As the US finds itself trying to play catch up against an increasingly capable, large and assertive PLA, the reassurances of America’s superior innovation capacity run up against the reality that the US military has been hamstrung for years by arbitrary budget restrictions that have undermined medium to longer term planning and investment in modernization and infrastructure. The cost of the Covid 19 pandemic, trillions and trillions of dollars, will amplify these ongoing restrictions, and almost certainly necessitate further cuts as the Biden Admin rams through trillions of dollars in new domestic spending. Inflation, and the rising tax burden the Admin says is needed to pay for the new spending, will continue to weigh on growth and purchasing power. Thus, at a time when the US must be more prepared than ever for an existential struggle, its investments in military capabilities suggest the opposite. The DoD has tried to sound the alarm for a long time now. Even if, by some miracle, US leadership ever wakes up and tries to reverse the problem, it will be too little, too late.
The uncertain and restrictive budget environment is forcing the Army to make tough choices, the vice chief of staff of the Army, Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Allyn and his counterparts from the Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps spoke at a hearing on the current state of readiness of U.S. forces.
The Army is accepting considerable risk by reducing its end strength while deferring modernization programs and infrastructure investments, he said.
"The ripple effect of that goes through the years,” the admiral said. “You not only lose the maintenance time, but you lose qualification time for people, and that experience set can never be bought back."
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-St...y-leaders-say/If the military struggles to maintain the force and infrastructure it has, how can it hope to sustain and replace losses in even a limited war with China?Many DoD facilities have degraded significantly from reduced investments, and the department has a $116 billion backlog in facilities requiring attention, Niemeyer said. “A lot of our facilities are either in fail or poor condition,” he told the House panel. “This will ultimately result in the DoD facing larger bills in the future to go ahead to restore or replace facilities that deteriorate prematurely. The stark reality is that it is too costly to buy ourselves out of this this backlog.”
https://www.defense.gov/News/News-St...larger-budget/
People speculate about whether the US can or even would intervene to defend Taiwan when the PLA invades in the near future. Even if defense is successful to a degree, it would mark the beginning, not the end, of an escalating conflict. Soft power and economic power will have their impact, but as Bejing’s growing investments in the rapid modernization and expansion of the PLA demonstrate, the implications of hard power will grow with it. A key advantage of the US during the last world war was that we could replace losses faster than the enemy could inflict them; so much so that we materially sustained not only our own war effort but those of key allies. The US will not have that same productive advantage in the next great power conflict, and in many ways, we are already losing.Therefore, even if the budget were to hold constant, the ability to purchase defense items is likely to fall. Scenarios only become worse if one considers compounded effects from pandemic-related economic slowing and additional stimulus costs.
But, in our view, it seems very likely that the cuts are coming. As with the Budget Control Act (PDF), these reductions could be an opportunity for the DoD to make needed changes and reforms, but only if they can be executed thoughtfully and appropriately. In this regard, the Budget Control Act also provides a cautionary tale of what can go wrong if there is not adequate planning and preparation, as the “salami slice” cuts of sequestration (which mandated across-the-board cuts that would impact programs of all types, essential or not, if agreement on reductions could not be achieved) could have been avoided.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2020/04/de...-pandemic.html
Perhaps the biggest problem is that war often comes down to the will to win, especially since neither the US nor China can destroy each other short of nuclear war. The US has been inundated for years by popular and academic institutions with the narrative that the US a white supremacist evil empire built on fraud and lies that must be destroyed from the inside. In China, the dominant narrative is, conversely, that the country is ascendant and the whole nation must work inexorably to achieve its destiny at all costs. When push comes to shove, it’s more and more clear which side would be likely to blink first and retreat from its objectives in such a conflict, as the US has already begun to do in the Middle East.This cycle — persistent demand on an aging and shrinking force, combined with the impact of across-the-board budget cuts caused by budget sequestration in 2013 — has had a lasting impact on the readiness of key elements of American air power. This readiness crisis was at its worst from 2015-2017 when senior leaders testified that less than 50 per cent of the Air Force was ready, or “fully mission capable”, to conduct the full-spectrum of combat tasks including nuclear deterrence missions, supporting counterterrorism operations and engaging in potential conflict with a peer adversary.210 Specific air power assets that are key to the conventional balance in the Indo-Pacific were under strain, including fifth generation F-22s and B-2 bombers.211 Over the same period, the Navy’s carrier air wings and strike aircraft were also struggling, with 62 per cent of its F-18s reportedly “out of service” and not ready for combat.212
This growing arsenal of accurate long-range missiles poses a major threat to almost all American, allied and partner bases, airstrips, ports and military installations in the Western Pacific.57 As these facilities could be rendered useless by precision strikes in the opening hours of a conflict, the PLA missile threat challenges America’s ability to freely operate its forces from forward locations throughout the region. Alongside China’s broader A2/AD capabilities — including large numbers of fourth-generation fighter jets, advanced C4ISR systems, modern attack submarines, electronic warfare capabilities and dense arrays of sophisticated surface-to-air missiles — it permits the PLA to hold US and allied expeditionary forces at risk, preventing them from operating effectively at sea or in the air within combat range of Chinese targets.58 Following Beijing’s construction of a network of military outposts in the South China Sea that can support sophisticated radars, missile batteries and forward-based aircraft, the A2/AD threat is further intensifying in this critical waterway.
https://www.ussc.edu.au/analysis/ave...e-indo-pacific