"U.S. Military Dominance a Thing of the Past?" Topic

"The past two decades should have taught U.S. policymakers that an increased defense budget will not allow the country to maintain world military dominance and create international stability. Yet, Donald Trump has laid out clear goals to increase the size of our military in pursuit of "peace through strength." This plan calls for increasing the the size of the Army and Marine Corps, and increasing the number of Navy ships and planes in the Air Force because "our military dominance must be unquestioned." However, due to capabilities that Russia and China have recently developed, overwhelming U.S. military dominance is becoming a thing of the past.

Capabilities such as Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD), include weapons systems like China's DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile and Russia's S-400 anti-air systems, posing a serious threat to U.S. ships and planes. With ranges of 1,100 and 285 miles respectively and relatively cheap to produce, China and Russia could easily build a great number of these weapons, severely limiting the U.S.'s ability to deploy and maneuver forces in a theater of operations and U.S. force projection…"
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

US military supremacy can only be maintained by developing the technologies and means to counter the A2/AD systems. If they are not taken out pre-emptively in the opening phase of any potential future conflict, our forces will be vulnerable no matter how large they are. American strategy since WWII has always depended on removing the threat from the environment so that our forces can move in unmolested.

If we get into a hot war with them, I suspect those systems will be some of the first to be killed.

Iraq reportedly had a very strong, "state of the art" Russian Air Defense System, which was surgically deconstructed in short order when we went to war with them.

Most of their jets were pretty useless too, which is why many pilots refused to take off, others fled to Iran, and they just buried other top-line jets under tons of sand.

Yes, we need to be aware of, and careful around them, but we have weapons and superior tactics to nullify many of their advantages.

China has a proven ASAT capability so the technology mightn't be that useful…

Iraq had a state of the art Russian defence grid but it wans't crewed by state of the art soldiers which was the problem.

Remains to be seen. All supreme militaries are invincible until suddenly they're not. Often it only takes one battle or campaign to reveal a fatal flaw or vulnerability. And rarely is it seen coming. Ask the Spartans, or Romans, or Byzantines, or 1940 French army.

In a raw military sense, I doubt the US will be leaving the top spot any time soon.

Yes, one way or another the US will remain on top.

My feeling is that any intelligent enemy of the US will be looking at a way to fight any future conflict asymmetrically -- and defeat the US by NOT allowing the US to choose its battlefield or set its own rules that favor its strengths. That is where the threat lies -- not in challenging US superiority in conventional, old school methods. The threat will be in something that renders things like lots of aircraft carriers or overwhelming air forces suddenly vulnerable and no longer war-winning arms. Or some strategic counter to these that's cheaper, simpler to use, less prone to battlefield breakdown, and available in greater numbers.

The US has not really fought a conventional war of any duration since Korea; its record in guerrilla warfare is mixed at best; it has not fought an enemy on anything like equal terms since what, the Civil War? And even in that the Union had a preponderance of strength and resources. If the US ever finds itself in a position where it does NOT have overwhelming conventional strength and logistical resources or these advantages are nullified somehow, all bets are off.

The US is still the world's preeminent military power but its economy is unable to sustain that level of military expense without borrowing and its creditors are also its potential rivals. Thus it will have to down size its military expenses or eventually go bankrupt. The military strength of the US is also less effective in the connected world of today when images of an atrocity or a graphic cruelty can cancel the gains of a whole military effort. I wonder if to some extent the US is still stuck in a 19th Century Gunboat mentality while her rivals are using 21st Century unconventional, hybrid warfare like little green men, internet radicalisation, economic warfare and artificial island building to do end runs around US military strength.

I also wonder whether the US will face a military cascade chain of events where many of her potential rivals might coordinate their actions to overwhelm the US military globally for their own gain while not threatening the US existentially. Would the US people be willing to spend trillions of dollars and lose hundreds of thousands of lives dislodging China, defending Eastern Europe from Russia, suppressing a Mid-East insurrgency and another emerging grand caliphate, a defiant Iran, fighting Russians and Chinese in Africa and perhaps anarchy in Mexico and Central America all at once? It's doing that right now at a low level of conflict and is challenged. Could it manage at a more demanding level of conflict? At some point empire or Pax Americana becomes too costly and is likely abandoned by an over taxed and fatigued electorate/citizenry. At that tipping point does the republic stand or does a Caesar come along to delay the inevitable wane for several generations? Will the deaths of democracy and liberty be the price of prolonged US global dominance? Has that tipping point arrived today?

Cheers?
Rod Robertson

Just saw on the News/CNN. The US ARMY has a new Branch. A Cyberwarfare Branch. With their own branch insignia and everything. Sound like a good idea. And I'm sure the US Army can afford this new branch. As it is very good concept, with all the Cyber threats, etc., very much on the rise.

I also wonder whether the US will face a military cascade chain of events where many of her potential rivals might coordinate their actions to overwhelm the US military globally for their own gain while not threatening the US existentially.

Sounds like a great wargame, but I'm sure it's been done before … They even have made at least 2 movies about it …