Jen Spindel
Keith Carter
Introduction
Just three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, The Atlantic ran an article declaring “War Will Never Be This Bulky Again.” Phillips Payson O’Brien, a historian of war, argued that Russia’s failure to swiftly capture Ukraine showed the diminishing power of heavy and expensive military power. He claimed that the very nature of combat would change as “tanks, fighter jets, and warships are being pushed into obsolescence.”
For the next seven months, these predictions seemed to hold. Ukraine was able to push back and eventually make gains against a much better-equipped Russian force using more maneuverable, cheaper, and easier to use mid-tier arms. Even now, as the war has trended toward stalemate, Ukraine has used the same weapons to delay Russia’s advance and to strike their strongholds in Ukraine and in Russia. While tanks, fighter jets, and warships will continue to have their place in future conflict, we argue that the war in Ukraine—like the recent conflicts in Nagorno-Karabakh—is demonstrating the increasing importance and wide operational use of mid-tier weapons.
These weapons tend to be highly effective in small unit operations. Mid-tier arms are cheaper, easier to use, easier to produce, and nimbler than the weapons usually associated with major land wars. Among the weapons successfully used in Ukraine are the Javelin, smaller drones, loitering munitions, traditional non-precision guided artillery, and air-defense missiles. This article provides recommendations for future arms acquisition from the types of arms used in Ukraine and Nagorno-Karabakh. We argue that mid-tier weapons can complement larger weapons systems that are typically associated with major war. Moreso than planes, tanks, and other exquisite weaponry, this category of mid-tier arms will become increasingly important for future conflicts. In short, this real-time pivot from heavy arms to nimble, mass produced mid-tier arms will have significant implications for the arms industry, the interstate arms trade, military force design, and future warfare concepts.
The Nature of Mid-Tier Arms
But what counts as “mid-tier” armaments? Weapons systems are generally split into two categories: (1) Major weapons platforms, which includes jets, tanks, and any vehicles with heavy protective armor, naval vessels, etc. and are used to project power; and (2) small or light arms, which are portable individual, or crew served weapons like rifles and machine guns. The mid-tier weapons we are concerned with have features of both major weapons systems and lights arms. They are human portable like small arms but have the capability to destroy main battle tanks, aircraft, and entrenched fighting positions. Included in this category are the Javelin, some variants of mortars and artillery, small drones and loitering munitions, and other mobile, easier to learn, and low-cost arms. Typically, mid-tier arms require minimal logistic support, have significantly shorter training timelines, and are optimized for rapid distribution and decentralized operations.
However, mid-tier arms do have drawbacks. Although they are very maneuverable, their lack of protective armor renders them vulnerable if they can be effectively targeted. Because mid-tier weapons tend to be accessible without training, if they are captured, they can be readily used by the enemy. Yet despite these unique characteristics and their outsized operational effects, these arms get less attention than their larger more prestigious cousins.
The successful use and widespread demand of mid-tier weapons in Ukraine should lead the American defense establishment to rethinking their current practices and prepare for a very different future conflicts.
Current Practices
The US way of war typically demands two features: highly sophisticated weapons platforms paired with a major logistical build up. First, the United States, like most nations, has focused its innovation and advancement on technologically sophisticated arms: fighter jets, stealth capabilities, submarines, tanks, and large unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Though the recent outcomes in Iraq and Afghanistan offer a compelling counterpoint, the implicit assumption is that technology will always give the US military the advantage. Second, the United States and its allies tend to assume they will be able to establish theater logistics from areas of relative sanctuary to support a major logistical buildup. By relying on the US network of overseas bases, the United States has grown accustomed to fighting in limited wars with minimal logistical interference. The United States could establish and maintain a large operational footprint and commanders could mass forces and weapons at will. For years the biggest question facing the US military was how to get its hardware into the fight—especially if that theater is contested. The standard assumption is this: if the United States is able to get its forces to the fight and set the theater with its most sophisticated weapons it will ultimately prevail because the side with the most advanced weapons always wins. The decades-long pairing of massed forces with technologically sophisticated arms means that the United States, like most states, has a preference for the production and procurement of major weapons systems over their production capacity and stockpile of mid-tier arms.
