Posted on 04/26/2003 5:22:02 PM PDT by Brandon
April 27, 2003American Power Moves Beyond the Mere SuperBy GREGG EASTERBROOK
tealth drones, G.P.S.-guided smart munitions that hit precisely where aimed; antitank bombs that guide themselves; space-relayed data links that allow individual squad leaders to know exactly where American and opposition forces are during battle ó the United States military rolled out all this advanced technology, and more, in its lightning conquest of Iraq. No other military is even close to the United States. The American military is now the strongest the world has ever known, both in absolute terms and relative to other nations; stronger than the Wehrmacht in 1940, stronger than the legions at the height of Roman power. For years to come, no other nation is likely even to try to rival American might. Which means: the global arms race is over, with the United States the undisputed heavyweight champion. Other nations are not even trying to match American armed force, because they are so far behind they have no chance of catching up. The great-powers arms race, in progress for centuries, has ended with the rest of the world conceding triumph to the United States. Now only a nuclear state, like, perhaps, North Korea, has any military leverage against the winner. Paradoxically, the runaway American victory in the conventional arms race might inspire a new round of proliferation of atomic weapons. With no hope of matching the United States plane for plane, more countries may seek atomic weapons to gain deterrence. North Korea might have been moved last week to declare that it has an atomic bomb by the knowledge that it has no hope of resisting American conventional power. If it becomes generally believed that possession of even a few nuclear munitions is enough to render North Korea immune from American military force, other nations ó Iran is an obvious next candidate ó may place renewed emphasis on building them. For the extent of American military superiority has become almost impossible to overstate. The United States sent five of its nine supercarrier battle groups to the region for the Iraq assault. A tenth Nimitz-class supercarrier is under construction. No other nation possesses so much as one supercarrier, let alone nine battle groups ringed by cruisers and guarded by nuclear submarines. Russia has one modern aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, but it has about half the tonnage of an American supercarrier, and has such a poor record that it rarely leaves port. The former Soviet navy did preliminary work on a supercarrier, but abandoned the project in 1992. Britain and France have a few small aircraft carriers. China decided against building one last year. Any attempt to build a fleet that threatens the Pentagon's would be pointless, after all, because if another nation fielded a threatening vessel, American attack submarines would simply sink it in the first five minutes of any conflict. (The new Seawolf-class nuclear-powered submarine is essentially the futuristic supersub of "The Hunt for Red October" made real.) Knowing this, all other nations have conceded the seas to the United States, a reason American forces can sail anywhere without interference. The naval arms race ó a principal aspect of great-power politics for centuries ó is over. United States air power is undisputed as well, with more advanced fighters and bombers than those of all other nations combined. The United States possesses three stealth aircraft (the B-1 and B-2 bombers and the F-117 fighter) with two more (the F-22 and F-35 fighters) developed and awaiting production funds. No other nation even has a stealth aircraft on the drawing board. A few nations have small numbers of heavy bombers; the United States has entire wings of heavy bombers. No other nation maintains an aerial tanker fleet similar to that of the United States; owing to tankers, American bombers can operate anywhere in the world. No other nation has anything like the American AWACS plane, which provides exceptionally detailed radar images of the sky above battles, or the newer JSTARS plane, which provides exceptionally detailed radar images of the ground. No other nation has air-to-air missiles or air-to-ground smart munitions of the accuracy, or numbers, of the United States. This month, for example, in the second attempt to kill Saddam Hussein, just 12 minutes passed between when a B-1 received the target coordinates and when the bomber released four smart bombs aimed to land just 50 feet and a few seconds apart. All four hit where they were supposed to. American aerial might is so great that adversaries don't even try to fly. Serbia kept its planes on the ground during the Kosovo conflict of 1999; in recent fighting in Iraq, not a single Iraqi fighter rose to oppose United States aircraft. The governments of the world now know that if they try to launch a fighter against American air power, their planes will be blown to smithereens before they finish retracting their landing gear. The aerial arms race, a central facet of the last 50 years, is over. The American