From military illiterates in Congress and political generals in the Five-Sided Wind Tunnel of the Potomac we hear noises about an upcoming war with China. This war, it is thought, will be chiefly naval with America’s carrier battle groups doing the heavy lifting. The carriers, it is further thought, will strike terror into the Chinese. Perhaps Better thinking would help.
A bit of history:
Wikipedia: In 1967aboard the carrier USS Forrestal, an anomaly caused a Zuni rocket on an F-4B Phantom to fire accidentally, striking an external fuel tank of an A-4 Skyhawk. The flammable jet fuel spilled across the flight deck, ignited, and triggered a chain reaction of explosions that killed 134 sailors and injured 161. At the time, Forrestal was engaged in combat operations in the Gulf of Tonkin, during the Vietnam War. The ship survived, but with damage exceeding US$72 million, not including the damage to aircraft.
The Zuni is a small five-inch ground-attack rocket suitable for such things as destroying trucks. This trivial weapon, all by itself, caused damage that rendered the carrier useless for over a year in the repair yards. The warhead was roughly the size of the suicide-drone warheads used in the Ukraine. That’s all it took.
Washington, looking to start a war with China, which has vast numbers of antiship missiles, many of them hypersonic, might reflect on this.
We could say that the disaster on the Forrestal was a freak accident. It was. An “anomaly” means that the circuitry was badly designed, badly maintained, or badly employed. It is not likely to recur. However, almost any missile,or naval gunfire, can burst an aircraft’s fuel tanks. An aircraft carrier is a large bladder of jet fuel wrapped around high explosives. This is worth remembering.
The provincial lawyers in Congress who want a war with a country about which they know little might bear in mind a few things about China. It is not a primitive country of goatherds of the sort the American military likes to fight. It is a huge technological and industrial power with massive financial resources, universities of high quality, large numbers of excellent engineers, and an efficient government. It sent an automated sample-return mission to the Moon and a combination orbiter, lander, and rover to Mars, successful on its first try. It has a space station. America tries desperately to crush its AI program. Chinese students dominate America’s best tech universities. It isn’t Guatemala. It very, very isn’t.
For decades China has been designing its military for almost the sole purpose of fighting America in the waters off its coast. It has developed hypersonic antiship missiles. America has not. It has a larger navy than the US, in hulls if not in tonnage. It has a formidable air force. Many of China’s large and varied missiles are specifically designed as carrier killers. Military enthusiasts can argue whether the Chengdu J-20 is a better plane than the aging FA-18 or the F-35, a notorious dog. It doesn’t matter. The Chinese air force is right there, a hundred miles from Taiwan
Americans have an almost mystical faith in the superiority of their technology. What they seem not to have is the almost mystical technology. America suffers both from complacency and a tendency to regard weapons programs chiefly as a means of funneling money to the arms industry. Washington talks of sending F-16s to the Ukraine as if this were a fearsome bird. No. While it is not actually a biplane, it first flew in 1976. The Russian Su-57 is new and intended actually to fight. Kiev has 31 M1 Abrams tanks, touted as irresistible. The Pentagon, presumably noticing that Russia has destroyed the best tanks that England and Germany could sent, has kept the Abrams off the battlefield.
Unknowns come into play. Would the Russians side with Beijing and send their fleet? Mysteriously the Russian general staff has not communicated with me on this matter, but the Kremlin would have strong geopolitical incentives to do so. Washington would then be at war with Russia, not just around Taiwan but everywhere. Then what? How much war does Washington really think it wants? The Pentagon might send strategic bombers to attack the Chinese mainland. Two can play this game. Russia and China have submarine-launched cruise missiles, of which several, hitting the Pentagon, would be something of a shock. What then?
The greatest unknown arises because no one has ever seen a battle involving a carrier-based navy on the WWII model versus satellite-guided weapons and antiship missiles, and so on. The American fleet hasn’t been in a war since 1945, the Air Force since 1973. Nobody knows what would happen. How would Washington respond to several carriers irreparably in flames Forrestal-style, with several thousand dead per each?
Times change and, often, militaries don’t. Unused forces become mired in outdated doctrine and suffer grave astonishment come war. In the Russo-Japanese conflict of 1904-05 Europe was shocked when those funny little yellow people with the squinty eyes destroyed the Russian fleet. In World War One, there were army officers who sincerely thought that cavalry would matter, utterly misunderstanding the effects of machine guns, and the armies had no idea that the conflict would consist of long years of murderous attrition war.
Over and over and over, wars do not happen as expected. Few had any idea that Vietnam would go as it did. The Viet Cong, those funny little yellow people in the south, didn’t even have supersonic fighter planes. They won.
