Diplomacy & Crisis News

Summary: The U.S. Navy is at a pivotal juncture, facing the dual challenge of maintaining current operational capabilities while preparing for future warfare dominance through the development of the F/A-XX, a sixth-generation stealth fighter jet. With the strategic imperative to ensure the carrier air wing's capacity and lethality, the Navy acknowledges the critical role of aircraft carriers and their complement of fighter jets in potential conflict scenarios, particularly in the Indo-Pacific against a backdrop of rising tensions with China. However, constrained by budgetary limits, the Navy is compelled to delay $1 billion in funding for the F/A-XX program, reallocating these funds to future budgets. This decision underscores the harsh realities of defense spending, where immediate readiness and personnel needs take precedence over long-term modernization efforts.

Widespread technological innovations are pushing forward the global defense industry, with militaries funding cutting-edge projects in all domains. When it comes to next-generation aircraft, the U.S. Navy is looking to ensure its future superiority on the battlefield through the F/A-XX sixth-generation stealth fighter jet. 

However, budgetary constraints are forcing the Navy to make tough decisions about its next fighter jet.

The Navy is delaying $1 billion in funding for the F/A-XX program for future budgets. 

Budgetary constraints and specific limits force the Navy to reallocate funds intended for the development of the F/A-XX into future budgets, thus likely delaying the introduction of the sixth-generation fighter jet. 

“We’re absolutely committed to the capacity and lethality of the of the carrier wing,” Rear Adm. Ben Reynolds, deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for budget, said during a press event last week. 

Reynolds highlighted that the capacity and firepower of the carrier air wing are at the top of the priorities for the Department of Defense. The reason for that is that the aircraft carrier remains the primary tool for power projection. In a potential conflict with China in the Indo-Pacific, aircraft carriers would be at the center of the fighting. As such, the fighter jets would determine much of the fighting and potentially a whole conflict. 

Although Navy officials acknowledge the importance of future programs like the F/A-XX, in the absence of unlimited funding, they have to make tough decisions to ensure current operational readiness remains high. 

Budgetary constraints and specific limits force the Navy to reallocate funds intended for the development of the F/A-XX into future budgets, thus likely delaying the introduction of the sixth-generation fighter jet. 

“In terms of what comes at the top of the list, it is readiness. It is people. It is the today issues that we have to get on top of,” Navy Under Secretary Erik Raven told reporters while speaking alongside Reynolds. “Where our guidance directs us to take risk is in future modernization.”

Alongside the Air Force’s Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) program, the F/A-XX will be a sixth-generation fighter jet with manned and unmanned capabilities. 

The Navy is looking for an aircraft that would be able to operate from aircraft carriers—it will require a stronger structure and landing gear compared to aircraft designed for conventional operations. In terms of capabilities, from what it is known, the Navy is looking for a fighter jet that would have directed energy kinetic capabilities (laser weapons) and the ability to operate with and control drone swarms. As for mission sets, the Navy is looking for an aircraft that would be able to operate in permissive or semi-permissive environments with potent adversary air defense systems and establish air superiority through long-range kill chains. 

Right now, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrup Grumman are the three companies vying for the F/A-XX contract, with Pratt & Whitney and GE Aerospace competing for the stealth fighter jet’s engine. 

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP.

Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro recently barnstormed Northeast Asian shipyards in hopes of enlisting investment from allied nations to help revivify the U.S. shipbuilding sector. The secretary entreated the leaderships of such industrial heavyweights as South Korea’s HD Hyundai Heavy Industries and Hanwha Ocean and Japan’s Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to reopen one or more mothballed U.S. yards. 

And not a moment too soon. Adding marine industrial capacity is a must if the U.S. Navy, Marine Corps, and Coast Guard are to keep pace with the challenges of our time—chiefly Chinese sea power. China, the world’s biggest shipbuilding nation, reputedly boasts over 200 times the United States’ capacity. It is flourishing in the nautical realm while America struggles. Because Chinese yards are outbuilding their U.S. counterparts at a helter-skelter rate, China will go to war with a larger navy than the U.S. Navy and it will be able to repair or replace battle losses more swiftly. 

That is a big deal. The arithmetic of war is stern. A force that can speedily regenerate combat power after taking a punch, as all forces do, is resilient; one that cannot is fragile. The People’s Liberation Army Navy may not measure up to the U.S. Navy on a ship-for-ship, airframe-for-airframe, missile-for-missile basis. But the balance of resiliency yaws the PLA Navy’s way to an alarming degree. China has a bigger fleet and can replenish it faster. 

Manufacturing supremacy bestows an advantage of worrisome import on Beijing. 

So the strategic rationale for soliciting foreign investment is impeccable: America needs more hulls and more capacity to maintain and overhaul them. It should amass that capacity wherever it may and in a hurry. And there is precedent for what Del Toro is asking. Australian shipbuilding firm Austal already constructs warships in Alabama, for instance, as does Italy’s Fincantieri in Wisconsin. It only makes sense to add the world’s second- and third-largest shipbuilding nations to the mix. 

But. What about the business rationale? 

That’s less compelling, and the Navy Department needs to figure out how to burnish its case by the numbers. Look at Del Toro’s appeal through the eyes of Asian business magnates. One imagines they will evaluate any North American venture by the closely interconnected standards of profit, risk, and time. First, profit. Shipbuilders are not philanthropies. Show them the money! Company officers will crave assurances that there will be enough demand for their wares to repay their investments on these shores, plus enough more to make it worth their while. That chiefly means would-be suppliers want to know there will be sufficient demand from the U.S. government, by definition the United States’ sole customer for ships of war and merchantmen that support the fight. 

Convincing Asian shipbuilders that the United States actually means to build a much larger fleet, as laid out in the navy’s 30-year shipbuilding plans, will be pivotal in negotiations. This will be a tough sell. The U.S. Navy’s inventory is still dawdling below 300 ships years after Congress mandated a 355-ship fleet. Shipbuilding budgets have fallen well short of paying for those extra 60-odd ships, remain in limbo under a continuing resolution almost halfway through the fiscal year, and are set to remain stagnant. This is a recurring pattern within the Beltway. Recalls former acting Secretary of the Navy Tom Modly: “Everyone seemed to talk a good game to each other about the requirement for the 355-ship navy, but there was no commitment, no plan, and no money to actually build one.” 

Sea power is a conscious political choice, and it’s far from clear that American society as a whole has resolved to bulk up the sea services. Washington has some ‘splaining to do if it covets Asian investment. 

