Defense Strategy
CONTINUED
The most dangerous part of punting our national security strategy to the defense lobby is that it lets members of Congress – who, through their Article I powers, hold extensive constitutional authority over military and defense policy – off the hook from asking the truly critical questions.
Questions like: Can our military handle simultaneous, competing threats around the world? Given the changing nature of war, how many armored brigade combat teams do we need to keep active and what exactly will their role be going forward? What should our troop structure be in this age of modern warfare? How will the military handle adversaries in the “gray zone?” How best can we capitalize on A.I., robotics, directed-energy weapons, and space-based systems? What types of missions will hypersonic weapons be used for, and are they even necessary for deterrence? … and, while we’re at it, what exactly is up with the Conventional Prompt Strike program and why in the heck does it cost so much money?
The Congressional Research Service (CRS) explains that the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) program “allows the U.S. to strike targets anywhere on Earth in as little as an hour. This capability may bolster U.S. efforts to deter and defeat adversaries by allowing the U.S. to attack high-value targets or ‘fleeting targets’ at the start of or during a conflict. These weapons would not substitute for nuclear weapons but would supplement U.S. conventional capabilities. They would provide a ‘niche’ capability, with a small number of weapons directed against select, critical targets.”
Okay, that sounds pretty good, but in 2021 the CRS reported that the “Pentagon’s FY2021 budget request continues to show significant increases in funding for the Navy’s CPS program. In FY2019, this program received $278 million. The Navy received $512 million for this program in FY2020 and requested $1.008 billion for FY2021. The budget request shows continuing increases in funding over the next five years, with $5.3 billion allocated to the program between FY2021 through FY2025.”
Cut to 2025, when the CRS reported that “the Pentagon’s FY2025 budget request for hypersonic research < maneuvering weapons that fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 and are part of the CPS program > was $6.9 billion – up from $4.7 billion in the FY2023 request. The Pentagon declined to provide a breakout of funding for hypersonic-related research in FY2024 but requested $11 billion for long-range fires – a category that includes hypersonic weapons. The Missile Defense Agency additionally requested $182.3 million for hypersonic defense in FY2025.”
Unfortunately, in July 2026 the Government Accountability Office (GAO) reported that “the Navy is currently 24 months behind in its efforts to modernize three DDG 1000 Zumwalt class destroyers to host the Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) hypersonic missile as part of its surface strike mission” – and continues to face significant challenges.
Nevertheless, “DoD is planning to invest at least $50 billion into developing, testing, producing, and fielding CPS capability across several programs,” even though the department “does not have a comprehensive strategy across all programs that ensures that each program’s investments achieve CPS’s common objectives.”
“Without a comprehensive investment strategy that includes more formal coordination,” they warn, “the Army and Navy are not well-positioned to make timely and efficient investments in key areas, such as addressing shortfalls on their shared production lines or ensuring the economical sustainment and performance of the DDG 1000.”
Oh, for the love of %$#%. You have GOT to be kidding us with this.
This is downright ridiculous. We have spent an obscene amount of money on this already. What due diligence is being done to justify this program? What are the accountability procedures, beyond DoD simply ignoring the GAO’s recommendations? What is the end game, or do we even have one? Who are the players involved in making these decisions? Are strategies like these even the best way forward? Does anyone even know?
We have got to get with the program, people – and force the U.S. Department of Defense to do better. War is clearly evolving, BIG TIME. As we learned the hard way, Iran has been stockpiling Shahed drones – propellor-driven aircraft with eight-foot wingspans that carry 110-pound explosives in the nose of the fuselage – for years. They cost between $30,000 to $50,000 each to produce. Meanwhile, the Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates the total cost of the Patriot – still America’s “workhorse” go-to for high-to-medium air defense, anti-ballistic missiles, and cruise missile defense – is likely around $1.1 billion ($400 million for the system itself and $690 million for its missiles).
Clearly, our military and defense strategies must evolve as quickly as possible… which means we must start thinking about all this differently. The “my bomb is bigger than your bomb” strategy we have depended on for decades now seems lazy and terribly inadequate.
It goes without saying that the United States should never be forced to sacrifice the military capabilities we need to protect ourselves. America must have a military that has the fortitude to fully protect this country, regardless of where the threat comes from or in what form it comes in – and have everything we need to operate successfully whether the theatre is land, sea, air, cyberspace or outer space.
