Pentagon leaders should challenge the armed services to solve very hard, very specific problems, Work said: Sink 350 Chinese navy and coast guard vessels in the first 72 hours of a war, or destroy 2,400 Russian armored vehicles. Whoever has the best solution gets the most money. Those are hardly easy goals, Work said, but they’re also doable with technology now in development.
I don't know, this seems like the wrong thing to do. I mean, it seems worth considering but it also sounds like "if we don't sink N+1 battleships we lose the war", which doesn't seem any more right today than it was in the 20th century.
IMO a smarter, and probably cheaper, approach would be to force things to operate in a more decentralized fashion. Maybe at scale lots of smaller, distributed infantry and fire/air support units would be just as expensive but it seems more survivable for a longer term grind. My bias though is that, yeah, I was an infantryman and most of us (at least in my circles) expect the next one to be a long grind like WWI than a flash pan mass-extinction event like a lot of planners do today.
The Chinese call this “system destruction warfare,” Work said: They plan to “attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time.”
Okay, then maybe "whoever can figure out how to continue operations during an extended comms blackout gets the most money." I know field craft isn't as "cool" anymore as the newest gadget, but maybe teach the boys how to make those Vietnam era claymore-wire antennas again (half joking). Cutting some massive check for another decades long R&D project is suspect to me.
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I don't know, this seems like the wrong thing to do. I mean, it seems worth considering but it also sounds like "if we don't sink N+1 battleships we lose the war", which doesn't seem any more right today than it was in the 20th century.
IMO a smarter, and probably cheaper, approach would be to force things to operate in a more decentralized fashion. Maybe at scale lots of smaller, distributed infantry and fire/air support units would be just as expensive but it seems more survivable for a longer term grind. My bias though is that, yeah, I was an infantryman and most of us (at least in my circles) expect the next one to be a long grind like WWI than a flash pan mass-extinction event like a lot of planners do today.
Okay, then maybe "whoever can figure out how to continue operations during an extended comms blackout gets the most money." I know field craft isn't as "cool" anymore as the newest gadget, but maybe teach the boys how to make those Vietnam era claymore-wire antennas again (half joking). Cutting some massive check for another decades long R&D project is suspect to me.