We know the virtues of good defense in sports like baseball or football. What about military defense? Obviously crucial as well, especially today.
One problem, however, and it’s seen historically: over-reliance on either defense OR offense. Which also feeds into a related problem — i.e., the propensity of war ministers, generals and other military planners essentially to fight one war behind.
For instance: the French learned much from Prussian offensive verve in its short, victorious wars of 1864-70 (and all wars would henceforth stay short, right?). So: in a surprisingly PROLONGED WW I, France’s top brass (pulling along the Brits, too) hatched one thrust after another into impregnable German trench lines, losing myriad young soldiers in the process, and with little to no gain.
New lessons belatedly gleaned from these ill-conceived and costly offensive operations made defensive readiness the democracies’ next dogma post-WW I and through the ‘30s; just as Herr Hitler and his Rommels and Guderians were going in the opposite direction of blitzkrieg, i.e., lightning-fast, and emphatically offensive, war!
The French meanwhile poured billions into a fortified Maginot Line; and when WW II began, their supine chief of staff, Gamelin, put his best troops along with British ones on the Belgian border, because during the previous conflict, the Germans had come through neutral Belgium and into France. Between the Maginot defensive installations and those troops up in the Belgian sector was the poorly-defended Ardennes Forest.
The Nazis wouldn’t be able to bring their panzer divisions through all those trees, right? So ran Gamelin’s thinking. However, in “Operation Scythe Cut,” and supported by marauding aircraft above, that’s exactly what the Germans did. They then crossed the Meuse River, and with a huge array of tanks winging along, now had their way with the flat land of northern France, finally pinning the bulk of French and Brit troops up against the Channel. The latter took off on boats, while France was left to fall, and Sir Winston was soon rallying his own country to parry an inevitable German pummeling of the island nation.
In other words (as in sports): defense is fine, but so, too, is offense? No question. Plus, it’s vital for military planners not simply to fight the last war over again! Because smart enemies don’t stand pat; they adapt, just as good quarterbacks do on football fields.
These observations came to me while reading with admiration, astonishment, and some confusion, too, about today’s Thaad missile-defense systems, which helped keep Israeli citizens safe during their recent set-to with Iran. But these are gizmos which Lockheed Martin can’t make fast enough, given their cost, and highly complex, sophisticated nature (with over 40 “interceptors” amidst a half-dozen launchers for each one).
As of late July ‘25, the U.S. had only seven Thaads ready for use around the world, which are plainly not enough. Meanwhile, what of the offensive weapons being faced?
Cheaper missiles, and MUCH cheaper drones, and plenty! With yes, Israel and its foes, but even more, Ukraine as proverbial canaries in the coal mine here. Guinea pigs, if you will, graceless as that sounds.
Now then, despite my bout of preaching above, please don’t ask me to act the all-knowing sage in this field, though we can be sure of one thing: that Lockheed Martin will keep being pressed for more production of these vital Thaads. Meanwhile, enemies around the world won’t stop with their own upgrades of offensive tech materiel (given how much obsessive care starving countries like North Korea, terrorist entities in the Mideast, and not least, powers like China put into that endeavor).
Adapt, adapt, adapt, both defensively AND offensively? That seems to be the way to go, and about all I can aver here. But really, how on earth can this rank amateur lecture top U.S. military brass?
But I still hope such planners will be supremely adaptive and flexible, too, and again, via both defense and offense, if not always in equal measure; and getting approximately in sync (“approximately” being the key word) with today’s fast-evolving nature of technological warfare.
Which is indeed well over the head of this particular observer, one who could barely pass shop class! (Thanks anyway for reading …)