The precursor to modern guided cruise missiles was the V-2 ballistic missile. Nazi Germany launched thousands of V-2s into Great Britain under the mistaken impression that the randomness and brutality of this new technology would break Londoners’ spirit.
Instead, V-2 launches only strengthened the Britons’ resolve, like indiscriminate bombing always does, always has, and always will. Moreover, the wildly expensive V-2 program nearly bankrupted the Nazis, even as the rockets themselves were being built mostly with slave labor. In all likelihood, the war in Europe ended months sooner than it otherwise would have if the Nazi war machine had invested the resources put into the V-2 program elsewhere.
I suppose it’s no surprise that Pete Hegseth didn’t learn any lessons from history or foreign countries through his work as a clownish weekend Fox News host prior to becoming the clownish secretary of war. It seems his war strategy against Iran amounted to lobbing as many expensive long-range guided missiles at Iranian targets as possible until the United States military ran out of them.
The U.S. fired over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles during only the first month of the war with Iran. Each Tomahawk missile costs American taxpayers around $2.2 million. Naval versions cost more than $4 million apiece. Irrespective of the cost, arms manufacturers only have the capacity to produce approximately 2,330 Tomahawk missiles per year. While the truly dire shortages are in the defensive missile category, the American military seems to have wasted a good portion of its offensive missile stockpile too.
The Tomahawk is not meant to be the primary offensive means of carrying out a war, nor is any cruise missile. Cruise missiles represent impressive technology and can be deployed effectively on the battlefield for certain tasks: precision strikes targeting key individuals or leadership groups, evading air defenses to hit high-value infrastructure, or, God forbid, delivering nuclear warheads.
On the other hand, any idiot could have told Pete Hegseth that it is counterproductive to launch thousands of multimillion-dollar munitions at targets worth less than the missiles themselves.
In fact, at least one idiot did tell Hegseth (and anyone else with an internet connection) that this was a bad war strategy: me. Back in October, well before the U.S. started this war with Iran, I wrote about what a bad idea it was for Russia to stupidly spend upward of $200 million on cruise missiles and suicide drones just to kill five random civilians in Lviv last fall.
Those five people’s lives were priceless to themselves and to their loved ones. But Russia did not get $200 million worth of value out of that attack.
On the contrary, the Russians hurt their own war aims. The attack came early in the morning. By the time the cafes opened, the city was abuzz. Children swarmed the playgrounds. Excited people crowded into restaurants. Toasts to Ukrainian courage were shouted above the din. Morale improved dramatically not in spite of the bombing, but due to the bombing.
It is not possible to bomb an entire country into submission from the air using conventional weapons. The United States has been taught this lesson again and again in its own wars and by the wars of other nations, yet we refuse to actually learn it.
If a commander is about to order a sortie flown over an enemy surface-to-air missile battery with a $100 million jet, sure, it makes sense to spend a couple million dollars in advance on cruise missiles to eliminate the threat to the far more valuable asset. On the other hand, just using expensive munitions to target everything? The economics of that are never going to work out.
The United States has lost its war against Iran. This war never should have been waged at all. But if we were going to fight a war, we should have used a better strategy than firing off nearly all of our incredibly expensive missiles at mostly low-value targets. The only question now is whether this administration will continue to compound its failure in Iran or simply accept the humiliating terms of defeat before moving on to the next foreign policy debacle.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at jon_wolf@hotmail.com.
The post Lobbing Multimillion-Dollar Munitions At Targets Worth Less Than The Missiles Themselves Remains A Bad War Strategy appeared first on Above the Law.
The precursor to modern guided cruise missiles was the V-2 ballistic missile. Nazi Germany launched thousands of V-2s into Great Britain under the mistaken impression that the randomness and brutality of this new technology would break Londoners’ spirit.
Instead, V-2 launches only strengthened the Britons’ resolve, like indiscriminate bombing always does, always has, and always will. Moreover, the wildly expensive V-2 program nearly bankrupted the Nazis, even as the rockets themselves were being built mostly with slave labor. In all likelihood, the war in Europe ended months sooner than it otherwise would have if the Nazi war machine had invested the resources put into the V-2 program elsewhere.
I suppose it’s no surprise that Pete Hegseth didn’t learn any lessons from history or foreign countries through his work as a clownish weekend Fox News host prior to becoming the clownish secretary of war. It seems his war strategy against Iran amounted to lobbing as many expensive long-range guided missiles at Iranian targets as possible until the United States military ran out of them.
The U.S. fired over 850 Tomahawk cruise missiles during only the first month of the war with Iran. Each Tomahawk missile costs American taxpayers around $2.2 million. Naval versions cost more than $4 million apiece. Irrespective of the cost, arms manufacturers only have the capacity to produce approximately 2,330 Tomahawk missiles per year. While the truly dire shortages are in the defensive missile category, the American military seems to have wasted a good portion of its offensive missile stockpile too.
The Tomahawk is not meant to be the primary offensive means of carrying out a war, nor is any cruise missile. Cruise missiles represent impressive technology and can be deployed effectively on the battlefield for certain tasks: precision strikes targeting key individuals or leadership groups, evading air defenses to hit high-value infrastructure, or, God forbid, delivering nuclear warheads.
On the other hand, any idiot could have told Pete Hegseth that it is counterproductive to launch thousands of multimillion-dollar munitions at targets worth less than the missiles themselves.
In fact, at least one idiot did tell Hegseth (and anyone else with an internet connection) that this was a bad war strategy: me. Back in October, well before the U.S. started this war with Iran, I wrote about what a bad idea it was for Russia to stupidly spend upward of $200 million on cruise missiles and suicide drones just to kill five random civilians in Lviv last fall.
Those five people’s lives were priceless to themselves and to their loved ones. But Russia did not get $200 million worth of value out of that attack.
On the contrary, the Russians hurt their own war aims. The attack came early in the morning. By the time the cafes opened, the city was abuzz. Children swarmed the playgrounds. Excited people crowded into restaurants. Toasts to Ukrainian courage were shouted above the din. Morale improved dramatically not in spite of the bombing, but due to the bombing.
It is not possible to bomb an entire country into submission from the air using conventional weapons. The United States has been taught this lesson again and again in its own wars and by the wars of other nations, yet we refuse to actually learn it.
If a commander is about to order a sortie flown over an enemy surface-to-air missile battery with a $100 million jet, sure, it makes sense to spend a couple million dollars in advance on cruise missiles to eliminate the threat to the far more valuable asset. On the other hand, just using expensive munitions to target everything? The economics of that are never going to work out.
The United States has lost its war against Iran. This war never should have been waged at all. But if we were going to fight a war, we should have used a better strategy than firing off nearly all of our incredibly expensive missiles at mostly low-value targets. The only question now is whether this administration will continue to compound its failure in Iran or simply accept the humiliating terms of defeat before moving on to the next foreign policy debacle.
Jonathan Wolf is a civil litigator and author of Your Debt-Free JD (affiliate link). He has taught legal writing, written for a wide variety of publications, and made it both his business and his pleasure to be financially and scientifically literate. Any views he expresses are probably pure gold, but are nonetheless solely his own and should not be attributed to any organization with which he is affiliated. He wouldn’t want to share the credit anyway. He can be reached at [email protected].
