World Affairs Brief, November 25, 2022 Commentary and Insights on a Troubled World.

Copyright Joel Skousen. Partial quotations with attribution permitted. Cite source as Joel Skousen’s World Affairs Brief (http://www.worldaffairsbrief.com).

US MILITARY AIRCRAFT VS. CHINA AND RUSSIA

The head of US nuclear forces recently claimed that Ukraine is just a warmup for a very long struggle with China, as Sputnik News warns, evading the fact that Russia will join China in the attack on America.

US Navy Adm. Charles Richard, the head of US Strategic Command, recently warned the US would soon face a protracted conflict with China unlike anything it’s faced before. Stratcom is responsible for handling the country’s nuclear weapons, as well as the suite of defensive and offensive information capabilities termed C4ISR.

“We have to do some rapid, fundamental change in the way we approach the defense of this nation,” Richard said at a Navy symposium last week. “This Ukraine crisis that we’re in right now, this is just the warmup,” he said. “The ‘big one’ is coming.”

Richard warned “the [military] ship is slowly sinking” because China is fielding new capabilities faster than the United States, which will soon find itself outnumbered and outclassed on the battlefield.

Richard also criticized US stagnation, saying it had “lost the art” of delivering new systems quickly.

The US is already behind China in the key field of missiles, with China fielding a generation of ultra-long-range cruise missiles, a bevy of ballistic missile varieties, and several varieties of hypersonic weapons for which the US has no equal and no answer.

Let alone Russia, which is ahead of China in both missiles and nuclear warheads.

Beijing has also developed a radar capable of detecting stealth aircraft and begun equipping its newest warships with it, putting the US’ vaunted F-22 and F-35 fleets at risk.

However, the Pentagon is especially worried about what it fears was a fractional orbital bombardment system China tested last year, saying it is a part of China’s militarization of space.

The Heritage Foundation now ranks the US military as weak for the first time. Well, weak is a relative term. The US isn’t weak by any means, but Russia’s Nuclear forces and all of China’s forces are getting stronger fast, and surpassing US preparations, the Washington Examiner writes:

The Heritage Foundation’s 2023 Index of U.S. Military Strength found that… “It is rated as weak relative to the force needed to defend national interests on a global stage against actual challenges in the world as it is rather than as we wish it were,” the index said. “This is the logical consequence of years of sustained use, [mostly in the phony war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan] underfunding, poorly defined priorities, wildly shifting security policies, exceedingly poor discipline in program execution, and a profound lack of seriousness across the national security establishment even as threats to U.S. interests have surged.”

The Heritage Foundation…concluded the military force is at risk of being unable to “meet the demands of a single major regional conflict” and would be “ill-equipped to handle two nearly simultaneous” conflicts.

The Heritage Foundation listed each of the military branches for individual rankings based on capability, capacity, and readiness, according to the report. The Marine Corps fared the best, receiving an overall “strong” rating — an improvement from its “marginal” rating in 2021.

As a former Marine officer, I would strongly disagree with that. The Marines under the woke leadership of the current Commandant is dumping its armored land warfare abilities in favor only of coastal landings which are terribly vulnerable to modern missile barrages. Only Force Recon is small but powerful force within the Marines. The Marines, like the other services, are lowering their recruitment and training standards to accommodate more minorities, illegals, women, transgenders and gays.

The Air Force fell to the bottom of the list, receiving an overall “very weak” rating due to struggles with pilot production and retention, leaving “little doubt that it would struggle in war with a peer competitor.” The Navy and Space Force were rated as “weak,” and the Army was considered “marginal.”

The report also analyzed the country’s nuclear capabilities compared to other countries, rating U.S. nuclear weapons as “strong” but trending toward “marginal” or even “weak.”

That’s an understatement. We reduced the warheads on the only ICBM we have (Minuteman III) from 3 warheads to 1. Our new missile won’t be ready until after 2030, when I suspect we will be already deep into WWIII. …

Russia’s New Avangard Warhead

The Avangard is a nuclear-capable, hypersonic, rocket boosted-glide vehicle developed by Russia that is carried by an ICBM. It was one of six “next generation” weapons described by Russian President Vladimir Putin during a speech in March 2018. There have been approximately 14 reported flight tests of the Avangard between 1990 and 2018, according to CSIS.org.

Russia’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine reportedly delayed Avangard development, as Ukraine manufactured a critical maneuver and targeting control system for the weapon… Russia has repeatedly stated that it is developing hypersonic weapons to ensure Russian strategic forces can penetrate future U.S. air and missile defenses.

The Avangard has a range of over 6,000 km, weighs approximately 2,000 kg, and can carry a nuclear or conventional payload. One TASS report said that the HGV’s nuclear warhead is “more than 2 megatons in TNT equivalent.” As a boost-glide weapon, the Avangard is carried to its apogee by a ballistic missile. This carrier is currently the SS-19 “Stiletto” but will later be replaced by the R-28 “Sarmat.”

Once boosted to its suborbital apogee of around 100 km, the glide vehicle separates from its rocket. It then cruises down towards its target through the atmosphere. In his March 2018 speech, Vladimir Putin claimed the HGV can maintain atmospheric speeds of up to Mach 20 (6.28 km/s) and can maneuver. This maneuverability could make Avangard’s trajectory unpredictable, complicating intercept attempts after its boost phase.

“Complicating intercept” is a gross understatement. It’s currently impossible, and that is why I believe the US is secretly basing interceptors in space where it can target the ICBM at its apogee where it is still vulnerable, before it releases its hypersonic warheads.