Beginning in the 16^th century Swiss mercenaries hired themselves out to the French monarchy (among others) and a saying grew among soldiers, whenever their pay was delayed. Literally the expression means “no money, no soldiers”. The tradition lives to this day in the Vatican’s famous 135-member Papal Swiss Guard.

What prompted my citation of this ancient saying was a discussion I watched on the subject of the Russo-Ukraine War. Both men in the interview had reasonable discussion points and I enjoyed the conversation but near the end the discussion turned to what I have called an American obsession: metrics.

The first metric was what weapons cost and the trade-off between weapons and how this was affecting the economies of the two nations at war. I have talked about this before so I will be brief: Yes, costs are important but almost never the most important determinant of a war’s outcome. There are plenty of examples of nations going deeply into debt in order to survive a war. Make no mistake; fiscal and economic ineptitude has brought down regimes, most famously the French in 1789, and the Soviet Union in 1989. But Ukraine is a different matter, and as I have repeatedly maintained, they would rather set themselves on fire than return to having Russian overlords.

The second metric was drone production. This was interesting for many reasons. The latest estimate is that Ukraine is producing upwards of three million drones of all types per year. That is an astounding number but more important, the Ukrainian armed forces are innovating as quickly as they are increasing production. They are demonstrating astounding intellectual application to the tactical problems they face. The one stumbling block that their massive — and effective — use of drones cannot overcome is that victory is nearly impossible while remaining on the defence. As Carl von Clausewitz explained in On War, the defensive is the stronger form of war, but the offensive is the decisive form. Granted, like the Iranians, they are now “winning” because they continue to survive. Whether they can do so without moving over to the offensive at the operational and strategic levels is a question for another day.

The point that prompted this post was that the historian being interviewed pointed to a fascinating fact: most of the components found in the drones, both Russian and Ukrainian, are made in China (I cannot verify the veracity of this comment, but it seems logical) and the US should be terrified of China’s manufacturing capacity regarding these weapons systems. And here is where “the wheels fell off” as far as I’m concerned.

This is not a new argument, but when it comes to war, it has always been a spurious one in my mind. We saw this argument being made during the Cold War; The USSR could throw so many weapons and soldiers at us that we would run out of ammunition before they stopped. It was nonsense then and it remains so. Flooding the battlespace with “targets” is not like flooding the marketplace with cheap consumer goods. Numbers are important and whatever the fascination may be with “counting” these numbers, they are not the decisive factor in war. Doctrine, tactics, leadership, generalship et al are the critical factors.

There are scores of examples where inferior forces overcame superior ones through better tactics and superior leadership. Two that spring to mind are excellent case studies.

The Battle of Cannae in 216 BC. Roughly speaking 90,000 Romans lost catastrophically to 50,000 Carthaginians, due to inept commanders.

The Battle of France in 1940 is perhaps more telling. The French had all the advantages but lost. They were on the defensive. Force sizes were equal. Allies had almost 4,000 tanks. The Germans had approximately 2,500. French tanks were technically superior and yet they lost almost 1,800 of them. British tanks were on par with Germans tanks, but they too suffered heavy losses with almost 700 destroyed. German tank losses in May and June of 1940 were approximately 800 of all types.

The difference? Doctrine. Tactics. Leadership.

Numbers are critical in warfare, but as Napoleon said, “The moral is to the physical as three is to one.”