By Matt Paul, Co-Author "Damn Fine Soldiers" 

The images coming out of Ukraine and the Middle East should unsettle anyone responsible for building the future force. A $1,000 first-person-view drone slams into a multi-million-dollar weapon system, or the opposite happens. Commercial quadcopters modified in garages and field workshops can hunt artillery, logistics convoys, and command posts. Iranian-backed groups launch swarms of inexpensive systems that force the U.S. and its partners to respond with interceptors that cost orders of magnitude more. This is a shift in the economics of war.

Policymakers and decision-makers should not consider ongoing events a sideshow.

For decades, the U.S. has optimized for a model of warfare built on a small number of exquisite systems that were highly survivable, technologically advanced, and enormously expensive. That model made sense in a world defined by nuclear deterrence, precision strike, and uncontested logistics. It makes less sense on a battlefield where mass, iteration, and cost imposition increasingly determine outcomes.

The U.S. is still building for a world of scarcity while its adversaries are fighting with abundance. The truth is uncomfortable. In a sense, the Ukrainians and Iranians are Moneyballing warfare, because they must. They don’t need to hit home runs to win, they just need to get enough of their players on base. It is a different paradigm that leaves the United States with two strategic options moving forward: 1) Win fast and decisively with overwhelming force and technological superiority, or, 2) Play the same game as our adversary. If the U.S. tries to do both, it might suboptimize one or the other. It must find the right framework to achieve the right balance.

Frederick the Great believed in brief wars to achieve limited political objectives; he avoided the pitfalls of long wars that depleted a nation’s resources and population. Instead, he combined a highly-trained professional force with the latest technology to achieve quick, decisive outcomes.

Sometimes short wars are not an option. In World War II, the U.S. won by building enough systems, not by building the most advanced systems. The Sherman tank was inferior, in many respects, to the German Tiger. It was also easier to produce, easier to maintain, and available in overwhelming numbers. Liberty ships were deliberately simple, rapidly constructed vessels designed to be replaced as needed. They were not engineering marvels. The American advantage was scale, not perfection. Scale combined with less shiny attributes such as training, readiness, system reliability, sound strategy, and popular support helped win the war.

No single technology, aside from nuclear weapons, will win the next major war. Some would argue that when going nuclear, nobody wins in the end. The Cold War did shift the calculus. Nuclear weapons and long-range precision strike capabilities elevated lethality and survivability above all else. Systems had to work the first time and survive long enough to matter. The result was a generation of exquisite platforms including nuclear submarines, stealth aircraft, and advanced missile systems. It raised the bar for acquisition programs big and small; cost became secondary to capability and quantity gave way to quality. The numbers don’t lie—in 1988, the

U.S. spent $60B more on R&D than it did in 1948 (adjusted for inflation). Nearly every

National Security Strategy (NSS) since World War II stated technological superiority as a goal and national imperative. The 2025 NSS mentions “Technology” 27 times.

In March 2003, during the invasion of Iraq, U.S. forces demonstrated a different model—one that combined quality with operational tempo and adaptability.

My unit, the 3rd Infantry Division, did not possess all the latest technology at scale. But we spent 18 months training relentlessly in the swamps at Fort Stewart and the unforgiving desert conditions at the National Training Center. We had great leaders and we had a sound operational “shock and awe” plan to remove the Iraqi regime. It worked.

As the war transitioned from rapid maneuver to insurgency, unconventional tactics like IEDs exposed vulnerabilities in vehicles and equipment. The response was urgency not elegance. The MRAP program fielded vehicles at unprecedented speed. They were far from perfect but they were “good enough,” and they saved lives. Absent the SECDEF’s personal intervention to slay the bureaucracy, MRAP would never have hit the field in time to make a difference.

Pockets of success during this period, like MRAP, revealed something important about operational necessity. When in conflict, with lives at risk, and with leader emphasis at the highest levels, the U.S. system can prioritize speed, accept imperfection, and deliver at scale. MRAP contributed to a winning strategy to complete transition and redeploy U.S. forces from Iraq—this happened, and it worked. However, spending $3T in exchange for the strategic gains earned in Iraq and the Middle East is debatable. Over 4,000 servicemember deaths and countless wounded yielded a heavy toll, irreplaceable and priceless.

Today’s battlefield is defined by a different logic. It rewards systems that are adaptable and replaceable.

