30 June 2025

Bivens Narrowed Again

The U.S. Supreme Court's conservative majority isn't troubled at all by denying remedies to violations of the U.S. Constitution.

Bivens is a U.S. Supreme Court case that allowed suits for money damages against federal officials who violated selected constitutional rights, something Congress has failed to do by statute.

The order list [from today] include a unanimous per curiam opinion in Goldey v. Fields, No. 24–809 (S. Ct. June 30, 2024) (also available here), which involves an effort by a federal prisoner to sue federal prison officials for an Eighth Amendment violation alleging use of excessive force. The Court rules a Bivens suit is not available in a three-page opinion that concludes this way:
This case arises in a new context, and “special factors” counsel against recognizing an implied Bivens cause of action for Eighth Amendment excessive-force violations. To begin with, Congress has actively legislated in the area of prisoner litigation but has not enacted a statutory cause of action for money damages. See Ziglar, 582 U. S., at 148– 149. In addition, extending Bivens to allow an Eighth Amendment claim for excessive force could have negative systemic consequences for prison officials and the “inordinately difficult undertaking” of running a prison. Turner v. Safley, 482 U.S. 78, 84–85 (1987). Moreover, “an alternative remedial structure” already exists for aggrieved federal prisoners. Ziglar, 582 U.S., at 137; see Correctional Services Corp. v. Malesko, 534 U. S. 61, 74 (2001). The existence of such alternative remedial procedures counsels against allowing Bivens suits even if such “procedures are ‘not as effective as an individual damages remedy.’” Egbert, 596 U.S., at 498.

For the past 45 years, this Court has consistently declined to extend Bivens to new contexts. See Egbert, 596 U.S., at 490–491. We do the same here.

Congress should extend 42 U.S.C. § 1983 to provide the same relief to violations of rights under the U.S. Constitution or federal law to violations committed under color of federal law. 

The claim that this would make it inordinately difficult to run federal prisons is at odds with the fact that an identical legal rule applies to all state and local prisons and jails, which house the lion's share of federal inmates (and a much larger share of violent criminals).

The Morality Of Legality

Resistance from civil servants has been less effective at mitigating illegal conduct from Trump than one might hope, because the U.S. Supreme Court is enamored of a novel "unitary executive theory" with no historical basis, and because Trump has used his illegal attempts to fire independent agency leaders, to fire civil servants without a legal basis, to interfere with federal government unions, and to appoint incompetent people chosen for loyalty, in order to undermine this form of resistance to his illegal acts.
The Morality of Legality holds that it is a moral wrong, and essentially taboo, for those who work in the executive branch to act unlawfully, even if high-level officials much want to act unlawfully, even if circumstances clearly call for the action in question, and even if there is a strong public demand for the unlawful action. The Morality of Legality is less innocuous and more directive than it might seem. It is a red light; it is a conversation-stopper; it empowers law and lawyers. Those who are committed to it will not engage in unlawful action even if no court will be available to strike the action down, and even if there would be significant gains, including political gains, from undertaking the action. 
The Morality of Legality distinguishes nonauthoritarian from authoritarian systems, and it is a fundamental (and puzzlingly unrecognized) feature of the rule of law. In U.S. constitutional law, it can be taken to be codified in the Take Care Clause. Those who are committed to the Morality of Legality are willing to face "litigation risk" and to seek changes in existing law, even if those efforts are more likely than not to fail. The Morality of Legality is often felt as a matter of duty, rather than a product of some consequentialist calculation; but it is probably best justified on rule consequentialist grounds. 
By itself, the Morality of Legality is (mostly) agnostic on the allocation of interpretive authority as between the executive branch and the judiciary. Under emergency circumstances, very narrowly defined, the Morality of Legality might have to yield. The Morality of Legality might also be followed in other places, including of course legislatures and courts, and also private institutions.
Cass R. Sunstein, The Morality of Legality, SSRN (2025).

The World's Most Expensive Bridge Toll

It is quite remarkable that a bridge can support such high traffic levels with such a high toll, which implies that even with the high toll, it is superior to the alternatives in the eyes of people who use it.

A bridge connects Copenhagen [in Denmark] and Malmo [in Sweden], and now the price is higher:
…the basic price for a one-way car journey across the bridge has been jacked up to 510 Danish kroner, or £58. For the largest vans, it is the equivalent of £218.

Research by Sydsvenskan, a regional newspaper in southern Sweden, suggests this is by far the most expensive bridge toll on the planet, costing about twice as much as its nearest rivals in Japan and Canada…

Despite the vehicle toll, the total number of people crossing the Oresund by car, train or ferry hit a record 38 million last year, equivalent to about 105,000 trips a day. A one-way railway journey between central Copenhagen and Malmo typically costs only £13.

Via Marginal Revolution

Will Democracy Make It?

We still have a year and a half to go before midterm elections are planned. 

Courts have thwarted or slowed down many, but not all of Trump's attempts to ignore the law and rule as a dictator. 

The U.S. Senate in considering his budget, has removed some of its worst provisions as beyond the scope of a budget bill, but is still on track to pass its main outlines which cuts about $1.3 trillion of spending for the poor to pay for $1.3 trillion in tax cuts for those making more than $500,000.

The financial markets convinced Trump to back down from his absurd tariffs (mostly) and to back off from trying to fire the chief of the Federal Reserve to undermine its independence.

State and local governments are doing their best to push back and compensate for the federal government's failings.

There has already been irrevocable damage to scientific and medical research, to higher education plans (especially for international students), to the attractiveness of the U.S. as a tourist or international student destination, to the reputation and credibility of the U.S. abroad, to U.S. soft power, to the rule of law with the January 6 traitors and dangerous criminals pardoned and with Trump granted absurd legal immunities, to human rights at home and abroad, to large numbers of people who are dying due to cuts in U.S. foreign aid (which were illegal since Congress had made the appropriations), to U.S. public health, to international trade relationships upended by the tariffs, and it will only get worse.

The U.S. Supreme Court has undermined lower courts trying to keep Trump's lawlessness in check and dealt a serious blow to the rights of transgender people, although it has not delivered wins to him across the board.

There have been protests, some moderately big, which have caught public attention but haven't done that much to swap politics in Washington D.C. and red states. But both abroad and in domestic vacancy elections and state and local elections, it appears that there has been a strong anti-Trump swing that is likely to manifest if we manage to hold another mid-term election next year.

We aren't out of the woods yet. Democrats probably aren't responding as effectively as they could. The dire state of things isn't penetrating to the public consciousness fast enough although it is trickling in.

Ukraine's Air Defenses Are 89% Effective

Russia fired a total of 537 aerial weapons at Ukraine, including 477 drones and decoys and 60 missiles, Ukraine’s air force said. Of these, 249 were shot down and 226 were lost, likely having been electronically jammed.

The onslaught was “the most massive airstrike” on the country since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, taking into account both drones and various types of missiles, Yuriy Ihnat, head of communications for Ukraine’s air force, told The Associated Press. The attack targeted several regions, including western Ukraine, far from the front line.

Poland and allied countries scrambled aircraft to ensure the safety of Polish airspace, the country’s air force said.

Three people were killed in each of the drone strikes in the Kherson, Kharkiv and the Dnipropetrovsk regions, according to the three governors.
In the far-western Lviv region, a large fire broke out at an industrial facility in the city of Drohobych following a drone attack that also cut electricity to parts of the city.

