By Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D.
You’d think that after spending a decade adapting to threats like improvised explosive devices, the U.S. Army would be a little more imaginative about what kinds of challenges future enemies might pose. Well, no such luck. Having allocated over a billion dollars to develop defenses against future air threats — manned and unmanned — it now proposes to forego fielding anything new so the money can be spent on more pressing needs. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why this move is being made: few of the Army’s current enemies have air forces, so nobody’s worried about air threats. Planners will focus on improving air defenses if and when an enemy with airplanes comes along.