The United States should also never be in a position where we are forced to pick and choose between the most dangerous regions of the world. We must be able to sustain security simultaneously in Russia, Africa, South and East Asia, the Middle East, and Europe.
Given all that’s been said here about China, safeguarding stability in the Asia-Pacific region is increasingly important to our economic and national security. At the same time, we obviously can’t fixate solely on that region of the world when Africa, the Middle East and Eastern Europe remain so unstable and unpredictable. Even before Donald Trump, JD Vance, Marco Rubio, and Pete Hegseth started a war with Iran, one had to look no further than Putin’s invasion of Ukraine; Hamas’ attack on Israel; Syria’s new reality; the War on Terror increasingly moving to Africa; and the fact that Afghanistan is once again a refuge for jihadists to see how quickly things can escalate in those regions.
Because of the sheer scope of operational and geographical realities – and the rapidly changing nature of weapons – U.S. national security must be forward-thinking, highly innovative, and cutting-edge to deter and counter our adversaries.
Beyond the risk and danger of it all, we simply can’t afford to keep this up. Contrary to what some in Washington want to believe, we don’t have a bottomless bank account for military spending and national security – and saying that does not make me soft on defense, disloyal to the military, or unpatriotic in any way. What it makes me is a responsible realist.
But our leaders still don’t seem to get it. Decade after decade – over and over and time and time again – those in charge seem to take actions and repeat behaviors that didn’t work the first, second or even the third time around… and the military in particular seems to be having an exceptionally difficult time keeping up with the times.
The Wall Street Journal reported back in September 2025 that the Pentagon’s Replicator program, launched during the Biden administration, had fallen short of its goal of fielding thousands of cutting-edge air, land and sea-based drones by August 2025. The reporting found that many Replicator systems were unreliable, expensive, and/or couldn’t be manufactured fast enough to be bought in the quantity we need. The Pentagon has also struggled to find software that can successfully control large numbers of drones.
Even though Silicon Valley has been pouring tons of money into this – looking for that sweet military-industrial complex cash – almost a year later the WSJ reported that, in April and May 2026, Ukrainian drone operators easily spotted and defeated American troops and armored vehicles during a military exercise in Germany called Combined Resolve. “Ukrainian drones were doing this so quickly that they had to be sent back into the exercises as new units, or ‘re-spawned,’ to keep the exercise going, a U.S. official briefed on the drill said.”
… and what was the Pete Hegseth-led military’s response? To shut down the U.S. Army’s new 600-member “Unmanned Assault Battalion” that was established in January 2026 to master drone and ground robot warfare. Specifically, the new battalion was supposed to learn tactics and skills from Ukraine’s fight against Russia and apply them to the U.S. military.
Even though General Christopher LaNeve – the acting chief of staff of the Army who replaced General Randy George after he was fired by Pete Hegseth – vowed the Army would establish units to advance cyber, electronic-warfare and A.I. technologies, he shuttered the specialized drone unit so the Army could “refocus on its core warfighting tasks as an airborne infantry battalion.” Pete and LaNeve think our military should go “back-to-basics” – evidently meaning the 1950s.
But they aren’t the only ones. The FY2026 defense appropriations process included more than $300 million in unrequested Humvee-related procurement and upgrades. Congress also ultimately provided $240 million for additional MQ-1C Gray Eagle drones, even though Army leaders had announced plans to stop buying what they called “obsolete” Gray Eagles, and $360 million for additional AH-64E Apache aircraft that were not included in the Army’s FY2026 request.
At one stage of the appropriations process, the House and Senate bills contained a combined $52.2 billion in 1,403 “program increases” above the Pentagon’s weapons request, according to an analysis by Taxpayers for Common Sense. This came after Congress had enacted $156.2 billion in mandatory defense funding through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act in July 2025.
Congress forcing the military to spend money on weapons and equipment it hasn’t requested is nothing new. During the post-Iraq War drawdown, for example, the Army repeatedly sought to pause production and upgrades of the Abrams tank, only to have Congress continue funding them, in part to preserve the tank-production industrial base.
Way back in 2015, Army Chief of Staff General Raymond Odierno told the Senate Armed Services Committee, “We are still having to procure systems we don’t need.” (The Army) spends hundreds of millions of dollars on tanks that we simply don’t have the structure for anymore.”
