Hal on Policy

With the news that the U.S. will now send a small number of ATACMS to Ukraine, and of course over a year of asking why we haven’t sent them, I thought I’d do a little analysis of the numbers we could send.

Overall, it looks like the U.S. bought just under 3000 ATACMS over the years. The ATACMS actually went out of production years ago, then production re-started to meet Foreign Military Sales. But the U.S hasn’t bought new ones in a very long time and has no plans to do so. Instead, a new missile, the Precision Strike Missile (PrSM) will be available (“Early Operational Capability”) shortly (FY24). It won’t reach Initial Operational Capability and enter full production until FY25 or reach Full Operational Capability until FY27. Enough inventory to allow retirement of the ATACMS doesn’t happen until sometime in the 2030s.

That the U.S. purchased 3000 ATACMS doesn’t mean that is what the U.S. current has in inventory. Looking at various sources that show wartime usage, but having to guess at training and testing use, there are about 2300 ATACMS left in U.S. inventory. That could sound like a lot or a little to you, in reality it is a pretty small number. We have some data points that can show that. For example, the U.S. Air Force thinks in terms of there being 100,000 aim points (aka discrete targets) in a major regional war. The U.S. Army sees a lot more, and indeed we know that Ukraine has expended somewhere between 1 and 2 Million 155mm artillery shells alone so far. PrSM Increment 1 has an Inventory Objective of almost 4,000 (and then there are additional increments), so at a minimum the Army sees 4000 aim points for a missile in the same class as the ATACMS.

There are, sadly, a lot of targets in war. 2300 ATACMS seems like a drop in the bucket in that context, and that was before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine reinforced that western countries had allowed munitions inventories to drop far below what is adequate in wars between nation-states. With PrSM still a few years from full production, and other deep strike weapons (e.g., JASSM) running into production limits, the U.S. inventory of ATACMS is a critical resource that can’t be significantly reduced for a few years.

Those 2300 remaining ATACMS are not of a uniform type. Over half of the original 3000 were of the original M39 (ATACMS Block I) type. These have a cluster munition warhead, a maximum range of 165km, and INS-only (i.e., no GPS) guidance. The second largest type purchased was the M39A1 (ATACMS Block IA). That adds GPS and extends the range to 300km. After that the U.S. started buying versions with a Penetrating Blast-Fragmentation Warhead rather than cluster munitions. The initial version of that was the M48. An improved version is the M57. The U.S. has about 100 M48 and a little under 500 M57 remaining in inventory.

When you think about going after the Kerch Bridge and similar targets, think M48/M57. We just don’t have much to give away. But that isn’t the end of the story.

Since 2017 the U.S. has been remanufacturing the M39 and M39A1s into what is known as the M57E1. That’s an M57 with a new proximity fuze that allows an optional airburst for wide area effects, partially replacing the capability of the cluster munitions. So, the M57E1 is the most versatile ATACMS variant but we aren’t buying new ones (again, PrSM is coming). What isn’t clear is how many M39/M39A1s have already been converted to the M57E1. Hundreds certainly. We also don’t know the split between remanufactured M39s and M39A1s. On the surface remanufacturing M39s first makes more sense, because their shorter range, lack of GPS, and age (requiring a service life extension) makes them obsolete. And while the U.S. has been moving away from cluster munitions, it keeps some inventory in case of emergency. In that case, you’d want to retain some M39A1s.

Now the question comes up, what ATACMS might you supply to Ukraine? Some press articles have suggested they will be a cluster munition variant. We don’t know how many M39s are left in inventory, but frankly I don’t understand the utility of sending those to Ukraine. They don’t have the range or accuracy to meaningfully improve Ukraine’s capabilities. It’s not that the cluster munition warhead doesn’t add capabilities that nothing else provides, but volumes of M39s just wouldn’t be high enough under any conditions to make a substantial difference. Finally getting deliveries of the GLSDB going is going to be more impactful against targets in the 150km range, and hopefully that happens before the end of 2023. That leaves the M39A1s as a possibility.

