Curiosidade do dia

Há quase um mês escrevi "Como é que os decisores se adaptarão a esta vertigem evolutiva?". Agora já sei a resposta… não se adaptam; a tarefa deles é cumprir um indicador, não ser eficazes.

Recordo também o que escrevi há cerca de uma semana nesta "Curiosidade do dia".

Vamos a isto. 

Hoje, o Twitter estava em polvorosa por causa desta demonstração de arrogância em "Building Tanks While the Ukrainians Master Drones".

O artigo começa por mostrar um forte contraste entre o que a guerra na Ucrânia revelou e o que a  indústria grande de defesa continua a fazer. Simon Shuster visita a Rheinmetall, à espera de encontrar uma empresa profundamente abalada pela ascensão da guerra por drones, mas encontra, antes, uma liderança que a desvaloriza. 

"Last month, on my way home from Kyiv, I passed through Germany to visit one of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers. My hope was to see its response to the rise of drone warfare. The company, Rheinmetall, is best known for making artillery and tanks; the Ukrainians have fought the Russian army to a virtual standstill by learning how to destroy such old-school armaments with cheaply made drones. I thought I would find the leaders of Rheinmetall seized by the threat of this revolution in military technology. I found no such thing."

O texto abre logo com a ideia de que os ucranianos travaram o exército russo aprendendo a destruir armamento tradicional com “cheaply made drones”, enquanto o CEO da Rheinmetall reage com desdém e fala em “Legos”. 

"When I brought up the drones that Ukraine has used so effectively against Russian tanks, the company’s chairman and CEO, Armin Papperger, was withering in his dismissal. "This is how to play with Legos," he told me.

He did not expect them to disrupt his industry. "What is the innovation of Ukraine?" Papperger asked. “"They don’t have some technological breakthrough. They make innovations with their small drones, and they say, ‘Wow!’ And that’s great. Whatever. But this is not the technology of Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, or Rheinmetall.""

A tensão central do artigo nasce aqui: a eficácia táctica dos drones baratos já foi demonstrada, mas os grandes actores industriais não parecem dispostos a aceitar facilmente o que isso implica. É impressionante a abstracção face à realidade no terreno:

"That, at least, is the feeling toward tanks that I have developed after several years of reporting in Ukraine, where they are no longer seen as vehicles that keep you safe and kill your enemies. In that war zone, they are slow-moving prey for the drones that fill the sky. I would sooner pull the pin from a grenade than ride around near the front lines in a tank.

When I explained this to my guide, Jan-Phillipp Weisswange, he seemed confused and a little defensive. The sale of armored vehicles makes up a significant part of the business at Rheinmetall. In Russia and Ukraine, soldiers have learned to protect their tanks from drone strikes using improvised nets and boxes, which cover the vehicles like a turtle shell. I asked whether Rheinmetall had developed something like that after four years of war in Ukraine. Weisswange glanced around at the machines on either side of us, all of them waiting for repairs, their tracks unchained and gun barrels angled upward. "No," he said. "We don't have something like that."

Well, why not?

The reasons turned out to be complex. But they help explain why Germany, like Europe and the rest of NATO, is so ill-prepared for not only wars of the future but also the ones raging today."

Ao mesmo tempo, o artigo mostra que:

"Since the Russian invasion in 2022, the Ukrainians have sparked a revolution in military technology. "Their level of innovation is out of this world," Lieutenant General Steven Whitney, a senior Pentagon official, testified this week before the Senate Armed Services Committee."

... e fizeram uma mudança estratégica muito rápida: 

"Produce less tanks. Produce more drones."

O argumento, portanto, não é que o velho arsenal desapareceu; é que o novo centro de adaptação, precisão, alcance e velocidade de aprendizagem se deslocou fortemente para os drones e sistemas associados.

O artigo mostra, depois, que a continuidade das compras de tanques, blindados e outros sistemas pesados não decorre apenas de lógica militar. Resulta também da forma como o Ocidente compra, certifica e financia a defesa. O texto diz que as compras desses sistemas "keep swelling", que é mais fácil alocar rapidamente grandes verbas a “exquisite systems”, e acrescenta que, “as a general rule”, os militares ocidentais dão os maiores contratos a fabricantes estabelecidos. 

"Still, purchases of new tanks and armored vehicles keep swelling the deal book at Rheinmetall, as well as the company's stock price, which has risen more than 15-fold since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Most of that growth came after Trump returned to the White House and began demanding that Europe spend more on defense. NATO members pledged at a summit in December to increase their defense budgets over the next decade to 5 percent of gross domestic product, more than double the previous spending commitment.

To reach that goal, European politicians and military planners need to allocate billions of dollars in a hurry, which is easiest to do by ordering what are known as "exquisite" systems-state-of-the-art machinery such as ballistic missiles, warships, and fighter jets. Most drones are too cheap to move the needle toward NATO's gargantuan spending targets."

Ao mesmo tempo, novas soluções enfrentam barreiras institucionais: para vender à NATO, os ucranianos precisariam de "NATO qualification", e mesmo mudanças de desenho em sistemas alemães exigem nova certificação. Isto dá ao artigo uma segunda camada: não é só uma história sobre tecnologia militar, é também uma história sobre inércia industrial, procurement e protecção dos incumbentes.

No fim, o artigo sugere que a verdadeira disputa não é apenas entre armas antigas e armas novas, mas entre modelos económicos e industriais diferentes. A ascensão dos drones baratos "poses a direct threat" ao modelo de negócio de empresas como a Rheinmetall, precisamente porque estas precisam de continuar a justificar contratos multimilionários para sistemas caros e pesados. O texto termina quase como uma ironia estratégica: 

"Papperger, of course, sees it differently. The rise of cheap drones poses a direct threat to his business model. To continue winning multibillion-dollar contracts for tanks and artillery, he needs to convince his clients that these weapons will remain essential to wars of the future. Ukraine has made that a much greater challenge.

When I asked him whether Ukrainian companies would one day sell their drones to NATO, he sighed and shook his head. They would not make it through the alliance's bureaucracy, he said: "They need a NATO qualification." Western regulators could, in other words, keep them off the European market by requiring licenses that Ukrainian firms might find hard to get.

Even adopting Ukrainian know-how seems difficult in that environment. During our tour of the factory in Unterlüss, my guide explained the complexity of changing anything about the design of a German weapons system. "Any adjustment needs to be recertified by the procurement agency," a department within the Ministry of Defense, Weisswange said. Any change to the material used to make the barrel of a tank, he said, would take at least a year to certify. "The quality controls are very strict, and the costs are very high."

In the end, Rheinmetall has a strong incentive to continue making the expensive weapons it has made for much of its history, even if they can be blown apart by drones that cost less than the average smartphone."

Este trecho é o tal que deu mais tweets, é doentio:

"Ukraine now makes more drones than any democracy in the world, and wealthy nations in Europe, Asia, and the Middle East are lining up to buy them. But when I asked the CEO of Rheinmetall what that could mean for his business model, he bristled. "Who is the biggest drone producer in Ukraine?" Papperger demanded. I listed the ones that I had visited in Kyiv two weeks earlier, Fire Point and Skyfall, which make hundreds of thousands of drones a month for the Ukrainian armed forces. "It's Ukrainian housewives, Papperger said of their factories. "They have 3-D printers in the kitchen, and they produce parts for drones," he said. "This is not innovation.""