“This new physics of war is present equally in the conflicts between Ukraine and Russia, Hezbollah and Israel, Hamas and Israel, and the Houthis and everyone else. In short, this new dynamic allows the small to act with great power, precision, and at a very low cost. While the large can also act with precision and on a small scale, it is much more costly for them to do so, having to bear the weight of vast legacy weapons systems.

For the moment, the net advantage seems to favor the small. This should worry us, when thinking about how the nascent artificial intelligence revolution will undoubtedly drive this trend, allowing the small to act with greater power and at lower cost.”

“John Arquilla, professor emeritus of defense analysis at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School, explained to me that missile warfare is no longer limited to firing a warhead with a predictable trajectory and letting inertia and GPS guidance systems steer it to the target. The Russians have invested enormous resources in building missiles with in-flight maneuverability, guided by more accurate real-time information, increasingly powered to hypersonic speeds, and capable of hitting targets from an angle the defender has not foreseen. According to reports, Iran's Fattah missiles possess these capabilities, although it is still unclear whether it was they or drones that destroyed the THAAD system 800 kilometers from Iran.

“This is turning the missile into the predominant weapon of the 21st century, with the potential to undermine deterrence and stability” in many different types of battles, said Arquilla, author of the new book “The Troubled American Way of War: From Hiroshima to the Age of Algorithms”.”