Flight Global: Report: US military needs to rethink its precision strike portfolio
The US military is overly invested in short-range direct attack bombs and not enough in long-range, stealthy smart weapons and aircraft, and this must change if it ever expects to challenge the air defences of nations like China, Russia, Iran or North Korea.
That’s the assessment of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, which released a new report this week on “sustaining America’s precision-strike advantage”.
The crux of the argument presented by authors Mark Gunzinger and Bryan Clark is that while shorter-range weapons like joint direct attack munitions (JDAMs) and small diameter bombs (SDBs) have kill rates as high as 100% when an aircraft can get close to its target, that won’t be possible in large force-on-force salvo against large military force that has its own guided, smart weapons.
Update: US Military Incapable of Overcoming Defenses of Russia, China and Iran -- Sputnik
WNU Editor: In brief .... what the report is saying (quoting Russian news media) is the following .... the US military has over-invested into weapons which work well for launching attacks on countries like Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria but are quite ineffective for countries like Iran, Russia and China. What's my take .... I know that the U.S. does not have the conventional military weapons to take on Russia or China (and neither does China or Russia vs. the U.S.) .... but the inability to wage a conventional war against a country like Iran is a worrisome one .... since it is the military option that the White House likes to sometimes advertise it is capable of doing as the Iranian nuclear talks continue.