If it Flies it Dies, with Tom Karako - on Midrats
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Two of the above-the-fold topics in the last year in the national security arena both in involve one of the most technologically advance, complicated, and essential parts of modern warfare; ground based anti-air.
For over a year we have watched and evolving ongoing real world laboratory in the Russo-Ukrainian War. On the other side of Asia, when not looking in the sky for big balloons, America and her allies are sobering up to the very significant threat of the People’s Republic of China conventional ballistic missile putting almost all of our forward bases “under the gun.”
From small, slow, lawnmower sounding combat drones, to hypersonic missiles - how to you see them and kill them before they reach their targets?
For the full hour this Sunday from 5-6pm Eastern we will address these and related challenges with our guest Tom Karako, senior fellow with the International Security Program and the director of the Missile Defense Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Join us live if you can, but it not, you can get the show later by subscribing to the podcast. If you use iTunes, you can add Midrats to your podcast list simply by clicking the iTunes button at the main showpage - or you can just click here. You can find us on almost all your most popular podcast aggregators as well.
Can we crowdfund a decent microphone for you, Sal?
Back in 2006, the late Stuart Slade observed that anti-aircraft defensive technology was steadily gaining ground, and it was improving in ways which made the work of coping with these new technologies more and more time consuming and expensive.
In his opinion, unmanned combat aircraft and drones would buy us some time. But that by mid-century, the advantages that anti-aircraft defenses had over all forms of aircraft would be complete. In which case we would be back to World War I.
Not to say that manned and unmanned aircraft would be completely useless. Here in the 21st Century, aircraft are facing the same situation as we see with tanks, artillery, and infantry.
Combined arms maneuver warfare using aircraft, tanks, infantry, and artillery will work as long as you commit the mass of forces needed to overwhelm the adversary's defenses, and as long as you are willing to accept horrific losses in personnel and equipment while you are in the process of defeating that adversary.
IMHO, we are now seeing the general accuracy of Stuart Slade's 2006 predictions about the future of warfare playing themselves out in the Russia-Ukraine war.