U.S. Military Could Lose War to Russia or China, Report to Congress Warns

[DonViejo]

Source: The Daily Beast



The U.S. military is losing its edge over its rivals and could lose a war against Russia or China, a new study written for Congress reports. The National Defense Strategy Commission, made up of former top Republican and Democratic officials, warns the Trump administration isn’t investing enough money into keeping up with the Chinese or Russian military and says the U.S. could be “overwhelmed” in a conflict. “There is a strong fear of complacency, that people have become so used to the United States achieving what it wants in the world, to include militarily, that it isn’t heeding the warning signs,” said Kathleen Hicks, a Pentagon official during the Obama administration. The report laid out a stark warning. “The U.S. military could suffer unacceptably high casualties and loss of major capital assets in its next conflict. It might struggle to win, or perhaps lose, a war against China or Russia,” it said, adding: “The United States is particularly at risk of being overwhelmed should its military be forced to fight on two or more fronts simultaneously.”

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Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/us-military-could-lose-war-to-russia-or-china-report-to-congress-warns?ref=home

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U.S. military edge has eroded to ‘a dangerous degree,’ study for Congress finds

By Paul Sonne and Shane Harris November 14 at 12:01 AM

The United States has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report released Wednesday by a bipartisan commission that Congress created to evaluate the Trump administration’s defense strategy.

The National Defense Strategy Commission, made up of former top Republican and Democratic officials selected by Congress, evaluated the Trump administration’s 2018 National Defense Strategy, which ordered a vast reshaping of the U.S. military to compete with Beijing and Moscow in an era of renewed great-power competition.

While endorsing the strategy’s aims, the commission warned that Washington isn’t moving fast enough or investing sufficiently to put the vision into practice, risking a further erosion of American military dominance that could become a national security emergency.

At the same time, according to the commission, China and Russia are seeking dominance in their regions and the ability to project military power globally, as their authoritarian governments pursue defense buildups aimed squarely at the United States.

more
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/us-military-edge-has-eroded-to-a-dangerous-degree-study-for-congress-finds/2018/11/13/ea83fd96-e7bc-11e8-bd89-eecf3b178206_story.html

[HopeAgain]

1. Sounds like...

The military - industrial machine wants more money. We kept hearing the same bullshit during the cold war.

[Power 2 the People]

33. +1

[Crutchez_CuiBono]

2. Thats why war is a bad dea and the State Dept is so important.

Just how much MORE money are we going to dump into the military? What in gods name are they doing w the cascade of money they are getting now? Probably stuff like tariffs etc don't help relations. We need to stop waring.

[James48]

3. But

We’ve always been at war with Eastasia!

[Perseus]

7. Don't forget Eurasia, we do switch back and forth

LOL

[mastermind]

4. well, too bad

I guess that big tax break to the rich is really paying off.

[KG]

5. total bullshit.

[bronxiteforever]

6. Winners? In a war with threee super nuclear powers?

How is winning defined?
We could lose capital assets? Like what, the earth? I don’t think I want to be alive after the winning.
☢️ ☠️😵

[Sherman A1]

8. Ah,

The inflatable Russian and Chinese Threat Doll makes it's appearance. Must be budget time.

[cstanleytech]

9. The size of our military is only a tiny reason why China and Russia have not tried but

the main deterrent has been the significant nuclear arsenal that we have.

[TexasBushwhacker]

10. And when the nukes start dropping

The difference between the winners and the losers will be negligible.

[cstanleytech]

14. That's if it ever happens. Hopefully though it will continue to only be used as a deterrent.

[Achilleaze]

11. "отлично!" - Dirty Donny* (R)

* aka republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief

[hlthe2b]

12. The Trump-led arrogance of "superiority" reminds me of that scene in Gone With The Wind

where all the "glory-besotten" young men engage in bragging about their desire for war with the North and how their "superior" honor alone will have the Yankees scurrying back home in defeat. Clark Gable's Rhett Butler calmly steps in to point out that there is not a canon factory in the whole South and that "all we got is cotton, slaves, and arrogance". (I see this scene playing out repeatedly in recent decades with the arrogant naivete' of politicians exploiting our young men and women who WILL be the proverbial "cannon-fodder" )

[qazplm135]

13. I don't think so

Logistics wins wars and we are still light years ahead of either of them.

[DeminPennswoods]

17. Logistics has been steadily outsourced to the private sector

for about the last 20 years. Worked at a logistics command and we were constantly being pushed into pursuing contracts with the Boeings, McDonnell-Douglas', Grummans, Lockheed-Martins, etc of the world to allow them to manage parts and deliveries and other logistics components. None of these companies were or are as good at doing this job as the DoD civil servants.

[qazplm135]

22. still better than the Russians and Chinese

not just in how we do it, but in the sheer number of boats and planes, the fact that we've actually done this multiple times over generations.

How many times have China or Russia moved military personnel of any size by anything except over land they already controlled?

[DeminPennswoods]

28. Not if you've seen these companies in action

nt

[qazplm135]

32. yes still better than those who have never ever done it

and don't have the equipment to do it.

