The benefits of proxy warfare do not need to be demonstrated to the US government of the day. The USA is the master of warfare in which it does not personally participate, not a drop of American blood is shed, yet it is in control, and it profits from the suffering and death of others.
The CNN news portal is now writing about how good it is for the United States to be able to test its weapons live in a place where non-Americans die while "collecting data".
Even if it bleeds, it doesn't hurt us
The costs of Joe Biden's shipments of increasingly large and increasingly crude weapons are slowly becoming unaccountable.
However, it is clear that after the initial caution, the White House has taken a nosedive and is supplying Kiev with more and more of the technology that Putin repeatedly warns of an increased risk of escalation - to which Biden calls bluff again and again, until once in a while it really happens.
The war in Ukraine provides a particularly great opportunity for warfare in suits, from which not only the American arms manufacturers, but also the Pentagon happily sip the sweet froth of profit. The US Ministry of Defense cannot examine the warranty and current applicability of the stocks that have been in storage until now,
he can test newly developed military equipment live without getting his hands dirty for a moment.
It was an absurd moment in the background events of the war, when last April the Pentagon's Defense Logistics Agency, DLA, published a statement in which it appealed to arms manufacturers and trading partners, referring to the service of the war in Ukraine. In its appeal, the Pentagon sought information from manufacturers and developers of all weapons,
"that can be quickly exported, deployed with minimal training, and proven effective on the battlefield."
Fun fact: the companies had to describe the weapon they recommended in a hundred words, then in what area it can be used, whether it is already in production, and if not, how long it will take to start it. Based on this, the Pentagon decides with whom and how it contracts.
The fact that the US government wants to conclude a contract for techniques that have not been sent into production, and in most cases without testing, and then send them to the Ukrainian front without any lead time, means that the Biden government sees Ukraine as a testing area and an opportunity, where, in reality, moreover, you can try out the latest or only existing devices without risking the lives of American soldiers. Of course, the idea is not new, but the openness in the way it is communicated is rather unusual.
CNN has now continued its exposé. In his writing, he states with satisfaction how good the war in Ukraine is for testing American weapons systems, and how much the Pentagon and the triumphant team of American arms manufacturers are profiting from the war taking place at a safe distance from the USA.
Above all, the enthusiastic material flatters the Ukrainians for being able to carve a mortar from a pencil. The home-made solutions - as they write - completely impressed the Pentagon, where the managers and military experts looked with open mouth at the targeting system application developed by the Ukrainians, which turned the phones into a software device capable of determining targets and issuing fire orders - of course, based on the data of American intelligence.
The DIY (do-it-yourself) category of battlefield innovations is neither good nor numerous in military techniques created in the spirit of the poor man's cooking with water. From the depths of the American armchairs, they watch the cheap, yet functional solutions of the Ukrainians, the installation of sophisticated US missiles on the MiG-29s, the grenade-throwing drones, the conversion of broken-down vans into mobile missile launchers, the ingenious combination of depreciated Soviet military technology and their own shipments.
Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, one of the most renowned American research institutes, are overjoyed to be able to study such a safe testing environment for them. "Their innovation is simply amazing," enthused Seth Jones, director of the center's international security program, emphasizing that Ukraine has become a real combat laboratory in the field of cheap but effective solutions.
Safety first. And of course the profit
However, it is much more important for the USA than the Ukrainian solutions to be able to test its own weapons sent to Kiev live, studying how they perform under intensive use and load conditions. In addition to monitoring these, of course, they also collect a huge amount of information about the effectiveness of the weapons deployed by the Russians - the cheap, simple Iranian kamikaze drones have particularly attracted interest, mainly because of their surprisingly effective strikes on Ukrainian infrastructure. The word "laboratory" came up here as well, as an insider told CNN: "Ukraine is the perfect weapons laboratory in every sense of the word, a sharp test ground, since a good part of the techniques have never been used in a war between two industrially developed nations." . (By the way, the sentence is an affirmative answer to the question of whether we are actually talking about a US-Russia war.)
Americans develop or apply new innovative solutions based on feedback and information about their own weapons. To their surprise, for example, the Switchblade drones did not live up to the expectations placed on them on the battlefield, so they can also think further about the concept of the Phoenix Ghosts developed based on them.
The HIMARS systems represent an enormous force in the equipment cavalcade of the Ukrainian army, the targeted, successful strikes of a limited number of missiles confirm the designers, but at the same time - based on the feedback - excessive use causes frequent failures, which means that the US army needs much more emphasis on maintenance options for the weapon to lay
M777 howitzers have been used by the USA until now, but the problem appeared in the same place as in Afghanistan. The barrel of the weapons simply cannot withstand intensive use, so they become unusable without replacement after a certain number of shots, and this negatively affects the whole artillery strategy. According to one US Army operations officer, the US learned the biggest lesson in this area. As he said, the difficult maneuverability and quick amortization time of similar M777 systems call into question the effective use of towed artillery devices in the future war.
Battle of drones
Weapons manufacturers and the American military leadership were also surprised by the effectiveness and prominent role of drones in the war in Ukraine. They were surprised not only by the Ukrainian sufnituning solutions, but also by the effectiveness of the extremely cheap, single-use kamikaze drones used by the Russians.
In the case of the latter, on the one hand, the protection capacities of armored combat vehicles must be re-evaluated, and on the other hand, cost reduction must be studied. If even the penny ($10,000) drones can destroy with such efficiency, then on the one hand, the ever-increasing development system of the multi-million budget, packed with space technology and cost-consuming devices needs to be reinterpreted. Several intelligence and military officials have already stated that the defense industry should focus on cheap, efficient, single-use drones as a priority in the future.
The war has become the USA's biggest playground, where they can use all the tested and as yet untested weapons they want.
Every single target destroyed or missed, every Ukrainian or Russian soldier killed, quenches the United States' hunger for information and sets the course for future weapons development.
All this without a single American soldier sacrificing his life because of the Pentagon's experiments. It is difficult to conclude a more fruitful and successful business. As Democratic representative Jim Himes, a member of the intelligence committee of the House of Representatives, put it: a book could be written just from the experiences that have been gathered so far. And where is the end.
Featured image: magyartudat.com
