America Loses the Next War (Won't Be a Cyber War, It Will Be a DevOps War)

Couple points.

1. This is only true for some part of the Government. There are other parts that move very quickly. There are also external vendors who move very quickly, and can that deliver quickly. It is by policy that these slowdowns happen, and that policy can be undone.

2. While Russia did take 6 months to redo their AA Systems. The US has taken far less time with its software changes, and its assistance of Ukraine as well. HIMARs had software changes to block ATACMS Rockets. The Patriot batteries were reprogrammed for "Hypersonic" missiles. Other systems were programmed with ground attack capabilities. These changes happened in days/weeks.

3. The F-35's Software updates were not for shipping the F-35 quicker solely. They were for capabilities, and reliability. The F-35 is a multi-role fighter and has great capabilities. One of these is to exist as a radar extension of the rest of the US Military. For example, a US Carrier can turn off its radar, and have an uplink to an F-35 utilizing its radar. This is part of the US Combined Ops methodology.

Which brings me to my last, and perhaps most important part. The US Military Doctrine is no longer about large quick manufacturing to overcome an adversary in a war. It is not "manufacturing might makes right" as seen in WW1/WW2/Korea/Vietnam. The US Doctrine is more about ensuring successful surgical strikes. It's about being precise and not losing people in the process.

The US is not planning on just throwing bombs at the problem. We can to an extent, but we aim to be more surgical. Whether this strategy is correct or not, time will tell. But, saying that "the US can't make X fast enough" isn't a real critique. Because that's not our goal anymore, we know about that, we know we could do that. We've moved away from that process of fighting/war. This is why you see far more US Adversaries killed with Hellfire R9Xs or Remotely-Operated Guns. You only see SF Teams, Extraction Teams, Invasion forces, etc in high risk things events like Osama Bin Laden's killing. We're not playing by the older "salt the earth" rules of war anymore.

Time will only tell if this is the right approach.

And here I am, complaining about terraform.