Ukraine’s air force said one of its F-16 warplanes supplied by its Western partners crashed after sustaining damage while shooting down air targets. The pilot died.

Russia has recently been improving its drone technology as well as its tactics, striking Ukraine with increasing success.

From here.

Sixty-two out of 537 missiles and drones in the latest Russian air attack on Ukraine weren't intercepted or thwarted by electronic jamming.

The effectiveness of Israel's air defenses, and the effectiveness of air defenses for U.S. surface warships, are in the same ballpark.

29 June 2025

Ghibli v. Disney Villains

In a nutshell, this video makes the case that Disney villains are inherently evil and must be defeated and punished, while Ghibli villains are redeemable and have understandable motives but have suffered and are misunderstood. To a lesser extent DC Comics follows the Disney model and Marvel Comics follows the Ghibli model. The video argues that Ghibli villains are more realistic and creatively interesting, but acknowledges that Disney villains are cathartic, efficient, and satisfying. The video attributes the difference to a Judeo-Christian American culture compared to Japanese values rooted in Shinto religious roots (although much of that is really Confucian).

Honestly, I disagree that Ghibli villains are "more realistic".  Ghibli style villains may be more common, but Disney style villains are out there too. We call them "psychopaths" and some key distinctions in criminal law, like the distinction between 1st degree murder and 2nd degree murder, are attempts to distinguish irredeemable psychopaths from misguided or impulsive or environmentally pressured individuals who are capable of being reformed.

24 June 2025

Observations Related To The Latest Conflict With Iran

In a nutshell, the most recent military conflict involving Iran, Israel, and the U.S. can be summed up as follows:

* Iran is getting close to developing nuclear weapons.

* Iran wants to remove Israel from the face of the Earth and that is why it is developing nuclear weapons.

* Iran has not very long ago launched missile and drone attacks on Israel.

* The Houthis in Yemen, Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank in Israel, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, are all Iranian proxy forces. Iran was deeply involved in facilitating the October 7, 2023 attack on Israel.

* Iran has had periodic military engagements with U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf.

* Israel carried out a major airstrike on Iran, mostly using F-35I stealth fighters with conformal fuel tanks to boost their range allowing them strike and return without aerial refueling, targeting Iran's nuclear program and key individuals in that program. Many of these targets were successfully struck and/or killed. But, one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities is in a very deep bunker in Iran.

* The U.S. used seven B-2 stealth bombers and with two "bunker buster" bombs each, to strike this very deep bunker with Iranian nuclear facilities (although probably only setting it back a few months), and used one of these and other carrier based aircraft to attack two other Iranian bases.

* It isn't clear that the U.S. has non-nuclear strike capabilities sufficient to truly destroy Iran's most secure nuclear program resources in its deepest bunker sufficiently to set its nuclear program back all that far.

* Before attacking Iran, the U.S. threatened it and evacuated personnel and ships from a U.S. naval base in Bahrain, and moved more carrier groups into the region.

* Iran counterattacked Israel and a U.S. military base in Qatar. Interceptor missiles apparently stopped all of the strikes on Qatar, and 80%-90% of the strikes on Israel, although this was not entirely successful and there was Israeli casualties. These defenses may not be sustainable, since Israel is running very low on key missile defense interceptor missiles that are part of its "Iron Dome" anti-missile and anti-drone defenses. But Iran's supply of effect long range missiles and armed drones and strike aircraft that can reach Israel is also not unlimited, and it has no quick source from which it can resupply itself (and Russia does not appear to want to get involved in this fight).

* Iran has been a major supplier of armed drones to Russia for it use in the Ukraine War.

* Iran has regularly interfered with shipping in the Persian Gulf and has a fairly impressive naval made up mostly of submarines and small missile boats, although it is building a drone carrier and has shipping container ballistic missiles as well.

* Many decades of sanctions have caused Iran to develop its own military industrial complex.

* Iran's government is officially under the supervision of a Shi'ite Islamic theocratic supreme leader since the Islamic revolution in 1979. But it has a democratic secular elected government, screened to remove candidates contrary to the regime or contrary to Shi'ite Islam, that has gradually been growing more powerful and more moderate. In part, this is because its economy is at least as dependent upon a diversified mercantile class as it is upon oil and gas exploitation (which is about 20% of its GDP) and agriculture.

* Iran is religiously diverse despite being a theocracy. It is home to many minority religions, that are tolerated, and its people are less religious in their daily lives and more secular leaning, than most countries in the Middle East, North Africa, and many other places in the Islamic world (like Pakistan and Afghanistan). Devout Shi'ite Muslims make up only a plurality of the population (about a third of the population) at most.


* Iran, not having the luxury of abundant oil wealth shared by a small population of citizens with real work done by temporary foreign laborers, like the Arab oil monarchies, has a substantial grass roots movement that wants fewer restrictions on women, more modernity, an identity that embraces its historical Persian roots rather than an exclusively Shi'ite Islamic national identity, more political freedom, and more freedom of speech. This said, there is wide grass roots opposition to and hate of Israel and the United States in Iran. In general, Shi'ite Muslims have been less backwards than Sunni Muslims in the Middle East. Iranians, and in particular, Iranian women, are also better educated than many Middle Eastern countries.

* But for its attacks and proxy attacks on Israel, its direct and indirect attacks on Persian Gulf and Red Sea commerce, its nuclear program, its military support for Russia, the sensible thing to do would be to allow Iran to percolate with its own internal conflicts and political developments without foreign interference. This would probably have led to considerable moderation and maybe even disestablishmentarianism, either politically or through a counterrevolution, sometime in the next five to twenty years. But, its violent foreign policy has made intervention more urgent.

* Israel was basically already at war with Iran and was entirely reasonable in taking action to prevent Iran from obtaining military capabilities that would be used to obliterate it.

* On the merits, U.S. military support for Israel in its strikes on Iran's nuclear capabilities was not unreasonable.

* The U.S. has, without really intending to do so, defanged Iran's main potential military opponents in Iraq and Afghanistan, through invasions of those countries, freeing up Iran's military resources to take on Israel and to interfere with Persian Gulf trade and to become an arms supplier to Russia.

* Neither the Israeli strikes nor the U.S. strikes appear to have done all that much to degrade Iran's air defenses, its air forces, its drone forces, its long range missile capabilities, its Persian Gulf navy, its anti-ship missiles, or the military industrial complex it uses to supply itself, Russia, the Houthis, Hamas, and Hezbollah. But, if the U.S. and Israel are going to be attacking Iran anyway, those seem like sensible additional targets.

* A sustained ground invasion of Iran makes no military sense. There is no likely scenario in which the U.S. sends hundreds of thousand of U.S. group troops to Iran, possibly as part of a multi-national coalition like those in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, or needs to new military draft. This a a conflict involving strikes with aircraft, missiles, and drones, and defenses against counterattacks by similar means and at sea, and in terror attacks (most likely not primarily on U.S. soil, and more like the U.S.S. Cole attack by al Qaeda on October 12, 2000 in Yemen, and Shi'ite militia attacks on U.S. forces in Syria and Jordan in the waning days of the Syrian civil war).