China doesn't even have the number of water transport craft needed for an invasion of Taiwan just across the straits from them.

[Hoyt]

15. Not gonna lose any sleep over that BS.

[TomVilmer]

16. This would have been so much worse...

... if Congress had reported that the U.S. Military could WIN a War with Russia or China. Somebody should inform Congress that after such big wars we ALL will be losers.

[DeminPennswoods]

18. DoD gets about 1/4 of the entire federal budget

There is plenty of unnecessary spending, but a big problem is the services are never satisified with simple weapons systems that work. Everything has to be "gold-plated". It's why ships, tanks, planes are so expensive which leads to procurement of fewer than planned that winds up in even more expense.

[TexasBushwhacker]

19. And all those billions didn't protect us on 9/11

Are Russia and China really our biggest threats, in terms of war?

[skypilot]

30. THAT...

...was the first thing I thought about when I read the OP. What was the dollar amount for defense spending at the time? Something like 40 billion?

[TexasBushwhacker]

31. $40B? Bwaaahahahaha

Military spending in 2000 was $300B. Now it's more than double. In fact, it doubled just during GW Bush's 8 years in office. Of course, we were fighting 2 wars. It topped out at $711B in 2011 and slowly declined during Obama's 2nd term. But it's back up with Trump. No surprise there!

https://www.statista.com/statistics/272473/us-military-spending-from-2000-to-2012/#0

[skypilot]

44. Damn.

Can't believe I was so far off in my recollection. 300 billion and the WTC towers are gone and even the Pentagon got hit.

[Blue_Tires]

20. Well, obviously...

Trump has no brains or mettle for war, and Russia+China know all our military secrets anyway...

[Bayard]

21. tRump will use this an an excuse

Ramp up the military even more. Wasn't that one of his MAGA promises?

Last I read, we had enough bombs to kill everybody in the world many times over.

[Oneironaut]

23. If ignoring nukes, the US would get massacred in Asia, imo.

Aircraft carriers are easily destroyed now by missiles. Then, China and/or Russia begins bombing airfields in Japan and surrounding countries, making them ineffective. With air and sea assets depleted, they launch a massive ground assault (with air and sea superiority) on the trapped US troops. It would be a stunning defeat.

The opposite is true if Russia and China tried to invade the US. Neither has any nearby airbases. They wouldn’t even make it to the shore.

Basically, oceans are still good buffer zones. Neither side could launch a successful, sustained assault on the other. If you include Europe as a US ally, Russia would probably invade European counties instead. If not, most of the fighting would be through bombs from the sea and the air.

Of course, nuclear weapons would be used in a real world situation, so this is pointless speculation.

[zipplewrath]

29. No, but large losses

The "between the lines" on that report is the "unacceptable losses". The US has grown used to being able to "always win" in every confrontation. The military uses the reasoning that we might lose a tank or a ship as a reason for needing more capability.

It is true that China has gotten more capable lately. Russia is improving its capabilities. But neither of them are large enough, or able to project power far enough to "defeat" the US. Even without nukes, they'd be hard pressed to "hold us at bay" for any real length of time. However, we might lose some ships, especially early on. And the US isn't going to respond well when B-1B's start falling from the sky.

It's all pointless however because all three of us are nuclear capable and anyone that feels the least bit threatened with loss is gonna roll 'em out.

[apnu]

37. According to CNN in May 2018, Russia is spent less on military in 2017

https://money.cnn.com/2018/05/02/news/russia-defense-spending-plunge/index.html

Given how focused on Cyber Russia and China is, and how tone-deaf the Pentagon is to cyber threats, I bet we'd get wrecked in a fight.

Remember when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008? The first thing they did was knock Georgia off the Internet. It was shocking how easy Russia did it.

If our military is dependent on the Internet for anything in a conflict we are screwed.

[zipplewrath]

45. They are not

They have their own internet. GPS on the other hand.... The Chinese have already experimented with disabling that.

It's a bit hard with both the Chinese and the Russians to understand how much they spend militarily because they both have Labor departments that fund the labor for military expenditures so it is hard to know what they've spent comparatively.

[NickB79]

47. Chinese and Russian air forces would be shredded over Japan

Their Air Self Defense Force, combined with US carriers on the Eastern coast of Japan outside surface-to-surface missile range, would be a formidable force against attacking aircraft.

Beyond that, we still have the only long-range stealth bombers in operation, with suitable bases in the Middle East, the Pacific and Indian Oceans for re-arming, along with mid-air refueling. While there is talk of next-gen radar capable of seeing them, nothing we know of is currently in service. There is also the South Korean military system with state of the art air bases in the region for support.

It would be a bloodbath for sure, but the Chinese and Russian forces wouldn't be in any shape to fight again once it was over. Hell, the Chinese don't even have the forces to overrun Taiwan without taking serious losses.

[area51]

24. And reports like this

will be used as an excuse as to why we can't afford health care as a basic human right.