Second, risk. Firm leaders will want assurances that the demand signal for military and mercantile shipping will remain vibrant. Otherwise they may balk at what promises to be a capital-intensive enterprise. How many resources it will take remains to be determined. Presumably naval shipyards in such ports as Long Beach and Philadelphia were laid up with an eye toward preserving and perhaps recommissioning them in some future time of crisis. But chronological age matters even if crews did their preservation job to perfection. Machinery decays. Long Beach Naval Shipyard was shuttered in 1997, Philadelphia in 1995. The degree to which buildings and hardware remain in good order after sitting idle for so long is unclear, and is sure to come up when U.S. officialdom parleys with shipbuilders. (It also appears the Philly site has undergone partial redevelopment—adding another wrinkle.) 

Answering questions about the scope of the project will help HD Hyundai, Mitsubishi & Co. gauge and manage risk—making it easier to get to yes in talks. Candor pays. 

If not reassured decisionmakers could blanch at the risk. Think about the politics of naval shipbuilding. To all appearances Congress has elected not to meet the martial challenges of our time. Peacetime strategy is about designing and fielding forces fit for war. That being the case, lawmakers make strategy through the budgetary process all the time. They make strategy by what they fund—and by what they don’t. As Admiral J. C. Wylie points out: “The Congressman voting on an military appropriation is, in a very real sense indeed, making a fundamental strategic decision . . . .” 

And how. Refusing to approve military appropriations for this fiscal year marks a fundamental strategic decision that stasis shall prevail in naval and military affairs. Given the highly visible budgetary impasse in Washington, it’s unclear what kind of assurances U.S. naval and military leaders could concoct to show that demand for South Korean- and Japanese-built ships will remain strong and steady. Recent history says just the opposite. But the effort must be made. 

And third, time. Shipbuilders will want assurances not only that an American venture will be profitable at reasonable risk, but that U.S. government orders for warships will remain robust enough to sustain yard operations for a long, long time. Constancy is a virtue on the demand side when courting the supply side. Assuming one were forthcoming, an initial burst of new-construction dollars would do little for builders if demand dwindled over the long term, leaving them operating at a loss with a wasting asset on their hands. 

They might rebuff a transpacific partnership rather than risk eventual ruin. 

In short, Secretary Del Toro has taken on an unenviable task: persuading Asian business leaders to invest in the U.S. shipbuilding complex at a time when domestic political headwinds are fierce. Profit, risk, time. Let’s wish him well. 

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Nonresident Fellow at the University of Georgia School of Public and International Affairs. The views voiced here are his alone.

Image: Creative Commons. 

For years, I have argued that America’s legislative branch has failed to live up to its obligations in guiding U.S. foreign policy. Trends dating back before the turn of the millennium reveal that the Legislative branch has spent an increasingly small amount of time discussing and researching important foreign policy questions. Beyond that, when important foreign policy topics are discussed, individual legislators are increasingly likely to grandstand or fundraise instead of work towards policy solutions for major issues. 

For most of my life, this dereliction of duty has resulted in American involvement in unguided and near-unending conflicts across the Middle East and North Africa. Two pieces of legislation (the 2001 and 2002 Authorization(s) for the Use of Military Force) passed the House and Senate in the turbulent months following the September 11th terror attacks. Those two bills combined to serve as justification for roughly two decades of continued fighting across almost 80 nations, resulting in 8,000,000,000,000 dollars in expenses, over 7,000 American casualties alongside 230,000 civilian casualties. Most all, including President Obama when he unsuccessfully petitioned Congress to vote on military action in Syria, agree that many of the conflicts funded through the AUMFs extend well beyond the legeslation’s original intent. 

As a consequence of making the  purposeful choice to remain on the foreign policy sidelines, the members of the House and Senate ignore the combined wisdom of their 535 duly elected members in favor of the President and their small band of advisors. This is an obvious mistake. 

In response to this embarrassing state of affairs, and before the Biden administration’s top-down withdrawal from Afghanistan, I wrote advocating that both chambers of the Legislature adopt the following rule-

Before the end of each congressional cycle, each representative must vote for or against continued funding for each of America’s ongoing military conflicts. In the event that neither branch of the legislature votes in support for continued funding for any individual conflict, funding for that conflict is assigned a sunset date one year from the day of the vote.

While the language of the proposal would likely benefit from some fine-tuning, the driving force behind the proposal -the idea that the legislative branch should be held responsible for completing its constitutionally assigned foreign policy responsibilities- remains as relevant today as it was years ago.

In the current moment, and in defiance of recent historical precedent, both chambers of the Legislature appear primed to express their views on key foreign policy issues ranging from the ongoing invasion of Ukraine to the continued tragedy taking place in Gaza. If media predictions can be believed there is sufficient support in both chambers to pass additional funding for the defense of Ukraine- so long as that funding can receive a clean vote. This support is mirrored in the general American public. Why then has no vote taken place? 

This is the case because leadership in the House of Representatives has decided to make it so. Congressional leaders are using their agenda setting authority to thwart both the will of the institutions in which they serve and the citizens that they represent. This trend is not new, nor is it the sole responsibility of the current speaker- past speakers were unwilling to bring votes to the floor during other modern military romps.  Some have suggested that this is due to electoral considerations, others have pointed to internal politics, others still have highlighted personal considerations. Few have suggested that the lack of a vote is in pursuit of sound foreign policy. 

Regardless of the reason, the fact that Congressional leaders would appropriate House rules as an excuse to ignore their constitutionally assigned responsibilities is shameful. It is, for a moment, unimportant  where we might personally stand regarding continued funding for Ukraine or the IDF, each of us has a right to know where our representatives stand on these critical questions. Current leadership in the House is working to make sure that their band is shielded from the sanitizing light of a public ballot. 

This brings me back once more to the rule I propose requiring representatives to take timely votes for or against continued funding for military missions. The original intent with the institutional rule was to push for a vote and end funding for the wars in the Middle East. Today, the rule would likely result in additional funding for the defense of Ukraine. The goal of the proposal is not inherently “more peace” or “more war” but instead “more thoughtfulness” to replace today’s willful rudderlessness. Who can argue with that?

Perhaps it should come as little surprise that as conflicts spring up in hotspots around the world and the risks begin to feel closer to home, many in the Legislature would like to have their voices heard. Perhaps it should also come as little surprise that decades of ignoring foreign policy questions has brought about conditions in which dealing with foreign policy questions is increasingly urgent. Adopting the proposed rule would both help guide the United States through today’s turbulent moment, and it would also help maintain thoughtful foreign policy moving forwards. 

