Air Force secretary says US not ready for China war — he’s right
Tom Rogan
Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall deserves praise for admitting a hard truth: his organization isn’t ready for war with China.
As reported by the Air and Space Forces Magazine, Kendall made his remarks in a podcast. “If we were asked tomorrow to go to war against a great power, either Russia or China,” Kendall said, “would we be really ready to do that? And I think the answer is not as much as we could be, by a significant margin. And we’ve got to start spending a lot of time thinking about that and figuring out what we’re going to do about it.”
There’s a rare honesty here. Thus far, only the Marine Corps has sufficiently embraced China-related reforms. Fortunately, alongside President Joe Biden’s excellent nominee to become the next chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Kendall might reflect a rising sense of Pentagon urgency with regard to China. That urgency is much needed. As author of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, Elbridge Colby, put it, “We should *really* listen to [Kendall].”
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After all, many politicians and Pentagon officials prefer to pretend that the U.S. retains unquestionable military superiority. They suggest that the U.S. can, as it is doing now, both reinforce its air and naval footprint in Europe and ensure simultaneous readiness to defeat China in war. Theirs is a dangerous hubris. Colin Kahl evinced as much during his time as a senior Pentagon official. He described the China-U.S. military balance as that of “two teams in the preseason who look like they should be in the Super Bowl, except that one team has never played a single game. And the other team has been playing season after season for decades.”
The reality? Where the U.S. has been resting on past glories and playing whack-a-mole with terrorists, China has been preparing for the Super Bowl performance of a lifetime. Xi Jinping’s People’s Liberation Army has spent at least two decades fixating on the generation of capabilities that can deny territorial access to the U.S. military and cripple its keystone platforms. In contrast, the U.S. has plodded along as if it is destined to retain perpetual hegemonic power. Today, the U.S. lacks enough of the right munitions, aircraft, submarines and destroyers that it needs to effectively deter and/or defeat the PLA. And because the U.S. Navy’s industrial base is broken and the PLA’s industrial base is surging, the capability deficit is only set to worsen.
An exemplifying problem is that the Navy continues to rely on aircraft carriers as the centerpiece of its fleet. Those warships would be targeted by dozens of exceptional, individually targeted Dongfeng missiles during war. Congress is further complicating matters, passing moronic legislation like that of Sens. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) and Tim Kaine (D-VA) which makes it harder for the Navy to build ships on time and at cost. Even those in Congress who know better, such as China Select Committee Chairman Mike Gallagher (R-WI), are forcing the Navy to retain Littoral Combat Ships that would be U.S. death traps in any war with China. The notion that the LCS vessels can be used as Marine transporters or drone carriers is absurd: The ships would still be vulnerable to being destroyed and, more likely, simply breaking down in the middle of the battlespace. Breaking down amid saturated PLA air and naval forces is probably not a good idea. Still, it’s not coincidental that Baldwin and Gallagher represent Wisconsin, as that state is home to vested shipbuilding interests.
But Kendall’s urgency demands close scrutiny.
Today, China’s escalating aggression in the South China Sea threatens conflict with a U.S. treaty defense ally, the Philippines. Moreover, most U.S. military and intelligence analysts believe China is likely to invade Taiwan within the next decade. CIA Director Bill Burns has stated that Xi has ordered the PLA to be ready to begin such an invasion by 2030. President Joe Biden has four times now pledged U.S. military intervention were China to attack its island democracy neighbor.
Of course, rhetoric is the easy part. What Kendall needs now and tomorrow is more funding for more aircraft and weapons of the right type. That means far more long-range anti-ground and anti-ship missiles. It means more F-15EX fighter jets: the F-35 debacle makes that jet too expensive and underarmed to be relied upon for the China fight. But that’s just the start.
Kendall and his Biden administration colleagues must also get U.S. allies in Europe to provide greater support for NATO operations. The low level of European support for NATO drains U.S. military resources away from the Pacific or domestic readiness/preparation operations. One example of this challenge: the U.S. Air Force is providing the vast majority of refueling aircraft in Europe at present. Those aircraft would be in much-needed but very short supply in a war with China. Another challenge comes with the high deployment tempos for squadrons flying the best U.S. jet, the F-22. These deployments will increase maintenance backlogs and reduce the emergency availability of those aircraft. And over the longer term, the U.S. needs lots of cheap drone aircraft that can distract and harass the PLA within its strongholds.
Nevertheless, Kendall deserves credit for his remarks. Although they’ll likely upset the White House, they reflect a decision to put service and country before Washington politics. And that’s all too rare a thing.