U.S. struggles on China-war planning - top officer(finding a right mix)

Reuters ^ | 06/29/05

[TigerLikesRooster]

U.S. struggles on China-war planning - top officer
Wed Jun 29, 2005 03:18 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Defense Department is struggling to determine the right mix of bombers and other warplanes to fight China if it ever became necessary, President Bush's choice to become the next Air Force chief of staff said on Wednesday.

Lining up such firepower would top his list of priorities if confirmed as the Air Force's top military officer, Gen. Michael Moseley said at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Moseley said the right mix of long-range strike capabilities was "certainly one of the things that we are struggling with" as part of a sweeping U.S. defense review carried out once every four years and currently under way.

"The enhancements that we see in the Chinese military (do) cause concern," he added in reply to a question from Sen. John Thune, a South Dakota Republican.

Moseley who ran the air war over Iraq that led to the ouster of President Saddam Hussein in 2003.

"That is at the top of my list ... long-range strike and the ability to do that for this country," said Moseley, the vice chief of staff up to replace the retiring Gen. John Jumper.

Retired Air Force Col. Walter Boyne, a former director of the Smithsonian Institution's Air and Space Museum, said Moseley likely was referring to the warplanes -- manned and unmanned -- needed to take out command posts, radar installations, surface-to-air missile sites, air fields and military headquarters. Many such targets are deep in China's interior.

Moseley's comments reflected U.S. concern about mounting Chinese investments in ballistic and cruise missiles that could hold forward U.S. bases at risk of attack in places like South Korea and Japan, said Andrew Krepenivich of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a nonpartisan group specializing in military strategy issues.

"This is not the Air Force saying we want to go to war with China, he said. "This is the Air Force saying if we want to avoid war with China, we've got to be able to hold their critical capabilities at risk lest Beijing be tempted to use force to resolve disputes it has with other countries in the region."

[ReveBM]

I remind myself that some of our best weapons systems have sometimes been developed during periods when threats may have been seen as "hype".

I will be glad for every advanced weapons system we have and every trained soldier or sailor if we ever have to fight China.

The Chinese are upgrading their military hand over fist; the only small comfort I have is that they have never fought a complex war in a combined fashion (such as the type of byzantine maneuvers they would need to execute to attack Taiwan) and I'm hopeful that they will make many critical mistakes. Shucks, I hope they will be just plain stupid in every way, aside from the whole stupidity of starting a war with us.

[Marine_Uncle]

" ROFL! Good call!"
Of course in Wesely Clarks case, perhaps it truely is a real struggle. Aaaaah. Sigh........God bless our many excellant general officers. Give em strength to deal with the relenting press as it's pop weevils crawl about the floor during press
conferences. Keep them from wanting to reach for one of their ivory handled revolvers and blow the useless scum away!

[Captainpaintball]

And which side (China or the US) has the MUCH larger problem dealing with "The Enemy Within" ?

[Kuehn12]

You think that China was marching across the global like Germany at the beginning of WWII. So far, the only thing China has done is continue the modernization of their military. Their military budget still is dwarfed by US.

You an I as well as the rest of the world should take a breath. Fifty years of hostility during the cold war, where there was an clear in present threat greater than the Chinese could hoped to present,and we never went to war with the Soviet Union directly. Maybe in a world with the bomb, wargamers on both sides realized that victory was impossible, and so will the Chinese. We hope.

Why is it conspiratorial to think that without a threat out there whether real or imagined, weapons procurement could become problematic? Just think if you built say submarines and the rest of the world had no submarines for which to threaten us with. How would you justify it? The greatest threat in the back of some in the Pentagon would be universal peace.

Sadly they have nothing to worry about. Man is violent in his heart and war is within his nature. Someday war with China might come, but I would rather see another Cold War because even with all the rhetoric we never listen to devils of our darker side of our nature.

I don't know what motivates the media except fear of how to fill up all that space; television and Radio time, inches on newspaper, vast blank panes on web sites. They need to create drama,to magnify the absurd and make us afraid of what is out there. The current bogeyman is China as if the Terrorist weren't enough to be concerned with.

[EQAndyBuzz]

Wasn't this referred to as the window of opportunity during the Eisenhower years?

What we do is project the threat of our potential enemies and from there we budget as to what we need to maintain a tehnological superiority.

[rbmillerjr]

"Their military budget still is dwarfed by US"

25 years from now when they are an economic power, this will no longer be the case. Furhter, they will be buying all the technology they can from Russia and some of the EU.

You must be vigilant to protect liberty.

[Kuehn12]

I agree.

[1Old Pro]

Of course ALL contingencies are planned early on even if they are never used.

What strikes me as hilarious is that this same militaary planned for invasions of Iraq (N.Korea, Iran, etc) years ago and Charlie Rangal and Ted Kennedy use this SOP contingency planning as "evidence" that Bush was "planning" on invading IRAQ regardless of 9/11 or terrorist training in IRAQ etc.