However, the assumptions supporting sophisticated weapons systems and massive logistical buildups are crumbling before our eyes. Most states have a significant gap in their arsenals between major weapons systems and the mid-tier arms—like towed artillery, smaller loitering attack munitions, shoulder fired anti-tank and air defense munitions—that have proven effective in recent proxy wars of great power competition. Among the many lessons being challenged by the war in Ukraine, the existing assumptions about the superiority of sophisticated arms and the role of massed formations are potentially the most disruptive to the US way of war.
The demand for exporting mid-tier weapons to Ukraine means the US defense industrial base is currently underproducing them. United States arsenals (as well as that of its allies and partners) are under-stocked on mid-tier weapons. The demand for these weapons should push the US and allies to reconsider their manufacturing priorities and shift production lines to less traditional suppliers. Partnering with countries including India, South Korea, and potentially even Brazil could expand the production capacity of mid-tier weapons, and help boost the domestic production capabilities of friendly states. The economics of weapons sales also need to be reconsidered. The worst outcome for future conflict would be to continue focusing solely exquisite weapons platforms of near-peer competition, only to find one day the mid-tier weapons needed for the fight are not only absent, but cannot be produced at scale anymore.
Future Practices
The growing demand for mid-tier weapons has a number of implications for the future of conflict, ranging from warfighting to the arms industry to arms sales. States need to think differently about the weapons that matter. These implications include future decisions regarding acquisition, training, arms sales, and the orientation of America’s arms production.
First, regarding acquisitions, states will have to decide between increasing mid-tier arms purchases and pursuing more expensive weapons. What is the right balance, and what are the opportunity costs of different arsenal configurations? When explosives can be attached to a swarm of cheap quadcopters, does it make sense to invest in fewer more sophisticated systems like the MQ-9Reaper? In a world where states generally cannot afford to have every piece of military equipment they want, the effective use of cheaper mid-tier weapons by Azerbaijan in 2020 and by Ukraine currently suggests that rebalancing arsenals away from the expensive big-ticket items is a sound strategy. Given the demonstrated performance of weapons like the Javelin, Stinger, Bayraktar TB2, and others, it is clear that weapons of this type have a significant role to play in future conflict.
Second, if the United States Department of Defense’s acquisitions demand will change, so will the nature of the arms industry. Mid-tier arms, unlike advanced fighter jets or submarines, tend to have lower barriers to production, thus increasing the likelihood that that new arms manufactures can enter the market. This will have wide-ranging effects on what is usually a monopolistic market: states and non-state actors will have more procurement options in the future, and those new mid-tier arms producers will have new opportunities to influence the scope and scale of the arms trade.
The shift towards mid-tier weapons could be particularly important for states like India, who have unsuccessfully been trying to enter the global arms market for decades. For example, rather than focusing their efforts on producing a fighter jet to rival Russian or Chinese offerings, India could focus on competing with Israel or Turkey. States like India may be able to carve out an effective niche as bulk producers of advanced shoulder fired munitions, conventional artillery rounds, smaller drones, and rockets. This would give them a more central role in the inter-state arms trade.
Third, a shift in focus to mid-tier arms will require a shift in training. In addition to continuing to train on the more technical weapons systems, militaries also need to return to basics of small group maneuver, combined arms between satellite and on-the-ground movements, and militaries should empower and incentivize junior officers and NCOs to innovate and experiment with low-cost new technologies.
The fourth implications concerns the arms trade and politics of arms sales. Many states restrict the sale of or have other export control regulations around more advanced arms, like the US prohibition on selling the MQ-9 drone or the F-22 jet. Shoulder fired weapons, smaller drones, loitering attack munitions, and other increasingly lethal weapons by contrast, are not usually subject to such restrictions, which is why Turkey’s Bayraktar TB2 drone has seen widespread use during the war in Ukraine.
If the United States is to adequately prepare for future war, it cannot only focus on sophisticated, advanced weapons systems. It needs to fully appreciate and recognize the ways in which mid-tier arms can challenge larger militaries, and the ways in which US allies can use mid-tier arms in conflict. The sooner the United States appreciates the distinctiveness of mid-tier arms, the more quickly it can address questions about defense acquisition, arms sales, and the orientation of America’s arms production, and the more quickly it can begin training its own and partner forces on use of and defenses against mid-tier arms.
Jennifer Spindel is assistant professor of political science at the University of New Hampshire.
Keith L. Carter is associate dean of the Naval War college at the Naval Postgraduate School.
The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US Air Force, the Naval War College, the US Navy, the Defense Department, or the US government.