‘The Big One Is Coming’ and the U.S. Military Isn’t Ready

SFC13557

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A U.S. flag officer talks candidly about the fading U.S. deterrent.​


No Shit!

From the WSJ.

"Russia’s invasion of Ukraine revealed the fading power of America’s military deterrent, a fact that too few of our leaders seem willing to admit in public. So it is encouraging to hear a senior flag officer acknowledge the danger in a way that we hope is the start of a campaign to educate the American public.

“This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” Navy Admiral Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said this week at a conference. “The big one is coming. And it isn’t going to be very long before we’re going to get tested in ways that we haven’t been tested” for “a long time.”

How bad is it? Well, the admiral said, “As I assess our level of deterrence against China, the ship is slowly sinking. It is sinking slowly, but it is sinking, as fundamentally they are putting capability in the field faster than we are.” Sinking slowly is hardly a consolation. As “those curves keep going,” it won’t matter “how good our commanders are, or how good our horses are—we’re not going to have enough of them. And that is a very near-term problem.”

Note that modifier “near-term.” This is a more urgent vulnerability than most of the political class cares to recognize.

Adm. Richard noted that America retains an advantage in submarines—“maybe the only true asymmetric advantage we still have”—but even that may erode unless America picks up the pace “getting our maintenance problems fixed, getting new construction going.” Building three Virginia-class fast-attack submarines a year would be a good place to start.

The news last year that China tested a hypersonic missile that flew around the world and landed at home should have raised more alarms than it did. It means China can put any U.S. city or facility at risk and perhaps without being detected. The fact that the test took the U.S. by surprise and that it surpassed America’s hypersonic capabilities makes it worse. How we lost the hypersonic race to China and Russia deserves hearings in Congress.

“We used to know how to move fast, and we have lost the art of that,” the admiral added. The military talks “about how we are going to mitigate our assumed eventual failure” to field new ballistic submarines, bombers or long-range weapons, instead of flipping the question to ask: “What’s it going to take? Is it money? Is it people? Do you need authorities?” That’s “how we got to the Moon by 1969.”

Educating the public about U.S. military weaknesses runs the risk of encouraging adversaries to exploit them. But the greater risk today is slouching ahead in blind complacency until China invades Taiwan or takes some other action that damages U.S. interests or allies because Bejiing thinks the U.S. can do nothing about it."
 
The next War will be with China unless Emperor Xi changes his tune or his "replaced". He has promised the Chinese Military that he would "reunite" Taiwan with mainland China whether they like it or not. He has just been "re-elected" to his 3rd term which is unprecedented since Mao and he can't lose face with the PLA. If we don't greatly increase the Navy's budget and modernize, Taiwan is doomed along with the south Pacific. Bye, Bye Japan, SK, Australia, etc.
 
Okay. Again:

1. Why would China bother attacking us? They already control a lot about our country; why would they want to kill their golden goose?

2. How would China attack us? Are they going to invade us? Where's their sealift? What's their plan to conquer the country? You're going to need to spell it out for me, because I don't see it happening.

The China fear porn here has never made much sense to me. They are our creditor; they aren't our competitor. In almost every way that counts, they've already defeated us. Why and how would they bother doing anything military against us? There are many, many richer pickings nearby that they can snap up much more easily, if they want to expand (which they don't, really).

Doesn't pass the common sense test. Never really has.
 
Is it that time of the month again?

Seems like we have at least one "war with China" thread every month.

Can we instead focus on chickens that look like vaginas or vaginas that look like chickens?

[popcorn] [popcorn] [popcorn]
 
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How would China attack us?
there are only 2 countries that can attack continental US - Canada and Mexico. Not my job to assess the probability for either of them to amass enough ground troops for an invasion, whatever a reason for such invasion can be.

and all the rest of military asshats that still talk about wars across the globe - they should shut up and start maintaining security of the border of their own country.
 
Okay. Again:

1. Why would China bother attacking us? They already control a lot about our country; why would they want to kill their golden goose?

2. How would China attack us? Are they going to invade us? Where's their sealift? What's their plan to conquer the country? You're going to need to spell it out for me, because I don't see it happening.

The China fear porn here has never made much sense to me. They are our creditor; they aren't our competitor. In almost every way that counts, they've already defeated us. Why and how would they bother doing anything military against us? There are many, many richer pickings nearby that they can snap up much more easily, if they want to expand (which they don't, really).

Doesn't pass the common sense test. Never really has.
I agree. China doesn’t have a recent history of military actions to gain control of an area. They like to make mining deals with nations and then bust them out when they can’t meet impossible goals. Look at Africa, South America and now parts of the Middle East. Plus, if they attack us and we embargo their crap, their financial house of cards finally falls down and then they’ll have real internal problems to deal with.

I also wonder how the lack of experience in war controls things? Has a single person in their military ever been in a single battle? Maybe they’ll use Taiwan as a test case and hope the threat of their hypersonic missiles will keep our noses out of that mess?
 
there are only 2 countries that can attack continental US - Canada and Mexico. Not my job to assess the probability for either of them to amass enough ground troops for an invasion, whatever a reason for such invasion can be.

and all the rest of military asshats that still talk about wars across the globe - they should shut up and start maintaining security of the border of their own country.
They attack through Mexico. Don’t you watch movies?
 
Okay. Again:

1. Why would China bother attacking us? They already control a lot about our country; why would they want to kill their golden goose?

2. How would China attack us? Are they going to invade us? Where's their sealift? What's their plan to conquer the country? You're going to need to spell it out for me, because I don't see it happening.

The China fear porn here has never made much sense to me. They are our creditor; they aren't our competitor. In almost every way that counts, they've already defeated us. Why and how would they bother doing anything military against us? There are many, many richer pickings nearby that they can snap up much more easily, if they want to expand (which they don't, really).

Doesn't pass the common sense test. Never really has.
That's Cold War thinking. China has no desire nor capability to invade us. They just need to neutralize us.
We're well on our way to being neutralized.
 
That's Cold War thinking. China has no desire nor capability to invade us. They just need to neutralize us.
We're well on our way to being neutralized.
Also if they destroy America they'll have nobody to by their junk.... and that would be a serious problem for them it's kind of like a f***ed up codependent relationship... 🤣 their ultimate power move is using money to buy up property in America it doesn't really matter what the country is called if they own the assets.....
 
It’s financial war that is/will be the more popular way to battle. It’s already happening in spades while the masses sip boba and perform tiktok dances.
Next thing you know you will find out that the Family farm down the street got bought out by some front company that's actually operated by Chinese nationals...
 
That discussion comes up more frequently then most would like. Overall I don’t disagree but I take it with a grain of salt. We are coming into a new year and budget cycles are always a good time to discuss things like this.
 
That discussion comes up more frequently then most would like. Overall I don’t disagree but I take it with a grain of salt. We are coming into a new year and budget cycles are always a good time to discuss things like this.

Yeah, about that budget….


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