—

Peter Scaturro is the Director of Studies at the Foreign Policy Association. The views expressed here are his, and not necessarily those of the FPA. 

Summary: Russia's advanced Su-57 Felon fighter remains a rare sight on the Ukrainian battlefield. Production delays and Western sanctions cripple its ability to mass-produce the aircraft despite Moscow's urgent need. Even the use of innovative augmented reality techniques hasn't solved the issue. While touted as a stealth fighter, Western analysis remains skeptical. Its limited, cautious use in Ukraine shows its preciousness and emphasizes how production issues have left the Su-57 unable to make a significant impact on the war.

The Su-57 Felon is the most advanced fighter jet in the Russian military’s arsenal. 

Despite an urgent need caused by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, the Russian Aerospace Forces can only field a handful of Su-57 fighter jets, most of which are prototypes pressed into operational service. 

Production issues coupled with Western sanctions likely prevent the Russian aerospace industry from producing additional aircraft in a manner that could make a difference in the war in Ukraine. 

For years, the aircraft's production has been plagued by problems and delays. The first production Su-57 Felon aircraft crashed soon after leaving the factory in 2019. 

The Kremlin unconventionally put the first dozen prototypes into service. This rather desperate move indicates an urgency to demonstrate fifth-generation capability and join the “big boys club” alongside the United States and China. 

However, production issues and Western sanctions on military hardware and technology mean that despite innovative manufacturing processes, Russia will unlikely produce more Su-57 fighter jets soon. 

Perhaps the most impressive of these methods is augmented reality. Russian technicians have been using augmented reality to assemble the aircraft. Major parts of the aircraft carry QR codes that a technician scans and the technician then uses augmented reality to figure out where they go. Essentially, it is like the technician has IKEA assembly instructions in front of him. 

Similar technology and processes are being used in the automobile industry to facilitate the faster production of cars. 

Extreme precision in the manufacturing of aircraft like the Su-57 is essential, less its low-observable attributes, which contribute to the designation of an aircraft as stealth or not, are off. If, for example, a technician improperly installs a screw that causes the airframe to be slightly off, that could impact the fighter jet’s stealth characteristics. 

The Su-57 Felon is a twin-engine, single-seat fighter jet that can perform several different mission sets. Although the Russian military claims the aircraft has stealth capabilities, Western analyses don’t necessarily corroborate that claim. 

Nevertheless, the Su-57 Felon brings essential capabilities to the Russian Aerospace Forces. In terms of weaponry, the fighter jet can carry a wide range of munitions, including R-73 heat-seeking air-to-air missiles and R-27 radar-homing air-to-air missiles, as well as cruise missiles, hypersonic munitions, glide bombs, rockets, and conventional bombs. 

The Su-57 Felon also carries a powerful 30mm Gryazev-Shipunov GSh-30-1 cannon with 150 rounds for dogfights or strafing. When not in use, the cannon's muzzle is concealed to maintain the fighter jet’s aerodynamic performance and low-observability attributes. 

According to Western intelligence services, the Russian Aerospace Forces have used their limited fleet of Su-57 Felon fighter jets in the conflict in Ukraine. However, the Kremlin has been cautious with its most advanced fighter jet, using it in limited instances and only for long-range strike missions with stand-off munitions. 

Thus far, Moscow’s technological pride has failed to meet expectations and hasn’t made any difference in the largest conflict the Russian miliary has found itself since the Great Patriotic War in World War Two. 

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Summary: Ukraine's strikes on Russia's costly A-50 surveillance planes are seriously impacting Moscow's intelligence capabilities. Kyiv has destroyed at least two A-50s in the air, with another damaged in Belarus. Russia, possessing only a handful of these aircraft, struggles to replace them. Ukraine's recent attack on a repair facility further hinders Russia's efforts. This leaves Moscow with potentially only six operational A-50s, restricting their ability to track Ukrainian movements and forcing them closer to the frontlines, increasing vulnerability. While Russia did destroy a US-supplied Patriot missile system, drone surveillance remains an imperfect substitute for the A-50s.

Already this year, Ukraine's military has shot down two of Russia's A-50 long-range radar detection and control aircraft, worth $330 million each. A Ukrainian drone also damaged another on the ground in Belarus last year. The loss of any of the aircraft has been seen as potentially devastating for Moscow, as Russia began the war just over two years ago with only nine of the reconnaissance planes.

One of the Beriev A-50 airborne warning and control (AWACS) was downed over the Sea of Azov in mid-January, while a second was shot down over Russian territory in late February. The Kremlin has scrambled to replace the aircraft, reportedly attempting to refurbish least one A-50 from the several dozen that are no longer deemed flyable.

Ukraine responded by conducting a drone strike on the aviation facility in the city of Taganrog tasked with repairing A-50s. According to a report from Newsweek , the plant was "heavily damaged," and an A-50 aircraft close to the facility was either destroyed or sustained significant damage. It isn't clear whether that particular plane was damaged or operational.

Kyiv's claims haven't been independently verified and the Kremlin hasn't commented on the news. However, as Forbes.com reported – citing open source intelligence – as recently as February 29, an A-50 was parked outside the final-assembly shed. The aircraft wasn't visible in the post-strike imagery, and there is speculation it was inside the shed when the drone attack occurred.

Russia may now have as few as six A-50s in the sky, which could limit its ability to monitor the skies over Ukraine. That could force the remaining A-50s to operate closer to the frontlines, which would put them in the crosshairs of Kyiv's anti-aircraft launchers.

The good news for Moscow is that its forces destroyed a U.S.-made MIM-104 Patriot air defense system last week while it was being relocated to a new forward position. Both sides have thus taken a loss of equipment that can only be described as irreplaceable in the short term. Moscow has already been attempting to fill the reconnaissance gap with drones, but the stop-gap measure has reportedly been met with limited success.

The Beriev A-50 (NATO reporting name "Mainstay") was developed by the Soviet Union in the 1970s and is based on the Ilyushin Il-76 transport. Developed to replace the Tupolev Tu-126 (NATO reporting name "Moss"), the A-50 took its maiden flight in 1978 and entered service in 1985.

As previously reported by The National Interest, the aircraft has been compared to the United States Air Force's E-3 Sentry – commonly known as the AWACS (Airborne Warning and Command System) – but with notably fewer capabilities.

