Opportunities lost....Capability Gaps identified....

A quick down and dirty of opportunities that the US military is squandering and new capability gaps that are obvious to all...

Opportunities lost.

UAV lead...

The US military in general and the Navy in particular has a chance to make a leap ahead in persistent, all weather, long range strike with the X-47 in testing.  Instead its headed to the scrap heap and the F-35 will be pursued instead.  Why?  The X-47 will deliver everything that the F-35 will .... only better ...and cheaper!  The rest of the world is in a virtual holding pattern and instead of exploiting this lead and causing everyone else to play catch up, we squander the lead.  Oh and spare me the talk about the Taranis.  The Europeans are playing the usual --- monkey see, monkey do ---- they have no apparent interest in fielding the airplane, they only seek to make a smaller, larger or cheaper version to sell in competition if we go forward.

Lasers, Railguns...

Another case where we have a huge lead but aren't exploiting it.  We have a chance to field the world's first lasers and railguns but are dithering instead.  The Europeans, Russians and Chinese are all playing catchup but as usual we're waiting for them to get into the field.  Why?  This is a game changing technology like nothing else but we're not moving.

Capability Gaps.

Armor...

The Russians, and Chinese are both developing new armor.  We continue to use 1970's era developments and my beloved Marine Corps dithers about with the Amphibious Combat Vehicle that I still wonder about the true desire to field.  While the US military has become so "Special Ops" crazy that they actually believe that small units can defeat large, armored formation, our enemies are reading our Manuals and understand that even we say that those units are vulnerable to conventional units.  The result?  We're going to plop a Company Landing Team in bad guy land and wonder why CNN is video taping a "compassionate" enemy filling body bags with Marines that depended on F-35's to provide supporting fires but didn't because the weather turned bad.

Fighters...

You know the story here.  The Chinese are moving forward with the J-20.  The Russians are moving with the PAK-FA.  Everyone else is buying advanced anti-air systems.  We're sticking with the F-35.  Instead of admitting that the plane is a White Whale (as the Independent in the UK states here ) we're pushing ahead hoping to sell the stupid on the idea that the plane will be a ISR and C2 hub instead of delivering steel on target in the intended manner.

Conclusion.

We're setting ourselves up for a major ass kicking in the next fight. Assumptions are being made that could prove deadly.  Instead of being led by Think Tanks that desire to revolutionize the force, perhaps its time to get back to the serious business of defending a nation.  Academics/Presidents can afford to be dreamers (well honestly they can't but it appears that they've cornered the market in dreaming while awake).  Strategist/Defense leaders need to be clear eyed and sober.