In “Moneyball Military: An Affordable, Achievable, and Capable Alternative to Deter China,” Christian D. Brose, currently the Chief Strategy Officer of Anduril Industries, advocates for a shift toward affordable, scalable, autonomous systems to counter China’s military advancements. This vision aligns with Anduril Industries’ approach, which focuses on cost-effective, AI-powered, autonomous technologies like the Fury fighter jet, reflecting Brose’s call for a “Moneyball Military” that emphasizes innovation over expensive legacy systems. Brose writes:
The US national defense enterprise—the political-military-industrial complex responsible for generating military power—is systemically broken. Despite trillions of dollars spent over the past two decades, the United States has endured unsatisfactory results in most of the wars it has waged in this century. We have mounted an inadequate and untimely response to the military transformation of a rising peer competitor, the Chinese Communist Party, that seeks to displace the United States as the world’s leading power. And we have become saddled with a defense industrial base that is struggling to generate both present military readiness and future military modernization. The specter of great-power conflict has not been higher since the last century.
Fortunately, a new consensus is emerging that we must make major changes. General Charles Q. Brown, likely the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has said: “If we
don’t change—if we fail to adapt—we risk losing . . . a high-end fight.” […]We must instead find a way to win the losing game we are now playing. Just as the Oakland A’s managed to think differently, disrupt themselves, and field winning teams despite having the lowest payroll in Major League Baseball, the United States must rapidly field alternative defense capabilities that are achievable, affordable, and capable of winning—a “Moneyball Military.” […]
These three forms of disruption—operational, industrial, and technological—have put the US defense enterprise in a strategic predicament. Our ability to generate and project military power is overly reliant upon small numbers of exquisite systems that our industrial base cannot build or replace at relevant scales and speeds, that China’s military modernization is increasingly capable of holding at risk, and that the accelerating march of advanced technologies is rapidly disrupting. No matter how much additional money we spend on these traditional capabilities over the coming years, if the United States were to find itself in a conflict with China by 2027, our military would be fighting and seeking to support our allies with little more than what is in our inventory today, depleted as that has been through our critical support to Ukraine. […]
Despite the many strategic disruptions working against the US defense enterprise, there are compelling reasons for optimism. The United States has all of the necessary raw materials to create in the coming years new and growing markets for a Moneyball Military that can get us out of the losing game we have been playing with China. We have talented people in and out of government. We still lead the world in many of the most important technologies. And we have plenty of money in our defense budget and private-capital markets to afford the kinds of changes that we urgently need to make. In short, Americans still definitively control our own destiny, and US leaders are finally speaking more honestly about the urgent need to solve these problems.
Brose, alongside Anduril founder Palmer Luckey, stresses the need for a decentralized, market-driven defense procurement model. By empowering operational forces and rapidly deploying new technologies, the U.S. could build a more agile military. Anduril’s name, inspired by The Lord of the Rings, symbolizes this transformation—just as Anduril was the reforged sword of Elendil, Anduril Industries is reshaping defense technology to meet modern threats. Their innovations offer a path to a more effective and affordable military capable of deterring adversaries like China. The US must adopt a “Moneyball Military” approach, inspired by the Oakland A’s, to quickly develop affordable and effective defense capabilities, focusing on innovation and cost-efficiency to succeed in modern warfare.
Anvil Drones and Advanced Sensors Lead Homeland Counter-UAS Push
The US military is launching rapid-response counter-drone teams to tackle a growing wave of drone incursions over domestic bases, according to The War Zone. Led by U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), the initiative will deploy “fly-away kits” within 24 hours to assist installation commanders facing drone threats. These kits, first developed by Anduril, include sensors and kinetic systems like the Anvil drone, which can physically intercept intruding UAVs. Incursions have nearly doubled over the past year, prompting this shift from passive monitoring to active defense. The first team will be based in Colorado, with plans to expand to the East Coast, West Coast, and Alaska. They write:
The U.S. military will soon have teams that can respond within 24 hours to drone incursions at homeland installations. The head of U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), Gen. Gregory Guillot, announced the new effort Thursday during the Falcon Peak 25.2 counter-drone evaluation taking place at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida. That’s where the equipment, called a “fly-away kit,” was demonstrated. You can read more about what’s in these kits later in our story.
The introduction of these teams comes as U.S. military installations have seen a significant increase in reported drone sightings over bases in the past year, a NORTHCOM spokesperson told The War Zone. From September 2023 to September 2024, there were about 230 reported drone incursions, the spokesperson said. From September 2024 to this month, there were about 420. Whether that represents an actual jump in drone overflights or better sensing that detected them remains unclear. […]
The first fly-away kit these teams will use was produced by Anduril. The company describes it as a “rapidly deployable, modular, and battle-tested counter-UAS system designed to detect, track, identify, and defeat Group 1-3 drones.”
The kit “includes a suite of sensors, effectors, and software optimized for expeditionary employment and the homeland defense mission. Key products in the kit include the Mobile Sentry for autonomous threat detection, tracking, and identification, Wisp SkyFence for wide-area IR passive detection and tracking, Pulsar for radio-frequency detection and electromagnetic effects, and Anvil for kinetic defeat. The kit also includes integrated power, networking, and edge compute. Designed for ease of deployment and operation by soldiers and airmen, the Fly-Away Kit delivers end-to-end kill-chain capability backed by the Lattice operating system.” […]
In a surprise attack, installations have to rely on their own resources, which are in the process of being bolstered by the respective military services, Guillot stated. However, “if for some reason it’s a surprise attack that’s followed with a sustained follow-on incursion, that’s where the fly-away kits would be useful.”
Read more here.
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