Nevertheless, even though this four-star general told Congress point blank they were wasting millions and millions and millions of dollars and to please reallocate the funds, they appropriated $120 million for Abrams tank upgrades anyway. And not for the first time. Three years earlier, General Odierno made the exact same plea to Congress, which resulted in $183 million for tanks. In 2019, the Army announced that it would spend around $714 million to upgrade M1A1 Abrams tanks at the Joint Systems Manufacturing Center (a.k.a. the Lima Army Tank Plant) in Lima, Ohio, and in 2025, the One Big Beautiful Bill included around $724.5 million for Abrams tanks.
As for the equipment and weapons the Pentagon says it does need? Well… there is really no other way to say this… it appears that, as we now have seen in Iran, they have been the wrong ones.
In The New York Times Overmatched series, it was reported that the most recent Overmatch brief – a comprehensive, multiyear assessment of American military power prepared by the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment – not only warned about the risk of the U.S. continuing to rely on expensive weapons as our adversaries use cheap, technologically advanced ones, but also about China’s ability to destroy U.S. fighter planes and large ships and satellites.
From the report “To see where American defense dollars go, consider the U.S.S. Gerald R. Ford, America’s latest aircraft carrier, which deployed for the first time in 2022 after more than a decade of construction and delays. The ship incorporates new technologies, including advanced nuclear reactors and electromagnetic catapults for launching aircraft, which make it more efficient than the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers it is intended to replace. The price tag: an estimated $13 billion. That figure is for a single ship. It does not include the billions of dollars-worth of military aircraft carried by the Ford and the escort ships needed to defend it.”
“Such formidable firepower is effective if you want to go to war with a relatively poor, weak country like, say, Venezuela. Yet the Ford, is fatally vulnerable to new forms of attack. China in recent years has amassed an arsenal of around 600 hypersonic weapons, which can travel at five times the speed of sound and are difficult to intercept. Other countries possess quiet diesel-electric submarines capable of sinking American carriers. In war games like those depicted in the Overmatch brief, ships like the Ford are often destroyed. Still, the Navy plans to build at least nine additional Ford-class carriers in the coming decades. So far, the United States has yet to deploy a single hypersonic missile.”
But here we go again. Donald Trump is building a “Golden Fleet” of 15 nuclear-powered battleships that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates will be at least 50 percent more expensive than the original estimate. The total cost now stands at $275 billion. The first ship – that will have Donald’s name plastered all over it, naturally – is estimated to cost $23.4 billion, making it the most expensive warship ever built, with the next 14 ships averaging $18 billion.
Incidentally, even though the Navy’s new aircraft carriers are in various stages of development, our president has decided he wants a major redesign of them, to look more like those from World War II… a change that could cost billions. Even before this brilliant design idea, our president issued a national security memorandum directing the Navy to replace electromagnetic catapult systems on future aircraft carriers with steam catapults. This redesign will also add billions to the cost.
Our president also thinks the Golden Dome missile-defense system is a fabulous idea. Although the Trump/Vance administration initially put its cost at about $175 billion, the CBO has since estimated that an illustrative missile-defense architecture capable of meeting the administration’s stated objectives could cost $1.2 trillion over 20 years.
Let’s be clear: This is not a fabulous idea. For one, don’t let the name fool you. Golden Dome has faced serious criticism from physicists, arms-control experts and budget analysts who question its cost, feasibility and strategic consequences – mainly because even an enormously expensive system like this can’t provide an impenetrable shield against a large Russian or Chinese nuclear attack.
Then there are the basic laws of physics. Golden Dome’s proposed space-based interceptors would have only minutes to detect and destroy an ICBM during its boost phase, potentially requiring thousands of orbiting interceptors. Russia and China could simply counter the system by building more missiles and warheads, deploying decoys and other countermeasures, or attacking Golden Dome’s satellites and communications systems.
Meanwhile, while our leaders have, for decades, been recklessly relying on extremely expensive missiles and munitions – – and Pete Hegseth and President Trump were rambling disjointed and incoherent sermons to the 800+ senior U.S. military officers they summoned to Quantico from around the world, going on about fat generals, beardos, woke garbage, dudes in dresses, the enemy within, sleepy Joe Biden, stupid rules of engagement, the inferiority of women, and using American cities as military training grounds – – the Chinese remained laser focused on investing in new strategies and technologies to exploit our weaknesses and vulnerabilities, which they have been doing now for decades.
