[ared38]

The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace.

"Instead, the new incentive for most countries would be to build a military in a way that aims to minimize the political costs... it makes sense not to build an army for conventional operations but instead with an eye towards the kinds of actions which mitigate the harm caused by failed states: armies aimed at policing actions or humanitarian operations."

MRAPs exist to minimize the political costs (dead and wounded soldiers) in a policing action. When you look at conventional wars like Ukraine, HMMWVs remain very relevant in their doctrinal role.

[hunter-gatherer]

> The US and the HMMWV did great at the combat part of Iraq and Afghanistan. The real switch was from conventional military operations to the long peace

The combat part was ok I guess, but what OP is pointing out was what we went to conflict with. Lots of money was spent upgrading Humvees with armor and turret mounts that didn't exist. The equipment fielded by US troops actually looked very different from a comparison of 2001 and 2005. Body armor went through development iterations, camouflage patterns, infantry equipment like magazine carriers and weapons optics, and so on.

Had the US tried to drive into the Afghan and Iraqi desert the way we did against fighters armed with heavier weapons and fighting skills then the US losses would have been a lot higher.

The Iraqi military had more formidable equipment but was so ill-trained and the moral so low that it was very much a paper tiger.

I think people underestimate hiw much the US military has transformed over the two two-decade long conflicts. There have been striking changes both organizationally, culturally, and technologically.

[jonstewart]

I think the hypothetical you posit is wrong, as US doctrine places primacy on air power. In Iraq, I & II, air strikes at the outset destroyed much of the Iraqi armor and spurred a lot of desertion.

I’m not a military and/or Iraq war expert so I don’t want to argue definitively, but I don’t think you can say US losses would have been significantly higher had the Iraqi army had heavier weapons and fighting skills — they’d have needed effective air defense, too.

I think the Ru-UKR war shows the vulnerability of contemporary air forces to air defense, however, and that Western/NATO forces themselves lack cost-effective short-range and medium-range air defense systems. The US Air Force fields exquisite weapons (“platforms”) and these may prove useless in a conflict like Ru-UKR. Or, perhaps, they’re good enough to overcome the difficulties that the Sukhoi/MiG-based air forces of either side have encountered. Hard to know.

Range and mobility in artillery systems also seems like a weak point for the US military. The Excalibur precision shell is very expensive but likely cost effective—one shot, one kill. But the US M777 towed howitzer costs ~$3.7M (titanium) while the French Caesar costs $5-6M and can outrange the M777 in addition to driving away immediately after firing.

[torstenvl]

Excals are not very high precision in my experience, and definitely not "one shot one kill." I don't remember exact data and I'm sure it would be classified even if I did, but... suffice it to say that laser guidance for final targeting is not good for dusty environments. (Ditto for GBU-12s, which were worthless.)

Afghanistan may have been a different story.

[rascul]

> But the US M777 towed howitzer costs ~$3.7M (titanium) while the French Caesar costs $5-6M and can outrange the M777 in addition to driving away immediately after firing.

The US has the M109 which can serve in some of the same roles the Caesar can.

Also, does France have much rocket artillery? That might play a factor in the requirements for other artillery systems.