James Hasik

Fighting, Ukrainian Style: The Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative points to pending change in military organizations and industrial advantage.

The recent crash of a Russian warlord’s airplane is a reminder of the ubiquity of overhead surveillance: American intelligence thinks that the cause must have been an onboard bomb, because no missile launch was detected near Moscow. The full scope of that sort of overhead surveillance has enabled a Ukrainian style of warfare that relies heavily on highly dispersed, mobile infantry splendidly equipped with precision robotics. The Pentagon’s Replicator Initiative aims to duplicate some of that for the Americans, though perhaps with more robust and survivable weapons. Reforming fighting forces like 21st-century “Jock Columns” demands precision technology en masse, which suggests quicker program starts, faster learning curves, a shift in comparative advantage in military contracting, and less enthusiasm for horizontal mergers.

Read my four-page analysis here: Download On Fighting Ukrainian Style 20230829.

On Learning Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War: Moving militaries into the 21st Century may require alliances for marketing and manufacturing.

Anonymous opinions about the situation in the Russo-Ukrainian War have been characterizing the military situation as stalemated. I assess that this whisper campaign is more designed to justify political decisions by the Biden Administration than to assess both the tactical situation and the broader technological dynamics of modern warfare. A more honest debate about what is possible and plausible in modern warfare, underway for several years, has been greatly informed by feedback from the front. Many 20th-century military systems are showing obsolescence because 21st-century surveillance and strike systems have been limiting their battlefield potential, inflicting high losses for little countervailing value. This in turn has been exposing the high costs and long production lead-times of the old-and-obvious.

The question for technologists and industrialists is whether the strategists will learn the relevant lessons, and how soon. The 21st century will unfold more slowly than some pundits predict, but more quickly than conservative military sentiments will allow. Fixing that problem will require vigorous marketing, and judicious timing in scaling manufacturing. Corporate alliances between emerging and established firms continue to offer an excellent way to solve that problem, and sometimes as far forward as Ukraine.

My full seven-page analysis is available here: Download On Learning Lessons from the Russo-Ukrainian War 20230825.

On Landmines: Consider criminalizing the mining of another country’s territory, and a prize competition for a truly automated approach for detection and destruction.

As the Ukrainian defense minister recently lamented, “Ukraine is the most heavily mined country in the world.” While his not-quite 6,000 sappers are hard at work scratching paths through Russian lines, actually clearing the country of explosives could take twenty years at its present pace. Few systematic solutions have emerged “left-of-boom,” beyond hand-held metal detectors and Bangalore torpedos, developed during the First World War. My research describes how matching better solutions to the problem requires providing policymakers with windows of opportunity for making the right decisions, which open lamentably infrequently. I offer two other ideas for advancing the cause against landmines: criminalizing the mining of another country’s territory, and a prize competition for a truly automated approach for detection and destruction.

My five-page analysis and policy proposal is available here: Download On Landmines 20230814.

Does skill, technology, or learning matter most in warfare? Recent battlefield evidence argues that industry should rethink old weapons, invest in simulations, and emphasize corporate agility.

Analysis of the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War continues to suggest answers to what matters most in warfare. As my friend Byron Callan likes to say, wars are audits; and to paraphrase Leon Trotsky, from time to time, another war gets interested in us. Militaries and their supporting industries should thus always want to know what inputs best predict victory. Then, in pursuit of a reasonable return and efficient processes, we should ask ask what industrial factors matter most for supporting that victory. To answer this question, I update an assessment I began in 2013 with new evidence from the Russo-Ukrainian War. I consider three possibilities in the literature, and offer three ideas about what to do:

1. If technology matters most, then manufacturers have strong arguments for new weapons—and new skills too.
2. If skill matters most, then the training & simulation industry has the best argument.
3. If learning matters most, then agility is an essential corporate quality for wartime contracting.

If indeed (3) is true, then, every arms manufacturer and military software developer with the financial means should have a team on the ground somewhere in Ukraine trying to learn what’s being learned, and critically, how to learn.

My four-page analysis is available here: Download On Skill Technology and Learning in Warfare 20230804.

How will new antitrust policy affect military contracting? The strongest effect could be on startups, whose liquidity horizons could greatly lengthen.

