The Folly of the Imminent Standard

The size of the Iran War is daunting to many who watch it. It is also the consequence of relying on an "imminent threat" standard to justify military action. 

Long ago I warned against the "imminent" threshold for justifying military action as "the last resort" (quoting a 2003 post):

When you believe that any path, no matter how unlikely to bear fruit, keeps you from that "last" resort, then military force is practically speaking never an option.

In regard to Iran I wrote:

And while many here continue to insist that military action must be the last resort, the more the knowledge of nuclear weaponry becomes deeply embedded within Iran. More people acquire the knowledge of how to proceed and unless we kill them all, destroying buildings is the least effective way to slow them down. Iran can rebuild structures if they have the scientists and technicians who take decades to train ready to pick up the pieces. Indeed, Iran could rebuild in other countries and subcontract various stages of the work in locations that may be immune to future attacks. 

Sure, time may provide a solution other than military action. But it can also lead to stupid paper deals to achieve seriously farcical "solutions" resting on fantasy:

President Barack Obama has spoken of his ambition to bring Iran in from the cold, saying the long-time US foe could be “a very successful regional power” if it agrees to a deal over its nuclear programme.

I long worried that a president confronted with finally being the one standing when the music turned off in the game of musical Oval Office chairs in the nearly fifty years of mullah rule in Iran would take the easiest option by unleashing the four-step plan.

Yet here we are with time short but not out, working the much larger Iran problem rather than shrugging our shoulders and hoping the mullahs are not as mad as their rhetoric and violence would indicate.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

The Winter War of 2022 Negates Russia's Size Advantage

Early in the war I assessed the balance between Russia and Ukraine via the example of the Iran-Iraq War and judged Ukraine had the GDP edge and that Russia's population edge didn't give it the advantage you would expect. The GDP edge and casualty edge is now clearly in Ukraine's favor.

Well hello arsenal of democracy:

A prominent Russian ultranationalist military and political commentator claimed that Western economic potential is “orders of magnitude” larger than Russia’s and is becoming militarily evident as “Western-backed” Ukrainian drone strikes against Russia have increasingly involved hundreds of drones.[1] The commentator claimed that the size of such strikes will only increase, and that Russia cannot produce enough interceptor missiles to compete with Western economic potential[.] 

So Ukraine has the edge in the production war, notwithstanding Europe's slow pace of restoring their defense industrial base. Not that ours is blazing fast except by comparison.

And to add insult to injury:

The European Union (EU) will transfer €1.4 billion in proceeds from frozen Russian assets to aid Ukraine. 

As for casualties, Ukraine seems to be inflicting KIAs at more than twice the numbers overall, with 200,000 Ukrainian troops killed and 460,000 Russian troops killed (using maximum estimates for both).

Over the last year Ukraine has leaned into a thin line that trades space for time to kill Russian soldiers. That seems to indicate Ukraine has a much higher kill ratio than the overall ratio.

The cumulative effect of that attrition combined with Russia's communications problems have translated to changes on the battlefield (back to the ISW report):

Russian pro-war information space voices are beginning to acknowledge Ukraine’s frontline successes, mid-range BAI campaign, and drone adaptations. A prominent Russian ultranationalist milblogger complained on March 26 that Russian forces will be unable to reverse an unfavorable battlefield situation in the coming months and that “rather successful” Ukrainian counterattacks have disrupted Russia’s ability to pursue offensive efforts in 2026. 

Back in July 2022, based on a comparison to Iran and Iraq in their 1980s war, I wrote that Russia didn't necessarily have an advantage in people and economic strength that would enable Russia to bulldoze through Ukraine in the short run:

Like Iran, Russia has a 3:1 advantage in population. But Russian morale as a conqueror, that is clearly not liberating people from Nazis, is not superior. This could break Russia before Ukraine. Just how do we define the transition from the short run to the long run?

What about GDP and defense spending? You'd think Russia clearly has the edge with a 9:1 GDP advantage. 

But Russia is under Western sanctions that will harm Russia's ability to go to war production levels. Russian Soviet-era stockpiles will run low in time--or reach the material and ammo almost more dangerous to Russian users than Ukrainian targets.

And Ukraine is being supplied by the West, which has an immensely greater GDP advantage than Russia's advantage over Ukraine. So you can't just count the value of the arms and services provided to Ukraine when comparing the economic advantage. You'd have to count the research and development and logistics value on Ukraine's side of the ledger that provides the weapons, supplies, and services.

