From strikes by uncrewed aerial systems launching precision Hellfire missiles in Afghanistan and Iraq to U.S. Navy ships firing missiles against Houthi targets in the Middle East over the last few years, the United States has led the world in precision strike capabilities for decades. For more than a generation, the United States maintained a healthy lead in the most sophisticated military technologies, especially those that enabled precision strike, and its large advantage arguably deterred many potential rivals from symmetric competition. With the focus on precision, given the accuracy benefits and larger costs of systems, came a decision to prioritize quality over quantity in military capabilities. However, technological change over the last decade has eroded the binary between scale and sophistication. It has also accelerated the proliferation of key elements of the precision strike complex. Even relatively weak actors, such as Iran and militant groups like the Houthis in Yemen, can acquire and even produce these capabilities. For example, the Houthis use Iranian technology like the Shahed-136 one-way precision attack system — and derivatives they produce themselves — to attack shipping in the Red Sea, generating billions of dollars in costs to commercial shipping companies and the U.S. Navy. This is to say nothing of more capable rivals like the People’s Republic of China, which can deliver advanced weapons and platforms on par with the United States in many areas.
The global proliferation of precision strike means we now live in an era of “precise mass,” where comparatively cheap uncrewed systems — that can be deployed at scale — are also highly advanced and deadly accurate. The proliferation of low-cost precise mass means that the United States can no longer comfortably rely upon the edge in precision strike it cultivated over decades. Moreover, the cost-exchange ratio of competing solely with exquisite, expensive systems is likely to lead to failure over time, especially as lower-cost alternatives become more capable and manufacturing lead times for more exquisite systems grow (like in the case of the F-35). These dynamics suggest a strong logic for the United States and others in pursuing a mix of capabilities, emphasizing mass at the lower end and stealthy capabilities at the higher end that can survive in this era of warfare.
The Strategy of the Past
In the latter part of the Cold War and beyond, the U.S. military largely dedicated itself to gaining a qualitative edge over its adversaries. For example, in the late 1970s and 1980s, the United States adopted the second offset strategy to counter the Soviet Union’s numerical superiority in Europe with an advantage in expensive, high-tech, and exquisite systems. This meant investing in a suite of technologies that would enable the U.S. military to accurately and swiftly attack Soviet forces deep behind their lines before they could bring their forces to bear against the American military or Western European territory. The Soviets termed this new military concept the “reconnaissance strike complex” (from the Russian pекогносцировочный yдарный комплекс) and quickly recognized its revolutionary potential.
The reconnaissance strike complex, also known as the precision strike complex, is the integration of surveillance assets (such as satellites and reconnaissance aircraft), strike platforms (such as bombers and submarines), and munitions (such as missiles and “smart” bombs). This system of systems enabled the United States to strike its adversaries more quickly, from greater distances, and with much higher levels of precision than ever before. For example, while less than 20 percent of bombs fell within 1,000 feet of their targets in World War II, modern precision-guided munitions are deadly accurate. The effectiveness of the precision strike complex was illustrated in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, as the United States and its coalition partners vastly exceeded initial expectations and routed the large, well-equipped, and battle-tested Iraqi military with fewer than 200 American deaths. Laser-guided smart bombs used in this conflict inflicted a disproportionate amount of damage against Iraqi targets relative to their unguided counterparts, and satellites proved critical for desert navigation and communications.
However, acquiring a sophisticated precision strike capability was extremely challenging during the Cold War and early post–Cold War period for at least three reasons. First, it involved acquiring several key technologies rather than a single technology. Surveillance platforms that locate and track potential targets, strike platforms that deliver munitions against targets, and munitions that can destroy the target are all required to have a sophisticated capability. Second, many of the underlying systems were of the exquisite type and thus quite expensive. As a result, the United States made a conscious decision to reduce the scale of its military and rely on quality instead. Third, successfully adopting the precision strike complex requires highly trained personnel and the doctrine and concepts of operation designed to take advantage of the capabilities. Not all countries have sufficient levels of organizational capital to integrate this system of systems.
