The defense establishment is celebrating a phantom victory. The United States State Department recently greenlit a $236 million sale of Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSM) to Belgium. If you read the mainstream defense trade press, the narrative is painfully predictable. They frame this as a massive win for NATO interoperability, a crucial upgrade for Belgium’s incoming fleet of F-35 Lightning II fighters, and a stern deterrent against eastern aggression.
It is none of those things.
This deal is a textbook example of preparing for the last war using an outdated procurement playbook. Brussels is spending nearly a quarter of a billion dollars on a legacy capability that ignores the brutal, attritional reality of modern conflict. They are buying exquisite, low-quantity kinetic jewelry when they should be investing in mass, industrial persistence, and cheap denial.
The defense consensus is lazy. It assumes that because a weapon system is expensive, stealthy, and American, it inherently solves a strategic problem. It does not.
The Math of Miniature Stockpiles
Let us look at the cold numbers the Pentagon press releases conveniently gloss over. The approval covers just 34 AGM-158B-2 JASSM-ER (Extended Range) missiles.
Think about that. Thirty-four.
The AGM-158B-2 is undeniably a marvel of aerospace engineering. It boasts a low-observable airframe, a range approaching 1,000 kilometers, and a sophisticated GPS-jamming-resistant inertial guidance system. But in a high-intensity, peer-to-peer European conflict, 34 missiles is not a stockpile. It is a rounding error. It is a single afternoon of strikes.
During the opening weeks of the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, Russia expended cruise and ballistic missiles by the hundreds. True peer conflict eats munitions at a rate that terrifies modern Western accountants. If Belgium ever has to deploy these weapons against a sophisticated integrated air defense system (IADS), a significant percentage will be intercepted by layered surface-to-air missile systems, decoyed by electronic warfare, or lost to mechanical failure.
What happens when those 34 missiles are gone?
The Belgian Air Component will be left with an incredibly expensive fleet of fifth-generation fighters and empty magazines. I have watched European ministries of defense run this exact playbook for two decades. They sacrifice depth for prestige. They buy the shiny, headline-grabbing missile so they can look serious at NATO summits, completely ignoring the fact that modern warfare is an industrial war of attrition.
The F-35 Crutch and the Interoperability Myth
The primary justification for this purchase is that the JASSM-ER integrates with Belgium’s new F-35A fleet. The logic goes that by matching American munitions with American platforms, Belgium achieves the holy grail of "interoperability."
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of how coalition warfare actually functions on the ground. Interoperability should mean the ability to sustain combat operations collectively over time, not just sharing a data link during an opening strike.
The F-35 is a phenomenal sensor node, but it is notorious for its exorbitant operating costs and punishing maintenance schedules. Relying on a tiny fleet of complex stealth jets to deliver an even tinier fleet of complex stealth missiles creates a fragile, single-point-of-failure system.
- The Logistics Bottleneck: If the runways at Florennes or Kleine-Brogel air bases are struck by conventional ballistic missiles on day one, those F-35s are grounded. The JASSMs sit in their climate-controlled bunkers, utterly useless.
- The Sovereign Command Illusion: Belgium imagines these missiles buy them a seat at the strategic table. In reality, the mission planning software, the target intelligence generation, and the cryptographic keys required to operate the JASSM remain heavily gatekept by Washington. Brussels is paying $236 million for a capability they can only realistically deploy with explicit American consent and architectural support.
Dismantling the "People Also Ask" Consensus
When defense analysts assess these sales, they ask the wrong questions because they operate within a closed intellectual loop. Let us address the flawed premises driving this acquisition.
Does this sale strengthen NATO's northern flank?
No. It creates a false sense of security. Strengthening a flank requires resilient, distributed defense forces capable of absorbing a blow and striking back consistently. Thirty-four missiles do not deter a nation that manufactures thousands of long-range strike drones per year. True deterrence requires volume.
Why is Belgium upgrading its strike capability now?
Because they are suffering from collective peer pressure within the alliance to meet spending targets. Buying a pre-packaged Foreign Military Sales (FMS) item from Lockheed Martin is the easiest way for a bureaucrat to dump hundreds of millions of dollars into the "defense investment" column without having to reform their domestic defense industry or think deeply about asymmetric warfare.
Is the AGM-158B-2 the best missile for the job?
Only if the job is attacking a highly specific, hardened command bunker in a low-intensity conflict where you have absolute air supremacy. If the job is defending European sovereignty against a massed, industrial military threat, the answer is a resounding no. The cost-to-effect ratio is completely broken.
The Asymmetric Alternative Brussels Ignored
Imagine a scenario where Belgium took that $236 million and refused the American FMS contract. What could they have built instead?
For the price of a single JASSM-ER—which tracks at several million dollars per unit once you factor in the spares, training, telemetry, and support equipment included in the $236 million total—you can procure hundreds of long-range loitering munitions or one-way attack drones.
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| $236M Conventional Spend | $236M Asymmetric Alternative |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
| 34 AGM-158B-2 JASSM-ER Missiles | 1,500+ Long-Range Attack Drones |
| High vulnerability to base attack | Distributed, truck-launched |
| Complex, centralized maintenance | Low-cost, easily hidden logistics |
| Expended in hours of high-confl. | Sustained suppression over weeks |
+-----------------------------------+-----------------------------------+
The war in Ukraine has proven that cheap, mass-produced digital technology can consistently bypass legacy air defense networks through sheer volume and low radar cross-sections. A swarm of two hundred mid-tier, container-launched cruise missiles or attack drones presents a far more complex targeting problem for an adversary than a couple of F-35s trying to sneak into launch range.
Furthermore, distributed architecture is survivable. You can launch a long-range drone from the back of a commercial flatbed truck parked in a forest or on a Belgian highway. You cannot do that with a JASSM. By tying their long-range strike capability exclusively to an exquisite air-launched platform, Belgium has given its future adversaries a glaringly obvious target list.
The Painful Truth About Western Procurement
Admitting this reality is deeply uncomfortable for Western defense ministries. It requires admitting that our entire defense-industrial model is broken.
We are addicted to the procurement of overly complex, exquisite platforms because they sustain high-margin defense contractors and look impressive in promotional videos. The system is designed to produce low volumes of highly advanced technological marvels, completely ignoring the lessons of every major conventional conflict in human history: quantity has a quality all its own.
The downside to the asymmetric, high-volume approach I advocate is that it lacks prestige. It requires building out gritty, unglamorous supply chains for fiberglass, commercial grade GPS units, and small internal combustion engines. It requires rewriting doctrine, training thousands of infantrymen to operate drone launchers rather than celebrating a handful of elite fighter pilots. It doesn't look sleek at an airshow.
But it wins wars. Or, more importantly, it actually deters them.
Belgium’s $236 million check to Washington will buy them a tiny, boutique capability that will look great on paper at the next NATO summit. It will satisfy the politicians who want to claim they are meeting spending thresholds. But as a tool of statecraft and hard military deterrence, it is an expensive delusion.
Stop buying boutique weapons for industrial wars. Your adversary isn't counting your flags; they are counting your magazines. And right now, Belgium’s magazine is empty before the fight even starts.
