What's your honest take on Elon Musk's proposed reforms for the US military?
Haven't seen any of them personally, just a bunch of generalized bloviating about things he doesn't understand. If that's what you're referring to, then my take is that it's beneath me to even acknowledge such dumb positions lol.
Real, achievable path for the US assuming China stays static maybe. No real, achievable path for the US if China responds to a buildup with its own buildup.
I disagree. While the PLA could certainly ramp up its own procurement tempo, there are hard limits on the total scope and scale of such an effort which are driven far more by internal resource and economic priorities than external factors. The level of expenditure and overall allocation of effort towards PLA modernization and evolution have remained mostly constant over the past quarter decades, despite the significant changes in the balance of military power. Some degree of mirroring would likely occur, yes; but for all intents and purposes, the PLA has its own vision of its future force structure, and is likely to continue pursuing this vision regardless of actions we take on our end.
Further, many lines of effort present themselves which the PLA would be hard pressed to address in a meaningful capacity, but which still provide the US a notably improved position in some way. There is a lot of low hanging fruit that current senior leadership have utterly failed to harvest due to misaligned incentives and general incompetence, but even simple successes in this capacity would render our position far less tenuous than its current state. Significantly reducing overseas US commitment and operational tempo in low-yield theaters, recapitalization of our yards - even if just to maintain currently in service platforms, realigning fiscal priorities strongly in favor of Air Force and Naval procurement and modernization efforts, and more sensibly approaching procurement and sustainment endeavors such that we are no longer paying enormous fees to rent-seeking contractors to conduct support activities which are fundamentally ill-suited to civilian involvement, etc. etc. etc. would substantially reduce the barrier to fielding a capable and credible force to operate in the WestPac. Unfortunately, all of those things seem vastly beyond the capacity of our existing institutions to act upon.