There were 610 M39A1s produced. 74 were fired in Operation Iraqi Freedom. Others would have been fired in test and training. So, we can estimate there were around 500 in inventory before remanufacturing to the M57E1 started. The last contract (2021) for remanufacturing of M39/M39A1s to M57E1s that I can find ends in 2024. Projected funding for FY25 is half of what is allocated to the FY24 for completion of the 2021 contract, so it appears there are a few more missiles to remanufacture after the 2021 contract completes. I can’t tell if at that point there are no M39/M39A1s remaining, if any remaining M39s are headed for the scrap heap, and/or if we are still going to hold some M39A1s in reserve in case we desperately need a cluster munition. Any way you try to rationalize the numbers, the U.S. ends up with at best perhaps a couple of hundred M39A1s left after we end remanufacturing. One interesting possibility is that you end remanufacturing with the 2021 contract, leaving whatever was left with the projected FY25 funding (which perhaps you can redirect to PrSM) available to send to Ukraine. Good progress on PrSM makes that a low-risk approach to managing U.S. inventories. On the numbers front my best guess is that leaves at most 100 M39A1s that could be provided to Ukraine.

On the Penetrating Blast-Fragmentation (aka Unitary) warhead front there is a somewhat unique opportunity for delivering missiles to Ukraine. The 100 or so remaining M48s are known as the Quick Reaction Unitary (QRU) missiles. They were an interim buy while the M57 was developed. With most of the M39/M39A1s remanufactured into the M57E1, the U.S. could standardize fully on the M57/M57E1 and eliminate the remaining M48s from inventory. Those 100 M48s seem ripe for transfer to Ukraine.

When you get down to it, I’d estimate there are at most 200 ATACMS that the U.S. could spare, split between the M48 and remaining M39A1s. If we send any remaining M39s that would otherwise be scrapped, the numbers will sound larger, but the impact will be far less significant.

Now some caveats. I’m just an observer doing analysis of open-source information. There is information I might not have, and analysis where I am wrong. I don’t try to cover everything (e.g., the U.S. will soon deploy the Extended Range GMLRS that better addresses the targets that the M39 would have been used for). There are wildcards as always. I’ll even give one. A few weeks ago, it was reported that we “found” more ATACMS, and then that was denied. I suspect what “they” really meant is that the mix of ATACMS was a little different than the numbers they’d been working with. If “they” were looking at a post-remanufacturing Inventory Objective of say 2100 missiles and ignored that total inventory was actually 2300 (including remaining M39/M39A1s), it might seem that 200 more ATACMs had been “found”. They were never lost; they were just not part of the planning assumptions. If you add those back into the planning assumptions, you’ve found missiles you could spare for Ukraine while the U.S. still meets its inventory objective.

Update (10/17/23): Looks like the U.S. did send some of the remaining 165km range M39s to Ukraine as the remains of one have been found after a strike on Russia forces. As I mention above, a useful capability but not the “game changer” everyone is thinking ATACMS will bring.

So many questions I see display an incredible lack of understanding of the structure of the United States of America and its constitution. So how can this be explained simply? I’ll try.

Coming out of the Revolution you had 13 Colonies that became 13 Countries. Yes we called them States, because that is a generic term. Countries are States. They initially united under a pact called the Articles of Confederation, which gave them a relationship similar to the EU. The States did not give up their independence, they agreed to a contract of cooperation that put very limited powers into the hands of a central government. When it was apparent that this relationship wasn’t working as well as desired, the leaders of the states decided to try to improve the situation. In the ensuing argument over how to amend the Articles of Confederation proponents of giving the central (what we now call Federal) government more power won out and the Articles of Confederation were rewritten into the Constitution of the United States. The States then signed (nee ratified) this new contract. And that is the key thing to remember, the Untied States Constitution is a contract between the States. The reality is you are a citizen (even though we now say resident) of a State, and your relationship with the country as a whole is the result of that state’s contract with the other states.