* It isn't at all obvious that regime change can be achieved in Iran without a ground invasion, or that killing key political and theocratic leaders in Iran would result in much of a change in Iranian policies. Indeed, attacks by Israel and the U.S. on Iran probably strengthen the regime against these common enemies in the short run. Iran has plenty of adequate potential successors to its current leaders who wouldn't seem much different in their policies towards Israel, the U.S., and maritime commerce.

* A claimed U.S. brokered cease fire hasn't really held at all, for even t twenty-four hours.

* The Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran's nuclear program wouldn't have been necessary if Trump hadn't ended an Obama negotiated deal with Iran related to its nuclear program in 2018.

* Both Israel's leadership and the U.S. leadership have reasons to divert attention from domestic affairs to this conflict. It does have a genuine solid military motive, but the timing may very well be politically motivated.

* It isn't clear that President Trump had the legal authority to strike Iran in support of Israel without Congressional authorization which was not sought or obtained. This strike is not within the scope of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF), or any of the authorizations made in connection with the Iraq War.

* The MAGA right is divided on the desirability of this strike and it isn't clear that Trump could have promptly secured backing from Congress to make the strike if he'd asked it to do so.

* While a military strike directly on Iran from the U.S. no doubt does increase the likelihood of retaliation on the U.S. from Iran, the notion that we should be suspicious of Iranian-Americans, many of whom are medical professionals working in rural America, is very doubtful. There are probably not lots of Iranian "sleeper cells" in the U.S. who want to commit terrorist acts in the U.S.

* Political protests against Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is long standing on the American left, and has legitimate justification, particularly given an Israeli military response in Gaza to the October 7 attacks that, while understandable, particularly because Hamas continues to hold Israeli hostages and refused to surrender, has been overkill. Notably, however, the October 7 attacks had widespread support in Gaza long after the blowback it suffered from them became clear. The U.S. opposition to Israel's treatment of the Palestinians is predominantly not anti-Semitic, and isn't even predominantly anti-Zionist. It is mostly a very general pro-human rights driven movement.

* The Israeli response to October 7 in Gaza has been so completely destroyed that the enclave that it can support only perhaps a third or a half as many people as it had before the attacks (see also here). While there have been tens of thousands of Gazan deaths so far there, the clock is ticking and there will soon be either many hundreds of thousands to millions of Gazan deaths from starvation, lack of water, and illness, or a mass exile of people who are currently in Gaza, which no Islamic countries are volunteering to sponsor.

18 June 2025

Some Military and Paramilitary Technology Ideas

Lifeboat Bombs And Similar Swords To Plough Share Ideas

When a ship goes down in the midst of a naval battle or extreme weather conditions (like a hurricane), it may not be feasible to get a rescue boat or helicopter to the scene to rescue survivors quickly. And, in the event of the sinking of a vessel with lots of passengers, life a ferry, with inadequate life rafts or life rafts that were lost in the event that caused it to sink, getting lift rafts to the scene quickly might be critical because the rescuers don't have enough ships or helicopters to rescue everyone in a timely fashion.

We have lots of technologies in place, however, to deliver large payloads of explosives to very specific places.

What if the explosives were switched out for life rafts?

For example, a HIMARs or M270 multiple rocket launcher could trade an explosive missile for a life boat payload to deliver a life boat as much as 80-100 miles to a fishing boat sized destination that survivors of a sunken vessel with life preservers could swim to.

One could similarly substitute a life raft for the explosive ordinance in a VLS missile found in most U.S. warships with a longer range.

One could similarly retrofit a "smart bomb" normally delivered by a jet fighter, or bomber, or maritime patrol aircraft like the P-3 or P-8 so that it would carry a life raft rather than an explosive payload.

Or, one could put a guided "life raft bomb" on a transport plane or a search and rescue helicopter or a drone.

Fire Fighting Variants

One could do something similar by switching explosive ordinance for fire suppressants, allowing otherwise idle jet fighters and military bombers to be pressed into service to fight wild fires when necessary.

Resupply Variants

Or, one could do something similar with emergency supplies, with the "bomb" or "missile" having a parachute that would deploy close to the surface that could resupply people stuck on a small island or atoll until rescue could arrive, or in someplace where the roads and rail lines are washed out or destroyed by some other natural disaster, or to get urgently needed medical supplies to a destination before less urgent supplies can arrive, or to people on a floating ship whose engines have died, or to resupply a ship temporarily when ongoing conflict makes ports unavailable.

In a military setting, this could also be used to get ammunition and more potent infantry carried armed to units of soldiers that were cut off and isolated.

Interceptor Torpedoes

Torpedoes are some of the slowest moving forms of explosive ordinance and have limited range. But if they strike a ship or submarine it can be game over for the target.

The Mk 54 "light weight" torpedo that is the standard tool for U.S. aircraft and naval ships to strike submarines has a 12.75 inch diameter, and weighs about 750 pounds and has about 100 pounds of explosives, and has a maximum speed of about 46 miles per hour. It has a range of 6-7 miles in the water, and can be launched from aircraft and travel up to about 9-10 miles before entering the water. They also aren't cheap costing about $1 million each.

Active defenses in the form of interceptor torpedoes would seem like a new brainer. These would be much smaller than torpedoes designed to take out whole ships or submarines, because they'd only have enough of an explosive payload to destroy an ordinary torpedo which has little or no armor and is full of explosives, perhaps a tenth of the size or less. They would pull out all stops for speed with supercavitation which could allow it to reach speeds of up to 120 miles per hour in the water, and would have sophisticated sensors and guidance systems to allow them to independently maneuver to locate and destroy incoming torpedoes, even if the incoming torpedoes try to evade them. They wouldn't have to have a terribly long range themselves either.

This might weigh 75-100 pounds and would cost $20,000 to $200,000 each.

Interceptor torpedoes could also have a secondary use against jet ski/small craft sized maritime drones like those used in the Black Sea by Ukraine, and manned hostile small craft like those used by pirates or the Iranian navy, that don't require enough explosives to sink a warship or an ocean going ship.

In a close variant, one could have underwater armed supercavitating suicide drones that would escort ships and submarines, and would periodically be refueled from the ship that they were protecting.

Anti-Armored Small Craft Missiles

Most missiles and torpedoes designed to sink warships are expensive overkill for small craft, maritime armed drones, and amphibious craft like tank-boats and amphibious landing craft. It would make sense to have missiles about the size of anti-tank missiles, that would be guided by wouldn't have to be terribly maneuverable or fast (unlike anti-aircraft missiles), which could be cheaper and available in large numbers to address swarm attacks.

These missiles could also be used with an intent to damage or disable, rather than sink, larger ships, in order to allow the use of force without unnecessary escalation, for example, in a situation where Chinese Coast Guard ships are relentlessly harassing Filipino merchant ships, or when interdicting smugglers or shipping traffic.

Missiles are much more accurate than naval artillery guns, add much less weight to a ship equipped with them, and can have a longer range than naval artillery or direct fire small arms, in situations where something more potent than a 0.50 caliber machine gun is needed. These could be added, for example, to Coast Guard cutters as primary weapons, in addition to adding them a secondary weapons to larger warships. They could also be retrofitted onto civilian boats and ships when a rapid increase in force size to deal with low intensity conflicts was needed.

