![]() ![]() The AVF model will simply be insufficient to supply the military with the force levels that will be required to go up against China’s 2.18 million-man military or Russia's more than one million-man force. forces responsible for defending either Europe or rolling back a Chinese invasion of Taiwan will be too small, disoriented, and isolated away from America’s power base to effectively resist either a Russian invasion of Eastern Europe or a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. But, suppose the United States does not have a robust enough arsenal of hypersonic vehicles, how long does Washington wait for enough of those units to be built in order to retaliate against those who attack American forces? And, what happens during that interregnum? Or, how will these weapons systems operate effectively in a degraded environment where GPS signals were being jammed? Meanwhile, the loss of America’s satellites will ensure that U.S. This is where technologists will assert hypersonic weapons will be key. warplanes and transports will likely suffer high attrition rates if they move in too close. forces deploy, with their technological abilities stunted, they will then have to penetrate intense anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) bubbles where U.S. military forces can even respond to an attack by either Russia or China. From there, cyber and information warfare techniques will be used to sow chaos and degrade America’s resistance quotient-before U.S. forces of their aforementioned technological advantages.Īs I detail in the opening chapter of my forthcoming book, Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower, which will be released in 2020 by the Republic Book Publishers, the first shots of another world war will be fired in space against America’s satellite constellations. This is especially true, considering the focus of America’s enemies on depriving U.S. As the threat of interstate warfare increases, America’s small expeditionary force (which is wearing thin from decades of constant deployments) will be insufficient to meet the challenges that rival great powers, such as China or Russia, pose to the U.S. Today, however, the chances for great state conflict are high. American rivals have not forgotten this timeless truth. Policymakers today tend to forget that wars are still fought and won by men, not machines. military and its leaders have come to fetishize high-technology and rely far too much on it to make up for real weaknesses in its overall force structure. Satellites, airpower, cyber combat, drones, and a coterie of other technical assets have allowed for the relatively small U.S. What the Chinese routinely refer to as “American Magic” has become a force multiplier for that relatively small, expeditionary AVF. Not only have private contractors augmented the U.S. Further, in 2016, nearly one-in-five military deaths in Afghanistan were of private military contractors. More importantly, less than one percent of the American population (1.29 million Americans) serves in the military. While the defense budget in the United States is considerably higher than the defense budgets of its major rivals, it is at historic lows (it reached 15 percent of U.S. defense budget is 4.2 percent of America’s overall GDP. ![]() Should a great power conflict erupt, though, the age of specialization in warfare will go away, and total warfare will again be upon us again.Ĭurrently, the U.S. Today, we are told, wars are fought by small teams of elite professionals-like the Medieval knights of old. When the draft existed, it was created because warfare was a truly national endeavor. force smaller than it ordinarily would be-freeing up more Americans to, theoretically, become net contributors to America’s economic miracle. The AVF has also fostered a degree of technological innovation that helped to keep the U.S. ![]() On the other hand, Friedman believed that an AVF was a military in which its members had their freedom preserved. Friedman argued that a conscription force was ultimately one in which its members were slaves until the conflict ends (or they die). The brilliant economist, Milton Friedman, hailed the creation of an AVF as a momentous step toward national progress. Despite the strategic failures of the AVF in Afghanistan and Iraq, most military leaders today insist upon preserving the AVF rather than institute conscription. Many military leaders who had fought in Vietnam supported it, realizing that those who volunteered to serve and fight in a war were usually more effective in combat than those who were simply drafted into service. Nixon was not alone in his support for an AVF. ![]()
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