The A-50 is a four-engine jet-propelled aircraft, equipped with rotating radar that scans 360 degrees, detecting radars and potential targets in the air and on land. Each aircraft has a crew of 15 personnel who are tasked with interpreting radar returns and then relaying the information to up to ten fighter aircraft for either air-to-air intercepts or air-to-surface attack missions.

The aircraft can track air targets at a distance of up to 650 km (400 miles) and ground targets at 300 km (190 miles), while it can track around 300 ground or 40 air targets simultaneously. Without external support from airborne tankers, the A-50 can stay airborne for up to four hours and has a range of 1,000 km (620 miles). The A-50M variant has been modified to allow airborne refueling by Il-78 tankers, which can extend its loiter and surveillance time.

While a total of 40 were built, just nine were reported to be in operation when Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine almost two years ago.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org. 

Key Point: The vulnerability of the high-value B-21 Raider, a $700 million strategic bomber crucial to U.S. national security, to various cost-effective threats is an important point lost on many national security experts.

The Ghoul is a low-cost first-person-view Russian drone used successfully in Ukraine against $10 million Abrams tanks. At $500 per drone, the cost of a Ghoul measures in at a 1:20,000 ratio to that of the tank. 

The Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider will play a vital role in U.S. national security and strategic deterrence. What are some cost-effective “ghouls” that could take the glorious B-21 “angel” out of the sky? To find the answer, we start by asking what can fly faster, farther, or higher than the B-21. Other systems might not even need to match the Raider’s flight capabilities. 

The weapons in service, development, and theory that pose the most danger fall into four general categories, with some overlap: energy directed weapons (EDW), hypersonic glide vehicles (HGV), nuclear powered missiles (NPM), and orbital bombardment systems (OBS). 

EDWs overcome the need for greater speed or range. When fielded, energy directed weapons will offer the ability to point a laser or multiple lasers at the B-21 from satellites in space, ground-based systems, or airborne systems such as drones. This is an effective way to bring down the Raider – a $700 million aircraft – and its two pilots. 

The cost of the B-21’s arsenal also enters the equation. Equipping a B-21 Raider with a range of advanced munitions, including the modernized B61-12 nuclear bomb and precision-guided munitions like the AGM-158B JASSM-ER, JDAM kits, and AARGMs, could add at least $20 million to the Raider’s value while in flight. The inclusion of just one B61-12, after its Life Extension Program, represents a significant portion of this additional expenditure, potentially costing from $20 million to $22.5 million per unit. 

Sticking with the 1:20,000 ratio defined above, if an EDW fires and hits the Raider at a cost of $35,000 or less, that is the Raider’s ghoul. These threats are not yet fully online, but they will be. They will pose a significant threat to the B-21 when the Raider fully assumes its role as the Air Force’s workhorse bomber for the remainder of this century. 

Another cheap option is to detonate a tactical nuke in the vicinity of the Raider, which would not require a direct hit. Despite widespread aversion to using nukes, the exchange could be a bargain. 

The Raider’s baseball stats are classified, but we do know the B-21 is a strategic bomber with an emphasis on stealth. A more aerodynamic body built with materials that emphasize speed would make the bomber more easily detectable by radar. We can thus speculate that on the generous side, the B-21 has a maximum range of 6,500 miles with a top speed of no more than Mach 1, and a maximum ceiling of 55,000 feet. 

So what can fly faster, farther, or higher and threaten the flight of the B-21? 

A handful of Russian and Chinese ghouls fit the description. Three of them are hypersonic glide vehicles, including Russia’s Avangard as well as China’s DF-17 and DF-ZF. 

HGVs travel at speeds greater than Mach 5 with advanced maneuverability, making interception difficult. If deployed against a B-21, their hypersonic speeds would drastically reduce the reaction time available for the bomber to evade, or for defensive systems to intercept the missile. HGVs equipped with sophisticated targeting and guidance systems might exploit vulnerabilities in the stealth bomber’s defensive measures, especially if the HGVs are launched in a coordinated attack designed to saturate defenses.

At a reported speed of Mach 20, the Russian-made Avangard is 20 times faster than the B-21’s likely top speed. A human pilot might be able to outmaneuver the Avangard – the B-21 has longer staying power in the air compared to the Avangard and its range of about 3,700 miles. 

However, the conditions of such an encounter would not favor the Raider’s evasion. The Avangard would be launched atop an intercontinental ballistic missile, giving it a head start before it started gliding independently toward its target at hypersonic speed. Further, the B21 likely already flew at least a few thousand miles by the time it detected the Avangard, negating the advantage in range.

At a reported top speed of Mach 10 with a range of 1,200 miles, China’s DF-ZF grabs fewer headlines than the Avangard but is still a threat to the B-21. With a high speed of Mach 7 and a range of 1,400 miles, the DF-17 could threaten a B-21 as it approaches China. 

HGVs might become more lethal still as artificial intelligence is integrated into the weapons. AI might enhance the missiles’ evasion capabilities against missile defense systems, as well as improving decisionmaking and target recognition.

Russia’s SSC-X-9 Skyfall nuclear-powered cruise missile is still under development, but if Moscow deploys it, the device could pose a powerful threat to aircraft like the B-21. 

The Skyfall would use a nuclear reactor to heat air for jet propulsion, giving it potentially unlimited range and a speculated speed of Mach 4-6. The Skyfall could operate at various altitudes depending on mission phase and strategic requirements. It could sustain flight at low altitudes for stealth penetration, and reach higher altitudes to prioritize speed or range.

This is not the most obvious choice of weapon to pit against a B-21, but by virtue of its speed and unlimited range, if there were other offensive systems working against and distracting the B-21, the Skyfall could deliver a hit once the Raider runs out of fuel. A more aggressive Skyfall move would be to detonate within a range that would knock out the B-21. A less aggressive, peacetime move would be to trail the B-21, challenging the Raider’s stealthiness. The Skyfall could function like a nuclear submarine in the sky. 

The Skyfall is not available yet, but given that the B-21 will be the U.S.’ strategic bomber well into the latter half of the 21st century, it is reasonable to include the Skyfall as a potential threat. However, while the NPM would surpass the B-21 in range and speed, its price tag – perhaps $200 million per unit excluding R&D – lands it well short of “ghoul” status. Still, it will be cheaper than the $700 million B-21, not to mention the aircraft’s two pilots. Nor will the Raider’s $65,000-per-hour cost of flight time apply to the more economical NPM. 

In any confrontation between the two, time would be on Skyfall’s side. It could take all the time in the world while moving at speeds greater than Mach 4, with no pilot or plane fatigue. 