The American fleet of today is just an up-weaponed version of the fleet of 1945, carriers surrounded by escort vessels. These latter are fragile, unarmored. The battleships of the Second World War had sixteen-inch belt armor and were designed to take multiple hits and keep fighting. Today’s Tico class cruisers and Arleigh Burke destroyers have thin hulls and rely heavily on delicate phased-array radars.
Military history buffs will remember what a couple of French Exocet missiles, fired from Iraqui Mirages, did to the USS Stark, or what a missile did to the Israeli Eilat, or what a speedboat of explosives did to the USS Cole. Wrecked them. This bodes not well for a naval war in Asia. Check Wikipedia.
Never underestimate the effect of ravening vanity on international affairs. Biden suffered humiliation in his botched retreat from Afghanistan. More humiliation threatens in the Ukraine. “”Losing China” is something he cannot relish having hung around his neck. Washington is on the raw edge of losing its international supremacy, and is likely to do anything at all to avoid this. China delenda est.
Further, a military is a state of mind as much as a practical organization. In my years of covering the armed forces those within them often seemed to me to be testosteronal twelve-year olds in the grip of pathological optimism. Officers tell themselves and, particularly, the enlisted men that all is well, that they are the best armed, best trained, etc., when they are not. Today’s military, unable to meet recruiting goals, rotted by social engineering, not meeting physical or mental standards, poorly led by an affirmative-action officer corps, is unlikely to fare well in a real war. Then what?
And of course if the war goes badly the United States will just go home and leave Taiwan, a hundred miles from the mainland, at war with China andwith nowhere to go, as happens in all of America’s wars.
Or else. We know where you sleep.
Oh, yeah, the Exocet.
HMS Sheffield, Falklands, 1982. R I P.
I wish this weren’t 100% true, but, clearly it is. Add to that the reminder today that Ted Kennedy, at least, reportedly said the Joe Biden was the dumbest person to serve in the US Senate. He hasn’t gotten any smarter since then, but he does have an extraordinarily high opinion of himself.
Not a higher opinion of himself than trump, which I assume you were inferring he’s a man’s man.
War? Our nation has already slipped into the throes of old-age death. The Government has already collapsed, but will remain around until it can no longer spend $6.27 trillion per year it collects from taxes ($3.5 trillion) and Seigniorage ($3 trillion in Monopoly money). It’s institutions and laws were built by European Americans who increasingly are fading out of the picture. Those laws and views don’t make sense for the newer generation of foreign invaders taking over from them. The fading population of young whites are nearly all directionless, with no ambition nor drive, unable to show up to work on time and preferring not to work. The nation is in the throes of old-age death.
It’s funny that a nation thinks spending $800 billion on weapons, per year, will defend the country against all threats. The main threat has always been internal.
“Today’s military, unable to meet recruiting goals, rotted by social engineering, not meeting physical or mental standards, poorly led by an affirmative-action officer corps, is unlikely to fare well in a real war.”
Of further interest is how eager the flower of American youth will be to sign up for a political war after years of indoctrination about how toxic they are.
I seems to me that for thousands of years young males have had their egos pumped in order to get them to step forward and defend the tribe/clan/nation. We are running an experiment to see what happens to that sense of duty when you strip it of many of its psychological rewards.
They also thought they had girls back home. Remember how Bob Hope used to bring one hottie to “show you what you are fighting for”? Now the girls are either fighting alongside or pursuing their own careers back home.
They also thought they were led by wise elders. That became questionable in Vietnam, when fragging became common. Pointless wars and social engineering within the ranks has not helped those beliefs.
The New York Times/CNN/Yahoo news all tell me that NATO weapons have twice the range of the Russian Soviet/Czarist weapons and much better accuracy, so the Ukraine have killed 600,000 Russians with minimal losses.
Other sources say the Russians have lost a moderate number of their prisoner forces, and not too many of the free Russians who volunteered to save Russia from the, hard to remember, the French tried, the British tried, the Germans tried, and …
Wasn’t the 1812 Overture written to celebrate Napoleon’s victory over Russia?
Didn’t the British, French, and Ottomans have victory over the Russians in the Crimea, led by the Light Brigade?
Wasn’t there a Swastika flying over the Kremlin in the ’40s?
And now the Ukrainians with advanced NATO weaponry (and a few NATO experts safely in Kiev and Lvov trying to tell them what to do with those weapons) must be winning, mustn’t they.
Right after WWII, the US produced more than 50% of the world GDP. In 1944, the US$ was named the world’s first Key Currency since it could be exchanged by anyone who wasn’t an American for about 889 mg of 24K gold. When Nixon made the US$ worth a little less than the paper it’s printed on in 1971, the US$, for reasons that escape everyone, remained the world’s Key Currency.
