Beijing Sprints While America Slumbers

What another continuing resolution means for our military preparedness.

By and
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Gen. John Hyten, the vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was asked in an interview published last week whether the Chinese hypersonic weapons test this summer should be compared to Sputnik—referring to the 1957 satellite launch by the Soviet Union that shocked Americans regarding the Kremlin’s military-technology prowess. Hyten suggested the comparison was not a good one. “Sputnik created a sense of urgency in the United States,” Hyten said. “The [Chinese] test on July 27 did not create that sense of urgency.”

Hyten’s concerns about a lack of American urgency in responding to a growing threat from Beijing are reinforced by a Department of Defense report released on November 3 that makes clear Beijing is sprinting to field modern forces that can defeat the U.S. military. Instead of responding to this alarming news with urgent action, Washington seems to be slumbering.

Exhibit A: The Pentagon once again started the new federal government fiscal year on October 1 without the annual defense authorization and appropriation that helps America’s service members defend our country.

If the United States hopes to field the modern and capable military forces urgently needed to deter and defeat aggression from the rapidly improving People’s Liberation Army (PLA), there is no time to waste. Unfortunately, wasting valuable time is exactly the effect of tardy defense authorizations and appropriations.

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Comments (17)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    This is an annual pet peeve of mine! Congress needs to do its job. It’s ridiculous that there’s a CR almost every year.

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  2. Keeper of the Peregrinus

    Great piece, just commenting to say that @FDD is very welcomed here. Us types just tend not to comment that much. Tom and Bill need to come over full time!

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  3. Chase Choate

    The bureaucratic & political rot starting to come to fruition.

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  4. Pohl

    Thanks for highlighting this issue. We need to get serious about the challenges in the Indo-Pacific. Congress should not be making it even harder.

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  5. Paola

    Great job! Thank you for highlighting this issue.

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  6. Avatar photo
    DougCLE

    One thing that I would like to see from TD is some detailed evaluation of our general military capabilities and readiness, written for the lay person. What all do we have, what kind of shape is it in, is it right for our current needs, is there something else we should be doing instead, etc.?

    It seems like any time our military readiness comes up, I hear about equipment that is thousands of hours beyond its service life and/or built for the wars of 50 years ago. Is this true? If so, is it as serious as it sounds? Are there technologies we should be investing in that we are not? Are there programs that are burning money without much payback?

    Heck, I don't know. I'm a layman, remember? But it sure would be cool if someone who did know - maybe these two, maybe someone else - could write regular articles explaining it to me. Nothing too political - I'm not looking to discuss what wars we *should* get into, only to understand how well we *could* fight various wars (land/sea/nuclear/space, big/small, etc.) if we had to.

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    1. Ingenero.lux

      Some weapons systems are even older. The B-52 entered service in 1955 and new ones haven’t been built since 1962. They expect to use them into the 2050s - a hundred year old airplane. Nothing that has come since has been able to really replace them - they’re inexpensive to use and work, the B-1 was quickly obsolete and became a stop-gap measure, and the B-2 was expensive and the program cut after 21 planes were made. So the B-52 is still trucking despite first beginning service in Ike’s first term as president. But in this case, at least there’s a replacement program that’s currently building newer bombers. Some of the newer systems are showing their age and there’s no timeline for replacement - the F-22 was a Cold War air superiority fighter that began design in the 1980s and is still our best air-to-air fighter jet, but was deemed too expensive and the program heavily cut back in favor of the cheaper F-35, which itself was intended to be all things to all people, and you can probably guess how that worked out - the Air Force already says it isn’t going to be able to replace the F-16, designed in the 60s and 70s. Meaning another massive procurement effort will be needed for a replacement for the F-16 because the first two attempts didn’t work out - one is great but designed when the USSR was still around and too expensive, the other is newer and has the right price but doesn’t manage to fill every role for everyone to my complete lack of surprise. The Abrams tank was designed in the 70s and expected to be replaced ages ago, with the Army having cancelled the third attempt at finding a replacement for it and now say that upgrading the tank will mean they don’t plan to replace the thing in the foreseeable future. The happy talk is that the Abrams is still great if you keep upgrading it. I don’t see anyone else doing the same thing with 70s tech unless they don’t have a choice. Our ICBMs started life as a 50s project with the last version developed in the 60s, and the initial planned replacement project was first downsized, then entirely scrapped in 2005 to make the Russians happy. There’s supposed to be a replacement by the end of the decade but I’ll note the Minuteman III is over 50 years old, and the replacement project contract finally was awarded last year - meaning there is plenty of time for the thing to be axed. Which happens a lot. The Navy’s generally in better shape, they generally manage to upgrade their equipment regularly. There’s also no real reason to replace some things that are aging - no one’s found a better mousetrap when it comes to rifles, so any replacement to the M4 would be more expensive and not do anything different (the same reason the Russians still use a spruced-up version of the AK-74, with the Chinese fielding a rifle whose only real “virtue” is that it’s Chinese-designed, and designed by a committee at that), though there are always people getting visits from the bright idea fairy.