lead in ground forces is not uncontested ó China has a large standing army ó but is large enough that the ground arms race might end, too. The United States now possesses about 9,000 M1 Abrams tanks, by far the world's strongest armored force. The Abrams cannon and fire-control system is so extraordinarily accurate that in combat gunners rarely require more than one shot to destroy an enemy tank. No other nation is currently building or planning a comparable tank force. Other governments know this would be pointless, since even if they had advanced tanks, the United States would destroy them from the air. The American lead in electronics is also huge. Much of the "designating" of targets in the recent Iraq assault was done by advanced electronics on drones like the Global Hawk, which flies at 60,000 feet, far beyond the range of antiaircraft weapons. So sophisticated are the sensors and data links that make Global Hawk work that it might take a decade for another nation to field a similar drone ó and by then, the United States is likely to have leapfrogged ahead to something better. As The New York Times Magazine reported last Sunday, the United States is working on unmanned, remote-piloted drone fighter planes that will be both relatively low-cost and extremely hard to shoot down, and small drone attack helicopters that will precede troops into battle. No other nation is even close to the electronics and data-management technology of these prospective weapons. The Pentagon will have a monopoly on advanced combat drones for years. An electronics arms race may continue in some fashion because electronics are cheaper than ships or planes. But the United States holds such an imposing lead that it is unlikely to be lapped for a long time. Further, the United States holds an overwhelming lead in military use of space. Not only does the Pentagon command more and better reconnaissance satellites than all the rest of the world combined, American forces have begun using space-relayed data in a significant way. Space "assets" will eventually be understood to have been critical to the lightning conquest of Iraq, and the American lead in this will only grow, since the Air Force now has the second-largest space budget in the world, after NASA's. This huge military lead is partly because of money. Last year American military spending exceeded that of all other NATO states, Russia, China, Japan, Iraq and North Korea combined, according to the Center for Defense Information, a nonpartisan research group that studies global security. This is another area where all other nations must concede to the United States, for no other government can afford to try to catch up. The runaway advantage has been called by some excessive, yet it yields a positive benefit. Annual global military spending, stated in current dollars, peaked in 1985, at $1.3 trillion, and has been declining since, to $840 billion in 2002. That's a drop of almost half a trillion dollars in the amount the world spent each year on arms. Other nations accept that the arms race is over. The United States military reinforces its pre-eminence by going into combat. Rightly or wrongly, the United States fights often; each fight becomes a learning opportunity for troops and a test of technology. No other military currently has the real-world experience of the United States. There is also the high quality ó in education and motivation ó of its personnel. This lead has grown as the United States has integrated women into most combat roles, doubling the talent base on which recruiters can draw. The American edge does not render its forces invincible: the expensive Apache attack helicopter, for example, fared poorly against routine small-arms fire in Iraq. More important, overwhelming power hardly insures that the United States will get its way in world affairs. Force is just one aspect of international relations, while experience has shown that military power can solve only military problems, not political ones. North Korea now stares into the barrel of the strongest military ever assembled, and yet may be able to defy the United States, owing to nuclear deterrence. As the global arms race ends with the United States so far ahead no other nation even tries to be America's rival, the result may be a world in which Washington has historically unparalleled power, but often cannot use it. |
For the extent of American military superiority has become almost impossible to overstate. The United States sent five of its nine supercarrier battle groups to the region for the Iraq assault. A tenth Nimitz-class supercarrier is under construction. No other nation possesses so much as one supercarrier, let alone nine battle groups ringed by cruisers and guarded by nuclear submarines.
I hate it when so-called newspapers of record cannot get their facts straight. The US now has TWELVE "supercarrier" battlegroups in its Fleet, not NINE. They forget the three conventionally powered oil-burners the Kitty Hawk, the Constellation, and the Kennedy. The Nimitz class nuclear powered carriers are not the only carrier battle groups in the US Navy.
