The Offense Industrial Complex
With small victories comes Pentagonal Aggrandizement
With our limited victory over Iran’s theocracy comes an immediate call for expansionism of our limited but effective capabilities. Robert Peters, a research fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Center for National Defense of the Heritage Foundation now wants the U.S. to go all in on non-missile capacity for offensive warfare. In his opinion piece in the July 1, 2025 issue of The Epoch Times he argues strenuously for enlarging our fleet of B-21 Raider bombers to the initial proposed fleet of 100 from its present fiscally restrained level of an unknown number of aircraft. Given the physical limitations of the present production facility, he additionally demands a second factory to speed production of this highly advanced aircraft and provide important duplicity in its sourcing for national security. The basis for this production target and immediate need is the Air Force’s stated “need”. He does not provide that service’s justification for this need in the current or anticipated doctrine of thermonuclear warfare. His sole reason for promoting this extraordinary expense is deterrence of the threat from China. “Deterrence cannot be achieved without credible, survivable, and sufficient long-range conventional strike capability.” Note the emphasis on “conventional strike capability”. Our strategic long range bombers have, in Iran, demonstrated extraordinary capability in precision delivery of conventional weapons designed for a very limited and devastating destructive capacity. But that is an admittedly beneficial side effect of their main designed mission.
Robert Peters’ plea for emergent ramping up of B-21 Raider production and building a second production facility is a classic example of artificial demand in the face of absent supply and undefined need. He fails to specify what weapons would be used by this admittedly exceptional delivery system other than bunker busters, against what adversaries other than Iranian facilities buried under mountains, countering what defenses other than those already eliminated by the Israeli Air Force. Are our new fleet of Raiders really supposed to attack mainland China with conventional weapons during a future defense of Taiwan, or perhaps Russia after their follow-up to Ukraine in the Baltics? We may need conventional bunker busters again as Iran rebuilds its nuclear program, but this time around only tactical nuclear devices may be sufficient for more deeply protected and hardened facilities after their recent experience. A large Raider fleet is not the best solution to current limited conflicts as “carpet bombing” large areas with Peter’s desired conventional weapons would not be effective against his presumed adversary, mainland China. Precision placement of conventional weapons will be insufficient over the larger landscapes of China or Russia. And that doctrine won’t work well if the adversary chooses geographic diffusion of their logistics and command structures. The Russians certainly learned this lesson with the recent Ukrainian drone attack. Our B-21 Raiders were intended to restore a relative invincibility of the air arm of our nuclear triad, composed of undetectable nuclear submarines, swarms of nuclear ICBMs (which some authorities deem sufficient unto themselves), and now stealth nuclear bombers. Most non-nuclear local or regional conflicts are best handled with less expensive, easier to maintain and produce, older generation bombers with suppression of air defenses by our 3rd and 4th generation fighters.
Delivering the Raider delivery system to its worldwide targets is another problem. The KC 46A Pegasus tanker has repeatedly proven inadequate under wargame and routine mission conditions. Many bugs remain to be solved. The KC 135 Stratotanker is still the mainstay of mission refueling support, if long in the tooth. Even with our very large Stratotanker force it is not clear that we would be able to sustain a fleet of 100 world-circling Raiders and their required locally-based attendant fighter escorts in a recurrent and persistent wartime mission environment. Protecting such a large fleet in action is also problematic, as we are short, as the author notes, on Y-22s, and the vaunted F-35 is a logistical and fiscal disaster. F-35s are only combat ready about 30-50% of the time, and require huge logistical support facilities at/near a combat theater to maintain even that sorry readiness.
The final supply problem totally ignored by the author is that of funding. He envisions almost a Trillion dollars of private wealth confiscation just for building the second production facility, putting aside the three-quarter of a Billion dollars currently (rapidly rising to an even billion soon) for each new Raider. The benefits of this effort, the author admits, is mainly redistribution of wealth to a huge new cadre of workers and engineers not clearly currently available.
None of this is meant to devalue our existing Raider fleet or its highly specialized utility. What we are learning from current conflicts is the need to return to and enhance the creation and use of simpler, inexpensive, easily mass-produced weapons systems and counter measures. After all, even on the human battlefield, highly sophisticated precision weaponry can be overcome by volume of fire.
Maintain and enhance our current Raider fleet. Abandon further production of the F-35 in favor of restoring the original target fleet of Y-22s, even as the F-15EX is further enhanced. Remember the lessons we have learned in continuing to upgrade, use, and fly the B-52.