      While it’s nowhere near the quality of a good article, the long and short of it is that we’ve been coasting off of Cold War designs or cost-saving stopgaps for way too long in many instances. When we stopped worrying about the Soviets rolling through Fulda Gap, there didn’t seem to be much reason to put the money into new tank designs to take on their new tanks or new fighters to destroy their new fighters and bombers. Given that it’s been thirty years since the USSR collapsed, we should have been preparing for the long-telegraphed rise of China (and Russia’s transition from their army having to dig up potatoes due to funding issues to making modern equipment designed to attack our Cold War designs). How our stuff will hold up is anyone’s guess - there’s a lot of impetus for people to pretend, internally, that their enemies’ equipment is fantastic and their equipment is trash, if only to allow a big budget ask that will be cut down closer to what they actually need, while externally trying to signal their equipment is the best of the best. Hopefully we never actually find out - but it’s better to be prepared than not be and find out on the battlefield.

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    Synchronize Your Dogmas (Bill B)

    "Sadly, CRs are not an anomaly. They have actually become the norm."

    Look to Congress... of course, when have they been concerned about the country lately? They apparently have more important things to do.

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  8. Alex DeLarge

    The Pentagon wants more money, I'm shocked!

    And it's an emergency because of the ____ Gap. (This week it's the "Hypersonics Gap").

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  9. N T

    It seems reasonable to me, as a tax payer, that the Pentagon pass a simple audit as part of spending vast sums on the war machine. We should be seeking domestic chip manufacturing and not intervene in a war between China and Taiwan - both creating local jobs and reasserting control of our own destiny. We should also be figuring out what Japan is going to do when China decides to level it out of a sense of retribution, because Japan will not stand a chance is China decides to go after it. Will India be our proxy? I doubt it.

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    1. Avatar photo
      Dave T

      https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/01/the-tragedy-of-the-american-military/383516/ This article from several years ago was staggering and depressing.

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    2. Alex DeLarge

      The Pentagon is un-auditable. Too much money, going too many places to keep track of. Big chunks of the spending are secret. And, anyway, how can you know if the billions going to "New Weapon X" research is well-spent. There is nothing in the private sector to directly compare it to.

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    Adicesa14

    Since the fall of the Soviet Union, with the Bush years as notable exceptions, the federal government has seemingly neglected its primary responsibility, to defend the Nation. All other matters aside, without a robust military we and the world could be vulnerable to the sinister desires of ambitious nations. The naïve belief in a post-Soviet fiscal windfall that can be spent on domestic tinkering has created an opening for these rogue actors. Unfortunately, the current administration’s lack of defense focus, as illustrated by its refusal to boost defense capability and not even secure the border, is unlikely to change.

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    1. Alex DeLarge

      Why should we give the government zillions to defend Taiwan when they refuse to defend the own Southern Border from foreign invasion. Don't trust this government and don't give it any more money than you absolutely have to.

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