Big Guns Still Matter in an Age of Drones

Imagining there's a cheaper alternative to massive defense spending on fighter jets and other big-ticket weaponry is just wishful thinking.

- Lin Suling

Blame the Golden Dome missile shield plan of US President Donald Trump for being too big, too expensive (at US$175 billion) and too "beautiful".

Like his description of a spanking new sixth-generation F-47 plane, one that he calls the "most lethal aircraft ever built," the bombastic language employed draws the wrong sort of focus and perhaps the wrong sort of criticism.

A controversial figure, Mr Trump's proclivity for hyperbole is admittedly distracting and reasonably prompts disbelief. Yet his exaggeration seems to tempt an unhelpful over-reaction.

Right on schedule came the intellectual counter — that military spending focused on a missile defense shield and pricey fighter jets is both a sign of the US President's penchant for big projects and a misguided bureaucratic legacy policy given the changing nature of war in a time of cheap drones.

Okay, but which one are we going with? Mr Trump cannot be such a towering figure on defense procurement at the same time that he's basically buying what the defense wonks tell him to.

Admonish his over-promising perhaps — that a missile defense system and a sixth-generation jet suggest some sort of immediate quantum leap in defense capabilities.

Less headline-grabbing is the slow reality of military modernization. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, announced by the US in 2001, was fully operationally ready only almost 25 years later. The F-47 will be ready only in 10. Plus calling the F-47 what it is — a replacement for the US Air Force's ageing F-22 Raptors — doesn't have the same oomph.