Russia Is Building Tomorrow's War Machine

Most of what this article says, including the title, remains just as true with "Russia" replaced by "Ukraine".

https://archive.ph/2026.04.21-124107/https://www.nytimes.com...

There are no advances in warfighting that we can't surpass with just a few tens of thousands of our own casualties to learn from. When a real war comes, the US will eventually get past its military-industrial grift to produce pertinent and winning systems.

I agree with the point you’re making about the misaligned incentives of current prime contractors, and share some of your cynicism.

But I fear a shooting war with a peer adversary could get so horrific so quickly that we wouldn’t have time to respond in the way you say.

It would of course be better to deter conflict in the first place. But as we’ve seen in Ukraine deterrence is not just about having the absolute most high-tech weapons on Day 0, but the ability to sustain production of good enough capabilities over the long haul. And that’s the real harm the current system has created.

Realigning our industrial base to sustain a fight would take too long to happen after a conflict starts, and without it we can’t credibly deter one.