Just this month, new merger guidelines emerged from the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission, and to some alarm. As Elizabeth Nolan Brown wrote for Reason magazine immediately thereafter, the hint therein seemed to be “Maybe Just Don't Merge Anything at All.” In thinking about how this new articulation of old-is-new-again policy might affect investors and industrialists in military contracting, I have formulated four points:

1. The new merger guidelines seem severe, but may not greatly matter with large contractors. Horizontal mergers amongst large military contractors have been effectively forbidden for at least a decade, even if, as I will note below, they may not be so pernicious in those markets. Vertical mergers have come under serious scrutiny, which is why Lockheed Martin’s attempted purchase of engine supplier Aerojet Rocketdyne was disallowed. Conglomerate mergers have merely been attracting concern, which is why the entirely unrelated firm L3Harris was allowed to buy Aerojet Rocketdyne. The new guidelines do not say too much about conglomerate mergers, so the overall effect may be muted.
2. High-quality startups need prices and pathways—including options for merger. The problem may lie with startups, if enthusiasm for antitrust enforcement turns in that direction. Startups in any industry have two primary possibilities for liquidity events: public offering or acquisition. Over the past several decades, almost all of the successfully scaled startups in military contracting that did go public were eventually acquired. Acquisition in many cases may have been a more efficient path to building dynamic industries. Foreclosing acquisition as an option may thus chill interest in investment, at least in the short run.
3. If averse to merger, the military needs to nurture. The government’s role as regulator often gets in the way of its roles of customer and particularly sponsor, in the market that it alone creates. If most mergers were disallowed, procurement bureaucrats and industrial policymakers would need to engage much more seriously with investors and industrialists building startups, if they wanted that industrial structure to flourish. I have some reason to doubt whether than will happen.
4. Startups in military contracting should be built for the long haul. Independent growth by military contractors has almost invariably attracted interest from industry for acquisition. Antitrust policies change, so one approach is to wait out the new regime. Our research into successful startups suggests further guidance. If you are considering starting a military contractor, and you want to make a few hundred million selling it to someone, you should prepare for a twenty-year experience. If you want to make a huge industrial contribution to a war effort, it is best to start your company a decade before that war starts. Ten years after that, during the inevitable downturn, maybe you can sell it to someone, or even take it public. The new merger guidelines give us reason to wonder whether such time horizons will persist.

One further point concerns corporate alliances. In a world with far fewer mergers amongst military contractors, this alternative approach to corporate governance and production may become yet more interesting. I will continue earlier research on this point later this year.

My nine-page research note elaborates on these points, and is available here: Download On Antitrust and Military Contracting 20230729.

On Submarines: Navies must shift attention from manned to unmanned.

“Submarines Will Reign in a War with China”. So did Mike Sweeney of George Mason University entitle his recent prize-winning essay in Naval Institute Proceedings. That may be true, but reigning over the seas will require actual submarines. The US Navy has well fewer than the inventory thought needed for a war over Taiwan, and the Chinese Navy has been built for that war. This problem presents four alternatives for naval strategists:

• Increasing the building rate of Virginia-class submarines. This is infeasible in the short run, and questionably so in the long run.
• Increasing the repair rate for Los Angeles-class submarines. This is possible in the short run, but pointless in the long run.
• Shifting attack submarines to where they are more needed. The Navy has limited latitude to move submarines from the Atlantic to the Pacific.
• Building lots of small robotic submarines. While this is technologically uncertain, it is industrially far more feasible.

The choice pivots strategically on the timeframe of expected aggression from the Chinese regime. If we expect that an attack in the next few years, then repairing old Los Angeles-class submarines may be of some utility. If the attack is more than ten years away, then repair is pointless. Regardless, the US Navy may be headed towards a fleet of just 36 attack submarines. At this point, investments should be shifted to development of unmanned submarines, particularly those that can work alongside that fleet of newer Virginia-class manned submarines.

This is most true for the US Navy, but it is arguably so for most others with submarines. The challenge for technologists and industrialists is to demonstrate robotic submersibles with greater range and more reliable communications that can be serviced from impromptu tenders around the Western Pacific. If they can manage that challenging use case, they can serve almost anywhere.

Firms mentioned in this note include Anduril, Atlas Elektronik, Blue Eye Robotics, Boeing, General Atomics, General Dynamics, Huntington Ingalls, Israel Aircraft Industries, Leidos, Saab, Thayer Mahan, and Vigor Industrial.

You can find my full 19-page analysis here: Download On Submarines 20230720.