Here’s a fact that ought to startle every American who assumes that because we spend nearly $1 trillion each year on defense, we have primacy over our emerging rival, China.
“Over the past decade, in U.S. war games against China, the United States has a nearly perfect record: We have lost almost every single time.”
That’s a quote from a new book called “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare,” the most provocative critique of U.S. defense policy I’ve read in years. It’s written by Christian Brose, former staff director of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a close adviser to late senator John McCain (R-Ariz.). The book isn’t just a wake-up call, it’s a fire alarm in the night.
Brose explains a terrible truth about war with China: Our spy and communications satellites would immediately be disabled; our forward bases in Guam and Japan would be “inundated” by precise missiles; our aircraft carriers would have to sail away from China to escape attack; our F-35 fighter jets couldn’t reach their targets because the refueling tankers they need would be shot down.
…How did this happen? It wasn’t an intelligence failure, or a malign Pentagon and Congress, or lack of money, or insufficient technological prowess. No, it was simply bureaucratic inertia compounded by entrenched interests.
Now here is one bit from a post from a retired Army Colonel arguing that The US is not Ready for a Peer to Peer Fight in Europe:
LONG RANGE (NON-NUCLEAR) BALLISTIC MISSILES AND ROCKETS:
The US has NONE in the US Army, and the other Services have NONE OTHER THAN sea-launched and air-launched conventional, low flight level, subsonic cruise missiles. NO long range, land-based, conventional ballistic missiles in the US Armed Forces. How did this happen?
The US National Military Strategy is as much a defense industry-driven wish list of combat systems they want to build, as opposed to a threat-defeating strategy based on US Ground Forces out-matching our peer military adversary. Russia, for example, has many hundreds (if not thousands) of state-of-the-art missile launchers, tens of thousands of missiles (plus the Zircon that flies at Mach 6-9 – hypersonic speeds), as well as a full suite of tailored, target appropriate warheads, at multiple throw weights that can be selected based on the target to be attacked. We – the US – have ZERO such weapons.
Here is a rebuttal.
I have no expertise in this field and can’t adjudicate these claims but what I do know is that I used to think that however bad the US government was, the US military remained by far the best in the world. But the failing US power grid, the lethargic response to the pandemic, the ignominious retreat from Afghanistan, all have caused me to update my priors on US military capabilities and not in a good direction.