America's traditional means of projecting power abroad is growing “increasingly obsolete” and its billion-dollar military hardware could be as ineffectual against future threats as the heavily fortified Maginot line was in defending France against the Nazis, a senior Pentagon adviser has warned.

In a wake-up call to US military chiefs, Andrew Krepinevich, a leading architect of the counter-insurgency strategy in Iraq and Afghanistan, argues that the Pentagon is ill-equipped to counter rising powers such as China, hostile states such as Iran, the threat from irregular forces such as Hezbollah, and terrorists such as Al-Qaeda. It is also wasting billions on weaponry that could be outdated before it rolls off the production line.

In an interview, Krepinevich said the military, like many bureaucracies, was in danger of “drinking its own bathwater” and discounting new challenges, including the proliferation of precision-guided weapons and threats from space and cyberspace. Last week Robert Gates, the defence secretary, rewarded him for his prescience with a seat on the influential defence policy board at the Pentagon.

Aircraft carriers, navy destroyers, short-range fighter aircraft and forward bases such as Guam and Okinawa in the Pacific Ocean are becoming increasingly vulnerable to technology and tactics being developed by America’s rivals, Krepinevich argues in the July issue of Foreign Affairs journal.

Even new areas of supremacy, such as US dominance of global positioning satellites that guide “smart” bombs to their targets, are becoming a “wasting asset” as states such as China develop the space technology to destroy them. China already has the ballistic missiles and laser technology to destroy low-orbit satellites on which the military depends.

Krepinevich claims America should devote more resources to cutting-edge nanosatellites to maintain its technological lead and should invest in missile interceptors and laser energy defences that could counter the threat from adversaries deploying their own “smart” weapons. “Britain came out of the first world war with all the world’s aircraft carriers but fell behind between the wars,” said Krepinevich. “Being the leader doesn’t necessarily help you over time.”

His essay, The Pentagon’s Wasting Assets, has become essential reading for military and defence officials. It reflects a debate in Britain in which Lord Guthrie, former chief of the defence staff, has criticised plans for the Royal Navy to spend £5 billion on two new aircraft carriers. “How good are aircraft carriers at chasing Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden?” Guthrie has asked.

The Pentagon is preparing its defence review, which is presented to Congress every four years. Along with retired Lieutenant-General Paul Van Riper, Krepinevich has just been appointed to a “red team” of defence advisers with responsibility for thinking like the enemy and spotting weaknesses in the quadrennial defence review.

In his essay he draws attention to the astonishing success in 2002 of a “red team” of war-gamers, led by Van Riper, representing an unnamed Gulf power — in reality, Iran. A surprise attack was launched on the US fleet by swarms of Iranian suicide vessels and anti-ship cruise missiles. More than half of the US ships were sunk or disabled in “the worst naval disaster since Pearl Harbor”.

Van Riper turned off his anti-radar defences and kept his missile launchers moving, thwarting US attempts to track and destroy them, and rendering US ground forces that landed in Iran vulnerable to attack.

In wars of the future, “smart” rockets and missiles will be readily available to non-state forces such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, let alone traditional powers such as Russia and China, which already have the technology and the ability to sell it on. Despite this, the Pentagon is spending billions on short-range strike aircraft that need to operate from forward land bases or aircraft carriers vulnerable to missiles, submarines and drones.

In 2006, China sneaked one of its submarines into the middle of a US carrier group — to the mortification of the US navy.

The marines, Krepinevich notes, are developing an amphibious expeditionary fighting vehicle (EVF) that can navigate ashore and fight on land. Not only is it at great risk from roadside bombs, but “the fleet that would launch these is being forced to operate ever further from the shore, far beyond the distance for which the EVF was designed”. It should be cancelled, he advises.

Traditionally safe rear bases such as Camp Victory in Iraq and Bagram in Afghanistan, which provide a sanctuary for US land forces, could also be vulnerable, Krepinevich warns, citing the example of the recent war in Lebanon as the “harbinger” of the future. Hezbollah’s non-stop rocket attacks forced the evacuation of 300,000 Israelis.

“That’s already demonstrated capability,” Krepinevich said, “but how long before these rockets are precision-guided? Guided munitions are already available on the open market.” New defences such as missile interceptors “typically cost a lot more than the projectiles being fired”, he said.

Although Krepinevich has received encouragement from Gates, his prescription is likely to run into opposition from powerful vested interests.

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