These missiles could also be used to provide ship or boat based fire support to troops on coasts or near major rivers, with more precision and less collateral damage, that traditional naval artillery guns.

12 June 2025

Falling Birth Rates In Japan

Birth rates in Japan to Japanese nationals are falling much more quickly than expected, and Japan has, so far, resisted allowing significant immigration. Policy efforts specifically targeted at increasing birth rates, with measures like economic incentives for parents, have a very poor record of success globally.
Japan must stop being overly optimistic about how quickly its population is going to shrink, economists have warned, as births plunge at a pace far ahead of core estimates.

Japan this month said there were a total of 686,000 Japanese births in 2024, falling below 700,000 for the first time since records began in the 19th century and defying years of policy efforts to halt population decline. The total represented the ninth straight year of decline and pushed the country’s total fertility rate — the average number of children born per woman over her lifetime — to a record low of 1.15…

The median forecast produced by the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research (IPSS) in 2023 did not foresee the number of annual births — which does not include children born to non-Japanese people — dropping into the 680,000 range until 2039.
From the Financial Times.

Progress For Laser Defenses

The U.S. Navy has a prototype grade 400 kW laser, which is a significant improvement on past efforts. Ideally, a laser can destroy incoming drones, shells, and missiles at a minimal cost per shot with an ammunition supply that never runs out. The more powerful the laser, the less time it needs to keep its beam on target to sufficiently damage to target to prevent it from striking. 

Public records about these weapons have been coy about just how much time on target is needed, how far away the target can be, and what countermeasures or atmospheric conditions can prevent it from working. So, it is hard to know if it is ready for prime time yet. And, 400kW still isn't really all that powerful. That's just the power of a fairly powerful commercial electric car or truck (it is equivalent to about 300 horsepower). But, there is little doubt that more power is better, even though scaling up the power of a military laser presents serious technical challenges. If we can get to a ready to deploy 400kW defensive laser by 2026, perhaps we can get a megawatt defensive laser on line by 2030.

When it is ready for prime time, this active defense could be revolutionary, and could (together with electronic warfare methods and electromagnetic pulses to disrupt guidance systems and kinetic interceptors and new lighter armor materials) end the one shot, one kill era of smart bombs, guided missiles, and one way armed drones that persisted for about thirty years, in a major victory for defense, after a sustained period of time in which offenses have largely overcome armor and maneuverability.

Ships and point defenses for forward operating bases are a natural place to start, because the size and weight of the system isn't too critical. This could be the difference between large surface warships being viable or not, a vulnerability that the Secretary of Defense is well-aware of himself (not that anything he says should be given too much credibility, particularly since his budget is driven to a great extent by fear of a Chinese military threat):

In a rare admission, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said that the Chinese hypersonic missiles can destroy all US aircraft carriers in just 20 minutes.

“So far our [US] whole power projection platform is aircraft carrier and the ability to project power that way strategically around the globe,” said Hegseth in a recent interview.

However, Hegseth added that China’s 15 hypersonic missiles “can take out 10 aircraft carriers in the first 20 minutes of the conflict,” added Hegseth. . . . 
According to a US Department of Defense (DoD) report published in December 2024, China’s hypersonic missile technologies have greatly advanced during the past 20 years. Many PRC missile programs are comparable to other international top-tier producers.

China’s deployment of the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle (HGV)-armed medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) will continue to transform the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) missile force, the DoD added. The system, which was fielded in 2020, may replace some older short-range ballistic missiles (SRBM) units and be used to strike foreign military bases and fleets in the Western Pacific. The DF-27 may have an HGV payload option in addition to conventional land-attack, anti-ship, and nuclear payloads. Official Chinese military writings indicate this range class spans 5,000–8,000 km (3,107–4,971 miles), designating the DF-27 as an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), and the local media indicates that it can potentially range as far as Alaska and Hawaii. On July 27, 2021, China tested an ICBM-range HGV that traveled 40,000 km (24,854 miles).

In April 2019, the PLA Navy revealed during its 70th-anniversary celebration that its new guided-missile cruiser can employ long-range, land-attack cruise missiles and, in 2022, launched the YJ-21 hypersonic missile designed to defeat aircraft carriers.

According to the DoD, China has the world’s leading hypersonic missile arsenal and has dramatically advanced its development of conventional and nuclear-armed hypersonic missile technologies.

But imagine a system like that retrofitted into a C-17 or a B-52, that would go from having no defense but flares, to being able to destroy multiple incoming anti-aircraft missiles in flight before they do any harm, or to a military satellite that could destroy missiles intended to destroy it before they hit.

According to the contract announcement, the goal is to design, integrate, and test a high-powered directed-energy subsystem suitable for deployment aboard naval vessels and potentially land-based platforms.

At the heart of the effort is creating a 400-kilowatt-class laser weapon. This will be achieved by combining multiple 50-kilowatt laser modules into a unified beam supported by a precision beam-control assemblySuch a design is key to scaling laser systems to higher powers without compromising beam quality or accuracy.

The technology is being pursued for defensive purposes, like shooting down drones, missiles, and potentially hypersonic weapons, as well as other military uses, including remote sensing and battlefield illumination.

While the Pentagon has disclosed few technical details, industry experts note that this level of directed-energy output would represent a major leap in laser weapon capabilities. By comparison, most current operational laser systems deployed by the Navy, such as the Laser Weapon System (LaWS), have outputs of around 30 to 100 kilowatts.

A 400-kilowatt system would potentially allow US forces to intercept faster and more robust targets at greater distances, burning through drone bodies or missile casings within seconds of contact.

From Interesting Engineering.

Less obviously, high powered lasers might provide naval ships with intermediate options between sinking an opponent's ship and doing nothing, a challenging task when, for example, the Chinese Coast Guard or paramilitary merchant marine ships harass Filipino fishing vessels, and a naval escort vessel would like them to stop without causing an international incident.

A 400kW laser isn't going to sink a seaworthy ship in most cases. But it could inflict controlled and measured damage, like destroying the offending ship's radar, or some of its communications equipment, or one of its hydraulic control lines, or it reconnaissance drones, or one of its weapons, that would encourage the offending ship to back off. And, it could do so with minimal risk of causing collateral or otherwise unintended damage.

11 June 2025

The Imperfect Case That The Army Is Too Light

An argument that the Army is too light gets some points right, but others deeply wrong. 

How can we have forgotten the terrible lessons of the early 2000s, when losses in Iraq and Afghanistan prompted a scramble to deploy up-armored HMMWVs and Mine Resistant Armor Protected Vehicles? Today’s Army, far lighter than the one that took such damage in so-called “low-intensity combat,” is ill-equipped to deter or contend with the likes of China or Russia.

Let’s take roll of the Army’s 31 active maneuver brigades. Eleven are heavy brigades equipped with tanks and infantry fighting vehicles—well-protected platforms suited to modern war.

Another six brigades are Stryker formations equipped with their eponymous lightly armored, wheeled infantry carriers. Originally called the “interim armored vehicle,” the Stryker was intended to serve only until the arrival of the Future Combat Systems, which imploded instead. From conception, Stryker units have suffered from doctrinal and conceptual confusion. Stryker units carry more dismounted troops than Bradley units, which are intended to fight primarily mounted. But they are infantry carriers, not infantry fighting vehicles. With poor off-road mobility, they are vulnerable to hand-held anti-armor systems, and their units have towed rather than self-propelled artillery. Repeated National Training Center rotations show they cannot survive when employed against armor.

