You see - if you listen to Midrats, you're years ahead of everyone else!
Quite a few of you sent me a copy of the latest on China from the Project 2049 Institute. Over at FP, James Traub has an interesting overview of their latest called, "Asian Alliances in the 21st Century."
They bring up a subject we also touched on during Midrats Episode 12 with Dr. Donald Henry and Dr. Dr. James Kraska, and Episode 55 with United States Naval War College Associate Professors Toshi Yoshihara & James R. Holmes that is worth a listen. Here it is; Does that contain China - or does that make her feel surrounded by a hostile alliance? That is the question.
We need a clear headed and realistic view of China as she grows stronger, richer, and then older; no too negative and not too hopeful. We also need to be clear headed and realistic about our own abilities as we try to claw ourselves out of the debt of the last few years. From Traub;
The costs for the United States would be greater still. The "Asian Alliances" report accuses the United States of courting "strategic insolvency" and proposes investments in vast amounts of new weaponry. In a congressional briefing, Blumenthal specified the hardware: "a next-generation bomber; large numbers of attack submarines (SSNs); a sizeable fifth-generation tactical aircraft fleet" and on and on and on.Ponder.
That sounds costly, no? Mitt Romney, who never loses an opportunity to talk up the threat from China, not to mention Russia, would peg defense spending at 4 percent of GDP -- $600 billion, or $70 billion more than the current total, which of course would necessitate equivalent cuts elsewhere to make up the difference. Or perhaps voters should accept that national insolvency is a price worth paying in order to address strategic insolvency. Or of course we could Lose China again. Or risk the Big One.
Americans are, understandably, much too obsessed with the economy right now to spare a thought for national security. But the debate is waiting in the wings. The threat of terrorist attack is very real, but diminishing. Al Qaeda is not the national nightmare it once was. Are Americans going to replace it with a new nightmare -- or rather, a recycled one from the depths of the Cold War? I certainly hope not. China's regional ambitions do need to be checked. But if America bankrupts itself in the process, we'll win the battle and lose the war.
I'm just happy that more and more this conversation is taking place.
18 comments:
China has historically not been a terribly expansionistic power ( the Mongols were not Chinese). However, they have always expected to be hegemonaic in Asia. We do have interests and allies in the area and unlike most of Europe Japan and Korea do seem to take their defense seriously.
I'd focus most of our rescources in the Pacific and help our allies take a firm stand on things like their EEZ violations.
Also...I'm pretty sure that depiction of A.E. Neuman is....wascist.
The decision has already been made. The fleet is going to be significantly reduced in 2012. Budget drills are currently underway to axe significant numbers of ships, aircraft, personnel from all four services. Continued half-ass investment in Gen 5 technology coupled with non-realist mission sets (africa partnership station) will break the operational availability of the force to fight a potential major combat operations engagement in the pacific.
this will become obvious to our current allies and they will be faced with two choices: go it alone (together), or cede to China. Japan will not cede--they will develop nuclear weapons. We don't want that.
Every single time that the US has decreased her military and especially her Navy, she has had to fight a major war shortly thereafter. This will be no different.
Brick,
You need to get your mind right and celebrate Diversity. A.E. Neuman belongs to no race, creed, color, national origin, or sexual orientation. He is.
My speculation is that significant budget cuts will be made to defense spending, regardless of which party is in power at the beginning of 2013.
My further speculation is that the cuts will be made relatively quickly, perhaps reaching their full effect by the beginning of 2016, and possiblly implementing a total reduction amounting to one-third of current defense spending by the end of FY 2015.
I will also guess that in response to these drastic cuts, the US Navy and the US Air Force will decide to keep their system acquisition programs at current spending levels but will choose to cut their deployed force structures to approximately half of current levels -- a 50% reduction in deployed equipment, possibly a 40% or so reduction in the total numbers of uniformed personnel.
Under such a situation, the US Navy will likely choose to emphasize the large carrier battlegroups, plus some reasonable mix of submarine missions and capabilities, while at the same time sacrificing a large portion of the Gator Navy and most all other missions the Navy now performs at sea, leaving the Navy with between 150 and 170 ships by the end of 2016.
Under this kind of situation, something on the order of Admiral Mullen's "thousand ship navy" might be an appropriate response; i.e., the US Navy consciously cedes the day-to-day work of maintaining a continuous maritime presence in the Western Pacific to allies such as Japan and Korea, and backs those forces up with the large carrier battle groups as needed.
