Elbridge Colby Quoted in Discourse Magazine

 Two of the key lessons of the Russian-Ukraine war are the tremendous expenditure of the most high-technology ordnance to achieve any useful battlefield effect, and the vulnerability of even the most advanced ships, planes and tanks to enemy action. The best missiles are in short supply, and those platforms (i.e. the ships, planes and tanks) that are not destroyed require intensive maintenance to meet the operations tempo needed for modern warfare.

Elbridge Colby, co-founder and principal at the Marathon Initiative, a nonprofit think tank specializing in strategic analysis, said these considerations should burden U.S. war planners, even if they are not yet a national priority. “In China’s case I would be thinking, absolutely plaster Taiwan and potentially other American and Japanese facilities so there is no chance that they will be able to get a defense together,” Colby says. “The Chinese have a huge missile force, much larger than the Russians. They have a much larger industrial base.”

Discourse Magazine (Mercatus Center)