The remaining 14 active maneuver brigades are light infantry formations, cheaper and easier to deploy but, realistically, unable to compete with today’s threat. Under current guidance, they go to war in “infantry squad vehicles”—essentially, unarmored dune buggies without heavy weapons.

Compounding the problem, the commanders of these light brigades have dramatically less firepower than they used to. The recent decision to eliminate the air cavalry squadron from the aviation brigade in Army divisions removes half of each division’s 48 AH-64E attack helicopters, a massive reduction in combat power. Only slightly less dangerous was the Army’s recent decision to deactivate the cavalry squadron in Stryker and light infantry brigades, with their many wheeled vehicles and heavy weapons. The same directive stripped light infantry battalions of their antiarmor/heavy weapons companies: mounted formations armed with automatic grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and heavy antitank systems. These actions removed much of the brigade’s available firepower.

Meanwhile, light artillery battalions still use the venerable M119 105mm towed howitzer, which has a lower rate of fire, shorter range, and weaker weapons effects than the 122mm and 152mm systems used by Russian and Chinese brigades. They are also slower to displace than self-propelled systems, making them far more vulnerable to counter-battery fire and drone attacks.

Promises to offset all these reductions with “Unmanned Systems and Ground/Air launched effects” raise serious questions, given the lack of specifics provided and DoD’s poor acquisition track record.

A quick look at adversary force structure illuminates the challenge. Russian maneuver brigades (tank, motor rifle, airborne/air assault, naval infantry) are remarkably similar. All include four maneuver battalions; three artillery battalions (both tubed and rocket); anti-tank, air defense and reconnaissance battalions; and an electronic warfare company. Chinese brigades have four maneuver battalions supported by strong artillery, air defense and EW units. U.S. brigades have three maneuver battalions, a single artillery battalion, and no dedicated anti-tank, air defense, or EW units. At higher echelons, adversary artillery, air defense and EW continues to outmatch U.S. capabilities, and both the Russian and Chinese militaries have evinced strong commitments to advance their drones and unmanned systems. Overall, their forces are clearly stronger, a dilemma only exacerbated by repeated moves to lighten or weaken U.S. ground forces.

What should the U.S. Army do? Several things: re-equip light brigades with protected, wheeled transport mounting heavy weapons, as before; restore their antiarmor companies; increase the density of Javelin anti-tank and Stinger air defense systems across light formations; replace towed light artillery with wheeled, 155mm systems like the French Caesar or German RCH-155; reverse the deactivation of divisional air cavalry squadrons; and arm divisional UH-60 assault helos with the Hellfire antitank missile system.

Stryker brigades should be converted into true heavy brigades, perhaps with reconditioned M1 Abrams tanks and M2 Bradley fighting vehicles that are now in storage. Hundreds of earlier variants of the M1, M2, and M109 self-propelled howitzer are stored at Sierra Army Depot in Nevada. Should Stryker brigades be retained, they should include an armor battalion, similar to Russian motor rifle brigades. Heavy brigades should be upgraded with the M1A3 Main Battle Tank and M2A4 Infantry Fighting Vehicle as soon as possible.

Army divisions should field a general support 155mm artillery battalion in addition to the artillery battalions providing direct support to the maneuver brigades. All brigades and divisions should include air defense and electronic warfare units, as well as dedicated drone formations with trained operators at every echelon from company to division.

America has not fought a high-intensity war against heavy forces since the Gulf War, when it enjoyed crushing superiority in all domains. Today that superiority now longer exists.

Touted as a move away from a GWOT-focused Army to one more focused on “lethality” and better suited to the Indo-Pacific region, current changes in fact cut deeply into the Army’s ability to hit hard and mass combat power. An America optimized to fight in only one theater is an America content to be a regional but not a global power—a recipe for decline. In the real world, challenges erupt suddenly and unexpectedly (think December 1941, June 1950, October 1963, August 1990 and September 2001). True national security requires a flexible and adaptive Army trained and equipped for sustained, intense combat at the high end of the spectrum of conflict. This means mobility, protection and firepower in all Army formations.

In a word, light is not lethal. It’s time for a rethink.

From Defense One.

What does this analysis get right?

Sufficient armor to protect troops against small arms fire and IEDs does make sense. The “infantry squad vehicles”—essentially, unarmored dune buggies without heavy weapons, indeed don't make sense. They utterly unprotected against even rain or hail or dust or snow or children throwing rocks. They have no weapons of their own and don't have storage capacity to carry squad scale heavy weapons or medical supplies. And, they concentrate a whole squad in a tiny space where a single grenade or volley of automatic weapons fire or IED can kill all of them in one blow. It isn't particularly capable off-road (unlike, for example, the Humvee). The only thing that recommends an infantry squad vehicle at all is that it is faster than walking. Using that as the core model for 14 of 31 Army Brigades is indeed nuts. Maybe one or two brigades of them for paratrooper type deployments into very lightly armed theaters might make sense, but these are, indeed, far too light for almost any conceivable conflict. 

These units aren't even really heavy enough to take on civilian drug cartels (as President Trump has urged the Army to make a priority). U.S. police SWAT teams routinely use more armor and heavier weapons to take on tiny domestic drug dealing gangs in U.S. cities, and protesters without firearms, or a single violent boyfriend and husband or mass shooter with a handful of small arms none of which is more than 0.45 caliber.

Cutting close air support from helicopters with missiles doesn't make much sense either.

But, how can you think that the future of near peer ground warfare lies with heavy tracked tanks and infantry fighting vehicles after having seen how the Ukraine War has played out. The author of this piece forgets that the U.S. Army deliberate fielded few main battle tanks in Kosovo due to its mountains, and that it took many critical weeks to ship them by boat and train to the front in all of the conflicts in which the U.S. has been involved since the Gulf War, despite the fact that the pace of modern warfare has not gotten slower.

Strykers and MRAPs were adequate in the main U.S. wars since the 2000s, the firepower of the main M1 Abrams tank has not been very useful, tank v. tank warfare is basically no longer a thing, and guided missiles like anti-tank Javelin missiles, Hellfire missiles, and TOW missiles have all delivered much more firepower per pound, with greater precision, at equivalent or longer ranges than the main guns of tanks. Traditional tanks like the existing Abrams and traditional infantry fighting vehicles like the Bradley, have no air defenses and no anti-drone weapons, are challenging to operate in tight urban warfare and mountain warfare settings, and aren't particularly mine resistant.

Another lesson of the wars that the U.S. has fought in the last 25 years is that off-road capabilities, where tracked vehicles are a bit faster than off-road capable wheeled vehicles, are rarely used in practice. But the tracks vehicles slow down their entire units, and because they are profoundly less fuel efficient, require more, completely vulnerable fuel tanker trucks to be sent to supply them (and those tanker trucks can't go to the off-road places that the tracked vehicles can). In wars where the front lines are often ill-defined, this is a huge problem.