In Ukraine, units iterate drone designs in weeks, sometimes days. Software updates change tactics overnight. Loss is not a failure condition. Rather, it is the plan or an assumption. Systems that are designed to find-fix-finish the enemy are actually intended to be consumed in combat.

It appears that Iran and its proxies have internalized this model. They leverage low-cost systems to impose disproportionate costs on more advanced militaries. A swarm of inexpensive drones can force a defender to expend scarce, high-end interceptors. The goal is not to win tactically in every engagement. It is to shift the cost curve and starve the other side over time. The aim is to dominate the economic exchange ratio over sustained periods—moneyballing their way to victory.

This is the essence of disposable warfare. Winning is achieved not through hardening alone, but through redundancy, scale, and rapid replacement. Again, the Iranians or the Ukrainians do not need to win tactically to win strategically.

The U.S. has not fully adapted to this shift. It continues to invest heavily in systems that are increasingly vulnerable to cost-imposition strategies. A platform that cannot be easily replaced can become a liability, no matter how advanced it is.

History offers a bit of caution about fighting wars on the cheap. For example, World War I aircraft with inadequate survivability suffered unsustainable losses. Overcorrecting toward cheapness can be as dangerous as overinvesting in perfection. It would be a mistake to declare the end of exquisite systems. Some missions still demand them.

Air superiority is still a prerequisite for many forms of power projection; it requires aircraft that can survive and dominate against peer adversaries. The nuclear triad depends on survivability and reliability. Ballistic missile submarines must remain undetected for decades. Strategic intelligence platforms must operate in contested environments where failure carries national-level consequences.

These systems share common characteristics. The cost of failure is catastrophic. Redundancy is limited or impractical. Their effects are strategic, not merely tactical. In these cases, building anything less than the most survivable and reliable system available would be irresponsible.

Exquisite systems by themselves are not the problem. For decades, I navigated the myriad decision-support systems guiding acquisition programs and have come to learn that often nobody asks the right questions or analyzes the alternatives (AoA). I led hundreds of programs, and only ever did one full AoA because there was rarely an appetite to take the time to study the problem before investing in a solution. Rushing to failure becomes the risk. Today, AI has potential to substantially compress analytical timelines. If an AoA revealed that the U.S. military could defeat an emerging threat with a medieval catapult, why should it invest in a “next generation” technology? We need to ask ourselves, “Can we scale this next generation technology?” We need to ask ourselves whether it will survive on the next battlefield.

From my vantage point, almost every program trends toward the same outcome. The government bureaucracy, industry’s special interests, and Congress tend to create a gravitational pull toward more requirements, stakeholders, risk aversion, and ultimately, more cost. It is a product of incentives. It is not by accident or happenstance. Many of these pull factors stem from American values and its culture. America wants its servicemembers to go into battle “with the very best” capabilities with cutting-edge technology. But we really need to redefine what “best” means and we should specify the whole “best for what” proposition. Industry wants to make money, and the military-industrial complex has influence everywhere.

In large bureaucracies, failure is punished far more consistently than success is rewarded. A program manager who delivers a “good enough” solution quickly risks criticism if anything goes wrong. A program manager who accepts more requirements, increases oversight, and delays

delivery can point to process as protection. Over time, the system learns to favor compliance over outcomes.

The result is often predictable. Systems are over-engineered. Requirements expand beyond what is necessary. Timelines stretch and costs grow out of control. What might have been a disposable capability becomes an exquisite one by default. Deliberately “lightweight” systems grow fatter and fatter as they get older and older.

This dynamic is reinforced by the sheer number of stakeholders involved. Each brings legitimate concerns such as safety, interoperability, security, and reliability. But collectively, they create a bloated system in which no one is empowered to say “this is good enough.” Every voice can add requirements, but few can remove them.

This is an institutional problem, and it has little to do with technology. Large systems often preach innovation while rewarding compliance, creating an environment where speed is demanded but structurally impossible to achieve. In DOT&E’s 2025 report to Congress, it deemed only 23% of the systems on its oversight list to be “Operationally Suitable”. No program manager wants to be in the opposite 77% side of the equation. Consequently, it means that programs spend countless hours and resources toward building for perfection to earn that “A+” grade.

The requirements, money, and acquisition processes tend to favor the tactical level of warfare, not the strategic. To be sure, there are certain exceptions like the Aircraft Carrier and Nuclear missiles. But, for the most part, we architect and resource new weapon systems to thrive in a single tactical engagement. Tank verses Tank, Plane verses Plane. We almost never ask ourselves this key question, “How will this weapon system win the next War?” We must think, plan, and resource strategically.

