As if not enough is going on in the world, the Chinese military has flown two new stealthy jets. Some military observers consider them a tangible threat to the U.S. One is a bomber and one is a fighter. Lexington Institute military analyst Rebecca Grant joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to discuss what it all means.
China continues to strengthen its military capabilities, combining rapid growth in conventional power with readiness to counter U.S. asymmetrical strategies.
Protracted wars in the Middle East and Ukraine are draining the US arsenal of interceptor missiles. The problem is especially severe in Palestine and in the Red Sea, where dozens of missiles are launched monthly against incoming rockets and drones.
Xi Jinping has ordered the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to seize Taiwan by 2027. Whether he launches an invasion may depend on President Trump’s defense secretary. If confirmed by the Senate, Army National Guard veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth, Mr. Trump’s nominee, will have to confront the collapse of deterrence in Europe and the Middle East, resource constraints on Capitol Hill, recruitment challenges, and a deteriorating balance of power in the Indo-Pacific. The only way to promote peace is to go to war on day one—not with China, Russia or Iran but with the Pentagon bureaucracy.
Gallagher wants a wartime economy while leaving the financing to the private sector. It won’t work. 👇👇👇
In reality, Russia and China’s industrial bases are larger than America’s because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome. China in particular has a population four times greater than the US. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the US, and the physical size of its industrial base – military or otherwise – reflects this demographic disparity.
Even if the US had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the US likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the US invested in its national infrastructure – a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base – it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.
FYI, Gallagher is with Palantir, as well as the Hudson Institute.
Bilateral defense relations between Japan and the Philippines come at an all-time high, signifying the continuous cooperation between both maritime nations that share a common adversary and similar situation regarding territorial domains and integrity in the Indo-Pacific region.
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With the success of the export of the aforementioned radar systems to the Philippines from Japan, the latter is now raising up an idea of the likelihood of selling its surface-to-air missile batteries for the Philippine military to consider, with a wide variety of variants coming from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force that might find its way for the likes of the Philippine Air Force. This is especially in line with the recently passed New Government Procurement Act or NGPA (Republic Act 12009), allowing the purchase of second-hand military hardware, provided it is economically preferable to the government.
The new direction is the result of the lack of experienced Ukrainian pilots with requisite English-language abilities who can be spared from the battlefield, U.S. officials said. Some officials also said that the U.S. believes younger cadets would be more open to Western-style instruction.
For Israel, the incentives also argue against a large-scale war with Hezbollah. After nearly a year of fighting in Gaza, the IDF is tired, munitions stockpiles are depleted, public support for Israel’s leaders is weak, Israel’s economy is suffering, and its international and regional standing have significantly eroded. And IDF military planners are well aware that Hezbollah’s more advanced fighting capabilities and sophisticated weapons arsenal would make the Gaza campaign look like child’s play.
Never get involved in a land war in Asia, MacArthur had told Kennedy, because if you do, you will be repeating the same mistake the Japanese made in World War II—deploying millions of soldiers in a futile attempt to win a conflict that cannot be won.
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Kennedy appreciated MacArthur’s soothing judgment on Cuba (and would soon change the military’s top leadership—perhaps in keeping with MacArthur’s views), but then shifted the subject to Laos and Vietnam, where communist insurgencies were gaining strength. The Congress, he added, was pressuring him to deploy U.S. troops in response. MacArthur disagreed vehemently: “Anyone wanting to commit ground troops to Asia should have his head examined,” he said. That same day, Kennedy memorialized what MacArthur told him: “MacArthur believes it would be a mistake to fight in Laos,” he wrote in a memorandum of the meeting, adding, “He thinks our line should be Japan, Formosa, and the Philippines.” MacArthur’s warning about fighting in Asia impressed Kennedy, who repeated it in the months ahead and especially whenever military leaders urged him to take action. “Well now,” the young president would say in his lilting New England twang, “you gentlemen, you go back and convince General MacArthur, then I’ll be convinced.” So it is that MacArthur’s warning (which has come down to us as “never get involved in a land war in Asia”), entered American lore as a kind of Nicene Creed of military wisdom—unquestioned, repeated, fundamental.
A recent article appearing in the US-based Business Insider titled, “Russia’s showing NATO its hand in the air war over Ukraine,” would provide a showcase of the deep deficit in military expertise driving increasingly unsustainable, unachievable foreign policy objectives. The article summarizes a number of interviews conducted with Western “airpower experts,” exhibiting a profound misunderstanding of modern military aviation, air defenses, and their role on and above the battlefield.
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