Modern Military Procurement

[edyzmedieval]

In the past years, particularly due to the global security experiencing challenges, a number of countries have ramped up their defence spending, leading to more and more military procurement contracts worldwide. Defence budgets have been boosted, particularly in NATO countries, leading to more spending on all sorts of military equipment, the new star of the town (barracks?) being the drone.

This has led to a number of questions - what should military procurement focus on in these days?

Let's keep in mind that most conflicts today are asymmetrical - they're not conventional. It's not traditional as we know it, especially from our Total War games. A lot of it has also moved into cyberwarfare making this a new challenge for global security and military procurement. What do you procure for cyberwarfare? Encrypted servers? Experienced hackers?

A lot of questions are now being asked and debated, so please dear gentlemen, discuss and share your thoughts.

[Montmorency]

What do you procure for cyberwarfare?

Security training for your office workers.

[rory_20_uk]

First off, it depends on the ability and ambitions of the country involved.

USA / China and perhaps Japan and Russia can if they want be Tier 1 (there is of course an argument that USA is all by itself). Aircraft carriers and blue water fleets along with the rest of the modern things. Proper force projection in the high sea and inland. New weaponry and the will to use it.

Others are so much more limited that they have to start with what they want to achieve, and frankly I think many countries need to have a hard look and make some hard choices - most about accepting the weaponry they have is not cutting edge but frankly a lot cheaper and reliable. For the UK, no more vanity purchases of items that almost break the budget (e.g. carriers without planes).

For example, the UK needs to accept its limitations and probably end up with something close to the USA's Marines - and that's it. Enough of a punch about 5 miles in from the shore and little beyond that. Scrap having more flag officers than flag ships, and an Army that is so small that to engage in a war it would quickly seize up and run out of practically everything. Even have a hard look at whether a blue water fleet is really desirable. And yes, a lot more on cyber warfare since here is an area where all parties can attack with much greater deniability.

[Fisherking]

In the past years, particularly due to the global security experiencing challenges, a number of countries have ramped up their defence spending, leading to more and more military procurement contracts worldwide. Defence budgets have been boosted, particularly in NATO countries, leading to more spending on all sorts of military equipment, the new star of the town (barracks?) being the drone.

This has led to a number of questions - what should military procurement focus on in these days?

Let's keep in mind that most conflicts today are asymmetrical - they're not conventional. It's not traditional as we know it, especially from our Total War games. A lot of it has also moved into cyberwarfare making this a new challenge for global security and military procurement. What do you procure for cyberwarfare? Encrypted servers? Experienced hackers?

A lot of questions are now being asked and debated, so please dear gentlemen, discuss and share your thoughts.

Only those countries trying to maintain a fight with internal rebellion or maintaining an empire need worry about asymmetrical warfare.

If your military is focused on asymmetrical warfare it is focused on repressing and controlling populations. Usually the job of a state’s police force.

Military forces should be trained and armed to combat external threats. This mean equipping a well balanced combined arms force with effective command and control structure and logistical support to meet their needs.

Investing in special operations forces or strategic forces is only necessary if the state plans aggressive actions against others.

If you understand the capabilities of modern cyber warfare you would realise there is not much you can actually do to prevent it. If a military or even a state is reliant on computerised equipment or data it is in trouble.

[Montmorency]

If a military or even a state is reliant on computerised equipment or data it is in trouble.

As far as I am aware all major cyber attacks on industrial or intelligence targets over the past generation have involved on-site security breaches. Some of us put too much emphasis on "spooky action from afar".

[Husar]

Let's keep in mind that most conflicts today are asymmetrical - they're not conventional. It's not traditional as we know it, especially from our Total War games.

Sorry, but I hope you aren't saying that you expected most people here not to know that and then asked for ideas from the same people?

I think the whole asymmetrical warfare thing is just a trend that comes from the developed nations being so intertwined through trade and secured through alliances and nukulers, that they can hardly engage in open warfare. So I wouldn't say the nature of warfare has changed, I'd rather say that one kind of warfare has been on the decline. Asymmetric warfare has been around for a while and open conflict may just as well come back.

As for the internets, I doubt that it is easy to hack into one of these newfangled digital networks that are included in a lot of military gear, I also haven't heard of someone hacking a Mars robot.The proprietary nature probably makes it a lot harder as they may not employ standard technology like your typical web browser and I assume they are not meant for the tank commander to google the type of enemy tank he just spotted.

Of course if they did get hacked, that could have terrible conseuquences, but it's hard to speculate on that and I doubt the military that got hacked would be eager to publicly announce that it got duped and most of its hardware is now useless or significantly restricted in use.

