The age of the single decisive weapon is giving way to the age of the swarm. Robert Kelly, a professor of international relations at Pusan National University, warned that China is already working on how to overwhelm American defenses by flooding the battlespace with cheap, mass-produced aerial platforms - and the Iran war is proving the concept works.
As "Hvylya" reports, Kelly wrote in 19fortyfive.com that the obvious counter-strategy against expensive American air defenses is to "simply flood the battlespace with cheap airpower." The math is unforgiving: much of the swarm gets destroyed, but some always gets through. Targets can be overwhelmed by sheer volume.
Kelly noted that China "is researching exactly how to do that, even if Iran is unable to mobilize a high density of cheap airpower outside of the Strait of Hormuz." The distinction matters. Iran is a regional power with limited production capacity. China operates the world's largest manufacturing base and can produce drones and missiles at scales no other nation can match.
The shift toward cheap, ubiquitous airpower is not speculative. Kelly pointed out that the war in Ukraine already demonstrated it. Both Russia and Ukraine turned to "heavy use of cheap, ubiquitous airpower, including drones and low-cost missiles." The Iran conflict, he argued, is "moving in the same direction" - confirming that the trend is global, not an anomaly of one theater.
Against a Chinese swarm strategy, the U.S. military's current force structure faces a fundamental problem. Its interceptors cost roughly 40 times more than the platforms they are designed to destroy. Kelly described the mismatch as "unsustainable over time" and warned that in a peer conflict, the swarm would simply outlast the defense.
Also read: "Hvylya" reported on how China's rare earth leverage forced Washington into an unexpected retreat.