As for howitzers, either towed or self-propelled, tracked or wheeled, there are also problems. Their range is only 12-24 miles. They are very heavy relative to their firepower. And, they aren't very accurate, so its takes multiple rounds to destroy a target. Mortar systems are even worse in basically every respect. Guided missile systems like HIMARs, or like or Hellfire and Javelin and TOW missiles, produce equal or greater results, with much more accuracy, at longer ranges which enemy artillery can't reach.

We need a middle ground. Yes, Army units should have heavy and lethal weapons like grenade launchers/canons, heavy machine guns, anti-tank missiles, and anti-aircraft missiles. But, for just about anything more than 50mm rounds, guided missiles or handheld recoilless rifles (e.g. for breaching bunkers or fortifications) are superior to tank shells and artillery shells.

Also, yes, they should mostly have sufficient armor to protect against shrapnel and small arms fire, and provide force protection to resist land mines and IEDs. But trying to use heavy armor to protect military vehicles against dedicated anti-armor weapons is generally futile. In Ukraine, every single type of armored tank or infantry fighting vehicle, former Soviet and Western alike, has taken extremely heavy losses no matter how strong their armor was. Against these threats, the options are to either run and hide so as not to get hit, or to employ active defenses like Israel's Trophy system, or lasers, or ground based versions of the Navy's Phalanx close in weapons system, or electronic warfare tools that disrupt the guidance systems of cruise missiles and drones.

And, finally, except in extremely niche roles in very small numbers, wheeled vehicles are superior to tracked vehicles. They are lighter. They can still handle many off-road condition. They are much faster. And, they are much more fuel efficient.

A new off the shelf JTLV, which weighs about half of the original M2 Bradley (which means that you can deploy them in twice the numbers in the same time and with C-130 aircraft that can't transport a Bradley), has about the same fire power as the Bradley, and is similarly or more protective against forces without anti-armor weapons. Both are equally vulnerable to forces with anti-armor weapons. And, the JTLV is 50% faster and has a much lighter logistics trail (it needs much less fuel per mile than a tank or a tracked infantry fighting vehicle) and is cheaper. Yes, it carries fewer infantry to dismount, but this is made up for by allowing units to field twice as many of them.

Looking at how Strykers perform against armor is a straw man argument. Strykers aren't meant to primarily be tank destroyers, any more than it makes sense to send masses of dismounted infantry up against a machine gun nest for no cover. Their carried soldiers need anti-armor weapons (like the Javelin missile, or TOW missiles) that have a range longer than the range of a tank, or other systems to support them, like helicopters or drones armed with anti-tank weapons need to be deployed as tank destroyers.

Current U.S. military doctrine is based upon the assumption that U.S. forces will quickly gain air superiority, and will then use that air superiority to destroy enemy armor and artillery, before U.S. ground forces move in. Strykers aren't supposed to enter the field of battle until the armor, that they indeed don't fare well against head to head, are dispatched, and especially not a close range without at least anti-tank weapons for their dismounted infantry.

The Ukraine War, Houthi attacks on shipping, and recent clashes between Israel and Iran, however, have demonstrated that gaining air superiority and dominance may not be possible in every case, particularly against longer range guided missiles and one way armed drones. Traditional anti-aircraft weapons, meanwhile, are optimized against manned helicopters and fixed wing attack aircraft, not numerous cheap, deadline guided munitions that blur the line between armed drones and guided missiles. Against a "near peer" force, slow and heavy main battle tanks and infantry fighting vehicles, with big, vulnerable logistics trains are targets and not assets.

The U.S. Army does need to increase air defenses and drone defenses across the force. And, the U.S. military should seriously consider switching out more vulnerable and slower attack helicopters as close air support providers, for more robust and faster dedicated close air support aircraft to replace the A-10, and drones, in addition to traditional fighter aircraft designed primarily for air to air combat, and bomber aircraft, at high altitudes, dropping "smart" bombs.

The U.S. Marine Corps has learned these lessons. It has ditched its tanks and howitzers, but kept integrated fixed wing fighter aircraft and armed helicopters to support them. 

The U.S. Army hasn't yet fully woken up to these realities and is still trying to fight World War II and the Korean War.

The Foreseeable Conflicts

It also bears noting that wars against China and Russia, which the author identified as the threats against which the U.S. Army needs to be prepared, are two very different things. 

Plausible Russian Scenarios

The Ukraine War has given us a sneak preview of what a war in Europe with Russia would look like. The Ukraine War also means that Russia's resources to fight a large scale conventional war will have been profoundly reduced. And, any plausible conflict with Russia would be fought not by the U.S. alone, but with all of its European NATO allies. 

Tanks have been destroyed at high rates by both sides in that conflict and their main guns have been very unimportant in that fight. 

Conventional howitzers received heavy use early on, because that is what was available to Russia and Ukraine at first. But now, 70%-80% of the damage is done with armed drones, missiles, snipers, and machine guns do a fair amount of the rest of the damage, and while artillery does still play a significant role in that conflict (because the supply of drones and guided missiles is more limited) it is steadily decreasing as artillery batteries are destroyed (the Russian's have lost more than two-thirds of their's so far and lose more almost every day), while supplies of drones are being replenished (since replacing lost howitzers is much more difficult). Further, artillery resources have not given either side enough of an edge to budget the current territorial front lines for years. 

And, if the U.S. and NATO, unlike Ukraine, were able to overwhelm and defeat Russian air defenses (which their guided munitions, satellite intelligence, stealth aircraft, and medium range artillery missiles would all help facilitate), Russia would be in a much worse position in terms of conventional warfare. Still, one might try to argue despite this for heavier U.S. Army forces.

Plausible Chinese Scenarios Don't Heavily Implicate The Army

In contrast, there is no sensible scenario in which U.S. forces invade any significant part of mainland China with a plan to hold it and rule it for any significant length of time.

The U.S. missions in the Indo-Pacific theater, vis-a-vis China, are to (1) protect Taiwan from being invaded, (2) protect the Philippines from maritime harassment or subjection by China, (3) to protect Hawaii, Alaska, and the U.S. territories in the Pacific (e.g. Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands) from invasion or embargoes, and (4) to protect Japan and South Korea and other allies in the region from Chinese attacks or intimidation.

A threatened invasion of Taiwan is the dominant concern among those possibilities. And, mostly, the U.S. role would to be employ the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. naval aviation, U.S. surface combatants with anti-ship missiles, U.S. attack submarines, and naval and air force resources from Japan, South Korea, and Australia, and possibly other U.S. and Taiwanese allies, to sink as many invading Chinese ships and destroy as many Chinese aircraft as possible, in support of Taiwanese forces on the ground, and to destroy the facilities on the coast of China from which those forces are deployed without occupying them on a medium or long term basis. 

The U.S. Marine Corps, based in places like Okinawa and Guam would play the leading role in reinforcing Taiwanese ground troops on the island of Formosa and nearby islands. In part, this is because the U.S. Army with the help of U.S. Air Force  and allied transport planes going into a contested airspace, and painfully slow U.S. Navy transport ships going into a contested maritime space, wouldn't be able to arrive in meaningful numbers in sufficient time to make a difference (especially their heavier forces which would have to come from South Korea, Hawaii, Alaska, and the West Coast of the mainland U.S.). 