Because the States agreed to give up some of their powers to a Federal Government, nearly everything about the structure of that Federal Government is designed to protect the interests of the States. The States select the President. Why do you think we have an Electoral College? Each State selects delegates to send to the Electoral College to represent it. The representatives of the States then pick a President. The States have a lot of leeway in how they select their delegates. Most states have settled on an election in which all the delegates are pledged to vote for whoever wins that State’s Presidential Election. But they don’t have to allocate them that way, it is just the way that gives the State the most influence over who will be President.

The Senate represents the States. It used to be that State Legislatures actually picked Senators, and that was changed to be votes within the states. But here is something crucial, the only thing you can’t amend in the U.S. Constitution is that each State has the same representation in the U.S. Senate. It is that important to the contract that changing it is explicitly forbidden. The next time you wonder why Wyoming (least populous) has as much power in the U.S. Senate as California (most populous) it is because the Constitution is a contract between the States, the States are equal in that contract, and the Senate represents the States.

Why are Federal Judges confirmed by the U.S. Senate? The States wanted to make sure that the Judiciary, as the mediator between the States, represented their interests. The President, who represents the States, nominates a judge. The Senate, which represents the States, confirms the Judge. When a Federal Judge, particularly when you talk about the Supreme Court, rules on a Constitutional issue they are acting as a representative of the States.

Why are the senior Federal Government officials confirmed by the U.S. Senate? The States, after choosing the President, wanted to make sure that the rest of the senior government leadership was acceptable to them.

Want to change the Constitution? That’s up to the States. It is a contract between them, and changing it without their overwhelming support invalidates it. So yes, Wyoming has as much say in changing the Constitution as California.

There is only one institution in the Federal Government that is not beholden to the States, the House of Representatives. The House is elected directly by U.S. Citizens without the States as intermediaries. Its one unique power is that only the House can initiate legislation to tax Americans. That whole “taxation without representation” thing really had an influence on the structure of the U.S. Government. But also it means that the States can’t impose legislation on the country without the consent of the body that directly represents the people. So it is the true balance point between the Federal Government being a representative of the States and the People having direct representation.

Many of the tensions in society these days stems from forgetting that we are union of 50 separate countries governed by a contract between those countries. Over time the Federal Government has expanded its power by finding cracks in the definitions of what its limited powers were supposed to be. The fact that the Senate, Judiciary, and Presidency are there to represent the States has failed to keep this power expansion in check. You can take any issue in the country today, from why the “Presidential Popular Vote” is meaningless to Abortion, Gun Control, Immigration, Health Care, etc. and get a much better understanding of why the debate exists the way it does in the U.S. by examining it in the light of the true nature of the U.S. Constitution. It is a contract between the States, and they remain independent countries in most regards. They become downright indignant when other states try to cram something down their throat via the Federal Government, particularly when it was not something they agreed to give the Federal Government powers over.

One of the more interesting changes in the FY22 Defense Budget proposal is the U.S. Navy’s cancellation of the JSOW-ER powered glide bomb (nee, cruise missile) and its adoption of the JASSM-ER cruise missile instead. There is, not surprisingly, very little in the way of information currently available on their reasoning. So I thought it would be interesting to analyze the decision in the absence of explicit guidance as to their reasoning. Does this decision make sense? How will it impact military operations over the next decade or so? This is going to be on the long side, because it is analysis not reporting. Let’s dive in.

Much as been written on the People’s Republic of China’s growing Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2AD) capability. A2AD creates a long range bubble in which an adversary’s ships and aircraft are at extreme risk, making it difficult for them to survive to reach their weapons’ release range. Russia is also pursuing an A2AD strategy, though from a purely Naval perspective China’s is more front and center in U.S. Navy (USN) thinking. To summarize things as far as the JSOW-ER discussion goes, China has developed long range anti-ship weapons (including land-based anti-ship ballistic missiles) that requires U.S. Carrier Strike Groups to operate further from Chinese territory in order to retain the relative safety of the vastness of the ocean. Once the Carrier Strike Group starts operating more than a couple of hundred miles from targets its effectiveness starts to deteriorate. At a thousand miles from target transit times, the need to divert fighters from direct combat to acting as tankers, the need for additional escort aircraft (i.e., for electronic warfare or airborne early warning), etc. means you engage very few targets per day. Some see this as the death of the Aircraft Carrier, but of course that is a one-sided look at the problem. The U.S. is in the process of developing numerous weapons systems to allow the Carrier to remain effective at extended ranges. JSOW-ER was one of those technologies.