And the effects after four years of relentless Russian ground offensives seem to be tilting against Russia a bit:

Russia’s position on the battlefield has changed over the past six months (October 2025 through March 2026) as Ukrainian counterattacks and mid-range strikes, the block on Russia’s use of Starlink terminals in Ukraine, and Kremlin efforts to throttle Telegram have exacerbated existing issues within the Russian military.

Maybe this is just a blip in Ukraine's favor. It is tempting--and safer--to say things tomorrow will be the same as yesterday. And after the same old thing for years now, with only the obvious blip of Ukraine's 2024 offensive into Russia's Kursk region to break the trend, it would be easy to call this another blip that doesn't change the trajectory of the war. 

But it seems significant. Is the war on the knife's edge finally tilting in Ukraine's favor? 

NOTE: ISW updates continue here. 

NOTE: Also, I put war-related links and commentary in the Weekend Data Dump on Substack. You may read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved.

NOTE: Territorial change chart from ISW. 

Weekend Data Dump

The Weekend Data Dump is a compilation of short entries about the previous week’s defense and national security news that I found interesting. I couldn’t possibly comment on everything in my news flow or delve into everything that interests me. So most news that interests me doesn’t make the cut for a post. The rest go in the data dump. Enjoy!

HOP ON OVER AND READ IT! On the bright side, you can comment on Substack!

In case you missed it on Substack: The Forty-Five Year Oil War

In case you missed it on Substack: A Dangerous Lesson From the Winter War of 2022

In case you missed it on Substack: Four Lessons From the Iran War of 2026 for Taiwan?

In case you missed it on Substack: Protracted War?

Help me out by subscribing on Substack and by liking and sharing posts. I occasionally post short data dump-type items (or not-so-short) on my Substack "Notes" section.

Is America's Military Build Up a Long-Term Shiny Mirage?

Don't build a hollow military. Fielding a military that looks capable is more dangerous to American security than having a military obviously ill-prepared for war.

This is worrisome:

By pouring billions into procurement for new ships, planes, and sensors, without a corresponding transformation in how we budget for their operations and sustainment across their lifecycle, we are jeopardizing future readiness for acquisition speed today.

This doesn't mean we won't budget for operations and sustainment--and the realistic training to use the weapons and systems--in future appropriations acts. But readiness isn't something we can assume just happens. I want a reverse emphasis:

Readiness in materiel and leadership/training is hard to maintain but easy to squander.

If we repair our defense industrial base, readiness, and leadership first, expansion of our military forces to global war standards could be done when threats become more active and imminent. We could expand to the limits of our revived industrial capacity. If we reverse that we risk having an impressive-looking but hollow military. Which is a problem.

Granted, my focus was on the problem of expanding the force structure at the expense of sustaining our military in a war. But focusing on modernization at the expense of readiness gets us to a similar bad place of not being able to sustain what we send to war.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Welp, grabbed the image from someplace and forgot the source. Or it was a DOD source.

Iran's Eroded Proxy Force in Iraq

I've long been frustrated at the apparent inability of the Iraqis to dismantle the pro-Iran Popular Mobilization Force militias established during the ISIL 2014 offensive. Perhaps I have been wrong to worry.

I recognized both the threat of the PMF militias. Yet recognized forcefully disbanding them could be too much of a short-term threat:

I've written about the need to bring the militias under control or ultimately disband them. The weak Iraqi government has to be careful but the job must be started before the militias are as entrenched in Iraq as Hezbollah is in Lebanon.

The militias have largely been unwilling to rise up to support Iran. Seemingly, Iraq has slowly been working the problem:

They painted a picture of a proxy network hollowed out by years of targeted assassinations of hard-to-replace leaders; the loss of secure bases for training and weapons transit; and the transformation of Iraqi commanders into wealthy politicians and businessmen with more to lose than gain from confronting the West.

One commander said he believed only two or three of dozens of the militias would fully obey Iranian orders to strike.

It seems like the Iraqis took a smart, slow path to de-fang the militias. Crushing the mullah regime in Iran might finish them off whether or not the mullah regime survives. 

UPDATE: That's timely news:

Iranian-backed militias have been increasing their attacks in Iraq in part because Tehran has lost its control over these groups since the launch of Epic Fury, a retired tier one special operator who just left Baghdad told The War Zone.