In 1970, the US had the largest economy in the world, followed by the USSR. By 1980, the US had the largest economy followed by Japan and Germany. The USSR was badly managed and failing economically. The G7 produced more than 50% of the world GDP. Times change. The BRICS produce more of World GDP than the G7. The top 3 economies are 1) The PRC; 2) the US; 3) India/Bharat (soon to be Bharat/India, then maybe just Bharat). And Russia is probably #5, ahead of Germany but behind Japan. But the Russian economy is growing much faster than any G7 economy, and will likely rise to #4 in the next decade or so.
And then the top 3 economies are likely to be 1) The PRC; 2) Bharat; and 3) Russia.
Mundus delenda est?
India has already replaced the US as second biggest economy. The US is third, and Russia vies with Japan for fourth.
The Nazis didn’t make it to the Kremlin. You’re probably thinking of the Soviet flag flying above the Brandenburg Gate.
Newsflash! China has been waging war on America for a long time…decades. So far it has been an asymmetrical guerrilla type war, mostly cultural and economic, not open kinetic conflict. This war WILL eventually go kinetic, probably at a time when Beijing believes they have a sufficient military capability. Nobody knows when that time will arrive but it IS coming. This is reality. Accept it, there is very little we can do to prevent it. Doing so would require either we completely surrender…OR we develop and field military technology the CCP cannot match. Odds of developing such tech is slim. Odds of the criminals currently in power who are OWNED by the CCP surrendering, significantly higher.
Does the US military have problems? Hell yeah. And almost all those problems originate with the incompetent commie idiots who have insinuated themselves into power. Their DEI/social justice agenda has and is doing far more damage to our military than any foreign enemies could ever do. It’s clear and obvious to anyone paying attention that the American Communist Party…formerly the democrats, are firmly complicit with the Chinese Communist Party. As long as they exist, and especially if they are in power here America is in grave peril. Make no mistake about it, war is coming whether you like it or not, whether you want to believe in or not. We need to prepare for that eventuality, not nit pick about commas or minutiae.
Sadly the “bread and circuses” plan…today that is the beer, pizza and football plan, is working. The number of people actually paying attention and seeing what’s really happening is only a fraction of the number needed to make a difference. Barring a miracle of some type our economic collapse is inevitable follower by our defeat, militarily then culturally. The CCP has plans for North America. Those plans do NOT include all us whities used to freedom, to doing whatever we want. Nobody can predict the future beyond generalizations. But what’s coming is going to to be ugly on a scale not seen in a long time.
I don’t think Red China will attack us militarily, they are more inclined to promote economic warfare, as well as diplomatic obfuscation.
And proxy war.
Fred, Methinks has the China virus TikTok style. Fred-san sounds like he’s infected with the Munich syndrome. Fred, did you think the weapons that were killing and wounding us GIs were manufactured in North Vietnam? Unlike Fred, my ex was from the Philippines, so I know a lot about what China has been doing in the Philippines.
For those interested in this sort of thing, Douglas McGregor’s stuff is pretty good.
Not Col McGregor, the pro-Russian troll?
Frankly, my response is that “we will see.” I am inclined to think the US military has been too taken with DIE to actually do the very thing they are supposed to doing, training to kill and break things until the enemy says enough.
I have been given to understand that we do have hypersonic missiles. We dropped the program years ago and were able to pick it back up and finish development. As for ballistic missiles, we have the ability to shoot them down with the SM6 which is replacing the SM2. None of China’s “masterplays” are anything close to certain success. As was found in Ukraine, hypersonic missiles can be shot down, and we already knew it was possible to shoot down a ballistic missile.
No I did not misspell DIE, that is the proper spelling.
Sorry, this is inevitable. The schedule is set. It has to be China because it has to be Naval. Unless we just pretend Iran is a sea power. All 3 services won WW2. All 3 services participated in the Vietnam war and lost. They were all rebuilt with people and new stuff. Dessert Storm, despite some Army efforts to rewrite history, was a 90% Air war and it was all over when the Army drove in a blew up was was left of a defeated force. So, the Army needed a turn and the Iraq-Afghan wars were Army. The Army in fact won them but politicians decided to stay around and lose them. So the Air Force and Army have had their chance to prove themselves and use their new stuff. Now, it’s the Navy’s turn. While I doubt they will fight the war the way you assume, they will get their chance.
I would say, that would end the cycle but we have also created space and cyber forces. No doubt trying to schedule their events. The military does not decide to start wars, politicians and bankers do that, but military does decide how to fight them and needs them to justify existence. Anchors away!
