The benefits of war?

"What is our next move to counter drone swarms while we rapidly replenish our missile stockpile? The Navy's HELIOS laser system. It is just finishing field testing and could be deployed fleet wide in the very near future. And how exactly will they work in a true combat scenario? Good question - we might need to wait until the next war to find out. Until then, we will continue to learn as fast as we can." 

A different slant this morning. The 1969 song by Edwin Starr, War - What is it good for, have most of us nodding our head in agreement. War is a scourge. War is expensive. War is deadly. But in the case of the Iranian War, there is also an upside to that conflict. Experience. How do deal with the new global tool of warfare called drone swarms and AI. What our carriers are learning coupled with Aegis destroyers by their sides - is invaluable.

But have we learned enough? Not even close. But what we have learned has been hot lined back to the smart planners in the Pentagon to be assisted by DARPA. But that is what war is. A giant game of chess. Every move needs to be countered. We learn, they learn. Success in battle is being able to stay one step ahead of the other guys. And do date, we have done that very well. 

I worked on the Aegis program starting back in the late 1970's. To me, the more I learned about how this marvel of technology protected the fleet, seemed more like magic. And then in the 1990's I worked with on the Vertical Lauch Systems - (back then) a state-of-the-art weapon system which was hard wired into the Aegis battle system. I was amazed back then, and I am still amazed today. 

But the Aegis weapon system was not made to counter drone swarms. Now we are talking about an entirely new type of warfare. We have known about saturation attacks for years - mostly from missile volleys fired by Soviet Backfire bombers. But back then, that was all high tech and predictable. Drone swarms are not. They can come out of anywhere, from any direction, and overload even the most sophisticated detection system. And to keep taking out a $25k drone with a million-dollar missile is a fool's errand. But we are learning and learning fast.

What is our next move to counter drone swarms while we rapidly replenish our missile stockpile? The Navy's HELIOS laser system. It is just finishing field testing and could be deployed fleet wide in the very near future. And how exactly will they work in a true combat scenario? Good question - we might need to wait until the next war to find out. Until then, we will continue to learn as fast as we can.