Connor Keating
The future of conflict in the Western Pacific will hinge on sustaining firepower over vast distances with finite magazines and vulnerable logistics. The Russia‑Ukraine war and much of history show that victory has never relied on a small inventory of exquisite, high‑cost weapons.1 Instead, success increasingly rests on combining massed, affordable drones with a more limited stock of precision‑guided munitions—a munitions‑centric high–low mix. To deter and, if necessary, defeat aggression, the U.S. should build a mix of long‑range, payload-modular drones. This approach is about designing an economically favorable, attrition‑resilient strike architecture that forces an adversary into unfavorable cost‑exchange ratios.
Originally a Cold War concept that paired high‑ and low‑end manned platforms against the Soviet Union, the high–low mix has re-emerged in a new form centered on munitions rather than platforms. A munitions‑centric high–low mix forces adversaries to choose between defending against slow, numerous drones or conserving interceptors for higher‑end threats, thereby creating gaps in their air defenses.2 In a theater defined by extended supply lines and constrained magazines, such a mix will be essential to sustaining combat power and imposing escalating costs on the People’s Liberation Army.
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