25 Mar 2026
https://aurelien2022.substack.com/p/plans-platforms-and-projectiles

Lede: The longer-term meaning of the Iran war.

...

What is currently going on in the Gulf is therefore a conflict between two
different types of warfare, that we might call Platform Warfare and Projectile
Warfare. At the moment, the latter appears to have advantages in terms of area
denial and precision attacks in well-defended areas.

But obviously such weapons and such a style of warfare have their limitations:
they cannot take and hold ground, for example, and they cannot project power
beyond a certain point. They also require a doctrine and command and control
systems if they are to be used above the tactical level. Nor are they
necessarily the Poor Man's weapon: they can be used by advanced military powers
(Russia is the obvious example) and in any case they also require a degree of
training and technical expertise. However, Projectile Warfare does have a number
of practical advantages, especially for nations whose orientation is essentially
defensive and those who cannot or do not wish to acquire expensive
platforms. Indeed, if its use becomes generalised, nations may increasingly
hesitate before they acquire too many expensive platforms anyway.

It does seem the Iranians have made broadly the right choice, then, in their war
with the US and Israel. The question is whether the same military posture will
help them with what is assumed, from their statements, to be their larger
purpose of dominating the Gulf. I don't think its realistic to try to anticipate
internal political developments in Iran - it's well above my pay grade anyway -
but we can still talk a little bit about capabilities and how they might be
used. The first point to make is that "domination" in this sense does not need
to be assertive and flag-waving, along the US model. That model - primarily for
domestic US consumption - turns out in practice to be the facade we always
thought it was, and the war has revealed US "domination" of the region to be
largely theatrical. Beyond the rhetoric of "Empire," useful to US politicians
and equally useful to critics of the country, lay the reality of a declining
economic and industrial power trying to make up with violent rhetoric for an
increasing lack of solid military capability: a point to which I return.

In practice, it's likely that "domination" will amount essentially to deterring
states in the region from doing things that Tehran doesn't want, without the
need for public threats and bluster. That would include hosting US bases, or
developing too close a relationship with western countries. In turn, the West
would realise that attempting to challenge Iran militarily would be pointless,
and would therefore keep away. This is analogous to Iran's policy in Lebanon
(where of course there were also other regional players) which was based on its
ability, through Hezbollah, to stop the Lebanese political system dead at any
point. A few token assassinations and the odd drone strike would probably convey
the right message to any hesitating Gulf state leadership. And of course the
Straits can be closed at will, at any time. It isn't even necessary to say any
of this out loud, because, in that region as elsewhere, much is not said and
still less is written down, but lots of things are just known. For that reason,
a de facto recognition of Iran's status would probably be enough, particularly
since writing it down would involve a level of political humiliation which
neither the Gulf States nor the US political systems could easily tolerate. I
don't know whether Iran will do this, and what they do precisely will depend on
things that haven't happened yet, but such a policy would be technically
feasible. It would depend to some extent on continued intelligence support from
China and Russia, but both countries are likely to think this is a reasonable
investment, as well as a way of retaining influence in Tehran.

The second point has to do with the design of western equipment. The last decade
of the Cold War saw the West field a new generation of much more complex,
sophisticated and costly conventional weapons, which it was hoped would give
them qualitative superiority over the Warsaw Pact. They were designed for a
short defensive war in Europe, before the point where tactical nuclear weapons
had to be used. Tanks such as the American M 1, the British Challenger 2 and the
French Leclerc were an order of magnitude more capable than their predecessors,
and derivatives, developments and even some of the original hulls are still in
service today, although they have proved completely unsuited to the very
different type of combat in Ukraine. The problem is that, other than fiddling
with the basic designs, there are really no new ideas for the next generation,
and all that can be said is that a successor system will take decades to design
and produce, and cost unbelievable amounts of money.

The same is broadly true in other areas as well. Although the media focus has
been on new weapon systems such as the F-35 (which first flew twenty years ago,
remember), much of the US arsenal is elderly and some is obsolescent. Again,
this is because attempts to replace existing systems with advanced technology
such as the ill-fated Zumwalt-class destroyer, came to grief, and replacements
are still on the distant horizon, and will be fabulously expensive when they do
arrive. In addition, western destroyers and frigates were intended primarily to
counter aircraft and submarine threats, which reflects the circumstances of
their design and construction. Defence against drone swarms and hypersonic
missiles is another issue entirely. Such ships now carry no real protective
armour, and a hit from a sub-munition in a sensitive area could do a lot of
damage.

Not only is some US equipment elderly, and in some cases obsolescent, but even
the newer equipment is being used at high intensity, consuming stocks of spares
and wearing out the platforms. (The expected fatigue life of an aircraft, for
obvious reasons, is based on peacetime usage.) For example, the majority of US
tanker aircraft are KC-135s, a design dating from the early 1950s. The fleet is
slowly being modernised, but the existing older aircraft will have to continue
flying for some while. The strain of constant refuelling missions on old
airframes could mean that many will become unusable quite quickly.

Such programmes will also have to compete for funds with the need to modernise
the increasingly-obsolescent land and sea components of the US strategic nuclear
system. But even infinite amounts of money can only buy what there is to buy,
and what can be produced. Industrial capacity in the US has sharply declined in
recent years, and in shipbuilding; for example, only 1-2 hulls can be produced
every year. But the problem (which is not confined to the US) is in many ways
even more basic. Although there are programmes, designs and studies, it's not
obvious how much of the present generation of post-Cold War equipment is
actually going to be replaced, or indeed whether it can be replaced in any
reasonable timescale at any reasonable cost.

In other words, the platform-centric West may be about to hit a hard limit of
capability. Even in principle, it isn't possible to build platforms that can
counter the sheer numbers, simplicity of manufacture and relatively low cost of
projectile-based defences, or to resist such projectile technologies being used
aggressively. In the short term this is going to benefit Iran, both in defeating
the US and Israel and in its regional ambitions. In the longer term, it is going
to have a massive effect on the strategic balance in the world and, as usual,
nobody is thinking seriously about it.