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November 20, 2008
Red Dawn
An article from one month ago that deserves more attention than it got in the closing days of America's election cycle: A RAND study suggests US air power in the Pacific could be insufficient to prevent a Red Chinese invasion of the Republic of China by the year 2020. "Air Combat Past, Present and Future" details the PRC's anti-access arms and strategy.
Not happy reading but RTWT regardless. Also worth more attention than it most likely received, a comment left by Chris Taylor at a Flea post last week. I am reproducing it here in full.
The rest of it sucks, though.
Add to that the knowledge that the entire US nuclear triad is being allowed to rust out or retire with no planned replacements, and you have a recipe for a toothless strategic deterrent in 15-20 years.
These days, bombers take 20-30 years to deploy, from initial spec to technology demonstration to vendor competition to prototypes and crew training to IOC. The last nuclear-capable bomber the US designed was the B-2, and thanks to the Congress of the time, there are only 20 of them. All twenty aren't available for a strike at any given time (some will be in depot maintenance or other repair work), so the actual mission-capable strike force at any given time is more like 14 birds.
Then you have missiles, Minuteman IIIs which were initially designed and built 42 years ago. Sure, they fire off a random one every couple of years to make sure it still works as advertised, but a more modern launch platform would certainly offer some advantages. Like having scientists younger than retirement age familiar with designing and building the backbone of the nuclear deterrent.
Beyond that the Minuteman IIIs were already seriously threatened by late 70s Soviet missile technology (like the SS-18), which carry a heavy enough punch to probably destroy the Minutemen in their silos. So land-based deterrent is effectively a wash.
As far as the Ohio-class SSBNs go, there are only 14 of them, and as they age out they are being converted into SSGNs carrying conventional weapons. Their Trident D5 missiles have been treaty-reduced from 12 warheads down to 4 or 5.
Boats, incidentally, take even longer than planes to spec, design and build. The genesis of the Ohio class dates back to the Navy's ULMS study of 1971.
If the US had planned to maintain a credible strategic deterrent they should have been studying and building successor classes a decade ago. By the 2020 timeframe they will have a massive shortfall in USAF combat aircraft and capability, and no replacement classes for currently extant boats and missiles.
Basically we can see the end of Pax Americana within our lifetimes. American exceptionalism, like British and Roman before it, is predicated on moral, economic, and kinetic strength, and it's coming to an unavoidable end. And it is unavoidable -- hands up everyone who thinks Obama (or McCain for that matter) would ever have funded DoD to the level required to modernise both the nuclear and conventional forces.
The shade of Spengler has got nothing on my readership. We are over 9000 downers!
The advantages to having a naval hyperpower accrue not only to the economy of the hyperpower itself but to everyone else who does not need to directly support the cost of a navy and to even the smallest countries whose trade may proceed unmolested. Peace, too, is possible as potential rivals consider the overwhelming advantage of the hyperpower and decide not to compete.
A disadvantage to having a hyperpower is that everyone, including citizens of the hyperpower itself, quickly forgets the state of nature and comes to assume a tranquil sea is the default setting of the world. All the smaller countries piss and complain and the tax-paying elites of the hyperpower eventually decide a smaller navy will do the job of a bigger one. Potential rivals tool up and the world expresses shock and alarm at resurgent piracy, as if a world with half the warships it had fifteen years earlier would look the same.
Athens. England. This is only the rinse cycle. History is about to repeat itself.
Posted by Ghost of a flea at November 20, 2008 07:03 AM
Comments
That's why USAF keeps rotating wings of Raptors out to Guam and Japan. They want China to know that they are still trying to be in the air dominance business.
Our politicians and populace, however, will never again have the balls to build and contemplate the use of nukes and other scary weapons, so in terms of deterrence both nukes and a small number of Raptors are relatively useless.
What remains can be easily decapitated as NORAD has moved out of Cheyenne Mountain to an aboveground facility at Peterson AFB, and USAF no longer maintains alert flights of nuclear command posts of any kind.
The smart play would be to recognise our superpower successor waiting in the wings, and give them a early leg up via technology transfers.
We won't have the will to use them, but they might. And they will need all the help they can get against the next Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Posted by: Chris Taylor ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.ghostofaflea.com/nav-commenters.gif)
at November 20, 2008 02:46 PM
The British have already transferring nuclear technology to India, presumably with an American green-light. Hopefully somebody out there is thinking along the same lines that you and I are.
Posted by: Ghost of a flea at November 20, 2008 02:50 PM