To understand JSOW-ER we should first look at a taxonomy of weapons. We start with gravity bombs, both unguided and precision guided such as the U.S. JDAM family of GPS-guided bombs. These are dropped/tossed at a target from fairly short range, though tossing them from high altitude does allow for enough range (up to 28km) to avoid short-range air defenses. These are followed by glide bombs, which can have ranges up to 130km. At 130km the launch aircraft is safe from both short and medium range air defenses, and even long range air defenses can struggle to engage them. However extended, very long, or extremely long range air defenses (as well as fighter aircraft) do place the attacking aircraft at risk. As these defensive systems proliferate, even 130km standoff ranges are insufficient until air defenses have been significantly degraded. To operate at longer standoff ranges you need to rely on powered weapons, for our discussion purposes we focus on cruise missiles. Cruise missiles not only allow you to launch weapons from outside the ability of air defenses to threaten the launch aircraft, it extends the overall reach of the aircraft. For example, if you take an aircraft with a 1200km combat radius and equip it with a 500km range cruise missile, you can strike targets 1700km (1050 miles) from the aircraft launch point without needing to refuel the aircraft.

The USN has a number of glide bomb options, but the JSOW-C/C1 (C1) is of most interest to our discussion. The C1 is a 1000lb-class weapon with a 500lb-class warhead. It is actually a dual warhead called BROACH that has one warhead designed to punch a hole in a hardened target (e.g., bunker, ship) that allows a second warhead (designed to have broader area effects) to get inside and detonate. The C1 uses GPS/INS (as well as a data link to obtain targeting updates) to navigate to the target area, then uses infrared terminal guidance to find and strike moving targets including ships. While anti-ship cruise missiles (AShCM) get all the press, the JSOW-C1 is a primary anti-ship weapon for the USN. With a standoff range of 130km even non-stealth aircraft can use it against all but the most high-end naval air defense systems, of which adversaries currently deploy very few. As very long range air defenses and AShCMs proliferate, that 130km range becomes increasingly insufficient for the early days of a war. One can imagine that by 2035, if not 2030 or sooner, it will be necessary to use a lot of weapons with longer ranges to degrade an adversaries defenses before being able to comfortably close within ideal distances to use the C1. Even though the stealthy F-35 could still safely penetrate long range air defenses to use the C1, keeping the Carrier Strike Group at safer distances presents the F-35C with the need for extended weapons release range. The Navy’s initial plans to increase standoff range was to add a small jet engine to the C1, creating the 500km range JSOW-ER.

The JSOW-ER seems like an ideal weapon for the USN for a couple of reasons. First, as an extended range version of the JSOW-C1 it is compatible with the same aircraft, the same logistics system, the same maintenance and handling systems, etc. Bringing it into the fleet is simple and inexpensive compared to developing and adopting an entirely new weapon. The reach of the Carrier’s F/A-18E/F Super Hornets and F-35Cs would thus be greatly enhanced. Second, the JSOW-C1 is already carried internally by the F-35C and the JSOW-ER was being designed to retain that internal carry capability. So a 1200km combat radius F-35C with a couple of internally carried JSOW-ERs could strike a Chinese DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile launch site from a Carrier operating outside the range of the DF-21D.

When one thinks of the F-35 one always thinks of stealth, so a scenario with the F-35C operating in so-called Stealth Mode with internally carried cruise missiles makes a lot of sense. Except of course for one thing, when you are launching weapons from 500km away, how much stealth is really required? For many missions the F-35 can operate in so-called Beast Mode, carrying external weapons that degrade (if not eliminate) its stealth capability. Long range standoff strikes is one such example. So being able to carry the JSOW-ER internally sounds great, but might actually be a very niche capability. And what if 500km is still not as much range extension as one would like? The size restrictions imposed by the F-35 internal weapons may currently seems to preclude longer range cruise missiles. So if you want more range, you need an externally carried weapon. Could the USN adopt both the JSOW-ER and another longer range cruise missile for the Super Hornet and F-35C? Of course, and thus the plot thickens.

