Local opinion: Pentagon's billion-dollar blind spot

As a former U.S. Air Force Nuclear Missile Combat Crew Commander who has called Tucson home for six decades, I deeply appreciate what Raytheon brings to our community. The company’s 12,000 high-paying jobs have been an economic cornerstone for Tucson and Pima County. I also understand the critical importance of maintaining strong defense capabilities. However, Saturday’s Star coverage of Raytheon’s $1.1 billion AIM-9X contract compels me to voice serious concerns about the Pentagon’s strategic direction.

This massive investment — the largest production contract to date for the program — will produce 2,500 missiles annually at approximately $440,000 per missile. While the AIM-9X Sidewinder is undoubtedly a sophisticated weapon, we must ask ourselves: Is this the smartest allocation of our defense dollars when facing 21st-century threats?

Modern warfare has fundamentally changed. In Ukraine, drones costing as little as $400 are neutralizing sophisticated Russian equipment worth thousands of times more. China’s DJI Mavic 3, used by both sides, costs around $2,000 — meaning you could purchase 55,000 for the price of a single F-35.

This cost disparity isn’t just about numbers; it represents a fundamental shift in military doctrine. Russian Shahed drones, estimated at $35,000 each, retain what experts call “a cruel attritional logic” against traditional defense systems. The advent of cheap commercial drones has sharply tilted cost asymmetry toward offense.

As documented in Raj M. Shah’s compelling book “Unit X: How the Pentagon and Silicon Valley Are Transforming the Art of War,” the Defense Department has consistently failed to embrace the technological revolution reshaping modern conflict. Shah chronicles how a small group of military innovators fought bureaucratic resistance to integrate cutting-edge commercial technologies into defense systems.

This resistance to change reflects a broader institutional problem. As Chris Brose, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee, observed: “The second decade of the twenty-first century was one of colossal, missed opportunities for the U.S. military. DoD, on the whole, had missed the advent of modern software development, the move to cloud computing, the commercial space revolution, the centrality of data, and the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning.”

While we spend nearly half a million dollars per missile, our adversaries are rapidly scaling production of drone swarms, autonomous systems, and AI-enabled weapons at a fraction of the cost. China is mass-producing military drones while we’re perfecting incremental improvements to decades-old missile designs. Russia, despite its technological limitations, has demonstrated how cheap, proliferated systems can overwhelm expensive traditional defenses.

The mathematical reality is sobering. For the cost of this single AIM-9X contract, we could potentially field hundreds of thousands of advanced drones, develop revolutionary AI-enabled defense systems, or accelerate hypersonic weapons programs. Instead, we’re doubling down on a paradigm where each engagement costs more than most Americans’ homes.

This isn’t about abandoning proven capabilities or undermining Raytheon’s work. It’s about achieving the right balance between current readiness and preparing for future conflicts. We need a defense strategy that embraces technological disruption.

The Pentagon must shift from its traditional focus on exquisite, expensive systems toward proliferated, adaptive technologies. This means investing heavily in drone development, artificial intelligence, electronic warfare, and other asymmetric capabilities that provide overwhelming advantages at manageable cost.

Tucson’s defense community, including Raytheon, should lead this transformation rather than resist it. Our region has the talent, infrastructure, and innovation ecosystem to become America’s center for next-generation defense technologies. But this requires acknowledging that the future of warfare looks very different from the past.

America’s military superiority depends not on perfecting yesterday’s solutions, but on embracing tomorrow’s possibilities. The $1.1 billion AIM-9X contract represents everything wrong with our current approach: massive investments in incrementally improved legacy systems while revolutionary technologies reshape the battlefield around us.

We can honor both our community’s economic interests and our nation’s security — but only if we change course before it’s too late.