I can't predict anything relating to US congress anymore - and therefore levels of funding - I now understand why KGB was so frustrated trying to predict US politics...
But if I would have to shoot the darts into numbers, it would be 10 CVN's escorted by 50 Burkes and 40 SSNs making 100 ship core navy supported by 55 LCS for piracy hunting, flag showing and dying early and undisclosed but low number of gators. All-Hornet wings proceed to be changed to all F-35-wings.
As someone in the RN said in 1940 - God save the king, because with that number of escorts we can't...
See, here's the number we are going to be stuck on -- 250 ships. That is the "sweet spot" determined solely by fiscal capabiltiy, not a maritime or national strategy or threat based analysis. That is what the <span>programmers</span> say we can fiscally support in operations and shipbuilding and what Navy leadership will follow.
Period.
Assuming, of course, even more cuts than those foreseen coming down the pike manifest themselves. Maybe Coolidge was right afterall...
w/r, SJS
Is 250 the proposed FY 2012 figure? Or is 250 the figure that is <span>actually supportable</span> under the current FY 2011 budget?
In any case, we can reasonably speculate that all the remaining FFGs will be quickly decommissioned next year to pay for a few LCS and some vaporware mission modules, much in the same way thirty Spruances were decommissioned to pay for just three DDG-1000s, none of which are yet operational.
SJS, I'm hearing APOM II has a much lower number...220
@Scott Brim, Zoomie Partisan: Keep in mind that we have not been provided any operational relief yet. The COCOM's have yet to weigh in. That means we will keep the same optempo with less ships, and oh by the way, probably less maintenance and modernization funding. See, when these ships get cashed in, the "savings" is not fungible--i.e. it will be recouped by the Federal Government for redistribution into closing the budget defecit, paying off debt, or paying illegal immigrants to have children (or what have you). The "savings" will not go into making the Navy "whole" at any number of hulls / airframes / sailors. They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
@Scott Brim, Zoomie Partisan: Keep in mind that we have not been provided any operational relief yet. The COCOM's have yet to weigh in. That means we will keep the same optempo with less ships, and oh by the way, probably less maintenance and modernization funding. See, when these ships get cashed in, the "savings" is not fungible--i.e. it will be recouped by the Federal Government for redistribution into closing the budget defecit, paying off debt, or paying illegal immigrants to have children (or what have you). The "savings" will not go into making the Navy "whole" at any number of hulls / airframes / sailors. They. Just. Don't. Get. It.
They will cut and cut and cut and cut until we become as lamed as GB.
And it is our children who will pay. The Generation of WW2 payed for the excesses of the generation after WW1. and so on and so forth.
America-we sleep through all our history classes.
HEY! we will have LCS! The supership!!!
How much money could we have saved if we had just built updated evolved frigates and cruisers instead of LCS and DDG1000.
Maybe we will still get the super burkes........
No wait those will be cut for more transformational f-35's and LCS.
<span>Salty Gator .....</span><span> "</span> <span>SJS, I'm hearing APOM II has a much lower number...220"</span>
On other Internet discussion forums, I've been predicting since the summer of 2008 that the Navy's fleet would fall to roughly 200 ships by about 2020 as the result of a confluence of trends in both DOD funding levels and in the lagging ability of the US Navy's senior leadership to realistically manage their shipbuilding programs.
The way things are going now with the specter of severe DOD budget cutting near on the horizon, it's looking like we could see this happen a lot earlier than 2020.
do you expect us to see a naval version of when the air force destroyed squadrons so that they could by F22's?
C
The good news just keeps rolling in.
Projected that the deployment house of cards begins to collapse ~2015 and becomes untenable ~2020. Supposedly CGs and and a CVN (in addition to Enterprise) are candidates to be parked...
w/r, SJS
<span>pk</span> ... <span>do you expect us to see a naval version of when the air force destroyed squadrons so that they could by F22's? </span>
Yes .... To free up money for LCS, I would not be at all surprised if retirement of the FFGs is greatly accelerated so that all 27 of them are gone by the end of 2013, much in the same way that 30 Spruances were sacrificed in a mass slaughter to pay for three DDG-1000s -- none of which are yet operational.
SJS, along with 3 LSDs and one entire ARG/MEU.
Post a Comment