China’s F/MOBS (Fractional/ Multiple Orbital Bombardment System) also fits the bill. China has been actively pursuing an F/MOBS program, something the Soviets successfully tested as far back as 1969. 

The sheer volume and variety of threats posed by F/MOBS and HGV could challenge the defensive capabilities of even the most advanced stealth bombers like the B-21 – especially if an orbital bombardment system can effectively target airbases or known flight paths. 

Orbital or near-orbital assets can achieve extremely high velocities, significantly reducing reaction times for a lower-flying B-21, even at its likely maximum ceiling of around 55,000 feet. On this battlefield in the sky, MOBS would have the higher ground and superior numbers.

The B-21 represents an important component of the nuclear triad, but like any component, it has vulnerabilities. Defending a B-21 Raider against these threats depends on the advancement of early warning systems, electronic warfare capabilities, counter-hypersonic technologies, and propulsion of satellite-based weapons. 

For resiliency, the U.S. should counter on land with more effective and capable deterrents – for instance, it could increase the number of Sentinel ICBMs – while the Space Force should focus on the development of counterspace capabilities, and at sea, Washington should signal its support for the SLCM-N.

Alexis Littlefield, PhD, is Chief of Staff at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies and a Fellow of the Institute. He lived two decades in Taiwan and China.

Summary: On March 12, a Russian Su-27 fighter jet, crucial in the aerospace conflict dynamics, reportedly crashed near the Ukraine border in Valuyki, Belgorod. Circulating video footage shows smoke plumes, though details are unverified. Ukrainian figure Igor Suskho attributed the incident to the pro-Ukraine Russian Freedom Legion's activities, a claim not confirmed by Russia's Defense Ministry. The Su-27, a Soviet-era air superiority fighter designed to counter U.S. aircraft, remains integral to Russian air defense, despite controversies like China's unlicensed production. Its significance extends into the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war, with the aircraft engaging on both fronts.

The Russian Aerospace Forces reportedly lost another fighter jet on March 12 as a Sukhoi Su-27 crashed near the border with Ukraine. The supersonic fighter came down near the town of Valuyki, in the Belgorod region. Video footage quickly circulated online that showed plumes of smoke rising into the sky. The details have not been independently verified.

"Russian Su-27 fighter aircraft reportedly shot down over Belgorod, on the Russian side of the border with Ukraine, where the pro-Ukraine Russian Freedom Legion is currently active," wrote Ukrainian propagandist Igor Suskho on X. Suksho shared the video footage.

The Russian Ministry of Defense did not confirm the crash.

The Sukhoi Su-27 (NATO reporting name Flanker) was developed in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s to be the Kremlin's answer to the F-15 Eagle and the F-14 Tomcat.

The Flanker first entered service in the mid-1980s as an air superiority fighter. Its primary role was to be a long-range interceptor against U.S. Air Force strategic bombers such as the B-1B Lancer, B-52G, and H Stratofortress, while also protecting the Soviet Union's coastlines from aircraft carriers. It was further tasked as a long-range fighter escort for Soviet heavy bombers including the Tupolev Tu-95, Tupolev Tu-22M, and Tupolev Tu-160.

After the Soviet Union dissolved, the Flanker remained the backbone of the Russian Air Force throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. Many of the aircraft underwent a mid-life upgrade and were redesignated as the Su-27SM. The fighters were equipped with new avionics, and they were complemented by a small batch of newly built aircraft that also featured improved avionics and mission equipment. Those aircraft were designated Su-27SM3.

In the 1990s, Moscow began to produce the Flanker for foreign sales. Among the export models was the baseline Su-27SK, developed for China, which also received the Su-27UBK.

After the People’s Liberation Army received around 80 of the Russian-built aircraft, Beijing began to produce a licensed version. China angered Russia when it built 95 single-seat models designated as the J-11, a reverse-engineered version of the Su-27.  

The Su-27 has seen considerable service in the conflict in Ukraine.

In fact, the first Soviet unit to receive the Flanker was the 831st Fighter Regiment (now Brigade), which was based at Myrhorod, in the former Soviet Republic of Ukraine. The unit was considered to be among the best in the Soviet Union.

Around two dozen were still reported to be in Ukrainian service when Russia launched its unprovoked invasion in February 2022.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

Summary: China is on the brink of unveiling its highly anticipated Xi'an H-20 stealth bomber, a move that could significantly shift the strategic balance in the Pacific. First announced in 2016, the H-20 has remained shrouded in mystery, with sparse details emerging through state media and promotional videos hinting at its advanced flying wing design. Deputy Commander Wang Wei of the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has assured that there are no insurmountable challenges left in the bomber's development. The H-20, dubbed "Storm" by analysts, is poised to enhance China's long-range striking capabilities, potentially reaching as far as the U.S. West Coast with a payload of 45 tons. Comparisons have been drawn between the H-20 and U.S. stealth bombers like the B-2 Spirit and the forthcoming B-21 Raider. As the world awaits its official reveal, the H-20 signifies China's growing prowess in modern aerial warfare and its quest for a qualitative edge in nuclear and conventional strike capabilities.

The United States Air Force pulled out all stops in December 2022 when it officially unveiled the Northrop Grumman B-21 Raider at an event at the aerospace firm's testing and development facility in Palmdale, California. Now it appears that Beijing may go to similar lengths when it introduces its Xi'an H-20 stealth bomber to the world.

Chinese state media outlet Global Times reported on Monday that the strategic aircraft could be unveiled to the public soon. The aircraft was first announced by the People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) commander Ma Xiaotian in 2016, but since that time little official information has been released – apart from a video by the state-owned Aviation Industry Corporation of China in 2018 and a PLAAF recruitment video in 2021.

"Both videos featured computer-generated scenes of an unknown large aircraft covered in a blanket, with the aircraft's outline suggesting it boasts a flying wing design, but with no further elaboration," the Global Times reported.

"It's coming soon, just wait!" Deputy Commander Wang Wei further told Chinese state-owned newspaper Hong Kong Commercial Daily in an interview on Monday.

Wang, who is also a member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), added, "There is no bottleneck, and all problems can be solved. Our scientific researchers are progressing well, they are fully capable."

The H-20 has been described as "a new generation of new aircraft," and could greatly enhance China's aerial warfare capabilities.

"A generation of equipment brings a generation of combat effectiveness," Wang stated.

Even as details of the H-20 have remained sparse, the bomber has earned the moniker "Storm" by analysts, who have noted that China alongside the United States is one of the few nations possessing stealth strategic bombers. The H-20's introduction could potentially alter the strategic balance between the U.S. and China, particularly in the Pacific region, Newsweek reported.

