‘Just in Time’ Defense Modernization: Will the United States Miss the Boat?

by Peter Huessy and Stephen Blank  •  Gatestone Institute • August 9, 2024

Four recent reports call for major new investments in US defense spending, completion of the current nuclear deterrent modernization effort, and also recommend, given the projected rise of military power by America’s enemies, that the US add serious new nuclear capabilities to its deterrence. Pictured: An unarmed Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile launches during an operational test on August 2, 2017, at Vandenberg Air Force Base, California (Image source: U.S. Air Force)

• All four reports called for major new investments in US defense spending, completion of the current nuclear deterrent modernization effort, and also recommended, given the projected rise of military power by America’s enemies, that the US add serious new nuclear capabilities to its deterrence.

• The issue not addressed by all of the reports is: before the improvements in US defense capability are completed, will the US be able to successfully avoid conflicts with the new axis of China, Russia, Iran and North Korea?
• All four studies emphasized that the time was late for US modernization and that the dangers are escalating.
• All of the studies also proposed significant upgrades to the US deterrent capability, including nuclear, conventional, space, cyber and missile defense weaponry, and emphasized with the utmost urgency that modernization was needed now.
• Modernization, unfortunately, is slow. The system has not achieved what then Secretary of Defense James Mattis explained in 2018 was the ability to buy weapons at “the speed of relevance” — a capability that remains dangerously elusive…
• The timetables for the invasion of Ukraine, and the coordinated attacks on Israel, the potential invasions of Taiwan or the Republic of Korea, are in the heads of four dictators, Putin, Xi, Kim and Khamenei. They are not necessarily going to wait for the US to modernize its deterrent strength before striking.
• With US deterrent strategy perceived as weak, there are serious concerns that US military modernization may not be completed in time, but only “outside the time-zone,” as Zelikow notes, meaning after it was needed.
• Without nuclear modernization of our long-range delivery vehicles, as Admiral Charles Richard, the former commander of Strategic Command, has emphasized, the US is out of the nuclear business.
• Where Zelikow gets it right is in his proposals that the US also use its economic strength as a deterrent, particularly against China…. Success cannot be ensured, however, at the expense of de-emphasizing US military power.
• If the US fails to deter its enemies, and they are left to believe that, instead, the United States will deter itself from winning for fear of “escalation,” the ground is set for major new conflicts, especially over the next few years when the United States may be poorly prepared to win.