The U.S. Military's Greatest Advantage Is Dying A Slow Death

The U.S. has the biggest military on planet Earth—several times over—and its advanced arsenal exceeds even the wildest dreams of many foreign armies. But it's not enough just to have a big force. To maintain a tactical advantage, the military needs the ability to move into any part of the planet and strike with overwhelming force, something the U.S. has done mostly unimpeded for decades.

"From the Korean War all the way to the recent campaign against ISIS, this is how America kills its enemies," a retired senior U.S. Army official told PM, wishing to remain anonymous. "Take that away and…well…America isn't a superpower anymore."

BAE systems tests its electromagnetic railgun, one of the U.S. military\'s most futuristic weapons.

Lately, nations like China, Russia, and Iran have caught on to that fact, and have focused much of their defensives strategies on limiting America's ability to come close to their borders and strike at will. This strategy, called anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD), uses weapons like ultra-quiet submarines, sea mines, cruise and ballistic "carrier-killer" missiles, drones, and other systems meant to hold U.S. forces at bay—or make the situation risky enough to deter the United States from advancing. After all, does America want to lose a multi-billion-dollar aircraft carrier with thousands of sailors aboard in a fight over Taiwan, Eastern Ukraine, or South Korea?

The U.S. military wasn't blind to this new threat. Back in 2009, then-Secretary of Defense Robert Gates developed the Air-Sea Battle operational concept. This plan, which focused on a hypothetical battle against Beijing, guaranteed America access to all areas to the global commons—the world's oceans and skies that no one owns.

But while Gates' concept was workable, it was also controversial and confusing. One report, published by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, laid out in punishing detail just how horrific a U.S.-China war would be. For example, the report details what essentially is World War III. To ensure access to the space, the U.S. would attack China with...

"...long-range penetrating strike operations to destroy PLA ground-based long-range maritime surveillance systems and long-range ballistic missile launchers (both anti-ship and land-attack) to expand the Navy's freedom of maneuver and reduce strikes on US and allied bases and facilities…"

Such fictional strikes on the Chinese homeland filled headlines around the world and was even the subject of a short film by Peter Navarro, now one of President Donald Trump's key White House advisors. By the time the pentagon released its own version, many academics and national security experts came out against it.

Now, the Pentagon is now having a second go at it, this time with another operational concept called the Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (JAM-GC). While the concept has been brewing for roughly two years in the bowels of the defense department, we now have an idea of what it will look like thanks to a new article in Joint Forces Quarterly.

JAM-GC offers two welcomed changes to the Pentagon's previous plan. No longer would going to hypothetical war against Chinese or Russia be just a Navy and Air Force affair. The marines, army, cyber command, and space assets would all play a big part of a global effort. Also, the U.S. military would rely on the forces it has now, not new and expensive systems that may never see combat.

A downed F/A-18c in need of repairs.

Unfortunately, even this concept has several current and former senior pentagon officials worried. Because of a current readiness crisis, the U.S. military might be unable to implement the concept at all. Experts fear budget sequestration has done tremendous harm to the U.S. military's ability to fight the next great war, especially against China.

"How do we do something like JAM-GC when most of our F/A-18s are awaiting repair? How do we prepare for a fight against China, as this concept basically calls for, when most of our Army is not even properly ready for combat?," another senior pentagon official told Popular Mechanics.

The official continues: "Combine this all with the age of the weapons America would use in such a fight: the M1 Abrams tank, the F-16, F/A-18, B-1 Bomber and other critical weapons...you have a series of problems that are not easily solvable. Can you really fight a war with China with weapons you really were going to use against the Soviet Union in the 1980s?"

Even the best laid plans will always fail if you don't have the means to actually carry them out. The Trump administration will need to match these ends and means—or the next war America fights could be a lost cause before it even begins.