[Javaman]

25. in other news: the orange asshole allocates all federal moneys to go to military. nt

[Anon-C]

26. MAGA!

[End Of The Road]

27. Recent GAO report said our weapons vulnerable to cyberattack

https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/10/09/many-u-s-weapons-systems-are-vulnerable-to-cyberattack/

This article is a synopsis of the report, but the full report can be found at GAO website.

The Pentagon may not be taking cyber security seriously enough. They reportedly have not tended to cyber vulnerabilities that GAO had previously uncovered.

[HopeAgain]

35. They will wait until it is a crises

and the money to fix the problem comes flowing like the Mississippi. They are good with extortion like that...

[End Of The Road]

46. With China's and Russia's aggressive hacking, my concern

my concern is that they could possibly make systems critical for our success ineffective in early stages of war. Now that would be a crisis!
Hope the Pentagon wakes up soon, before Terrible Trump does something so reckless that Russia and/or China decide war with us is a viable option.

[apnu]

34. Russia and China spend way less on military than the US does.

So are they saying we are grossly over paying for shitty protection?

[HopeAgain]

36. I think they are thinking "conventional" warfare.

World war II all over again. They want more tanks and things that are useless in modern warfare.

[apnu]

38. As the old saying goes: "Generals always fight the last war"

Its embarrassing that even speaking conventionally, we send trillions yearly on Defense when both Russia and China spend less than $100 billion. There's so much graft in our Military Industrial Complex it makes the health insurance industry look like small potatoes.

[paleotn]

41. Spending on the wrong stuff.

The Russians have a carrier that breaks down regularly. The Chinese carrier force is completely untested. They’re learning what we and the Japanese mastered 75 years ago. We’ve got carriers by the score. Big expensive resource hogging carriers. Apparently the commission doesn’t put much stock in traditional power projection as our potential adversaries have figured out how to negate that. I suppose we need to look at power projection in a whole new way and stop spending money on the last war’s solutions.

[apnu]

42. The commission is probably not far from the mark.

Given how cyber everything is. Let's not forget when Russia attacked Georgia in 2008, they knocked the whole country off the Internet just before the attack. It was shocking how easy the Russians did it.

I'm not saying they could knock America off the Internet, but they can and would disrupt the Internet and sow global chaos and that will hurt us far more than conventional weapons.

Cyberwarfare is dirt cheap compared to nukes and carriers.

Plus carriers are easy to take out. Toss enough missiles at them, which Russia and China do have, and they will sink. So a large part of American military power is removed from the world stage. Missiles also cost far less than carriers.

Your last line is what I'm also thinking. The generals are fighting the last war. We don't live in a conventional world right now. We haven't for decades.

[paleotn]

53. Agreed. Asymmetric warfare is exponentially more effective

in cyberspace. Imagine North Korea turning off most of the electrical power in the US. It would be catastrophic beyond our wildest nightmares.

Add to that the Swedish Gotland class submarines. They have a crew of about 60 or so and cost as much as one F-35. In 2005, one penetrated a US carrier formation and “sank” the Reagan and a few of her support vessels. New technology once again defeats hardware from the last war.

[TomVilmer]

50. All the money in the World is no guarantee for "winning" a war...

Most spending on the military (in 2015). These are my own in Danish, but should be easy to read.

[paleotn]

39. Armor? Well, at least they didnt advocate for more carriers

Air Force guys have a simple word for armor. They’re called targets. I do agree we need to look at defense spending in a fundamentally different way, given how threats have changed. I particularly agree with their call for congress to do its damn job. Maybe we will get more of that with Dems running the house.

[Maxheader]

40. After years of letting the other guys see our secrets...

And don't kid yourself, they have all the latest info on our most advanced and secret
aircraft...Maybe can't build it right away, but that's how this country keeps justifying
huge defense budgets...We have to keep the enemy up to date...

[timewarped]

43. War Machine Needs Greasing

Since all the suppliers of the materials of war got tax breaks, and we got stuck with the tab, I think THEY ought to fund the military. Or perhaps we should just get to the eventual end and allocate the whole federal budget to the military.

[NickB79]

48. A $100 million jet vs a few dozen cheap Chinese supersonic drones

No need for them to even carry weapons; just swarm and impact.

Cyberattacks and anti-satellite weapons that cripple GPS systems our military relies on.

Cyberattacks against domestic power grids to create chaos at home.

Hypersonic missiles that can core an aircraft carrier before it's defense guns can even spool up and get off a shot.

That's the future of warfare. The US isn't in danger of losing a war because we aren't spending enough money on the military. We're in danger because we are still building weapons platforms to fight a 20th century war in a 21st century combat environment.

Yet the authors of this piece insist we need more money for even bigger weapons systems.

[IcyPeas]

49. remind me: did we win in Vietnam or Afghanistan...

[rzemanfl]

51. Mutual Assured Destruction was the U.S. counter to that for many, many years. n/t

[agincourt]

52. Surprised they mentioned Russia

As they have canceled the SU-57 high performance fighter and cannot fix their aircraft carrier, their military has been strained as well. China is a different story.