IMPLICATIONS FOR ASIA
While the Iran war has not spilled out of the Middle East, defence planners from Asia will have registered the sharp implications of how it is being fought.
First, LUCAS shows that the US is complementing its arsenal of high-end missiles with significantly cheaper and expendable assets. The US is already changing the way it will operate in the event of conflict in the Indo-Pacific, shifting away from operating large force grouping out of fixed bases in favour of smaller, more agile forces fighting from dispersed locations and the LUCAS could fit into this strategy.
One-way attack drones, with a relatively small and flexible deployment footprint, will likely figure prominently in the US force posture in the Indo-Pacific alongside a smaller number of more capable but more expensive weapon systems. This is the kind of asymmetric capability that the US is seeking, while China has been making advances in military capability.
Next, the US is burning through a prodigious amount of ballistic missile defence interceptors against Iranian ballistic missiles.
Even before the Iran war, experts had warned that the US and its Indo-Pacific allies do not have, and is producing nowhere near enough, the number of interceptors it needs should a conflict break out against China. This could call into question a vital aspect of the ability of the US military to conduct operations in the Indo-Pacific.
It is perhaps a salutary lesson to defence planners about over reliance on smaller numbers of high-tech, expensive weapons, and that it might be worth investing in a large quantity of cheaper, less-sophisticated systems to work alongside them for maximum effect.
Mike Yeo is the Indo-Pacific Bureau Chief for defence media outlet Breaking Defense. He has more than a decade of experience as a defence journalist, specialising in regional defence and security matters.
