US Military News, Reports, Data, etc.
- Thread starter tphuang
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IronsightSniper
Junior Member
I couldn't find a thread about our ASB plans (Air-Sea Battle), and I came back to SDF just to hear everyone's thoughts on it. 
Yesterday The Washington Post published this article about it: . It is pretty long, it is in four parts, so I suppose I leave everyone to find it at the WP web site.I couldn't find a thread about our ASB plans (Air-Sea Battle), and I came back to SDF just to hear everyone's thoughts on it.
The most significant part is, I think, this from the first page:
"A former nuclear strategist, Marshall has spent the past 40 years running the Pentagon’s Office of Net Assessment, searching for potential threats to American dominance. In the process, he has built a network of allies in Congress, in the defense industry, at think tanks and at the Pentagon that amounts to a permanent Washington bureaucracy."
I added the emphasis. Maintaining dominance is of course fundamentally different from defending a country's independence.
Marshall is described in the first sentence of the article:
"When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do."
Another interesting part is:
"Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China.
No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear."
China can best win by not going to war. It already effectively solved the Taiwan problem. But USN and USAF would win if this concept is accepted by Congress, and so would the US defense industry, and the US taxpayer would loose.
IronsightSniper
Junior Member
Yes, I've read that article before hand. Somehow though, I knew someone was gonna say that China's best course of action is to keep it as it is, as "it's just business", which is better than our recourse
plawolf
Lieutenant General
China's ultimate response to America's Air Sea Battle is pretty much the same strategy they have been perusing for the last 20 years to great effect.
China will not attempt to try and match the US like-for-like militarily, they remember well what happened to the Soviets when they tried that.
Instead, China will aim to broadly keep in touching distance of the US with the majority of it's conventional forces while searching for potential weaknesses, vulnerabilities and weak links within the US military machine, and develop tactics and equipment designed specifically to target and exploit these weaknesses to degrade the combat capabilities of the entire US military and level the playing field.
China's ASAT, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, long range precision strike, development of long range stealth fighters, AESA and anti-stealth radars etc are all part of this effort that the western likes to melodramatically call 'Assassin's mace weapons'.
All of the systems I have listed above is designed to help attack key, force multiplier assets within the US military machine. You take them out or reduce their effectiveness and the entire US military's combat effectiveness drops dramatically.
The idea was never about outright beating the US, it is about being able to cause the US military so much damage and loss of life that no US President could order an attack on China without a hell of a good reason.
That is the most direct aspect. The more indirect aspect, which usually escapes notice is the psychological and economic elements.
The US military is so used to the idea of being undisputed top dog that the idea that China could give them a bloody nose is pretty much unacceptable to top US military planners.
The result is ever more elaborate, complex and expensive weapons systems. China's deliberate secrecy also exacerbates the situation, with Americans either underestimating China and getting caught out (F22 production line closing down, J20 showing up soon after); or over-estimating China and ending up fielding weapons designed to defeat something that does not actually exist. All the ABM missiles and radars designed to shoot down an AShBM may well turn out to be a defense against an imaginary threat, costing untold billions and with SM3s taking up valuable VLS cells that would otherwise have been used for SAMs that would actually be useful, or tomahawks.
For every dollar China spends to develop a new weapon, the US needs to spend 5, or 10 to plug weaknesses exposed in their systems, or to develop new weapons a big enough edge over what the Chinese are fielding to satisfy the politicians and general/admirals.
The net result is the US is spending far more than it needs, or indeed, could afford, on defense to the point where defense spending is now actually a drain and burden on the economy instead of being a stimulus and driving force as it has in decades past.
It is ironic indeed that America seemed to have largely forgotten about how they won the Cold War and do not realize that they are increasingly following in the USSR footsteps while China has been borrowing a leaf from the US Cold War winning playbook by prioritizing economic development over military spending.
China will not attempt to try and match the US like-for-like militarily, they remember well what happened to the Soviets when they tried that.
Instead, China will aim to broadly keep in touching distance of the US with the majority of it's conventional forces while searching for potential weaknesses, vulnerabilities and weak links within the US military machine, and develop tactics and equipment designed specifically to target and exploit these weaknesses to degrade the combat capabilities of the entire US military and level the playing field.
China's ASAT, cyber warfare, electronic warfare, long range precision strike, development of long range stealth fighters, AESA and anti-stealth radars etc are all part of this effort that the western likes to melodramatically call 'Assassin's mace weapons'.
All of the systems I have listed above is designed to help attack key, force multiplier assets within the US military machine. You take them out or reduce their effectiveness and the entire US military's combat effectiveness drops dramatically.
The idea was never about outright beating the US, it is about being able to cause the US military so much damage and loss of life that no US President could order an attack on China without a hell of a good reason.
That is the most direct aspect. The more indirect aspect, which usually escapes notice is the psychological and economic elements.
The US military is so used to the idea of being undisputed top dog that the idea that China could give them a bloody nose is pretty much unacceptable to top US military planners.
The result is ever more elaborate, complex and expensive weapons systems. China's deliberate secrecy also exacerbates the situation, with Americans either underestimating China and getting caught out (F22 production line closing down, J20 showing up soon after); or over-estimating China and ending up fielding weapons designed to defeat something that does not actually exist. All the ABM missiles and radars designed to shoot down an AShBM may well turn out to be a defense against an imaginary threat, costing untold billions and with SM3s taking up valuable VLS cells that would otherwise have been used for SAMs that would actually be useful, or tomahawks.
For every dollar China spends to develop a new weapon, the US needs to spend 5, or 10 to plug weaknesses exposed in their systems, or to develop new weapons a big enough edge over what the Chinese are fielding to satisfy the politicians and general/admirals.
The net result is the US is spending far more than it needs, or indeed, could afford, on defense to the point where defense spending is now actually a drain and burden on the economy instead of being a stimulus and driving force as it has in decades past.
It is ironic indeed that America seemed to have largely forgotten about how they won the Cold War and do not realize that they are increasingly following in the USSR footsteps while China has been borrowing a leaf from the US Cold War winning playbook by prioritizing economic development over military spending.
Exactly, plawolf. Domination is much more expensive than defense. The US is now even unable to dominate Afghanistan, see this article in WP: .
The world will be better off without a dominator. A dominator wants in its own interest to maintain abject dictatorships in power against the interests of their peoples, see Saudi Arabia as an example, or wants to change regimes to fit its own interests and thus preclude a democratic development in the countries of such regimes, see Libya. It thus invites terrorism against itself by people who think they need to act in the interest of their own country/religion/whatever.
I prefer an international constellation similar to the Westphalian model.
The world will be better off without a dominator. A dominator wants in its own interest to maintain abject dictatorships in power against the interests of their peoples, see Saudi Arabia as an example, or wants to change regimes to fit its own interests and thus preclude a democratic development in the countries of such regimes, see Libya. It thus invites terrorism against itself by people who think they need to act in the interest of their own country/religion/whatever.
I prefer an international constellation similar to the Westphalian model.