Last night, the US House of Representatives approved $13.6 billion in military spending for Ukraine. This is glorious, and in the short-term, the Ukrainians are getting the portable anti-tank and anti-aircraft missiles they need, and from many countries. However, in the mid-term run—because this war could last many years—the Ukrainians will need tanks, aircraft, and heavier precision-guided weapons. The United States in particular has ample inventories of much of this, which can easily be provided for comparatively little cost. As others have discussed, the rough model is the Lend-Lease program of 1941. Practical planning and training of Ukrainians can start now, on lethal systems that the US military has mostly been trying to shed for years anyway. For this war, but the campaigns to come, I mean specifically M1A1 tanks, A-10Cs attack jets, MQ-1 Predator drones, and Harpoon anti-ship missiles.
—————
In his recent essay "Ukraine: The Case for a New Lend-Lease," Alan Riley, professor at City Law School, University of London, took note of just how big the Lend Lease program of the Second World War really was. The United States "provided largely for free $50 billion in 1941 dollars ($690 billion in 2020 dollars) of supplies and war materiel to Britain and other allies (later including the USSR) between 1941 and 1945." That's most of a year's military budget for the United States today ($782 billion in the House bill), but spent for others. In theory, all of this kit was supposed to come back, if it survived the war. In reality, we didn't care.
Supplying European democracies that would do the fighting for us have worked well, twice in the 20th century: access to the overseas economies of the British Empire and the United States is a large part of what won the First and Second World Wars. Even though the United States didn't mobilize for war before joining the effort in April 1917, its sales of raw materials to Britain and France kept both well-supplied and fighting. Both times, the Allies had all the ammunition and weapons they needed, while the Central Powers and the later the Axis found themselves running short of fuel and food. That's what to expect when one tries to fight the entire global economy.
Perhaps, as Richard Overy showed in Why the Allies Won (W. W. Norton & Co., 1995), the victory in WW2 wasn't assured, but fascist economic hubris and incompetence made it a lot easier. The Japanese and the Germans had seized lots of extractable resources by the end of 1941. However, the Nazis really didn't consciously mobilize for war until 1942, figuring on a swift victory. At that point, corruption and mismanagement in the Nazi system seriously obstructed any legendary German genius for design and production. The Japanese did clearly mobilize in advance, but the imperialists in Tokyo planned a quick strike against a country with ten times its industrial output, and without a backup plan.
Sensing the parallels with today? At least Hitler had Albert Speer and Werner Von Braun. We've got Elon Musk. Last week, with his announcement about fighting Starlink through Russian jamming, he was starting to look like Henry Kaiser. Meanwhile, Putin has Dmitri Rogozin.
Indeed, the Russians will be facing an increasingly negative military-industrial correlation of forces, behind and on the battlefront. As I noted earlier this week, the Russian economy has long been calibrated for resource extraction. It hasn't been about autarkic industrial production for 30 years now. Frankly, it's highly dependent on industrial inputs from the west. Note how the vaunted Lada factory shut down yesterday, idling thousands of automotive workers, less than two weeks into the war and its sanctions. Rebuilding domestic supply chains for such sophisticated products would take years.
So how do we win this war? Make clear to all who watch that the Ukrainians will never run out of ammunition, tanks, and aircraft. That requires a program in three parts.
The near-term phase is well underway: massive transfers of expendable, easy-to-use, portable missiles from existing inventories. These have so far included Javelin, LAW, NLAW, Panzerfaust 3, and other types of anti-tank missiles; and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles. Britain will likely be sending its well-regarded Starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. All of these are relatively easy to learn to use, particularly if the missileer is already familiar with something similar. The promised transfers of these precision-guided weapons count well into the tens of thousands. And, as one defense industry executive put it to me recently, "every one of our companies is getting calls" about how much faster we can make this stuff. (I'll have more to write later about why that's the expected state of affairs.)
However, no one should presume that this war will conclude quickly. Crushing the Nazis took six years. Lifting the Siege of Sarajevo took almost four years. Heavy equipment will be needed for the counteroffensives of 2023 and 2024. Planning for the duration means mobilization now for campaigns to come. That's the mid-term phase: provision of heavier equipment from existing stocks, and training of Ukrainian troops to take it. It's the modern equivalent of the Destroyers for Bases Deal of September 1940: sending fifty flush-deck, four-pipe destroyers left over from WW1 to the Royal Navy in return for some basing rights.