Carrier Commissioning Date ------------------------------------------ Oil-Burners CV 63 Kitty Hawk 1961 CV 64 Constellation 1961 CV 67 John F. Kennedy 1968 Nukes CVN 65 Enterprise 1961 CVN 68 Nimitz 1975 CVN 69 Dwight D. Eisenhower 1977 CVN 70 Carl Vinson 1982 CVN 71 Theodore Roosevelt 1986 CVN 72 Abraham Lincoln 1989 CVN 73 George Washington 1992 CVN 74 John C. Stennis 1995 CVN 75 Harry S Truman 1998 Future Nukes CVN 76 Ronald Reagan 2003 CVN 77 George H. W. Bush 2008
Point being, the US Navy sent five of its twelve carrier battle groups to the Gulf War II. THe Constellation (CV-64) retires after its last war cruise...
dvwjr
However, the author makes some mistakes and questionable assumptions.
As far as the ability to project force over long distances, no country can match us. The entire EU could not match us. However, the ability traverse the oceans is not absolute. Even if there will never be another carrier on carrier battle like Midway, there are other threats.
The English have some very nice SSN (the Trafalgars and new Astute class). The Russian Akula-IIs and Oscar-II are a threat (at least utill the Soviet era low-orbit satelite network burns up). Many countries have purchased good conventional submarines from the Germans, Dutch, Swedes, English,French, and Russians. The Russian Kilos purchased by Iran and China aren't going away any time soon. These are a threat to us in the shallow areas near these coasts. Uneven sea beds, shifting currents, and multiple thermal layers create bad accoustics for hunting submarines. As long as the Kilos are on battery power, they are hard to detect. While the Kilos might be constrained in that they too are in a fog of poor accoustics and are limited by battery power, they have some advantages. An america task group operating near Iran or China would be continuosly tracked by enemy recon and radar. The sub commanders could place their subs in front of a US carrier group and wait a few hours to strike.
Similarly, operating near enemy coasts puts our CNBG's at risk to enemy attack. As i noted before, our carriers would be painted by radar, unless we took these out. Iran and China have strike fighters and bomber carrying anti-shipping missles. The Chinese Silkworm may not be a real threat, but the Russian K-35 or Sunburns are.
No other nation has air-to-air missiles or air-to-ground smart munitions of the accuracy, or numbers, of the United States.
Many of our allies produce these weaposn for us and themselves.
Based on unclassified paper specs, I would take the Russian A-11 Archer over our AIM-9. the AA-12 looks like an AMRAAM, so I wouldn't discount it.
the Russian Klub cruise missle is supposed to use GPS. They have Laser guided munitions. They are a few years behind us, not decades.
The Abrams cannon and fire-control system is so extraordinarily accurate that in combat gunners rarely require more than one shot to destroy an enemy tank. No other nation is currently building or planning a comparable tank force. Other governments know this would be pointless, since even if they had advanced tanks, the United States would destroy them from the air.
The British Challanger, German Leopard II, Israeli Merkava, and Russian T-90 are all nice tanks. Iraq had the cheap export T-72's. These lacked the good Russian optical and targeting systems, as well as the Tank lanched anti-missle systems liket he Koronet, which outrange us.
Our forces are advanced, but a smart enemy could cause real problems for us. For starters, they could hit us, isntead of allowing hte US to have operational control.
The current situation IMHO is like the last move of the game when the victor marches around the entire globe in an unstoppable wave taking out each weakened opponent as he goes until der Welt is finally his.
Bwah-ha-ha-ha!
Personally, I would love to have a multi-layered system, including spce-based weapons. A depleted uranium dart lanuched from a satellite could do wonders.
By depicting the North Korean nuclear program as a reasonable defensive response against American hegemony (instead of what it really is, which is a prerequisite for continuing to threaten South Korea), the NYT is attempting to spin away one of XXX42's most obvious derelictions of duty.
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