These barriers combined to reduce the proliferation of the precision strike complex. As Barry Watts writes, “Not widely foreseen in the mid-1990s was that nearly two decades later long-range precision strike would still be a virtual monopoly of the United States military.” This conclusion is supported by a novel dataset we created measuring countries’ precision strike capabilities when it comes to eight key technologies: ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, bombers, fighter aircraft, submarines, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, precision-guided munitions, and satellites. Our data, which measures the sophistication of a country’s capabilities in these areas (e.g., by coding factors like range, payload, and speed) rather than the quantity of systems countries have, reveals that the United States has maintained a strong advantage over other countries since at least the late 1980s. Furthermore, despite the predictions of some prominent realist theorists, few countries have been able to successfully emulate the United States and compete when it comes to quality.
In fact, a statistical analysis we conducted shows that the United States’ large advantage in exquisite systems had a major benefit: it likely deterred some countries from competing symmetrically. This has long been a key element of American strategy. As Stephen Cambone, the then-principal deputy undersecretary of defense for policy and a close advisor to Donald Rumsfeld, articulated: “[I]t’s important that potential adversaries understand … that these are not going to be winning efforts. So don’t bother going down that course. Stay out of that area because you cannot succeed there.”
Because the United States maintained such a significant lead, many potential rivals realized they could not effectively match or eclipse the quality of American capabilities, and thus did not try to. Instead, many invested in more asymmetric strategies. For example, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 2007 to 2019, said, “Asymmetrical warfare … is [our] strategy for dealing with the considerable capabilities of the enemy. … Since the enemy has considerable technological abilities, and since we are still at a disadvantage in comparison, despite the progress we have made in the area of equipment, [our only] way to confront [the enemy] successfully is to adopt the strategy [of asymmetric warfare] and to employ various methods of this kind.” There was thus a strong rationale for America’s focus on quality over quantity in the past.
The Realities of the Present
Times have changed due to technological advancements that are reshaping the character of war. Improvements in manufacturing, the diffusion of know-how about precision guidance and access to commercial satellites, and growth in autonomy and AI mean the basics of precision strike are now readily available to state and non-state actors.
Consider the Russian-Ukrainian War, where Ukraine — a country whose gross domestic product per capita ranks about 135th in the world and whose gross domestic product ranks 57th in the world— now has the capacity to produce four million drones annually and is reportedly losing ten thousand drones per month. The scale of airpower being utilized by Ukraine is unprecedented. In contrast, the United States only produced around three hundred thousand military aircraft during the entirety of World War II, and it currently has less than five thousand total military aircraft in its inventory.
Iran, which the Defense Intelligence Agency concluded in 2019 is “lacking a modern air force” and is a middle-tier power at best, has also become a major player in the drone space. For example, thousands of their Shahed one-way attack systems have been used by Russia to conduct attacks against Ukraine. Even though a high percentage of them have been shot down, their low cost means even a 10 or 20 percent success rate is financially sustainable. That is especially the case since the missiles Ukraine has used to shoot them down are often many times more expensive than the munition itself.
The Houthis in Yemen, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, have wreaked havoc on the global economy by using Iran’s Shahed one-way attack systems, cheap drones, and other tools, including uncrewed surface vessels, to target commercial shipping in the Red Sea.
These examples illustrate that precise weaponry is now much more widely available to weak powers than it was in the past, and the low cost of many of these systems enables actors to deploy precision technology at scale (i.e., precise mass).
Consequences for U.S. Defense Strategy
As the technological landscape evolves, so should U.S. defense strategy. Even if current and potential U.S. adversaries initially invested in precise mass capabilities because they could not compete at the higher end with more exquisite U.S. capabilities, technological advances in manufacturing, AI, autonomy, and the diffusion of knowledge have changed the game. Now, precise mass capabilities have proven their worth on the battlefield in their own right, even as combined arms warfare remains key to success.