At the same time the original JSOW glide bomb program was started by U.S. forces, they started the JASSM stealthy cruise missile program. This is a 370km range, 1000lb warhead weapon. The Navy eventually left the JASSM program in order to develop the SLAM-ER instead. The SLAM-ER had somewhat less range than JASSM, and is not stealthy, but whereas the JASSM was only useful against fixed targets the SLAM-ER was also useful against moving targets and ships. Prior to the introduction of the LRASM, which we will get to in a moment, the SLAM-ER was actually the Navy’s longest range (270km) air-launched anti-ship missile. One great mystery is why once the extended range (925km) JASSM-ER was it not adopted by the Navy. While JASSM-ER does offer extended standoff distances, it once again was only useful for fixed targets.

DARPA pursued a technology demonstration project to see if the JASSM-ER could be turned into an anti-ship missile, and the USN decided to pursue that path to meet an urgent operational need. This became the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, or LRASM. The LRASM retains a land attack capability but suffers from at least one problem, it is outrageously expensive. Reports have it as around 4x the cost of the JASSM-ER. This might be because of its development as an Urgent Operational Need weapon, where cost is one of the tradeoffs made to cut time from the development cycle. It might also be because of the relatively low production volumes involved, something that continues to be confirmed by the purchase rates in the FY22 budget proposal. Most likely it is both. So while the Navy pursues enough LRASM purchases to meet its short term long range anti-ship missile needs, LRASM does not meet the needs for a longer range land-attack missile to supplement or replace the JSOW-ER.

So if LRASM doesn’t fit the bill for a long range land attack cruise missile, and the Navy is cancelling the JSOW-ER, then what is the Navy’s solution? It is a new variant of the JASSM-ER! The Navy’s JASSM-ER will take the anti-ship features of the LRASM and combine them with the JASSM-ER for a unique variant that meets the Navy’s needs. It may also be the case that this new variant will pick up features from the so-called JASSM-XR program. The JASSM-XR is intended as a longer range, and some say larger warhead, version of the JASSM-ER. Now I find the information on the JASSM-XR program extremely confusing, but in at least one version of the story it would have a range of 1900km. There might actually be two new JASSM-ERs being talked about. One sticks with the form factor of the current AGM-158B, the AGM-158B-2, and the other goes to a potentially larger missiles called the AGM-158D. What the features of the 158B-2 are is anyone’s guess at this point, but there are clues. For example, years ago there was a contract for design of a new wing for the JASSM-ER that would yield some modest range extension. Some have associated this with the JASSM-XR program, though it may have been independent of that. So the 158B-2 might have some range extension but not a larger warhead or nearly the range that have been attributed to the JASSM-XR. So just what is the 158B-2, and how does it relate to the Navy’s adoption of the JASSM-ER? Or just what are the capabilities of the Navy JASSM-ER? Only time will tell. But it is clear that the Navy will be buying a cruise missile with a range at least double that of the JSOW-ER. And that greatly increases is standoff capabilities against A2AD environments.

The one things that the switch from the JSOW-ER to the JASSM-ER gives up is internal carry in the F-35C. There has been speculation from time to time that a reshaped JASSM-ER. along with modifications to the F-35 weapons bay, would allow for internal carry. But that is a lot of expense and disruption for a likely unneeded (at least in the foreseeable future) capability. You don’t need extreme stealth at 1000km weapons release range. What if the F-35 does need greater standoff range weapons for internal carry at a future point? First, it is getting some, like the AARGM-ER/SiAW that extends ranges to the 200-300km area. But if the Navy were to decide it wanted more range and larger warhead it could purchase the air-launched variant of the Naval Strike Missile (NSM) that it is already purchasing for ship-launch, the Joint Strike Missile (JSM). Comparison of the JSM and JSOW-ER options may have helped the Navy make this decision, since even if internal carry is eventually a priority the JSM is likely the better option. In the meantime, the U.S. Navy is getting the extended range strike capability that they really need.