As Brent Eastwood previously wrote for The National Interest, "A heavy-payload, deep-penetration bomber would help China alter the nuclear balance with the United States. There is no current arms control agreement with the United States, and Beijing is always looking for a qualitative nuclear edge over Washington."

He added, "The Xian H-20 could also bully China’s neighbors by reaching Japan, Guam, and the Philippines, not to mention pulling a surprise attack against Taiwan. It has an enviable range of around 5,281 miles if reports are accurate, and aerial refueling could make it to Hawaii – and even the West Coast of the United States. The H-20 could also have a weapons payload of 45 tons."

The Xian's flying wing profile has earned comparisons to the U.S. Air Force's B-2 Spirit bomber, as well as the upcoming B-21 Raider. However, few other details about the H-20 have been officially disclosed or made public. Last year, photos of the aircraft were reportedly published in the latest edition of Modern Weaponry, a magazine that is run by the state defense corporation China North Industries Group (Norinco). The four computer-generated images – if they can be believed – may have highlighted some of the bomber's capabilities.

Based on recent reports, the Xi'an H-20 likely has an internal weapons bay, two adjustable tail wings, an airborne radar at the front of the aircraft, and two stealth air intakes on each side. In addition, the entire bomber could also be seen covered in a dark gray radar-absorbent material.

It is also believed that the H-20 could be equipped with either conventional or nuclear missiles and that it would have a maximum take-off weight of at least 200 tonnes with a payload upwards of 45 tonnes. It has been further speculated that the aircraft could fly at subsonic speeds and could also be armed with up to four hypersonic stealth cruise missiles.

To date, few photos and even fewer details have ever been disclosed publicly. Yet, it is expected that the shape and size of the aircraft are similar to that seen in a promotional video that was posted to state media in January 2021.

Titled, "Dream of Youth," the recruiting video first appeared on YouTube on January 5, 2021, and it followed a pair of recruits – played by noted Chinese actors Jackson Yee and Wu Jing – as they join the PLAAF and become pilots. It ends with an unveiling of the aircraft that they'll be flying. In the closing moments of the video, a previously unseen bomber was revealed in a type of dramatic fashion normally reserved for automotive trade shows – as a white sheet covering the aircraft was removed, revealing a flying wing design with two intakes at the back of the airframe. Seen only in a reflection of one of the pilot's helmet visors it didn't provide a detailed look at the aircraft, but across social media, it was suggested the aircraft was in fact, the H-20.

That video was produced by the state firm Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the XAC. The early 2021 video followed a similar promotional "sizzle reel" that was released in May 2018, which also included a brief glimpse of a similar-looking aircraft partially exposed from under a sheet.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: H-20 Screenshot from YouTube. 

Summary: Russia has claimed to have destroyed a high-value MIM-104 Patriot air-defense system in Ukraine, marking a significant loss for Kyiv's forces. This comes after the reported destruction of U.S.-supplied M1 Abrams tanks and a HIMARS launcher. The Russian Ministry of Defense alleges the hit was achieved with a hypersonic missile on a Ukrainian convoy, initially believed to be transporting an S-300 launcher but later suggested to be a German-supplied Patriot system. This incident highlights the challenges Ukraine faces in protecting its air defenses while being stretched thin across multiple fronts. The loss of the Patriot, a key asset in Ukraine's defense strategy against aerial threats, underscores the ongoing intense warfare and strategic implications for Ukrainian air defense capabilities.

Following the destruction of at least three U.S.-supplied M1 Abrams main battle tanks (MBT), and a HIMARS mobile launcher, it now appears that Kyiv's forces may have seen the loss of one of its high-valued MIM-104 Patriot air-defense systems.

The Russian Ministry of Defense released a video that initially claimed to have destroyed a Ukrainian S-300 launcher using an Iskander ballistic missile, but additional analysis has suggested that it may have been a German-supplied Patriot – one of just three full batteries operated by the Ukrainian Air Force. The Russian hypersonic surface-to-surface missile reportedly scored a direct hit on a Ukrainian convoy that was spotted by a Russian drone.

This is the first loss of a Patriot PAC-2 air-defense system – each believed to cost around $400 million – in the more than two-year-long war. The Patriot has been a crucial component of Ukraine's air defenses, believed to have been responsible for shooting dozens of Russian aircraft and possibly hundreds of drones and missiles, including the Iskander.

However, to successfully counter a missile, the air-defense system must be deployed, which wasn't the case on Saturday when was part of a convoy moving to a new location. The Ukrainian Air Forces may have stretched too thin to protect its cities, ground troops, and the convoy. As a result of the loss, it will now be even further stretched.

As noted by Army Recognition, the MIM-104 Patriot anti-aircraft defense system was developed for the United States military, It is an advanced surface-to-air missile system designed to detect, track, and intercept an enemy's aircraft, tactical ballistic missiles, and cruise missiles. The Patriot can integrate high-performance radar and sophisticated computer systems for precise guidance and control, allowing for the simultaneous engagement of multiple threats.

It was one of the most sophisticated weapons that Washington provided to Kyiv last year, as it is capable of countering Russia's ballistic missiles, and unlike other air-defense systems supplied by the West, the Patriot can also strike targets at a much farther distance. U.S. officials had said it could help secure the airspace and thus protect NATO nations in Eastern Europe.

The Patriot system was developed in the 1970s to counter Soviet missiles. It uses an advanced aerial interceptor missile and high-performance radar systems. The MIM-104 gained prestige during the Persian Gulf War of 1991 with the claimed engagement of over 40 Iraqi Scud missiles. Ukraine has said that employed the Patriot system to shoot down Russian ballistic missiles, including the air-launched Kinzhal.

The Kremlin further claimed to have destroyed three launchers in total.

"The Iskander tactical missile system presumably wiped out three launchers of the US-made Patriot system near Pokrovsk," a source in the Russian military told state media outlet Tass, while the report added that the same strike also "liquidated Western mercenaries" who operated the missile systems.

Moscow has alleged that NATO troops rather than Ukrainian Air Force personnel of operated the launchers.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

Summary: The UK's Royal Navy faces challenges with its Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, which have encountered a series of setbacks including mechanical failures and operational limitations. Recently, HMS Queen Elizabeth experienced a minor fire while docked in Scotland, although damage was minimal and no one was hurt. Despite their combined cost of £7 billion, questions arise regarding their defense capabilities and operational independence, as the Royal Navy struggles with logistical support and an unclear mission for these carriers. Issues with HMS Prince of Wales, such as engine room leaks and mechanical breakdowns, underscore concerns about the reliability and effectiveness of these ships amid broader concerns about the UK's military readiness.

