The Missile Race
Can the US catch up with Russia?
The arrival of Krepinovich’s mature precision-strike regime can be dated quite precisely. This was the moment in 2015 when the Russians launched a Kalibr hypersonic cruise missile from ships in the Caspian Sea to precisely hit targets in Syria, 1,500km away. With the help of the printer, I was able to scrape some data about missile arsenals from CSIS.* The data reveals the proliferation of remote-strike capabilities anticipated by Krepinovich, but in a very concentrated manner.
In what was once a comfortable American monopoly, Russia has taken what appears to be an improbable lead in strike capabilities. Specifically, the Russians have a sort of monopoly on the most advanced strike weapons of the day—hypersonic missiles. This is funny because, the US military made quite a fuss about prompt global strike. Now the US has meaningfully fallen behind the technological frontier, although, of course, the balance of power remains favorable. Beyond Russia is China with a formidable full-spectrum strike capabilities. Then we find Israel and Iran. And then the rest.
The spectrum of a mature-strike regime has a three level structure ordered by distance. At the top level are strategic strike capabilities. This includes ICBMs, ballistic missiles carried for second-strike duty by nuclear submarines, and hypersonic missiles that can evade air defense and missile defense and have the range to be launched at standoff distances from secure “shoot and scoot” platforms operating outside the defender’s A2AD cover. The range of strategic missiles is usually of the order of 10,000km. But Kalibr, which is nuclear capable, can be carried by Russian submarines under peacetime conditions (ie, before US ASW operations begin) in the Atlantic, where its 2,500km range puts it within striking distance of the entire Eastern seaboard, thus making it a strategic weapon.
But the mature precision-strike cannot upend the basic strategic stalemate at the level of general nuclear war. The heart of the revolution in military affairs effected by the arrival of the mature precision-strike regime is to be found at the operational level of war. The range here of the order of 2,000km. With a conventional payload, Putin demonstrated with the strike from the Caspian in 2015 that Kalibr was superior to any conventional remote strike weapon in the US armory. Russia’s technological lead expanded in 2018, when Putin unfurled six odd “Russian super weapons.” The frontier revealed here was centered on the strategic and operational implications of hypersonic global strike, immune to even the most formidable multi-layered air and missile defense in depth with the most expensive systems.
Israel and Iran join the three great powers in the ranks of the powers that contain the operating theater level of strike capabilities. Both have the technical means to strike each other if they’re capable and willing to bear the cost. Iran’s second strike revealed that Israeli defense against Iran’s ballistic missiles is considerably less effective and much more costly than tactical interceptors. Israel’s riposte revealed that air-defense is ineffective against remote strike since the range of missiles is greater than the range of the air defenses.
At the tactical level, we see a lot of proliferation. In general, at the strategic level we find three great powers; at the operational level, we see three additional regional powers; at the tactical level, proliferation goes as far as the Houthis. But this is also the level at which interceptors are effective.
Strike capabilities are not reducible to technical knowhow, of course. An important question is whether the missile race is offense dominant. The American Standard Missiles cost about $4mm apiece. (The following table is from here.) How much does Iran’s Shahab missile cost? I could not find credible sources but a few hundred thousand dollars is roughly the right ballpark. Maybe the cost-exchange ratio is unfavorable but perhaps not prohibitively so.
The cliometric assumption that Iran cannot afford the costs of war may prove as unwarranted as it did with the Russians. With the Russians, the question for the US is whether it can catch up in hypersonic missiles. Can America really not produce a functioning hypersonic cruise missile?
Missile Defense Project, Missile Threat, Center for Strategic and International Studies, https://missilethreat.csis.org.
There is also China's DF-27, an 8,000km range hypersonic IRBM with HGV which, per Discord leak, has been fielded in land attack and anti-ship versions and possesses 'a “high probability” of penetrating U.S. ballistic missile defense systems'.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/04/13/china-hypersonic-missile-intelligence-leak/
Not to mention China's hypersonic global strike platform in development which has been tested more than once, sometimes (probably improperly) referred to as a Fractional Orbital Bombardment System.
"While both China and Russia have conducted numerous successful tests of hypersonic weapons and have likely fielded operational systems, China is leading Russia in both supporting infrastructure and numbers of systems,” the Defense Intelligence Agency’s chief scientist for science and technology told U.S. lawmakers.
https://democrats-armedservices.house.gov/_cache/files/3/5/35e5f6c5-cffd-4d99-b4bc-9bed335dca4b/6185535D1E4EE6CDDD36142EC501C91B.freisthler-statement.pdf
Which is all to say, the subtitle here could be shortened to "...catch up", minus the "with Russia".
US invested in gold plated "stealth" platforms like the F-35, with their equally gold plated logistics train. This puts Pentagon leaders in the conflicted position, asking their future employers (ie Lockheed) to sideline their cash cow.
Marines got the memo, FWIW. Army and Navy just had bubble burst on essentially all their workhorse systems, by observing Ukraine. So the next US administration will oversee a massive upgrade cycle for them, like hasn't been seen since circa 1980. Navy especially is basically dickless at the moment, every ship bigger than a 100 tons of so is at an absurd disadvantage vs things that can kill it for a tiny fraction of the cost. Air Force prob will hold out last of all, since they have just as much ego to lose as Navy, but unlike sailors can still lean on the myth of stealth. Meanwhile, PRC entering scale-up mode across the board in aerospace, both in classic systems, submarines, and post-Ukraine drone based mass-cheap-precise land/air concepts.
Threat of direct US involvement anywhere is not going to be realistic for a generation. Sanctions likewise dead. Proxy action the only tool in the kit now.