The implications of this are colossal. Solar panels and electric vehicles and wind technology are one thing, but China is also quickly becoming the main supplier of things that the rest of the world – including the United States – must have on the modern battlefield… like the cheap, battery-powered drones that Ukraine used to obliterate part of Russia’s air fleet and that the Israelis deployed to destroy multimillion-dollar surface-to-air missiles and radars in Iran the first time around, ultimately allowing them to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian command and nuclear facilities.
Since the time China changed the game with their DF-21D “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missiles that threaten our naval forces in the Pacific, they have developed even longer-range versions like the DF-26 and DF-27. In what some referred to as a “sputnik moment,” in 2021 China tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic glide vehicle launched by a rocket into low-orbit that almost circled the earth before re-entering the atmosphere and hitting its intended target in China.
In December 2024, images of what seemed to be new Chinese military aircraft went viral on social media. Defense experts said these aircraft, though blurry on the video, appeared to be highly original advanced stealth designs – most likely part of China’s next-generation (sixth generation) fighter program.
In September 2025, China held a military parade celebrating the 80th anniversary of the role Communist soldiers played in fighting Japanese invaders in World War II. Xi Jinping held court, flanked by Kim Jong Un and Vladimir Putin – who attended the parade with leaders from 24 other countries, including Iran and Pakistan. At one point, Xi stood in the open sunroof of a Chinese-made Red Flag limousine while pigeons and balloons – supposedly numbering 80,000 each – were released into the air.
Xi’s intended message hit hard as the advanced weapons appeared one after the other: We, the Chinese, can stop American forces in the Asia-Pacific region by using every kind of weapon imageable, and we can rapidly deploy to Taiwan or even far beyond China whenever we damn well please.
The parade extravaganza – which included thousands of troops goose-stepping in unison across a bright red carpet covering Tiananmen Square – showcased things like jet fighter-bombers, ship-sinking hypersonic missiles, unmanned combat platforms, a cyberspace combat force, remote-controlled armored buggies that can clear mines and pick up wounded soldiers, and armored ground vehicles that can be dropped from transport planes.
Four models of anti-ship missiles rolled through, three of which are hypersonic – meaning they travel at least five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to evade defenses. The new YJ-19 anti-ship missile was there, which is a cruise missile that apparently uses a “scramjet” and burns its fuel in an airflow moving at supersonic speed.
The stars of the show were the nuclear-capable ballistic missiles that can already hit the continental United States – like one labeled “DF-31BJ,” indicating that the missile is likely a version of China’s road-mobile DF-31 intercontinental nuclear missile that has been adapted for silo launch.
Trucks carrying drones that look like small fighter jets drove past, as well as smaller ground, naval and aerial drones, including “loyal wingmen” that can fly alongside piloted jets for extra protection. Two submersible drones were unveiled, confirming that China has indeed been working on building extra-large uncrewed underwater vehicles (XLUUVs). It was thought they had been testing at least five XLUUV designs since 2022, which obviously they have been.
The drones were a particularly cruel slap in our face because, as we’ve already covered, we’re not making much progress on them – or on the batteries that power them (yet another area where China is leading in almost every industrial component). As it stands today, the Pentagon relies on around 6,000 individual foreign-sourced components across its weapons programs, and there are zero U.S. weapon systems and/or military platforms that have no foreign parts.
Meanwhile, Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov says that the industrial capacity of Ukrainian companies has increased enough to produce four million drones a year. These Linza drones are equipped with anti-jamming modules; utilize AI navigation; and can gather reconnaissance, deliver supplies, and even set land mines.
Even before that, Ukrainian soldiers were giving the Russians one hell of a fight by adding deadly modifications to the Mavic, a drone sold to ordinary people by a Chinese company called DJI. DJI, the world’s largest drone manufacturer, sells 70 percent of all commercial drones sold for hobby and industrial use worldwide (you can get a version of the Mavic for as little as $300). Experts say that DJI can make millions of drones per year, more than a hundred times more than anybody in the United States can make.
Ukraine has gotten so good at this that the Trump/Vance administration was forced to ask them for help within a week of its 2026 attack on Iran. As swarms of Iranian Shahed drones rained down over the middle East – breaching allied air defense systems and killing at least six U.S. soldiers – Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky posted on X: “We received a request from the United States for specific support in protection.”
< This is yet another reason that you should never invite your allies into the Oval Office, then start berating and insulting them. What goes around comes around, Donny Boy. >