Beyond Small Arms: Conceptualizing Mid-Tier Weapons in Conventional Warfare

The war in Ukraine has generated significant scholarly and policy discussion about the return of conventional land war and great power conquest. But the weapons used in Ukraine depart from traditional tools of warfare, and include portable, relatively cheap, yet highlight effective arms shoulder-fired munitions and small drones. We argue that the war in Ukraine—and other conflicts across the world—point to the rise of a new, analytically distinct category of weapons. We develop the conceptualization of mid-tier arms—the defensive, maneuverable, cheaper, and easier to use arms that have been staples of the Ukrainian fight against Russia—and show that this category has implications for the arms trade, the economics of security, and warfighting. For scholars, this article contributes to research that disaggregates and thinks through the politics of conventional arms sales. For policymakers, this article suggests a need to reconfigure arms procurement and arsenal stockpiling to better match wars in the contemporary period.