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March 3, 2010
The Decline of American Military Hegemony
David Wood talks about something that I've been worried about for some time:
China, Iran Creating 'No-Go' Zones to Thwart U.S. Military Power
by David Woods
Politics Daily
The United States, Pentagon strategists say, is quickly losing its ability to barge in without permission. Potential target countries and even some lukewarm allies are figuring out ingenious ways to blunt American power without trying to meet it head-on, using a combination of high-tech and low-tech jujitsu....
At the same time, U.S. naval and air forces have been shrinking under the weight of ever more expensive hardware. It's no longer the case that the United States can overwhelm clever defenses with sheer numbers.
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the problem this month, countries in places where the United States has strategic interests -- including the Persian Gulf and the Pacific -- are building "sophisticated, new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace.''
Those innocuous words spell trouble. While the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight in Marja, others - Iran and China, to name two - are chipping away at America's access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.
"This era of U.S. military dominance is waning at an increasing and alarming rate,'' Andrew Krepinevich, a West Point-educated officer and former senior Pentagon strategist, writes in a new report. "With the spread of advanced military technologies and their exploitation by other militaries, especially China's People's Liberation Army and to a far lesser extent Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the U.S. military's ability to preserve military access to two key areas of vital interest, the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf, is being increasingly challenged.''
There seems to be a myth out there that because the U.S. is the U.S. we will automatically win any high-tech war. I call it the "Top Gun Syndrome," and while Hollywood is maybe partially to blame they're just rehashing what they saw in the Gulf War.
Due to other pressures I only have time for the briefest of comments. I also don't have time to set up a bunch of links, and so to a large extent will be going off of my general knowledge of the subject and my previous posts. Lets start with this:
The Air War Over Vietnam
We went into Vietnam convinced that we'd blow the aircraft of North Vietnam out of the sky in droves. Our aircraft and missiles were thought to be technologically superior, and our pilots surely better than those of a third-world nation.
Much to our surprise, in the 1964-68 period we only achieved a 2-1 ratio over the NVA, and perhaps only 1-1 against their premier fighter, the MiG-21. This greatly disturbed us because if we could only do this well against the NVA, we'd surely do much worse against the Russians.
There were two reasons we did so poorly; one, our pilots had lost the art of dogfighting. We assumed that most fights would be at long to medium range with missiles. When we did dogfight, the practice was Americans fighting Americans; i.e. similar aircraft with pilots using the same tactics against each other. The second reason was missile reliability, which stank.
During the bombing halt after 1968, we corrected all of the problems. We formed Top Gun for the Navy and Red Flag for the Air Force, and got our missiles to work. When we went back north again in 1972-73 we shot them down at the rate of 13-1, which was more like what we had achieved in Korea.
Old Hardware
Our Nimitz class carriers are based on a 40 year old design, and suffer lack of electrical power production. Nuclear reactors are not magical devices, and are limited in the amount of electricity they can produce. They simply don't have the capacity to generate power for all the modern computers and such we'd like to put aboard but can't. The first Gerald R Ford class won't hit the water until 2015. Right now we've only got 10 Nimitz class and the Enterprise, which was itself launched in 1960 and suffers more problems than the Nimitz. This is the fewest number we've had since before World War II.
More, carriers are only as good as the aircraft on board. The F-18 Hornet first flew in 1978, and it's upgraded sister the F-18 Super Hornet in 1995. The latter is a nice upgrade, but only an upgrade and not really a new design. As we all know the F-18 has a range problem and you can only upgrade an old airframe so much.
The replacement is the F-35 Lightning II, which is in the pipeline, but there are two issues there. One, it was supposed to be backed up by the more capable F-22 Raptor, but Obama stopped production of the Raptor to 187 aircraft, limiting it's availability. Two, the F-35 program is suffering the usual cost-overruns that seem endemic to any program, government or otherwise.
Spending is Down
No time to rehash what I've written, so follow the links to these previous posts:
Obama to Cut Military Spending to Pre - 9/11 Levels
and especially
U.S. Military Spending Is Not Starving Domestic Programs
Not Blaming Obama
The truth is that George HW Bush cut back too much when he was president, Clinton didn't reverse this trend, and W ramped up domestic spending and listened too much to Don Rumsfeld. The history here is bipartisan.
That said, the Obama-Pelosi-Reid domestic spending agenda is so insane that it puts us farther away than ever from being able to rebuild our military.
So Who Cares?
The short version is that we are a democracy that mostly does good in the world and Iran and China are not. Our allies in Europe, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan are also democracies that mostly do good in the world. No that doesn't give us the right to do whatever we want, but the world would be a better place with Western military hegemony in all parts of the world.
Posted by Tom at March 3, 2010 8:30 AM
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Comments
I see it as bad press. Don't get me wrong, I'm for freedom of the press, but it's the way things are reported today with a spin that I hate.
The big guy who carries a stick is not always the bully, not when he's the top cop on the beat. But the bleeding hearts all too often play up the villians as victims much to the demise of this country's brave and loyal peacekeepers.
You can't call our boys anything else...unless it would hero.
Glen
"Lov'n the Lord & Liv'n the Life..."
Posted by: Glen at March 9, 2010 9:24 PM
American military power had maintained a balance against the soviet union from 1945 to 1991,the Economic decline is more worrying to her allies.
Smaller states such as
Canda,Australia,Britian,Japan and France can to a certin extent offset the military decline by spending more and beefing up their own militaries.
The the problem is the long term funding on American R&D efforts to equip American and her close allied nations.
1941 to 1945 is a good example of this,America became the arsenal of democracy.
Ironicaly the American standing armed forces were quite small in comparison to he potetential adverseries.
The focus of American military efforts in the late 1930;s was to devolepbetter newer weapons such as the Garand rifel,B17 Bomber,jeeps,half tracked vehicles and increase the size of navy her National Guard and reserve force capacity.
American indusrty existed to fufill a genuine civilian market was quickly turned to producing the needed war wining weaponary in quality and quantity.
What is needed is a re industrilisation of America and a focus on the high level tech skills needed to produce dual end civil/Military items.
Allies that are essentially paying their share of the security and cost burden of maintaning democractic principals.
A genuine re alignment of American foregin policy towards nations such India and indonesia,and her traditional english speaking allies will also act to offset and temporary chinese military advantage.
Globilisation and transfer of jobs and wealth to china has essentially weakened American finincial and military power and led to her Declining influnce in east asia .
Energy security and the need to devolep cheap clean energy will also benifit America and her allies as conflict over diminishing oil supplies will continue to escerlate.
Posted by: John Rohr at October 30, 2010 5:29 PM