Perhaps I'm mistaken about the pro-Iran militias not being as effective as I'd expect. The update article speaks of "chaos"; but I don't see news reports about that. Surely, much of the media would eagerly report that, no? 

Something to watch. 

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Image from here.

Combined Arms Changes

New weapons should change Army combined arms operations.

This is fair:

Drones are profoundly changing the Army’s approach to aviation and combined arms training, Maj. Gen. Clair A. Gill, commanding general of the U.S. Army Aviation Center of Excellence, told Military Times in an interview.

I wonder about attack helicopters over the modern battlefield. 

As for drones, of course they change combined arms. And widely fielded counter-drone systems could eventually do the same. So this is relevant, too:

However, fighting methods from Ukraine should not be broadly applied to American forces, he noted, due to differences in U.S. tactics and capabilities. 

Endorsed! And let's not forget difference in the drone defense issue.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo from the article. 

Changing the Terms of NATO: Spanish Edition

I read complaints that America has changed the terms of Article V by insisting allies earn American help by doing more to defend NATO. Spain is one of the countries that changed the terms of Article V long before America did.

Spain doesn't spend much on defense and never has in NATO. And the current justification is that Spain is far from Russia:

Madrid had little incentive to ramp up defence spending. It languished further after Spain reeled from the 2008 financial crash, standing at just 0.9 percent when Russia annexed Crimea. And since the likes of Germany were slow to raise their tiny military budgets after what should have been a turning point, faraway Spain could be forgiven for stepping up inadequately. Especially seeing as Ukraine is on the other side of the continent. 

Just going to note--notwithstanding my longstanding support for arming Ukraine and my even longer support for preventing Russia from being a threat--that America is even farther from Ukraine and Russia, from the perspective of looking across the Atlantic.

While America may be revising the terms of Article V--never an automatic trigger--Europeans had already revised the terms of Article V by disarming far more ... enthusiastically ... than America did after the Cold War. Those European states counted on America defending them regardless of their contribution.

Much of NATO has or is correcting that mutual defense deficiency. Spain has not. Although it did decide to help defend Cyprus. And if the initial author is correct, internal politics will prevent Spain from spending more. Spain's failure to let America use its air bases for the war against Iran is not a promising sign. And it got worse. 

Perhaps another NATO ally would like to host the ballistic missile defense destroyers we base in Spain now.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Photo of the Spanish destroyer ordered to Cyprus from the last article.

Yes, I Have Another Site

I experimented with linking my individual Substack posts here to increase their search engine visibility. But I think I was addressing a non-problem. So I'm not doing it any more notwithstanding my lovely illustration for the tag.

As long as you are here, head on over to my Substack, The Dignified Rant: Evolved, for more dignified rantiness on a new platform. 

I've been blogging since July 2022. I started on Geocities. Partially moved from the absorbed Yahoo!Geocities when my storage ran low to Blogger. Then fully relied on Blogger when Yahoo!Geocities died. 

And now I've moved partially to Substack. I would like escape the nightmare of again moving old site content to my latest site.

FUN FACT: When I started The Dignified Rant, I thought that one day I might move away from the more whimsical early Blogosphere vibe to the more buttoned down The Dunn Report--thus keeping the TDR shorthand intact. Screw that. Dignified and ranty will endure.

Small Drones Graduate From Ammunition

Small suicide drones are really loitering smart bombs with a small payload. Some are evolving back into platforms as modern attack drones began.

Small attack drones are now small bombers:

Explosive first-person-view drones get a lot of the attention, but the most dangerous drones in the sky over Ukraine—especially for the Russians—are heavy bomber drones.

Where an FPV explodes on contact, making it single-use, a heavy bomber drone is reusable. It can strike repeatedly with a payload of several grenades and then return to base for more munitions.

Hovering to drop the grenades may be accurate but that makes them more vulnerable to being shot down when troops increase their awareness of this threat, no?

Could we see these bomber drones become dive bombers to use speed at bomb launch for aiming and some protection? And how long before its all just a Bonsai Air Force doing all the things big aircraft can't do close to the ground? But even then, we won't have victory through tiny air power.

NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here. 

NOTE: You may also like to read my posts on Substack, at The Dignified Rant: Evolved. Go ahead and subscribe to it. It's the right thing to do!

NOTE: Image from the article.