There is a temptation, of course, to think about precise mass as simply a supplement to U.S. capabilities that is necessary in the short term given the struggles the U.S. defense industrial base is having producing ships, submarines, fighters, missiles, and artillery at scale and reasonable prices. Although increasingly large outlays to revive the defense industrial base by the Trump and then Biden administrations are poised to pay off, it may be years or even decades before the impact of investments in areas like the submarine industrial base or the manufacturing of high-end weapons like the long-range anti-ship missile becomes clear.
Therefore, continuing to invest only or mostly in quality, meaning exquisite, systems at the expense of platforms that can leverage precise mass would be risky. Adversaries now have a greater ability to utilize a large quantity of relatively cheap — but precise — systems to try and destroy a single exquisite asset. Currently, the financial burden is often greater for the defending force than the offensive force when it comes to large-scale attacks, as Iran’s assault against Israel in April 2024 illustrates. Using million-dollar missiles to destroy one-way attack systems that cost tens of thousands of dollars or less is a losing proposition over time.
Washington should therefore revise its defense approach to invest more in attritable systems, and cost-effective defensive technologies in general. The Replicator initiative is an excellent start, but it should be built upon and expanded. After all, the Department of Defense is only currently investing an extremely small fraction of its overall budget into precise mass. A key advantage of investing more in precise mass is speed of scaling and deployment. Systems like attritable drones can be produced relatively quickly to meet the increasingly fraught geopolitical landscape, whereas exquisite systems like Virginia-class submarines take much longer to produce, even though they are absolutely vital for U.S. military power.
Thinking about precise mass as merely a short-term supplement while longer-term investments in the defense industrial base come on line would also be a mistake. A mix of higher-end and lower-end capabilities will be necessary to succeed in future wars, particularly against nation-states. Even an extremely wealthy country like the United States can only afford a certain number of joint air-to-surface standoff missiles when they cost up to $2 million per missile. The cost of hypersonics, which are now entering the U.S. military arsenal and are already deployed by China and Russia, are even higher per missile. It is therefore not an either/or between expensive and attritable systems, just as it is not an either/or between newer and older technologies.
Precise mass capabilities therefore will complement rather than fully substitute for existing capabilities. For example, at least some exquisite systems — such as submarines and stealthy aircraft — can survive even in an era of precise mass with ubiquitous sensing. If they cannot be located, then precision and mass are not sufficient to destroy them. A future U.S. military arsenal with both attritable systems that can be deployed at scale and a suite of expensive, high-end, and stealthy systems that can survive the rigors of modern warfare would be a strong force. There is synergy between exquisite and attritable systems, as the latter can be employed to overwhelm an adversary’s defenses or strike them precisely in the absence of defenses, and the former can be utilized to strike and destroy the principal target with a high degree of confidence, even in the face of sophisticated defenses.
In conclusion, as our research shows, high financial costs and other barriers to entry made it difficult for countries to compete with the United States in precision strike systems for decades. These dynamics helped explain the initially slow proliferation of precision strike technology and justified Washington’s focus on exquisite systems at the expense of mass. But the strategies of yesterday will not necessarily work tomorrow. To adjust to the realities of the present, the Department of Defense should not go all in on just quality or quantity, but focus on both stealth and scale. For the United States, growth by defense technology firms, the launch of a new Pentagon office focused on scaling artificial intelligence adoption, and Congressional support for innovation means there is an opportunity now to build effectively for the future. The incoming Trump administration, given its interest in new and innovative approaches to defense technology, has an opportunity to build on initiatives like Replicator and make this a reality.
Michael C. Horowitz is the Richard Perry professor and director of Perry World House at the University of Pennsylvania and a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. From 2022 to 2024, he served as the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for force development and emerging capabilities.
Joshua A. Schwartz joshis an assistant professor of international relations and emerging technology at the Carnegie Mellon Institute for Strategy and Technology. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Grand Strategy, Security, and Statecraft fellow at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The views in this article are those of the authors alone and do not represent those of the Department of Defense, its components, or any part of the U.S. government.
Image: Sgt. Perla Alfaro via DVIDs.
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