Much has been written about the Russian Navy's cursed aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov – but the UK's Royal Navy's flattops are proving to be nearly as problem-plagued. The $3.7 billion flagship HMS Queen Elizabeth­, which has already been sidelined due to an issue with her starboard propeller shaft, caught fire over the weekend while docked for repairs at Glen Mallan on Loch Long in Scotland.

The damage was reported to be minimal and there were no fatalities or injuries, while no ordnance was involved in the incident.

"A minor, isolated fire on HMS Queen Elizabeth was quickly brought under control and extinguished," a Royal Navy spokesperson told the UK Defence Journal.

The Royal Navy's two Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers were approved in 2007 by then-Prime Minister Gordon Brown. HMS Prince of Wales was almost canceled and scrapped even before it set sail due to concerns over funding, yet, it was determined that axing it would be more expensive than completing it.

HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Queen Elizabeth cost a combined £7 billion, but it is widely accepted the Royal Navy remains unable to adequately defend or operate them independently. The UK's senior service has just one solid stores ship, RFA Fort Victoria, to support the carriers and she is due to be retired in 2028.

As a result, the mission of the Royal Navy's carriers isn't exactly clear – a point made by Tom Sharpe of the UK's Telegraph newspaper, who offered this commentary:

"Our carriers are a great capability but even when they are fully formed, in some faraway time when we have a full complement of UK jets and other aircraft to put on them, they will never rival a US Carrier Strike Group for the breadth of capability and firepower. This doesn't mean they aren’t capable but they aren't as capable as that."

Sharpe further suggested that the Royal Navy's carriers are nowhere near being fully formed and equipped, warning there are gaping holes in the ships' airborne early warning, air-to-air refueling, and solid stores support – which includes food, jet parts, ammunition and ordnance, as well as other goods.

Though the fire on HMS Queen Elizabeth was minor – and shipboard fires aren't exactly uncommon – it served as a reminder of the problems with the Royal Navy's two carriers.

HMS Prince of Wales languished in a Scottish dockyard – the same one where HMS Queen Elizabeth is headed – after it broke down off the Isle of Wight in August 2022. Since her commissioning in 2019, HMS Prince of Wales has been laid up almost as much time as she's been at sea.

The carrier's problems have been serious and ongoing, putting into question her reliability. The issues began in early 2020, when the carrier suffered a leak in the engine room, followed by the collapse of an accommodation block.

The recent sidelining of the Royal Navy's flagship also comes as UK ministers have warned that the nation isn't sufficiently prepared to fight an all-out war amid stockpile shortages and an armed forces recruitment crisis. The Royal Navy once ruled the waves, now it can barely keep its carriers operational.

Perhaps that is why some in the British government may seek to cut the losses and sell off one of the carriers. The question is who would want to actually buy one?

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: Shutterstock. 

Summary: The U.S. Navy's Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines, set to replace the Ohio-class, face delays due to supplier issues, pushing the delivery of the lead vessel, USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826), to Fiscal Year 2028. Challenges include delays in the construction of the bow module at Huntington Ingalls Industries in Virginia and steam turbines by Northrop Grumman. The program, crucial for the U.S. strategic deterrent mission, is one of the Pentagon's most expensive, with an estimated total lifecycle cost of $347 billion. These submarines, the largest ever built by the U.S., feature advanced technology and a life-of-ship reactor.

The United States Navy's future Columbia-class nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines – which are set to replace the aging Ohio-class boats – could arrive later than expected according to reports that circulated late Monday. According to the Capitol Forum, the U.S. Navy is now forecasting at least a year-long delay to the acquisition program due to supplier problems.

USNI News further reported that the lead boat of the program is facing a delay due to supplier issues, and as a result, the future USS District of Columbia (SSBN-826) could be delivered in Fiscal year 2028 (FY28) instead of the previously planned FY27 delivery.

The largest hurdle is the lead boat's bow module, which is now under construction at Huntington Ingall Industry's Newport News Shipbuilding in Virginia and is far behind schedule. Moreover, the entire program is further facing delays from the steam turbines that Northrop Grumman is building for the U.S. Navy.

HII has been late in delivering other sections of the boat, which has delayed the timeline for the construction of SSBN-826.

"We're seeing stress across the industrial base and again I think putting this in the context of the Secretary's 45-day review will add additional depth and context to the challenges that we’re seeing across the shipbuilding portfolio and we expect to have that done fairly soon," Under Secretary Erik Raven told USNI News following the U.S. Navy's Fiscal Year 2025 budget briefing on Monday.

Originally known as the Ohio Replacement Program (ORP) or SSBN(X), until 2016, it called for replacing the Ohio-class subs with the new Columbia -class SSBNs beginning in the early 2030s.

The program's goal is to build a dozen of the new nuclear-powered submarines, and those boats will continue to support the U.S. strategic deterrent mission.

However, the program now appears to be running behind schedule, and the U.S. Navy may be forced to keep the Ohio-class subs in service longer than expected. The original plan called for the first of the SSBNs to be retired beginning in 2027, with an additional boat leaving the service every year until 2040. The Navy has already determined it would be possible to extend the service life of at least five of its Ohio-class subs by two to three years each so that the force would remain at 12 vessels or more for all but three years between 2024 and 2053.

Even before the delays were announced – which could raise the price tag – the Columbia -class SSBNs were on track to be one of the most expensive Pentagon programs. It was previously reported that the U.S. Navy would spend around $132 billion for the procurement of the dozen submarines, while the total lifecycle cost for the entire class is estimated at $347 billion.

That figure includes all projected costs to develop, buy, and operate the 12 submarines through 2042.

In its Fiscal Year 2019 (FY19) request, Navy officials asked for $3.7 billion for the Columbia-class program – a 97% increase over 2018, making it the second-most expensive program in the 2019 Pentagon budget request, next to the Lockheed Martin F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is operated by the U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy and U.S. Marine Corps.

Last October, a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) warned that the program risks running at least 20% over, or about $20 billion, due to potential delays.

The new SSBNs will be the largest submarines ever built by the United States. Each of the planned dozen boats will be 560 feet in length and have a beam of 43 feet.