When I read statements about, well just about everything, I do mind experiments to try to better understand what I’m reading. The controversy over the F-35’s operating costs are a perfect example. Not so much the current numbers, but even the longer term direction. Now it is very difficult to get good numbers on operating costs because different sources have different numbers. I think that happens for two reasons. One is that some quote direct operating costs (e.g., how much fuel do you burn per hour) and others fully loaded costs (e.g., amortized cost of engine overhauls). Also costs are really reverse engineered from fleet-level costs. You have xxxxx aircraft, it cost yyyyy to operate and maintain those xxxxx aircraft, they fly zzzzz hours per year, so yyyyy/zzzzz gets you cost per hour. Of course if you have some old worn out aircraft and some shiny new aircraft, and the former require a lot of work and the later require very little, then this calculation is misleading. Just dump the old aircraft and buy more new aircraft and you have a much lower operating cost! And actually, this is part of the F-35s problem. Of the over 600 produced so far many are from before the design stabilized because of how the program was run. Buying aircraft concurrent with finishing its design means some number, I don’t know how many, are not representative of the Block 3F final configuration. So they add a lot of expense to the average as they are more difficult to maintain, require upgrades, etc. If that is 100+ aircraft then a big contributor to the cost reductions on F-35 operations is just making those a shrinking percentage of the fleet. But that isn’t what this blog post is about.

The biggest problem with the F-35 being the replacement for just about everything is that it is optimized for the high end fight. Let me give two scenarios to illustrate:

Commander(C): We have a unit pinned down by heavy enemy fire. You need to go eliminate the enemy position.

Pilots (P): They’re just finishing up a repair to the Distributed Aperture System on one of our aircraft. As soon as they close the panels and carefully apply the radar absorbent tape to get us our stealth back we’ll get to it.

C: We’ve already eliminated all air defenses in that area, all you have to worry about is ManPads. You don’t need stealth. Now go.

Two F-35s fly out and take care of the problem. Total operating hours 4 (let’s assume 2 aircraft, 2 hours each). Total cost at today’s ~$35,000 per flight hour is $140,000. At 2025 target cost of $25,000 per hour it is $100,000.

C: Hmm, I could have done that mission with an A-10 or F-16 for $50,000 or less.

Now you may think that a cost difference like this is nothing to worry about, but over the course of a conflict this turns into thousands of missions and many $Billions of dollars. And these costs are accumulating during training, patrols, ferrying aircraft, etc. too.

Now to be fair let’s look at a second scenario:

C: Our troops are pinned down by this enemy artillery position. Take your F-16s and eliminate the problem. There are reports of an HQ-16 in the area, but we haven’t located one. Better use standoff weapons.

P: No problem.

Two F-16s head off. Both are shot down with two pilots dead.

C: Damn, two pilots dead. And a $150 Million worth of aircraft lost. And the artillery still is pounding our positions. What happened?

Subordinate: Turns out they’d moved an HQ-9 into the area overnight but kept it silent so we never detected it. Their SDB’s kept them far out of range of the HQ-16’s missiles, but its radar queued the HQ-9 and they were able to get a lock on our guys, who were well within its missiles’ range. We fell right into their trap.

C: If our intelligence had given us any warning on this I would have sent F-35s. They would have taken out the artillery, and the *&U$#* HQ-9.

Now does the higher operating cost of the F-35 matter in this scenario? Of course not. Beyond the tragedy of two pilots dead, it cost $150 MILLION in lost aircraft to save $50,000 in operating costs. Alternatively you could send additional F-16s to perform the mission, with some dedicated to the Destruction of Enemy Air Defenses, mission. And others with electronic warfare pods to suppress enemy radars. I don’t know how many that would mean, 4? 6? In any case, once you do that any operating cost advantage is gone. You are spending the same or more then if you carried out the mission with fewer F-35s. And because each mission requires more aircraft, you can do fewer missions or need to buy many more aircraft.

There was a time when the Air Force, in particular, thought it better to have one aircraft type for all missions. Every fighter a stealth fighter. Now that doesn’t seem like the right strategy. They need a lot more high end aircraft then in the past because of the air defenses they are likely to encounter. On the other hand, they don’t need every aircraft to be a high end aircraft.

