Although the Republican congressional caucus is strongly pushing for a $15 billion supplementary military budget to significantly increase funding for the US military, and despite multiple sources indicating that the Trump administration plans to make the US military budget exceed $1 trillion in the next fiscal year, the difficult situation of the US military has not improved as a result.
01. The Commander of the US Indo-Pacific Command once again spoke out about the dire situation, emphasizing that the US military is losing its edge to win.
Since the Navy announced last month due to technical and financial issues that it would stop developing the air-launched hypersonic missile HALO, within just over half a month, the US military has had several new equipment development projects halted, multiple mature equipment procurement suspended, and the US Army may face further cuts in personnel.
In response to this situation, Admiral Samuel Paparo, Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command and Chief of Naval Operations, once again stepped forward at a public forum hosted by a well-known defense think tank in the United States. He emphasized to the media and audience that if the current decline in combat readiness continues, the US military will inevitably lose to the PLA in future conflicts.
Admiral Paparo, on the one-year anniversary of his appointment as Commander of the Indo-Pacific Command, attended a public forum hosted by a renowned defense think tank in the United States. At the forum, he emphasized to the media and attendees that based on the current paper strength of the US military, if a conflict were to break out immediately, the US military could still achieve victory relying on its stockpile advantage.
However, this advantage is now very fragile. The construction speed of the PLA's forces is astonishing, with the construction speed of large and medium-sized naval main battle ships being 3 to 5 times faster than that of the US. The US Navy's存量 advantage in submarines and space-based equipment assets will be quickly eliminated in the short term, making the outcome uncertain.
02. Looking back at the past 10 years of actual US military construction, what Admiral Paparo described is indeed reality.
This is not an exaggeration by Americans. Take the core aircraft carrier of naval warfare as an example. The US Navy's nearest-to-be-commissioned aircraft carrier is CVN-79 John F. Kennedy. It started construction in February 2011. When it cut the first steel plate for construction, the PLA's first aircraft carrier was still 8 months away from completing its refit and entering sea trials, and would only be preliminarily commissioned the following year.
After 14 years, the Shandong and Liaoning aircraft carriers of the PLA have already achieved full combat capability and conducted multiple long-range combat readiness patrols; Fujian has been at sea for a year and has completed most of the subjects including carrier-based aircraft sea-based catapult takeoffs and arrested landings, and is close to being commissioned. What about the Kennedy? Its outfitting is still incomplete, with several large workshops on the flight deck, and the sea trial date has been postponed repeatedly.
No matter how you look at it, this aircraft carrier of the US Navy, which has been under construction for 14 years, cannot enter service earlier or form combat capability earlier than the Fujian, which started construction later by 7-8 years. Don't forget that during this cycle, we also launched a medium-sized aircraft carrier-sized amphibious assault ship equipped with an electromagnetic catapult, Sichuan. It is毫无问题 that the PLA has built and commissioned three aircraft carriers within the time it took the US Navy to construct and commission one. This is even in the field where the PLA started the latest, had the weakest foundation, and advanced in small but rapid steps.
If we talk about destroyers and frigates, the field where the PLA has scaled up its numbers to meet operational needs, the gap between China and the US is even more staggering. Over the past 10 years, the PLA has net added at least 26 Type 052D destroyers and 8 Type 055 destroyers, totaling 34 medium-to-large air defense destroyers. Additionally, there are around 10 in various stages of sea trials.
Over the past 10 years, while the US Navy has only commissioned 12 Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, it has retired 13 Ticonderoga-class cruisers, resulting in a substantive shrinkage of the number of Aegis-equipped ships in the entire fleet. As the early Arleigh Burkes reach their service life, the gap between the two countries in this area will continue to widen.
Without considering performance differences or availability rates, purely in terms of paper strength data, the US Air Force tactical fighter force is already hundreds of aircraft behind the PLA Air Force's fighter aviation units; the scale of special mission aircraft such as airborne early warning aircraft, electronic warfare aircraft, and electronic reconnaissance aircraft is also lagging behind the PLA.
The US Navy still maintains a numerical advantage of about 30 Aegis-equipped ships, but this will quickly be erased in the coming years with the rapid commissioning of new batches of ships by the PLA and the concentrated retirement of ships from the 1980s and 1990s by the US Navy. Only the numerical advantage of aircraft carriers remains on paper. But can the US Navy's nuclear carriers convert this into usable force advantages?
03. Admiral Paparo found the problem, but the Americans no longer have the ability to come up with solutions.
As someone who is actually responsible for military operations in the US Western Pacific direction and faces the overwhelming power of the PLA, Admiral Paparo naturally feels anxious when looking at the sluggish progress of US military construction, the shrinking size of the navy, and the general delays and failures of next-generation equipment. Seeking to capture more budget decision-makers' attention through think tanks and media channels, and demanding more investment in military budgets is predictable.
But the difficulties the US is facing in upgrading and replacing equipment, and the widespread failure of new projects are really not solely caused by lack of funds. Will increasing the military budget allocation solve these problems? Clearly not. Although the lack of funds certainly creates significant challenges for maintaining the current scale and combat effectiveness of the US military and updating heavy equipment, more money cannot help resolve issues such as slower shipbuilding speeds compared to the PLA or the declining state of the aerospace industry.
A classic case is after the widely known plan for a $15 billion supplementary budget, the US Navy recently signed contracts for two Virginia-class nuclear submarines. These two submarines, which are already in large-scale service among the US military and have numerous orders in progress, saw their latest submarine construction budgets reach a terrifying $18.5 billion, with each costing over $9.2 billion.
To put this into perspective, just two years ago in 2023, the unit price for the same configuration Virginia Block V was only $4.2 billion, which was already considered a frighteningly high price at the time. The Navy and Congress claimed that the premium pricing was to stabilize production and improve construction speed at shipyards.
Two years later, the delivery speed of Virginia-class submarines has not improved, but the cost has doubled. Even though Americans claim that part of this increase includes higher wages for shipyard workers, it clearly demonstrates the incompetence and irony of the current US military-industrial complex. Can more money solve systemic issues like a doubling of the budget in two years?
Original source: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7500918666553197108/
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