My problem in general with wonder weapons is that warfare is always an evolutionary arms race, to think otherwise is to ignore, suppress or deny that opponents cannot or will not develop responses. Offense may reign for a while, then defense becomes stronger, then the advantage may switch to offense again, and so on. Nothing maitains the advantage forever. To cultivate faith in something as the end all be all is to invite disaster.

Virtually unknown to the public, just prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, a very expensive, large scale wargame was conducted simulating an enemy country like you would expect to be Iraq or other more minor threat. They brought in a retired USMC 3 Star to play the OPFOR. The result was that Donald Rumsfeld's commanders and the US Navy were virtually sunk by a combination of ingenuity and lower tech means, suicide tactics, swarms of cheap, disposable Silkworm class anti-ship missiles to overwhelm defenses, primitive communications such as message carriers rather than radio nets that can be detected and so on. Losses to the US represented scores of ships and thousands of sailors. It was quite an embarrassment, but since the US had spent so much money on the wargame to see it through to its entirety, they simply discarded the results and reset the games and took away the OPFOR commander's ability to wage the war he wanted to.

This is the kind of enemy you might face say, against North Korea or China. These navies will not win in a direct confrontation with the US Navy, and they aren't going to try to. Rather, they aim to create as much havoc as possible using more unorthodox means, or by attempting to exploit what they think advantages they do have.




No one gets out of here alive.