[edyzmedieval]

No no, I know that most people know that this type of warfare is asymmetrical, just reminding it in a way to steer the discussion into that part because military procurement of weapons such as warships is relatively straightforward.

[Montmorency]

Asymmetric warfare has been around for a while and open conflict may just as well come back.

What John Keegan set out with 40 years ago in that well-known work The Face of Battle still holds up:

For very, very few Europeans of my
generation - I was born in 1934 - have learned at first hand that
knowledge of battle which marked the lives of millions of their
fathers and grandfathers. Indeed, apart from the four or five
thousand Frenchmen who, with their German, Spanish and Slav
comrades of the Foreign Legion, survived Dien Bien Phu, and the
slightly larger contingents of Britons who took part in the
campaign in central Korea in 1950-51, I cannot identify any group
of people, under forty, in the Old World, who have been through a
battle as combatants. My use of the words 'battle' and
'combatants' will indicate that I am making some fairly careful
exceptions to this generalization, most obviously in the case of all
those continental Europeans who were children during the
Second World War...
but also in the case of the thousands of British and French soldiers who
carried arms in Africa and South-East Asia during the era of
decolonization... The first group exclude themselves from my generalization
because none of them was old enough to have had combatant
experience of the Second World War; the second because their
experience of soldiering, though often dangerous and sometimes
violent - perhaps very violent if they were French and served in
Algeria - was not an experience in and of battle. For there is a
fundamental difference between the sort of sporadic, small-scale
fighting which is the small change of soldiering and the sort we
characterize as a battle. A battle must obey the dramatic unities of
time, place and action. And although battles in modern wars have
tended to obey the first two of those unities less and less exactly,
becoming increasingly protracted and geographically extensive as
the numbers and means available to commanders have grown, the
action of battle - which is directed towards securing a decision by
and through those means, on the battlefield and within a fairly
strict time-limit - has remained a constant....
I do not think therefore that my Oxford contemporaries of the 1950s,
who had spent their late teens combing the jungles of Johore
or searching the forests on the slopes of Mount Kenya, will bold it
against me if I suggest that, though they have been soldiers and
I have not and though they have seen active service besides,
yet they remain as innocent as I do of the facts of battle.

Of course if they did get hacked, that could have terrible conseuquences, but it's hard to speculate on that and I doubt the military that got hacked would be eager to publicly announce that it got duped and most of its hardware is now useless or significantly restricted in use.

Cybersecurity is just be another front in the very old contest of espionage, and as always will rely heavily on inside agents. The more dangerous element than haxxing soldiers guns or whatever is that it will be open against anyone, in particular civilian industrial control interfaces that may or may not be "hackable" at all in the popular sense but nevertheless will present a target for sabotage with potentially serious consequences on the civic or municipal level. In other words, the activity itself is not really different but the hypothetical disruption for civilian targets will be greater.

[Strike For The South]

Keegan's single volume on WWI is fantastic. I haven't read the faces of battle yet. I do own it though.

[Montmorency]

Keegan's single volume on WWI is fantastic.

Haven't read it, but Keegan has a very bad reputation when it comes to understanding the relevance of Clausewitz to European military thought.

[Strike For The South]

Haven't read it, but Keegan has a very bad reputation when it comes to understanding the relevance of Clausewitz to European military thought.

I haven't read his book (the history of war?) that sparked that bit of historical controversy. I know a German translation combined with a healthy Anglo distrust of all things continental certainly shaded the English language Clausewitz historiography until the recent past. However, as interesting as that may be, I don't think his misinterpretation (perhaps simply a difference of opinion?) of Clausewitz is so egregious that it derails what is an introductory overview of WWI.

of course you may. in which case I need to get to a desktop because phone typing is hard.

[rory_20_uk]

America invaded Afghanistan and Iraq. The latter, the locals tried a conventional fight and suffered one of the most one-sided slaughters since the Europeans were shooting people in Africa armed with spears. In both, America has been suffering attrition losses -as the Ruskies did in Afghanistan and the Americans in Vietnam.

So Russia wanted the Crimea back. They didn't send in the official armed forces. They did everything but. And now they have it. If tanks had rolled, less likely.
Iran wanted to expand their power base. They didn't invade Iraq and Syria. And the same has Saudi Arabia et al. Israel would not have stood by and allowed conventional brigades to trundle around without some action.

Armoured brigades are extremely powerful when there is a clear enemy to fight. And transiently intimidating warlords. But when the other lot don't have the honour / bravery / suicidal tendencies to duke it out they get worn down.

So, you want to control the South China Sea? You'll need a large conventional Navy and Airforce. And a good one - good enough that the other lot take it seriously.