Reddit mentions of Military Power: Explaining Victory and Defeat in Modern Battle

Sounds like Stephen Biddle's "Military Power" would be up your alley. I'm halfway through my Mlitt in security studies and read this a couple months ago. I found it super interesting.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Military-Power-Explaining-Victory-Defeat/dp/0691128022

> So few fighters simply can't cover the air space of a Russia or China. Thousands of fighters would be needed, and $100M a pop just won't cut it.

The PLA have 1300 combat aircraft of which only 600 are modern and Russia has 800. The USAF has 2800 modern combat aircraft of which almost half are Carrier borne, there's no doubt who can attain Air Superiority.

Also drones don't do Air to Air. You need a much larger more capable platform for such a thing.

> Nothing is a magic bullet, even the F-35. I'd rather have a spread of aircraft to fill specific roles than putting all of my eggs into one basket and hope it does everything. My fear is that if we do get into a shooting war, some unknown design flaw or countermeasure to the F-35 will be discovered and we'll be without a modern fighter.

Do you listen to yourself? pray do to tell what could possibly make an entire fleet of aircraft worthless? That's completely absurd beyond reasoning. Are you afraid of the sky falling too?

> The F-35 has avionics too. Drones need human operators too. I call this a wash.

Exactly, drones are not a cost improvement at the capability level of manned fighters.

> We really don't know who we'll be fighting next, when, or under what circumstances. Will our enemy be terrorists with little more than armored trucks? North Korea with laughably old aircraft and tanks? Or a real threat, like a modernized China or Russia? We don't know. But I can assure you that warfare has changed greatly since the last major great power war: WWII.

Not really. It's actually incredibly predictable.

You should read the book, there's a lot you get wrong and could learn from.

> the home front can't stomach tens of thousands of human losses.

If drones are replacing manned aircraft then it's not going to be ten's of thousands, there are currently 2,800 combat aircraft in inventory so if every single one of them died then that's only 3,000 men.

Drones can operate along side manned aircraft and provide low level surveillance at the troop level(which they do a fantastic job of) but they simply don't have the avionics or speed or payload to cover respectable distances or engage aerial targets with a chance of defeating them or taking on IADSs. If you give them that capability then all of a sudden they cost more then 100m each.

Military Power by Stephen Biddle is a great read. He argues that modern infantry combat, what he terms the "modern system" has its origins on the Western Front of World War I and has basically stayed relevant since then. He uses three case studies- the St. Michael Offensive of 1918, Operation Goodwood in 1944, and Desert Storm- to illustrate how the modern system is employed both at the tactical and strategic levels as well as how poor implementation can lead to defeat. He even goes into detail about the statistical analysis he used to prove his theory (but you can skip that chapter if you want to).