What's different this time is that the US Navy lacks those excess inventories, having scrapped almost its entire Cold War fleet, and having allowed the rest of it to rust at the piers. (I had an illuminating conversation with a Navy Supply Corps officer about that a few years ago.) The land and air forces of the US, however, have lots of leftover stuff, or not-so-wanted stuff, that can be soon made ready for action, pending training. Some of it requires modest engineering work, or depot-level refurbishment, and it should happen in parallel with the training. The embarrassing shuffle over the Polish MiG-29s this past week indicates just how well the bureaucrats can handle this, if given the chance, but there are plenty of other excellent candidates:
-
The USMC's entire inventory of 403 M1A1 Abrams tanks. The "long rods," tungsten penetrators from their 120 mm guns, will go through Russian T-80s with ease. (Unless, of course, the Ukrainians actually want the depleted uranium rounds. The guys with Chernobyl in their front yard can tell us how they feel about that, either way.) The tanks were retired from service less than two years ago, in the Marines' great pivot to a littoral force structure, so they're likely in ready-to refurbish shape. General Dynamics is the go-to contractor for that sort of effort, and I predict that company will be happy for such an opportunity to support the war effort. The Ukrainians have lots of trained tank troops, and they're even taking captured Russian tanks into their service. Even so, they will need replacements eventually, so start sending cadres of Ukrainians to the US soon to learn how to fight with the Abrams. They can train their colleagues on the new tanks when they arrive later, by rail in Western Ukraine.
-
The USAF's entire inventory of 356 A-10C ground-attack jets. Fairly, this idea has already been publicized by Everett Pyatt, who as an assistant secretary of the Navy under John Lehman, recalls a few things about fighting Russians. After all, the generals in the USAF today keep insisting that the A-10C isn't very useful against China, and isn't very survivable against Russia. If so, we can definitely junk every one of those planes now. Perhaps the Ukrainians can prove the USAF wrong; we should let them tell us whether they're willing to try. The last of those aircraft was manufactured in 1984, but they're supposed to be flyable until 2040, and even today, they're cheaper to keep flying than F-16s. Word is, at least a few Ukrainian pilots are already qualified in the A-10C, from an exchange program with the USAF. They'll need ground crews, so the maintenance training should also commence soon.
-
The USAF's entire inventory of over 100 MQ-1 Predator drones. Several years ago, an Air Force general told me that all those hundreds of MQ-1 Predators and MQ-9 Reapers bought for the campaigns in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere, would be "irrelevant" against Russian and China. They simply couldn't survive against their air defenses. At the time, I had two thoughts. First, they're expendable, so why not find out? Second, I remembered how an old F-4 Phantom II pilot told me during the Bosnian War in 1995 that downing a Predator wouldn't be so easy for a fighter pilot over Europe. They're small radar targets, and they're hard to see against a gray sky from a distance. General Atomics (not Dynamics) built 268 MQ-1s for the USAF, and some were lost in service, but 100 were flying as of January 2018, so they're likely in good shape. General Atomics would similarly be the go-to contractor for that effort, and I also predict that the latter company will be happy for the comparable opportunity. Consider how those 20 or so Bayraktars from Turkey have been so lethal against the Russians. Now think about what 100 Predators with Hellfire missiles could do. Again, the Ukrainians already know the general contours of drone-attack operations; they just need to learn the specifics of the Predator.
-
A least a few dozen truck-mounted Harpoon missiles. In another deal that was incomprehensibly delayed for years, but on as of last week, Boeing will be sending 100 truck-mobile launchers and 400 Harpoon missiles to Taiwan. Deliveries, however, will not be complete until 2028, so it's unclear how much could be reprioritized for the current fight. Let's be clear, though: were the full quantity available and in Ukraine today, it could sink that entire Russian Black Sea Fleet. (I'll be writing later about other, near-term ways to sink the entire Russian Black Sea Fleet.) The US Navy has been pivoting for its anti-ship work towards Kongsberg's Naval Strike Missile and Raytheon's SM-6 Standard Missile. Boeing should relish the opportunity to show that the Harpoon is still lethal. And honestly, with ample stocks of surface-launched Harpoons for the US Navy's surface squadrons, how hard is building the trucks? The Argentines did this in a matter of weeks in 1982. Other NATO countries have plenty of truck-mounted coastal defense missiles that they could provide as well.
The long-term phase is design and production of new weapons based on wartime experience. Feedback from the battlefield directly to American weapons designers and manufacturers will be helpful for not just Ukrainians, but the NATO alliance as well. (We'll talk another day about Ukraine joining NATO.) Recall how it was the British Purchasing Commission, looking for fighters for the RAF, that spurred North American Aviation to design the P-51 Mustang in April 1940. It was three and four years later when that fighter showed its greatest value, escorting bombers on daylight raids deep into Germany.
Finally, and critically there's the question of people—people on the American side. As badly as the State and Defense Department have handled this entire equipping and mobilizing business in the past, we should not rely on just whoever is in the chair today. No, it's time to get the band back together. Find the people who made the MRAP program happen, when most of the bureaucracy preferred to preserve existing programs, and charge them with putting this plan into action. In short, ask Paul Mann to take over again. He'll know what to do.
Comments