Good.

It’s not like China has to lift a finger, the US government is doing a fine job of destroying the country.

I hope that's true, but this is a common refrain with various adversaries used as the boogie-man.

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-117-the-always-lagging-us-war-machine

The scam goes something like this: A weapons contractor and military-funded think tank publishes a supposedly neutral "report" or a handful "U.S. officials" run to a media outlet insisting the United States is "lagging behind" in a sector that incidentally coincides with said think tank's funders or government entity's interests. Credulous American media mindlessly repeats the claims, everyone acts panicked, treating the warning like a work of good faith, sober and objective analysis. Congress then reacts and uses media coverage to rationalize even more contracts to the very funders of the think tank that raised the warning, further bloating the Pentagon, State Department and CIA budgets. Rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat, all the while portraying the U.S.'s gargantuan defense expenditures as paltry and insufficient.

Good thing we’re busy terrorizing our own populace!

Article's gone. Here's the archive: https://archive.is/WDDOa

Rule 1. When you're having political problems at home, create a foreign enemy to distract the population.

The enemy is both weak and strong.

This is both believable, and actually makes me feel safer about world security

Lol sounds like he's doing a great job in his role checks notes in charge of US defense.

anyway, 30 billion more for Israel

That would be so funny.

And so you're going to reduce the military budget and start approaching diplomacy with an eye for mutual benefit and international cooperation, right?

US can't even beat Ansarallah

Therefore we need to cut all non-essential government spending, for example everything that isn't defense spending, and reallocate it to defense spending so we can overwhelm China's defenses with wave attacks of billions of big beautiful boats that cost billions to build and only a million to sink

US generals are not idiots, they're not going to sail their Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) straight into a hailstorm of Anti Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) equipped with either Maneuverable Re-entry Vehicles (MaRVs) or Hypersonic Glide Vehicles (HGVs) as warheads. The Chinese DF-17 HGV equipped ASBM, and the DF-21D MaRV equipped ASBM, have a range of around 1600km/1000mi. The DF-21 is said to be a Chinese equivalent to the now retired Pershing-II from the United States. So these weapons will act as area denial weapons, with the CSGs remaining outside of their effective range during the majority of their operations. Aircraft will rely on mid air refueling and/or external drop tanks to have the required range to conduct missions from this far out. This of course restricts their operations, but they can still carry out missions. This is also why there's a huge focus on increasing the internal fuel capacity and range for the US Navy's 6th generation strike fighter (F/A-XX), and why the F-35C has such a large internal fuel capacity.

Pershing-II (left), hypothesised DF-21D MaRV on top of DF-15 booster stage (centre), DF-21 with nosecone shield (right):

DF-17 with DF-ZF HGV:

We can see this in Yemen in the Red Sea (where ASBMs were used as weapons for the first time in history), where the USS Harry Truman aircraft carrier spends the majority of time around Jeddah, around 700-800km away from the Houthi/Ansarallah controlled parts of Yemen, and resupplies at Yanbu. This keeps them out of range of the Zulfiqar Basir MaRV equipped ASBM (700km range) during normal operations, and keeps them out of range of Anti Ship Cruise Missiles like the Abu Mhadi (1000km range) when resupplying.

Zulfiqar Basir, with a close up on the electro optical sensor on the MaRV for terminal guidance:

Area denial is still a great capability to have, but ASBMs aren't magic wands that can just eliminate CSGs. They have their own limitations, hitting a moving target such as a ship with a ballistic missile, even one equipped with a HGV or MaRV, is quite complex, especially at longer ranges where you'd have to provide midcourse guidance updates and resulting trajectory changes to a ballistic missile in space. This is why longer range ASBMs aren't there yet. To try extend the effective range of existing ASBM platforms, they could be launched from aircraft, which give a small range boost from the launch point, and allowing the aircraft to fly out over sea before launching, for a combined range extension (aircrafts range + ASBM range). China does have the KF-21, an air launched DF-21. The challenge then becomes avoiding the launch aircraft being intercepted by hostile combat air patrols before launching, such patrols will limit how far out the launch aircraft can fly.

Air launched DF-21 variant mounted on a Xian H-6, the two solid fueled booster rocket stages and MaRV are clearly visible.

The article mentions equipping a longer range ballistic missile like the DF-27 with a DF-ZF HGV, but I don't think that's practical over the ranges mentioned (8000km/5000mi). The DF-ZF is not designed to glide at hypersonic speeds for such a long distance, so your glide phase would take up a small part of the overall flight profile, meaning that such a platform would act like a conventional ballistic missile for the majority of it's flight time. The DF-ZF is also not designed to handle atmospheric re-entry at the higher speeds and loads that such an extended range would require. A new HGV would be needed.

inshallah

The only thing this pentagon chief can sink in 20 minutes is a fifth of whiskey

Lol @ the guy in the EE thread talking about how the opposing force in the Millennium 2002 challenge cheated

Please, Xi. Press the button. Almighty Allah please steel Xi's heart to do what must be done

China has Max Payne bullet time technology confirmed

I guess this is why we need to invest 102931203921 gazillions money into the military and do more austerities

Lots of comments that "this is a false distraction to justify war on Panama". War on Panama is about interdicting Chinese commerce with Brazil and other countries south of US. Including FDI in Panama to boost its cross ocean trade volume through a railway.

This is more of a classified leak exposing US weakness and impotence. This does compromise stupid people's faith in US protections across the world, and their rulers corrupt submission to US under propaganda of US protection.