And, invading Chinese forces that did manage to make it to Taiwan, would most likely be light infantry, because all or almost all of the ferries carrying heavy Chinese armor would likely be sunk by a barrage of air, sea, and land sources missiles, torpedos, and sea mines while crossing the 100 mile straight to Formosa from the Chinese mainland. U.S. special forces or Marines might briefly set foot on the Chinese mainland to destroy an airport or a port or a military base or to disrupt the supply chain of the Chinese forces, but they would most likely bug out as soon as their narrow and destructive mission was accomplished.

Taiwanese forces would be doing the heavy lifting to fight any Chinese forces that managed to cross the straight and in dealing with inbound Chinese missiles and armed drone with whatever anti-drone and anti-missile defenses they could muster. In any conflict where U.S. Army ground troops were doing more than just tipping the balance slightly in an evenly matched fight between invading PLA troops and Taiwanese defenders, their role would be a lost cause, and would need to happen in a matter of days, before PLA victory became a fait accompli. Artillery or tank duels between the U.S. Army and the PLA are highly unlikely.

All of which is to say that the Army's case that its forces need to be heavy armored forces to engage in a ground war with China doesn't stand up to close scrutiny. Even if the Army is able to secure the long range fires with a 1,000 mile range that it is seeking in defense procurement fights, that wouldn't matter. Hawaii is about 5,250 miles away from Taiwan. Alaska and the U.S. mainland are farther away. 

South Korea is about 830 miles away from Taiwan (about 28 hours or more by U.S. Navy transport ships once at sea through highly contested waters) and this distance would put it barely within striking distance with missiles with ranges almost three times as great as its current longest range option (which is in short supply). This is also too far for the Army to deliver its troops by helicopter without midair refueling in the face of very vigorous Chinese air defenses.

Okinawa, which has mostly Marines and Air Force and Navy personnel, is 400 miles away from Taiwan (which is still 13 hours away on an amphibious assault ship through hotly contested waters). Guam is about 2,750 miles from mainland China and has naval and air bases, but no meaningful Army or Marine Corps presence.

There are no U.S. military based on Taiwan itself, so it has almost no prepositioned troops or heavy military equipment there, and it doesn't have the depth of a relationship with local military forces that it does in Japan and South Korea either.

Plausible Scenarios Against North Korea

Really, the only plausible scenario in which U.S. Army forces would be engaged in ground combat with heavy opposing forces in Asia would be in North Korea, defending South Korea together with its own forces and with support from Japan and from other branches of the U.S. military. This would be a profoundly different kind of conflict than the conflicts against China or Russia that the author references.

North Korea may be armed to the hilt, but it is still a small country and its forces are hollow. And, it would be facing adversaries who had been planning for this moment for decades.

The Second Division of the U.S. Army, which is the main U.S. combat force stationed in South Korea (in addition to about 8,000 airmen), is divided between an artillery brigade with armored, tracked M270 multiple rocket launchers, and a combat aviation brigade with a mix of Apache AH-64 gunships, an assault regiment of troops deployed in UH-60 Blackhawk helicopters, and a regiment of general support transport helicopters, as well as some larger reconnaissance and armed drones.

The Seventh Air Force stationed in South Korea consists of two fighter wings with three squadrons of F-16 fighter aircraft and one squadron of A-10 attack aircraft.


There are about 300 sailors at a U.S. naval base in Busan, which is about 4,860 miles from Hawaii (about 162 hours by naval transport ship, in addition to time to travel from Busan to the DMZ over land). So, it would take more than a week to get more U.S. Army soldiers and equipment to South Korea that could not be air lifted (although the Marines in Okinawa would be much closer, about 25 hours by ship to Busan plus addition time to the front over land).


There are about 100 Marines and about 100 special operations forces and 20 Space Force "guardians" at the Army base there (Camp Humphreys) that also houses the 20,000 U.S. Army soldiers who are not special forces, and the U.S. Air Force base with 8,000 airmen.
Camp Humphreys is 40 miles (64 km) south of the former base in Seoul and about 60 miles (97 km) from the Demilitarized Zone that divides North and South Korea. That puts the base about twice as far from North Korea as its predecessor, one of the main reasons for the move. While the new location moves the bulk of U.S. troops out of the range of North Korean artillery, the North Korean military has developed large caliber rockets and ballistic missiles, as well as a nuclear capability, capable of reaching Camp Humphreys.

Camp Humphreys is 143 miles from Busan Naval Base, which is less than three hours away for wheeled vehicles (or by train) and less than four hours away for tracked vehicles by road. It would take another hour to the DMZ for wheeled vehicles and another hour and twenty minutes for tracked vehicles by road. So, it would be a full seven days of travel from Hawaii to the front by sea, assuming that no detours were necessary to avoid attacks in contested maritime waters, and however long it took to load and unload the forces onto their sealift, to make sealift arrangements, and to decide to deploy them. 

The Marines from Okinawa make take a couple of day to arrive by sea with heavy equipment and reach the front.

Three Launchers, One Set Of Missiles

The U.S. Army has a tracked long range heavy missile launcher, and a lighter wheeled one. It also now apparently has an experimental version that launches the same missiles out of a shipping container. These extend well beyond the 12-24 mile range of most cannon artillery and is much more accurate.


A mock-up of an ATACMS missile next to one of a standardized ammunition ‘pod. US Army

An M270 MLRS launches a 227mm artillery rocket. Lockheed Martin Lockheed Martin

A US Army HIMARS launcher fires an ATACMS missile. U

A test launch of an Increment 1 PrSM. Lockheed Martin


An uncrewed Autonomous Multi-domain Launcher (AML), derived from HIMARS, seen launching a new smaller, shorter-range rocket during a test. US ArmyS Army

A Lockheed Martin launcher based on the 10×10 MKR18 Logistics Vehicle System Replacement (LVSR) truck and capable of being loaded with up to four MLRS/HIMARS munitions pods. Lockheed Martin. L


A US Army M1074 Palletized Load System (PLS) truck seen offloading a standard shipping container. US Army

A containerized launcher designed to fire the same suite of artillery rockets and ballistic missiles as the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) has appeared at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bragg in North Carolina [top image]. The ability to launch ballistic missiles, in particular, from what is outwardly indistinguishable from any other shipping container, presents a flexible strike capability that is harder for opponents to spot. Ukraine’s recent Operation Spiderweb covert drone attacks highlighted to a dizzying degree the value of even lower-end concealed fires capabilities.

The launcher inside the container is visible off to the side in a video, seen below, from President Donald Trump’s visit to Fort Bragg today, which was posted online by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Dan Scavino. Trump was given demonstrations of various Army capabilities at the base’s Holland Drop Zone, including the launch of artillery rockets. A separate launcher, the type of which is not immediately clear, was used to fire those rounds. . . .

What is clear is that the containerized launcher, the entire roof of which is designed to open to one side, can accommodate two of the same ammunition ‘pods’ used as the tracked M270 MRLS and wheeled M142 HIMARS launch vehicles. Pods are available that come loaded with six 227mm guided artillery rockets, a single Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) missile, or two Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM). ATACMS and PrSM, the latter of which is beginning to enter Army service now to replace the former, are both short-range ballistic missiles.

Current-generation 227mm artillery rockets in Army inventory can hit targets some 50 miles (around 80 kilometers) away, and a variant with a maximum range of just over 93 miles (150 kilometers) entered production last year. The longest range variant of the ATACMS short-range ballistic missile in Army service today can reach targets out to 186 miles (300 kilometers).

