What’s Next In War: US military weapons, gear and tech in 2022
Autonomous drones, laser weapons, and goggles that can see through vehicles, oh my.
BY PAUL SZOLDRA | PUBLISHED JAN 24, 2022 8:43 AM
Predictions about what’s going to be next in war are quite often wrong. Despite official reports often including authoritative statements that the United States and its allies face a “diverse array of threats” playing out amid global disruption, military leaders have a long track record of being “100% right 0% of the time” about where they may end up in combat next.
“I think, as we look toward the future, I have been a horrible prophet,” said future defense secretary Jim Mattis, then a four-star general commanding U.S. Central Command in testimony to the Senate in 2011. “I have never fought anywhere I expected to in all my years.”
Indeed, as a one-star general, Mattis led the 1st Marine Division into Iraq in 2003 with unarmored Humvees and armored vehicles designed to fight the Soviets. Troops continued to lack the protection of armor for years until the Pentagon finally fielded mine-resistant vehicles in 2007. Such a mismatch between what military and political leaders thought would happen and reality would lead to a costly, disastrous fight in Mesopotamia and elsewhere against a stubborn insurgency that left a generation of service members emotionally and physically scarred by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and other low-tech responses to U.S. military might. Troops on the front line, who depend on their leaders to outfit and prepare them for combat, pay for this mismatch in blood.
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