With multiple Covid-19 vaccines now approved having received Emergency Use Authorization (EUA), and with others on the way, two big questions keep resurfacing. One is on the prioritization of who should be offered the vaccines first, the other is about the willingness of people to be vaccinated at all. The first is a very valid debate, with quite a bit of tension in the system. Should we focus first on those with a high risk of exposure (i.e., healthcare workers) or high risk of death (i.e., pre-existing conditions)? Should we prioritize minorities who have historically been underserved by the medical community? Or is that too much of a throwback to the days when Black Americans were the subjects of medical experimentation? This later point intersects with the second question, because Black Americans are one of the most wary groups when it comes to being vaccinated against Covid-19.

On the prioritization front there are two camps. The first camp believes we should focus on healthcare workers so that our ability to care for Covid-19 and other patients is not diminished by those healthcare workers contracting Covid-19. We may feel good about rewarding them for their heroic efforts throughout 2020, but it is keeping them in the fight that justifies prioritization over the second camp. The second camp is simple, prioritization based purely on reducing death. A healthy young healthcare worker is very unlikely to experience more than mild illness, so why are they being prioritized over others who would likely experience severe illness or death? This is, of course, a vicious cycle of argument since even a mildly ill (or asymptomatic) healthcare worker is out of the healthcare business for weeks. And if we have enough of those, then people will die from lack of adequate care. But it is still a good philosophical argument to have. I have even talked to healthcare workers who are in no rush to be vaccinated, in part, because they believe it would be more valuable for others to get the vaccine first. For all the debate underway, and the variation between states since they decide the detailed vaccination strategy (based on CDC guidance), prioritization is quickly becoming the less interesting point simply because it is getting to be too late to alter the strategy.

So we switch focus to the second question, will people (and I’m U.S. focused here obvious) actually get vaccinated? Before delving into this more broadly I’ll talk about my personal position. I am one of the most pro-vaccine people on the planet. I know this comes from my parents, in addition to my scientific viewpoint. I grew up with stories about the horrors of Polio, starting from the days when I asked my mother why one of our cousins needed a brace to walk. During the AIDS Crisis my mother really opened up about Polio as it triggered memories of her youth, and the fear that they lived with. And one of my earliest childhood memories? Lining up for blocks to get into a polio vaccination clinic. Hours waiting in line so that I could eat a sugar cube that had a drop of the newly introduced Sabin Polio Vaccine on it. Recently I’d asked my mother if her mother had told stories about the Spanish Flu, and instead she revealed that the pockmark on my Grandmother’s face was the result of Smallpox. Polio and Smallpox, two horrific scourges of humanity that only a few remaining Americans have any personal knowledge of. Two that I haven’t had to worry about my entire life because of vaccines. Despite that, I’m not in a rush to get the Covid-19 vaccine even though I deeply desire one.

My reluctance to get the Covid-19 vaccine is simple. Since it will not materially alter my life if I get it in January versus March, April, or even June, I’d rather wait and make sure we don’t discover a different side-effect profile in broad use than was found during trials. And that is partially a reflection of age. I’m on the cusp of being in one of the riskier groups, both by age and pre-existing conditions, but not actually there. So I don’t feel the full pressure of the high probability of severe illness should I contract Covid-19. On the other hand, I am not as much of a risk taker as I was in my 20s or even 30s when I not only would be jumping up and down for the vaccine I would likely have applied to be in a trial. So the risk/reward evaluation is, I want it soon but I’m not in a rush. Now if there were lifestyle benefits, like being able to visit my mother (who I have only seen once in a year, and who will be receiving the vaccine very shortly) then the risk/reward balance would change and I’d be in more of a rush. But so far no one is suggesting being vaccinated exempts you from all the restrictions on life. That is probably not something we see until the summer.