The money system, called “Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution” (PPBE) is designed for predictability. It rewards programs that can define requirements years in advance, estimate costs with precision, and execute against stable plans. This structure aligns well with large, complex systems that take decades to develop. It aligns poorly with technologies that evolve in months. Telling executive or legislative leaders and oversight gatekeepers “I don’t know how much it will cost in the future” is often a non-starter.

Disposable systems—by definition—require rapid iteration. They benefit from flexible funding, short development cycles, and the ability to pivot as conditions change. PPBE offers little of that. Funding is locked in years ahead. Reprogramming is difficult and uncertainty is penalized.

As a result, low-cost, high-iteration capabilities are often funded as side efforts, while major programs absorb the bulk of resources. The system does not intentionally choose exquisite over cheap. Rather, it defaults to it.

A better framework for American defense planning begins with a sober admission that the U.S. is still preparing for a kind of war that no longer exists. Our acquisition system is still optimized for certainty, exquisite performance, and bureaucratic defensibility. It is suboptimized for the volatility, attrition, and tempo shaping modern conflict. The answer is neither to abandon

high-end systems, nor to simply flood the field with cheap drones. It is to align means with missions and build a force where both approaches coexist by design rather than by accident.

The first step is strategic specificity. Every new capability should begin with a simple question too rarely asked today, “What role does this system play in winning the war we are most likely to fight?” Not “Can it survive a single tactical engagement?” Not “Will it pass a test report?” But “Does it meaningfully shift the cost curve, decision cycle, or strategic balance against a peer competitor?” If the answer demands survivability, long-range sensing, or nuclear deterrence, pursue exquisite systems with discipline and focus. But if the mission is more about winning a single tactical exchange, then the solution should be deliberately inexpensive, rapidly replaceable, and fielded in overwhelming numbers. Analyze the alternatives. AI can help.

Second, we must build parallel acquisition pathways, not a one-size-fits-all bureaucracy. The

U.S. needs a protected lane for high-end, high-stakes programs and a fundamentally different lane for disposable systems. The latter must be unconstrained by the processes that make sense for a submarine but suffocate a quadcopter. They require flexible funding, rapid contracting, continuous iteration, tolerant failure thresholds, and leaders empowered to say “good enough” when the battlefield—not the bureaucracy—demands it.

Third, we need to reframe what “risk” actually means. Today, risk can be defined as programmatic or political. But the real risk is strategic, by entering a conflict and discovering our exquisite platforms cannot be replaced, our formations lack depth, and our adversaries can out-iterate us at every turn. Risk is losing the adaptation race because the side that updates, scales, and deploys faster increasingly wins. Disposable warfare is not about cheapness. It is about tempo, imposing impossible choices on adversaries while retaining freedom of action for ourselves.

Finally, none of this works without a cultural shift. Leaders must reward speed, iteration, and strategic sufficiency, not process compliance or perfectionism masquerading as prudence. We need program managers who feel protected when fielding a 70-percent solution in months instead of a 100-percent solution in years. We need operational commanders who view attrition of unmanned systems as a feature, not a failure. And we need policymakers who understand that the 2030s battlefield will punish systems that are too few, too exquisite, and too slow to replace.

The future force will be defined by the discipline to match each mission to the right investment strategy and by the courage to break the bureaucratic habits that have trapped the U.S. Military in an exquisite-by-default model. A better framework must help the U.S. choose wisely between cheap or exquisite, mass or precision, survivability or disposability. The U.S. still has unmatched industrial capacity, technological talent, and strategic imagination. However, to win the next war, we must redesign our system around the battlefield as it is, not as we wish it to be.

The age of cheap war has arrived. The only question now is whether America will continue building for the last fight or shape a force truly capable of prevailing in the next one.

Matthew C. Paul is an Army officer with a combined 27 years of service in infantry and acquisition assignments, including multiple combat tours in the Middle East. His career as a former infantry commander and current acquisition project manager spans leadership in ground combat and modernization efforts across the Army.

Lieutenant Colonel (Ret) Scott Rutter served over 20 years in the U.S. Army, culminating as a battalion commander during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. He is a former Fox News military analyst and currently works in the medical and defense industries. He is the president of Valor Network Inc (which has no business interests related to the arguments above).

Rutter and Paul are co-authors of Damn Fine Soldiers.