Martyanov highlights specific Russian advancements that he claims have already devalued U.S. power projection:
The U.S. Navy, for example, has not faced a peer adversary since 1945. Its carriers—floating cities of immense vulnerability—are designed for a war of bombing desert encampments or enforcing blockades on failed states. Against a peer like China, a carrier strike group is less a weapon and more a $17 billion target. The People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has specifically engineered a war-fighting system—the Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) bubble—to render American power projection obsolete within 1,000 miles of its coast. Hypersonic missiles, satellite tracking networks, and quiet diesel submarines turn the carrier from a symbol of dominance into a hostage to diplomacy. Losing Military Supremacy- The Myopia of Americ...
The United States' failure to invest in new technologies is another significant concern. The rapid pace of technological change is transforming the nature of modern warfare, with advances in areas such as artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, and hypersonic missiles creating new opportunities and challenges. a trillion-dollar program
Strategic planning in the U.S. often ignores the social, cultural, and tactical requirements of conflict. He contrasts this with the Russian approach, which he views as more grounded in the realities of large-scale continental warfare. China is mass-producing drones
The myopia is believing that spending more on F-35s and destroyers will restore supremacy. The reality is that —not the one with the most expensive pilot in the cockpit. The war in Ukraine demonstrated that a $500 drone can destroy a $10 million tank. The war in Gaza showed that Iron Dome, for all its sophistication, can be saturated by mass-produced rockets. America is still building exquisite, crewed, high-cost platforms for a war that will be defined by swarms, autonomy, and attrition.
America’s military planners suffer from what former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called "next-war-itis": the pathological urge to fight the last war with the next generation of toys. The F-35, a trillion-dollar program, was designed to dominate skies that no peer adversary will contest. Meanwhile, China is mass-producing drones, loitering munitions, and hypersonic glide vehicles—systems explicitly designed to bypass, not challenge, America’s exquisite but brittle platforms.
Losing military supremacy is rarely a single event. It is a gradual geometry of shrinking options.