Those of mass e precision were two opposing concepts of military art and the function that a weapon system should perform on the battlefield. The Ukrainian war, the Middle Eastern conflict and the Red Sea crisis, instead, paved the way for what a part of the theory has identified as “Precise Mass”, that is, “precise mass”, with relatively inexpensive unmanned systems that can be deployed on a large scale and that are also technologically advanced and deadly precise.
The rapid “dronization” of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the use of drones and missiles by the Houthis are just some of the examples – perhaps the most striking – of the erosion of the relationship between mass and precision, determined by technological progress in recent years. The ease of access to know-how technological and consequently to the production and use capabilities of precision systems, has broadened the spectrum of actors, state and non-state, that can equip themselves with advanced weapons at a lower cost. This is an "economy of scale" that does not, conversely, lead to a reduction in the overall quality of the product produced.
“Precise Mass” is an extremely realistic conception of military affairs, opposed to the one in vogue until recently in the West, according to which “quantity” systems would always be disadvantaged compared to “quality” ones and that it would be impossible, in light of the Euro-American technological primacy, for numbers to be a determining factor on the battlefield or even as a deterrent.
The old strategic thinking of technical-military superiority of the United States and the West born during the Cold War, based on the development of highly technological systems – and not scalable by the adversary – aimed at to preemptively counter a war of attrition, after having given a good proof of itself also during the First Gulf War and the Yugoslav wars, has been overtaken by the current war events.
Previously, before the boom in precision weapons, to maximize success at one point of attack, commanders had to concentrate their forces as much as possible to achieve numerical superiority. As a result, unguided warfare had an inherent tendency toward mass. Today, precision is a “mass” concept, space is saturated and contested, and “active dispersion” of forces on the battlefield is an element to take into consideration.
This situation requires a significant paradigm shift in the West in the way of interpreting the operational needs of the armed forces and the production capabilities of the defense industry, also looking at the development of autonomous systems attritable, capable of combining mass production and high precision.