Sadly, this piece is spot on. The US military became a tool for social action in the 1970s as the Vietnam War was winding down and the true warriors who fought World War II retired. North Vietnam did have supersonic MiG 21s but they never used their air power in South Vietnam. (They didn’t have to, they knew the US would eventually get tired and leave.) Fred has been to China and knows what they have. I’ve not been there but a friend has and he says the same thing about the place that Fred does. Fred is also right that the US has been fighting goatherders ever since Vietnam using high-tech weapons against people using bullets. They don’t know what they’re in for in a real war.
The whole thing starts with sounding the alarm that China should not control the South China Sea. Why not? Do politicians have access to maps?
The South China Sea is a geographical term, no a political one. It extends up to the coasts of Vietnam and the Philippines. Does the PRC respect the territorial rights of its neighbors? Of course. But in this the territorial rights are either non-existent or vague, nobody bothered to claim some small and isolated islands way out yonder until the Law of the Sea.
Getting cruise missiles dropped on the Pentagon, or any other part of Washington DC would be a HUGE boon to the USA. Maybe we could ask them to bomb Hollyweird and our insane universities while they are at it? If war with China is the only way to get that… well you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.
It’s astounding that the US spends as much on defense as most of the rest of the Top 10 does, in aggregate. Yet how long has it been since the US has won a war? Depends on how one accounts for Iraq, and those were groups of countries (mostly US). But one can maybe say it’s been since WW II. We certainly didn’t win Korea, Viet Nam or Afghanistan. Oh, silly me, I forgot Grenada.
A good part of our problem is, we’ve let the suits control how we fight. If we fought WW II the way we fight today, we’d all be speaking German and Japanese.
Agreed about China, Japan showed what happens if you think you have an invincible fleet, and war is always unpredictable.as Putin found out.
In the Ukraine, tanks are little use without air superiority, hence the requests for F16s, even old ones.
Well, there is hope. It’s to be understood that the recruitment numbers for the US military are way way down. The majority of today’s youth are, it seems below par in all required parameters, many being practically illiterate, or obese and unfit. Of those who meet requirements, the majority are refusing to join up, saying “there’s no way they’re getting me to go fight their crazy wars”. I think the flowers that bloom on the hill have no idea of how their masses think – and thus plan their wars little aware that they will have no one willing o fight them. In fact, in the UK, believe it or not, but they actually had to advertise to get a couple of admirals.
Right – Join up, and we might send you to a war you don’t have permission to win. You can also fight to keep crooked politician at home in office.
[…] Guest Post by Fred Reed […]
Fred, you left out the fire on board the USS Bonhomme Richard. 1.4 billion in damages. Ineptitude. The 3 billion dollar nuclear sub that ran into a seamount- USS Connecticut. Ineptitude. The USS Fitzgerald colliding with a freighter-cost to repair $327 million. The USS John S. McCain colliding with a freighter- $233 million dollars. Ineptitude. All that money plus the fatalities. We have met the enemy, and he is us.
My late husband was aboard this ship when it caught fire. Luckily, he survived the fire, but succumbed 3 years ago to lung disease contributed to the fire.
This from Wikipedia:
The 1969 USS Enterprise fire was a major fire and series of explosions that broke out aboard USS Enterprise on January 14, 1969, off the coast of Oahu, Hawaii. After a Zuni rocket detonated under a plane’s wing, the ensuing fire touched off more munitions, blowing holes in the flight deck that allowed burning jet fuel to enter the ship. The blaze killed 28 sailors, injured 314, and destroyed 15 aircraft. The cost of replacing the aircraft and repairing the ship topped $126 million (roughly $1 billion adjusted for inflation in 2022)
Isn’t that the incident some blame McCain for?
‘And of course if the war goes badly the United States will just go home and leave Taiwan, a hundred miles from the mainland, at war with China and with nowhere to go, as happens in all of America’s wars.’
The USA is not a reliable ally…
Worthless, useless, brainless, senile dumb-ass dickheads like you are above all the greatest danger for the future of planet Earth!!!
China doesn’t have Magic Soil or a pink haired Commander Shanaynay in a purple we wuz kangs tutu and therefore has no chance.
They also don’t have the unity of the burn down America by any means necessary crowd who will gladly go to the Sino-American Friendship Center for some of that cargo cult redistribution only to hear please face wall now, comrade.
The fabulous 69th rainbow rump rangers will go on a glorious world conquering tour for the mean girlbosses and soy Braydens of the faculty lounge HR department.
Yes we can!
What you are saying, Fred, is that “Generals are always fighting the last war.”
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