It’s not just me of course. The general conversation I have with people reveals similar thinking to mine. Even others who very much want to be vaccinated are in no rush. Then there are the skeptics for various reasons. Finally there are those who are either broadly anti-vaccine, or have been convinced there are issues with these. We will ignore those who are broadly anti-vaccine because that’s a different topic. We should be addressing those with “other issues” by addressing those issues. Yet I had to do faceplant the other day as Colorado’s State Epidemiologist tried to address the question of the use of abortive fetal cell lines in the development of Covid-19 vaccines. She well addressed that the vaccines don’t contain any fetal cells, but botched the overall answer by obfuscating whether the cell lines used in development of the vaccines originated from abortive fetal tissue. This obfuscation is certain to fuel the fire of many morally opposed to the use of abortive fetal tissue in medical research, and cause them to avoid vaccines where this is the case. I think North Dakota handles this question much better, pointing out that many key authorities have rules there is no moral conflict. Even the Catholic Church is supporting the use of these vaccines. Still, many are likely to avoid the vaccine over this moral dilemma. And as you’ll see in a minute, that’s ok.

As for some of the other objections, well I just can’t deal with the “Bill Gates trying to inject us all with tracking chips” people. I will admit that actually knowing Bill, not that we are buddies or anything, causes me to get pretty emotional about irrational attacks on him. I think that most people who have worked with Bill over the years have the same kind of reaction. So we will ignore those people. Oh, and as you’ll see in a minute, their irrationality doesn’t matter.

Right now we are supply limited on Covid-19 vaccine. That means many of these debates just don’t matter. If people in the artificially determined higher priority groups delay being vaccinated when initially offered there are plenty of people in the next priority group ready to step in a little earlier. I’ve been predicting that the vaccines will be made available to anyone who wants them much earlier than the official timeline specifically because of this. That’s not failure, that’s success. There are many paths to get to the endpoint we are seeking, which is very high percentage of the population being vaccinated. You can try as much as you want to come up with the optimal path to get there, but that was never going to be fully agreed to or realistically executed upon. What’s important is every dose available being deployed as quickly as possible.

What about all those resisting for one reason or another? With a few small exceptions it doesn’t matter because their objections will fall by the wayside as vaccination proceeds. Myself, and all those with a little reluctance? I’m not that reluctant. If my doctor calls in March and says “go” I’ll go for it. Actually, I think February would be ok. My wife commented she wanted 6 months of data, and I pointed out that we’ve already passed that mark for trial participants. We will soon have 10s of millions of Americans, and many more worldwide, who have been vaccinated and that will remove a lot of doubts. There are vaccines in the pipeline with absolutely no taint of the abortive fetal tissue issue. By the time we need to get those with remaining moral concerns on board at least one of those should be available. Even the “tracking chip” people will eventually find a vaccine available which Bill Gates had absolutely no involvement in, and so perhaps many can be convinced to be vaccinated with those. This all goes back to my point, that no grand plan survives (as in the military, no battle plan survives the first encounter with the enemy). And that’s ok.

Everyone who is vaccinated is a step in breaking the back of Covid-19. No we don’t have data on if these people can still transmit the SARS-Cov-2 virus, but that’s just a lack of data. It is one of those things that we gave up by starting vaccinations under EUAs rather than full approvals. That data will come in as we go, but it seems very likely that vaccination will at least reduce (if not eliminate) transmission. And if we get those most likely to suffer from severe illness vaccinated early, it may not even matter. We live our daily lives with the threat of mild to moderate illness as a constant, and if we reduce the Covid-19 threat to the level of other constant threats then life as normal can return.

When asked about return to normal spectator sports the other day Colorado Governor Polis said he expects some people to be in the stands for the Colorado Rockies’s season opener at Coors Field in April, and that by the last (regular season) game at Coors Field in September the stands will be full. That’s a really fun timeline to be working with, especially if you are a baseball fan like me.

The bottom line for me is that most of the debates about the Covid-19 vaccines themselves, the prioritization of offering them, the willingness to be vaccinated, etc. are pretty much meaningless. All that is important is that we get on with vaccinating people as quickly as we possibly can, the rest will take care of itself.

Less talk, more pokes.

I’ve had this blog “allocated” for years, who would have thought it took Covid-19 to really use it. For my primary blog, which is Tech Focused, please go to Hal2020