Posted on 05/18/2022 4:34:47 AM PDT by Kaslin
Can the United States only fight one war with a chance of winning?
According to Adm. Mike Gilday
the chief of naval operations (CNO, Navy's senior officer) the answer is yes -- at least when it comes to the U.S. Navy fighting its share of the war.
According to Stars and Stripes, during a May 12 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo, asked Gilday: "What would the impact be on the Navy's ability to meet its operational requirements in (Europe) if we had to withhold Navy forces from Europe in order to deter Chinese aggression in (the Pacific)?"
Gilday replied that the current fleet of about 298 ships "is not sized to handle two simultaneous conflicts." The Navy is "sized to fight one and keep a second adversary in check, but in terms of two all-out conflicts, we are not sized for that."
Given the genuine threat posed by communist China -- whose navy is already larger than the U.S. Navy -- this is a jaw-dropping statement for the Navy's senior officer to say on the record.
Consider the information and narrative warfare elements -- and the Biden administration emphasizes "perception" above all. At the definite minimum Gilday's assessments rates as a diplomatic perception faux pas -- it signals weakness. At the hyperbolic maximum -- admittedly extreme -- Beijing's imperialist dictatorship could read it as an invitation to attack Taiwan. Given Russia's invasion of Ukraine, never dismiss hyperbolic and idiotic aggression by a dictatorship as impossible.
Major caveat: Ukraine's ferocious resistance to Russia's aggression should give Beijing aggressors second and third thoughts.
Alas -- Gilday exposes an unfortunate vulnerability. My American political explanation: He wants more money for the Navy and its current acquisition programs.
Another reason? Everyone sentient on the Senate Armed Services Committee knows the U.S. military is structured to "fight one and hold one."
The first "one" means a must-win war.
In this strategic bind we bet we win the one we choose to fight first then we go and win the one we held -- or hope we held.
"Win, hold, win" -- a bumper sticker that's the organizing principle.
In July 2001 then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, through a Pentagon leak, indicated America would no longer field -- and pay for -- a military built to fight a "two war strategy."
In the late 1990s a bipartisan Washington consensus believed the U.S. no longer confronted the strategic threat of fighting simultaneous major wars in the Atlantic/Europe and in the Pacific/Asia.
In a column written in July 2001 I suggested Rumsfeld was telling America that World War II and its Cold War aftermath had finally come to a strategic endpoint. The Cold War was World War II's long goodbye, with U.S. and Russian troops facing each other in a divided Germany. America's direct involvement in Asian tumults like the Korean and Vietnam wars were the fallout of defeating Japan -- and then confronting communist China and the USSR.
o be fair to Rumsfeld's 2001 (but pre-9/11) context, he was addressing a late 1990s' Pentagon planning concept for waging "two major regional wars."
Rumsfeld wanted to align Pentagon strategy with budget if not strategic threat. Since 1993 Congress had been spending the so-called end of the Cold War "peace dividend."
As for reality? In 1993 Russia was kaput. In 1993 it appeared China wanted to make money.In 2022 China is "the pacing threat." That's Pentagonese for America's most potent enemy. In his pre-testimony written remarks, Gilday employed the slang to make his point: "Sea control and power projection are essential to U.S. national security and long-term economic health." China, "our pacing threat, clearly recognizes this..."
In 2018, Congress stipulated the Navy deploy a 355-ship fleet "as soon as practicable," but the fleet has been reduced due to budget requirements. China's fleet already has 355 ships.
Lose the big one, what matters the hold?
I think we should move toward Autarky and be as economically self-sufficient as possible. Keep our nuclear deterrent so that no one messes with us, but pull back and be more isolationist. We’d save money on the military and foreign aid, we’d place America First in economics, and the Globalists would lose power over us.
We are good at spending money, we are not good at winning wars. We need to play a different game.
any military that believes climate change is the greatest threat will lose against a real enemy
Here’s an idea. Maybe Europe should meet its own “operational requirements”, and free the United States to concentrate on the Pacific.
We need fighting ships, not futuristic runs of 3 in a class, but real fighting destroyers and cruisers capable of operating pilotless craft to expand capabilities. Carriers that can operate drone and manned aircraft. Weapons that can reach out and destroy a target without them even knowing we are in the neighborhood.
The Chinese have a lot of manpower to use for their navy, and while the US doesn't, it should be developing the technology to negate that manpower and keep the Chinese navy in check with drones of it's own.
China and Russia combined are a formidable alliance.
A country that enables a full-scale invasion across its own border has no business waging even ONE, let alone two, regional wars around the world.
The Democrats and EU elites are determined to burn western civilization to the ground starting at home.
Will it count as a win if a few survivors fly the rainbow flag over the Kremlin?
I would agree with that, but we need to recognize the price -- or should I say -- the Democrats would have to agree to the price. Withdrawing as world hegemon would set in train a series of events whereby the dollar would no longer be a world reserve currency. I'm ok with that, but it would mean an end to the welfare state and the endless government borrowing. The world pretty much underwrites our debt because they get to borrow our military on a regular basis.
We need hulls in the water and I think more subs are needed and not necessarily nuke boats. With current technology we could probably build one hell of a good electric boat and probably a lot cheaper than a nuke version.
More hulls is the answer, but they have to be the 'right' hulls. The LCS was a total disaster and the contract given to manufacture was to bolster a re-election ticket.
The Zumwalts are a good start, but killed way to premature and without the LRLAP ammunition totally useless with the guns it has.
Agreed they do not but they kill the enemy quite proficiently when the shooting starts.
Whomever came up with the LCS concept and program needs to be committed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.