Erik Prince argues that the most important defense lesson from the Ukraine war is how profoundly the “democratization of precision weapons” transforms war and causes serious modifications in defense and foreign policy.
For Prince, an assistant to the US Pentagon under the current administration and the founder of Blackwater, robots, cruise missiles, and other precision weapons with AI that are now frequently used on any front line or insurgent causes like the Yemeni Houthis, are excellent equalizers.
According to Prince, they challenge regular US defense capabilities and cost modern armies unsustainable. In addition, Chinese mass production of missiles overpowers any US military force in the North Pacific Ocean and the points north.
Russia, a rival country in the region, adapted and defeated US high-tech weapons with a particular skill in digital warfare. Russia’s military has fared much better than it did during the Ukraine war.
In response to this wings trend, Prince urges a perfect rethink of US military plan in an appointment with Hillsdale College President Larry Arnn and in a statement to Hillsdale individuals. Following are the exams:
LA: I want to briefly discuss Ukraine. You appear to be well-versed in that, as well as in what does and is going on there. What are your thoughts on it?
EP: I believe that President Trump has the guts to send that conflict to an end. There is a 0 % chance that the Ukrainians will retake all of their property. They ought to have reached a resolution a time and a half ago.
Right then, they seem to be engaged in a war of attrition. They’ve been reintroduced to literal World War I-style, ditch warfare-style techniques, but also with the addition of precise drones and precision rockets to make it even more destructive for infantrymen trying to survive.
The Russians are utterly determined to claim Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and, I believe, Mariupol, which are regions with standard Russian tongues, and they already have Crimea. They don’t give up on that.
In a war of attrition, mathematics still matters, and I believe an imperfect harmony is preferable to a shiny battle. In terms of population, Russia has significantly more people and significantly more weapons than the Ukrainians can produce. And the defence sector in Western Europe and America is far too expensive and far beyond.
I believe that America should be given a stark reminder that our munitions don’t do so well there. They’re never in very high demand. Some of the items may work for a month or two before Russian electronic warfare discovers a way to jam the transportation, command link, or anything else to render them useless.
And the foolish officials say,” Oh, we’re degrading the Russian troops and we’re destroying all this technology.” No, the Russian military is now much better and more deadly than they were when they first started. It might take them an hour, an hour and a half to fire back with ordnance if you shot at the Russians when they went in in February 2022.
It’s more like two or three minutes today. So their period time of communication between a battery receiving the fire and a battery receiving the fire with precise positions to take up is much shorter. Yes, they’ve become a bit smarter.
LA: You anyone identify this information?
EP: A lot of it is available resource. A lot of this information is being analysed fairly well by the RUSI, the Royal United Services Institute in London. I have a ton of relationships in strange places where I interact with people and hear from first records.
But yeah, the US government has not taken the necessary lessons from [Ukraine], the motion, that the nature of war has drastically changed as a result of the use of precision and drone warfare in that battle space.
It represents a reform of perfection strike. It’s as shocking as Genghis Khan’s use of rods on horses, in my opinion.
LA: Is it accurate to say that we can’t defend our plane companies?
EP: Well, the Houthis, right, the Iranian proxy in Yemen have been firing a lot of missiles at ships, right? They claim to have shot down US ships with a billion dollars worth of US missiles, which is bad math because you’re using not one but two$ 1 million missiles to shoot down a$ 20, 000 to$ 50, 000 drone.
However, they claim to have spent a billion dollars on that, but that figure is actually$ 5 billion because, if the charges were from the 1990s when they purchased that weapon, they would have to have spent five times as much to replace it.
Any aircraft ship, whatever location is currently in danger, may be targeted by dozens and dozens of precise arms. However, it’s just a matter of arithmetic.
If the US Navy has to wage a war to protect Taiwan and you drive an aircraft carrier close to those [ Chinese ] missile batteries, they can continue to shoot missiles until they run out of them to shoot down, which causes real problems.
That is a pretty good job done by the Chinese. Our weapons cost eight to ten times as much, and we only have a limited number of them.
LA: We didn’t appear to add more quickly.
EP: [ There are ]ways]. A top professional and I were the only ones we spoke to about this. He claimed that they must shift from a government-led security specialist mentality to one centered on cars. They ought to learn” Freedom’s Forge,” which explores how American business actually influenced the outcome of World War II.
Then you visit an automotive supplier or manufacturer who has an understanding of a complicated legislature in quantity. And they are expected to lower prices annually rather than increase them. There is a lot of electrical production capacity and know-how that can produce excellent weapons at an increasingly affordable price.
What does this mean for the United States ‘ method in LA? The Navy, the Air Force, and some men are all involved in strength forecast in the modern United States, which might begin with the First World War.
What does it mean for the future of our defense and foreign policy if those large aircraft carriers carry all of those planes but are dangerous, cheap, and can be killed by something less cheap?
EP: That submarines have more significant roles in terms of scattered heat power, dispersed combat power, and fight projection power into submarine, semi-submersible, or other more difficult-to-kill vessels. Innovation counts, as does thoughts.
Curiously enough, remember that when President Ronald Reagan decided to build two battleships, he actually removed them from storage and returned them to complete combat service in the 1980s.
They were essentially impervious to present missiles because they were designed to withstand 15 and 16-inch gun hits, which was an oddity. Any of these boat weapons, drones, or other such weapons had flimsyly fall off a ship.
Also a water movement missile, which is intended to break a ship’s hull, was so powerful that it wouldn’t have mattered. But perhaps you return to a really old technology.
LA: Some of them are also present.
EP: Yes, they’re still in store. That’s a lot of material to try to rust ahead.