systems for our troops (of course, I AM an IT engineer so that’s a no brainer :p), as well as drone type autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons platforms for land, air and sea use. We need to keep developing systems and stay on the cutting edge, IMHO, because as I said earlier, it’s better to give than receive, and I never want to see US troops thrown into combat with inadequate or inferior equipment. It’s MUCH better to be perceived as a huge, unbeatable Juggernaut than for people to speculate as to whether or not they could take you. They should think that they don’t have any chance in hell of taking you…to me, that is the road to peace. It’s not something that we’ll be able to maintain forever, but while we can I think it will keep the Pax-Americana chugging along for a while longer.

-XT

This is basically what I see as the key question. We should definitely keep going with technology demonstrators and further research, even if we don’t elect to deploy the technology in any frontline combat platforms.

Perhaps the question should be “how can we continuously research and develop military technology more efficiently and less expensively?” It seems like the mammoth weapons programs to develop a single weapon platform always suffer from feature creep, pork barreling, cost overruns, and lining the pockets of entrenched defense industry interests, at which point you can still kill or severely limit something (e.g., the Seawolf submarine), but only at further cost, which is a poison pill built into the program in the first place.

As an IT guy myself, I’ve caught the Agile religion to this extent: The more strictly, and further out, you define requirements and costs up front, the more changing you’ll have to do later. Isn’t there a more agile, perhaps DARPAish way that military research could be ongoing and piecemeal, ready to take advantage of breakthroughs without the commitment to decades of spending?

My suggestion would be “Non-lethal” weapons- something that effectively takes equipment or soldiers out of commission without killing or badly injuring them.

There is an advantage to having overwhelming military superiority. If it comes to combat, it’s better to win a “shock and awe” campaign in a week than to fight a more equalized battle that lasts six months. It produces much fewer casualties on the winning side and even the losing side loses fewer people in a quick defeat than it would have in a longer drawn-out defeat.

And that’s assuming there’s a battle. Any country considering an attack is going to weigh the chances of success. A clearly superior force can deter an attack from being made and that reduces casualties to zero.

The problem is that the economics are fundamentally different. If you’re developing a car or a computer or a DVD player you’re aiming for the general market. You can figure there are a hundred million potential customers and if you sell your product to ten percent of them, you’ll be successful.

But when you’re designing a nuclear submarine, it’s a whole different market. You’ve only got one potential customer - he’ll either buy your product or he won’t. So you can’t just rely on the principle that if you build a good enough product, it’ll find its customers. You need to pre-sell the product before you produce it.

That means that there often isn’t going to be any competitors once the deal has been made. You won’t have competitors making breakthroughs in nuclear submarines because you’re the only company making nuclear submarines.

Per Tom Clancy, Germany’s biggest trading partner in 1939 was France.

Any sensible military is looking at possible threats 10 and 20 years ahead.

And even in 1939 Germany’s military equipment outclassed much of France’s, and indeed nearly everyone else in Europe. The Me-109 was miles ahead of pretty much everything except the Hurricane (and it was still better than that), and useful production of the Spitfire didn’t begin until mid-1939 IIRC.

The problem is how exactly to do that. If you are going to take a soldier out of commission without killing him, you pretty much have to badly injure him. Toe poppers - small landmines with almost no metal parts and only enough explosives to blow off a foot or a good part of a leg take soldiers permanently out of commission with the added advantage that two or four of his buddies are temporarily out of commission while they take him to an aid station; the point of not actually killing the one who stepped on the mine. Using lasers to dazzle and temporarily blind the enemy has been played around with, but it’s very easy to cause permanent blindness; which is not only badly injuring but banned by the UN protocol on blinding weapons of 1995. CS gas - tear gas - has been used in the past and meets the criterion of taking soldiers out of commission without killing or badly injuring them, but it was always a controversial grey area on the legality of its use on the battlefield and finally specifically prohibited by the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1993.

One thing that should be kept in mind is that many of the weapons programs that you hear about these days aren’t intended to replace stuff designed and fielded in the 1980s, but rather stuff a decade older than that, and near to the end of their service lives.

For example, the F-22 and F-35 are intended to replace the F-15 and F-16 fighters developed and fielded in the mid-late 1970s. Or the various small arms programs (FN SCAR, IAR, etc…) are intended to replace the rifles introduced in the early-mid 1980s (M249, M16A2, etc…)

It looks to me like most of what the military’s spending their money on is stuff that is general purpose stuff that would be equally useful in a conventional war or an insurgency (command/control/communication equipment, for example) or replacements for things that the fathers of today’s soldiers may have used when they were in the service.

Bear in mind I’m saying this as a strict pacifist, and that I’m aware of the potential for use against humans, but we really need to develop space-based destructive capability to deal with, you know…Them!*

Then, on the tech front - sure, today US opponents are stuck with AKs and RPGs - but what happens if fabrication technology improves in the next 20 years at the same pace it has, to the point where there are plans for drones or laser guides or whatever are available (and they will be) and useable by any shmo with a garage and a generator?

  • Them! being asteroids, but you never know…

Are those small arms really in need of replacing (from a design standpoint), though? I mean, the people the US are fighting (and are likely to fight in the future) are using Kalashnikov rifles, which is a 50+ year old design. The stuff the US has is either the same or better (by the time you start putting all the accessories on it) anyway, so I’m just not really sure that the benefit of reinventing the wheel is, unless there’s some sort of pulse/laser/caseless round* gun that’s going to completely revolutionise small arms.

*Yes, I know there are caseless round firearms in existence, but you can count them on one hand and the only one that’s even vaguely well-known is the H&K G-11.

Cash and cards.

You’ll see more smart guided projectiles and bombs. You’ll need fewer rounds but do more damage per round. Drones and missiles will be able to loiter longer and change targets depending on the situation. Nuke’em from space; maybe not but will see high power lasers capable of use against missiles, aircraft, and ground targets. Soldiers will fire smart rounds that will detonate at specific distances based on targets. All the soldiers will be interconnected by advanced/miniture commo gear. Explosives will be safer to store and handle and more powerful when correctly initiated.