The initial version of PrSM, also known as Increment 1, has a range of 310 miles (500 kilometers), but there are also plans to extend that out to 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) or more. It’s worth noting that a PrSM with a range beyond 620 miles/1,000 kilometers would be categorized as at least a medium-range ballistic missile. The Army is also developing an anti-ship variant of PrSM with a new seeker and is eyeing further versions with “enhanced lethality payloads” that could include miniature smart bombs and kamikaze drones.

The Army is also currently exploring new pods loaded with smaller rockets that could expand the magazine depth of M270 and M142 launcher vehicles, but at the cost of a reduction in range. The service has been experimenting with new launcher vehicles that can fire this same family of munitions, including uncrewed types and a design offering significantly expanded ammunition capacity.

Being able to launch this array of rockets and missiles already gives M270 and M142 immense flexibility. A containerized launcher would open up additional possibilities, including the ability to turn any truck that can carry a standard shipping container into a platform capable of firing long-range guided rockets and missiles. This, in turn, could help the Army more readily expand its available launch capacity as required.

The containerized launchers could also be deployed in a fixed mode, offering forward operating bases the ability to hold targets at risk dozens, if not hundreds, of miles away. This can include providing an on-call form of organic air/fire support for troops operating far from the forward base. The launcher inside the container cannot traverse laterally, but an array of them could be positioned in such a way to provide maximum coverage in all directions.

Being a container-based design, whether deployed in a truck-mounted or fixed configuration, they would be readily relocatable from one location to another. The containerized launchers could also be loaded on rail cars and/or employed from ships with sufficient open deck space.

In any of these modes, the launcher would benefit from its unassuming outward appearance. This would present challenges for opponents when it comes to detection and targeting, since any container could potentially be loaded with rockets or ballistic missiles. As already mentioned, Ukraine just demonstrated the value of concealed launch capabilities in its unprecedented covert drone attacks on multiple Russian air bases. Other countries, including Russia, China, and Iran, have also been developing containerized launch systems for artillery rockets and/or missiles.

In terms of naval use, specifically, it’s also worth mentioning here that the U.S. Navy is already in the process of fielding a different containerized missile launcher, designed to fire Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and SM-6 multi-purpose missiles, in shipboard and tractor-trailer configurations. The Navy launcher is based on the Mk 41 Vertical Launch System (VLS) found on various American and foreign warships, and is directly related to the Army’s ground-based Typhon system that can also currently fire Tomahawks and SM-6s.

From TMZ. 

A linked article discusses the smaller proposed rockets:

A new five-inch (127mm) artillery rocket Lockheed Martin is developing for the U.S. Army primarily as a low-cost training round could evolve into an operational munition. The service already wants to increase the magazine depth of its existing Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) and High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) launcher vehicles, which can currently fire various 227mm rockets and short-range ballistic missiles. This is part of a larger Army push to expand its overall rocket artillery capacity.

The new Joint Reduced Range Rocket (JR3) was showcased at the Army’s recent Project Convergence-Capstone 5 (PC-C5) test exercise at the National Training Center (NTC) at Fort Irwin, California, earlier this month. Raytheon (now formally known as RTX) also notably fired at PC-C5 a JR3 from a new uncrewed launcher vehicle it has been working on in cooperation with Forterra and Oshkosh Defense. The Army also released a picture from PC-C5, seen at the top of this story, showing its existing crewless Autonomous Multi-domain Launcher (AML), which is derived from the HIMARS, firing what looks to be a JR3. The AML and Raytheon’s new design are based on 6×6 Family of Medium Tactical Vehicles (FMTV) and FMTV A2 truck chassis, respectively. . . .
In addition to being cheaper than full-up live rounds, reduced-range practice rockets allow units to make use of a greater number of more constrained ranges for live-fire training. The current slate of precision-guided 227mm rockets that existing MLRS and HIMARS launchers can fire have maximum ranges of between around 40 and 50 miles (65 and 80 kilometers). New types with ranges closer to 100 miles (150 kilometers) are also in development. Those same launchers can also fire Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS) and Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) short-range ballistic missiles that can hit targets hundreds of miles away. The range the Army is targeting for the new JR3 is unclear, but existing LCRRPRs have a maximum reach of around 10 miles (16 kilometers). . . . .
Though designed primarily for training use, the JR3 has a modular design and Lockheed Martin has already talked about the potential for future variants or derivatives to be configured for use as live munitions.

“We’re definitely looking at [direct support fires technology] and how we could be a competitor in that market,” Dave Griser, vice president for Guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems within Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control division, recently told Defense News. “We think we can play there in terms of how we produce, our production and our experience that’s unique to [MLRS family of munitions] and what we do. We think it’s a good fit for us.”

For its part, the Army has been very open about its interest in acquiring smaller artillery rockets to increase the magazine depth of its MLRS and HIMARS launchers. The munitions for those launchers come in standardized ‘pods’ that can hold six 227mm rockets, a single ATACMs, or two PrSMs. MLRSs can be loaded with two of those pods at a time, while HIMARSs can hold one.

Considering just simple dimensions, a pod of the 127mm rockets might be able to hold 15 or more of the smaller rockets (a similar Israeli system holds 18), with range and an explosive effect similar to that of an artillery round, but greater accuracy and an ability to be used with the same launching systems.

The U.S. Army is on the brink of procuring an upgraded tracked and heavily armored M270A2 multiple rocket launcher system, which like its predecessor is based on the M2 Bradley. One of the most recent articles on the M270A2 states:

The M270A2 isn’t just an upgrade—it marks the powerful return of one of the U.S. Army’s most formidable long-range artillery platforms. First introduced during the Cold War, the M270 Multiple Launch Rocket System has been overhauled into a high-precision strike system, now capable of firing guided rockets and future missiles with ranges beyond 300 miles. Built on a tracked chassis, it offers better protection and a higher payload capacity compared to the wheeled HIMARS. The A2 variant features a modernized digital fire control system, enhanced armor, and is designed to support next-generation munitions like the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM).

The analysis of why it is important for a missile launcher firing at targets from 50-300 miles away needs to be heavily armored or tracked, of course, is absent. 

The priority in shoot and scoot non-line of sight (NLOS) military systems is generally speed, not off-road capabilities, but tracked vehicles top out at 45 mph on roads and less off road. If this long range NLOS system is within the 12-24 mile range of enemy artillery or the 2 mile or less range of enemy tanks, someone has made a very serious mistake that heavier armor won't cure. Their tracks also make it easy for surveillance systems to determine where the vehicle was when it fired at the enemy, and where it went afterwards, making it easier to fire back at it if the enemy has those capabilities.  And, the tracks aren't what gives it a higher payload capacity.

There may be a niche where this system is somewhere where it is facing light infantry with small arms but no anti-tank weapons of any kind, or where it needs protection from shrapnel from "successful" active defense system kills of incoming munitions, but this is the exception rather than the norm. 

Its inability to be deployed by C-130 transport plane, as well as the reduced number of systems that can be deployed via a C-17 or a C-5 transport plane, is also definitely a minus relative to the lighter, wheeled, HIMARs system.

Add to this the development of pallet based missiles that can turn military cargo planes into bombers and you have a new era of platform independent missile technology.