India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War

[rangerrebew]

India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War
by John Spencer, by Vincent Viola
 
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05.22.2025 at 06:00am
India’s Wake-Up Call: Why US Defense Reform Must Match the Speed of Modern War Image
The United States is in urgent need of fundamental defense reform. Not just adjustments. Not just marginal gains. A full-scale overhaul. The wars of today—and the even more brutal ones looming on the horizon—will not be won by the slow, the bloated, or the bureaucratically constrained. They will be won by those who can think faster, build faster, and fight smarter—and above all, by those who master the physics of lethality required on the modern battlefield. Right now, that’s not us.

The goal of modern war is no longer to prepare for indefinite, grinding campaigns. The objective is clear: wars must be won quickly and decisively with superior military capabilities. That demands a defense ecosystem built not just for speed—but for scale. The United States has fallen into the trap of believing that one magic platform, one exquisite system, can win future wars. It can’t. Winning will require modularity, volume, redundancy, and continuous adaptation—built into a system that is ultimately faster, leaner, and more efficient. That means rapidly identifying battlefield requirements, acquisition, research, iterative development and manufacturing, and deployment across an industrial base designed to surge—not stall. India just proved what that looks like.

America’s Acquisition Pipeline Is Too Slow for Modern War
The war in Ukraine laid bare a staggering truth: America’s research, development, and deployment cycle is operating on a timeline the battlefield no longer respects. Ukraine’s defense since 2022 has leaned heavily on western systems like Javelins anti-armor system, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and air defense Stinger missiles—but even this modest proxy war pushed U.S. defense production to the brink. The Pentagon had to scramble to restart dormant Stinger lines. Javelin production was capped at peacetime capacity. HIMARS launchers, though effective, were too few, too expensive, and too slow to replenish.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/2025/05/22/indias-wake-up-call-why-us-defense-reform-must-match-the-speed-of-modern-war/

[DefiantMassRINO]

... this is why organizations form "skunkworks" or "incubators" ... to innovate without all those pesky bureaucrats slowing things down.

[MeganC]

Ukraine’s defense since 2022 has leaned heavily on western systems like Javelins anti-armor system, High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), and air defense Stinger missiles—but even this modest proxy war pushed U.S. defense production to the brink.

My problem with this assertion is that it fails to mention that so far every single weapon delivered to Ukraine by the US was either mothballed in storage or slated for disposal.

The replacements for these weapons were already paid for and supposedly in production.

I believe the above fiction to be scaremongering to support more funding for weapons we've already paid for.