The Columbia-class will be equipped with sixteen SLBM tubes, as opposed to twenty-four SLBM tubes on Ohio-class SSBNs. That will also reduce construction, operations, and maintenance costs. In addition, the new boats will utilize the joint American-British developed Common Missile Compartment (CMC), which will also be installed on the Royal Navy's new Dreadnought-class submarines. It was designed to launch the Trident II D5 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). The joint effort has been reported to save each nation hundreds of millions of dollars.

The new submarines will be longer, heavier, and feature a complex electric drive propulsion system and associated technology.

Unlike the preceding Ohio-class, the new ballistic missile submarines are being constructed with a life-of-ship reactor, which will result in a shorter mid-life maintenance period, and each was designed to serve a 42-year service life.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Summary: The Montana-class battleships, planned but never built, represent a bygone era of naval power. With their formidable armament and heavy armor, some suggest bringing them back or such an idea for such a warship amidst concerns over anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) threats posed by nations like China. However, the efficacy of such behemoths in modern warfare is questioned. A2/AD capabilities, exemplified by China, pose significant risks to surface warships, rendering even the mighty battleships vulnerable. The escalating use of drones in conflicts like the Ukraine War further underscores the challenges faced by large surface vessels. Despite their historical allure, the Montana-class battleships may remain impractical in today's contested maritime domains.

During the Second World War, the United States Navy possessed a fleet which had some of the world’s most powerful and most sophisticated (for their time) battleships in the world. These were known as the Iowa-class battleship—and they served the United States on-and-off from the 1940s until 1992, when the last battleship was decommissioned. Today, there are still calls to bring these warships, which are currently museums, back into service. But the US Navy was designing an even larger, more powerful, and sophisticated battleship to succeed the Iowa-class. 

That was the Montana-class battleship. 

While these glorious battlewagons were never built due to the fact that by 1943, it was obvious to most naval planners that the aircraft carrier had displaced the battleship as the Navy’s premier weapon in its arsenal of power projection. 

For almost 80 years, the carrier has ruled the high seas as the US Navy’s primary capital ship. Yet, America’s enemies have not sad idly by, watching the Americans sail the seven seas aboard their floating airbases. American rivals have judiciously devised strategies for negating the potency of America’s aircraft carrier fleet. This has become known as “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD). 

China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea are all in possession of advanced A2/AD capabilities (notably China). These systems threaten the very existence of any US surface warship—especially America’s massive and expensive aircraft carriers—that gets within range of these weapons. 

The Navy knows that its warships are vulnerable. 

No matter how great the ship’s onboard defensive systems are, China’s A2/AD swarms are designed to overwhelm those defenses. They don’t need to sink the US warships. They just need to disable them to such a point that they become wasting assets in a fight. 

Some analysts are looking for ways to retain power projection in a contested, A2/AD environment. This brings us back to those calling for the recommissioning of the four remaining Iowa-class battleships. But what if the US Navy looked to building (and updating) its old design concepts for the Montana-class battleship? 

After all, the Montana-class was originally designed to have 12, powerful 16-inch guns and even heavier armor than what the Iowa-class battleships had. The Navy had more plans to add truly potent 18-inch guns that could fire shells weighing over 2,000 pounds at enemy targets. Coming in at 64,000 tons, the Montana-class battleships would have been the biggest battleships in the US fleet if they’d been commissioned.

Eighteen-inch armor and massive guns sounds pretty good in the age of A2/AD defenses. The Montana-class battleships could take—and dish out—a serious pounding. The only problem is that, even if they were upgraded with modern weapons and equipment, the Montana-class battleship would be out of its proper time. 

Because the problem facing surface warships today is not that some are more capable of fighting—and surviving—in the contested battlespaces of A2/AD-wielding powers than others. The real issue is that the swarming capabilities of A2/AD means that no surface warship can really survive a protracted engagement with these systems.

Modern warfare among near-peer rivals is going to be fought increasingly at greater distances from previous wars. That’s not to say the surface ships are obsolete. But until the A2/AD threats to them are neutralized, they are wasting assets, whether it be America’s current fleet of expensive and large aircraft carriers or the possibly resurrected Montana-class battleship. 

Further, another reason opted to not follow through on its plans to build these battleships was because of the cost involved in maintaining them. They were fuel guzzlers and required much maintenance. 

These systems, therefore, would not be helpful today.

Beyond that, large surface warships are already being shown to be increasingly ineffective. The Ukraine War, which has entered its second grueling year, has demonstrated how surface warships are poorly defended from sophisticated drone attacks. The Russian Black Sea flagship, the Slava-class battlecruiser, the Moskva, was sent to the bottom of the Black Sea by the Ukrainian drones. Similar attacks have been conducted against other Russian surface ships in the Black Sea. 

The point is that the mighty Russian battlecruisers cannot hold up against the kinds of systems being referred to in this piece. While American warships are more advanced and their crews better trained than the Russians, it does not negate the fact that US warships operating within an A2/AD “bubble” will likely suffer a similar fate as did the Moskva. 

Sure, a modern variant of the proposed Montana-class battleship might be able to operate in a contested environment—and even open it up—because of its added armor and larger weapons platform. Ultimately, however, the law of numbers will sink those warships as readily as US aircraft carriers will likely be damaged or destroyed by Chinese A2/AD systems.

The Montana-class should stay on the drawing board. 

Brandon J. Weichert is a former Congressional staffer and geopolitical analyst who is a contributor at The Washington Times, as well as at American Greatness and the Asia Times. He is the author of Winning Space: How America Remains a Superpower (Republic Book Publishers), Biohacked: China’s Race to Control Life, and The Shadow War: Iran’s Quest for Supremacy. Weichert can be followed via Twitter @WeTheBrandon.

Summary: Since World War II, the US has avoided direct conflict with major powers but engaged with lesser foes. However, as adversaries like China advance their military capabilities, the invincibility of American aircraft carriers is questioned. China's technological advancements pose a significant threat to these carriers, raising concerns about their vulnerability in a potential conflict. The geographic deployment of carriers may now depend on public sentiment and perceived conflict significance. 

Wisely, the United States has avoided direct conflict with great and middle powers since the conclusion of World War II. The US has, however, during the same period, engaged consistently with less formidable foes, i.e., North Vietnam, Grenada, Panama, Iraq, the Taliban. The result has been a public and a military leadership inoculated against the hardships and horrors of great power conflict.

Simultaneously, the US has stockpiled the world’s largest fleet of advanced aircraft carriers. Costing many billions of dollars per unit and taking years to construct, the supercarrier has become a symbol of American global dominance and a practical tool for expanding American air power.

But as America built their supercarriers, and avoided conflict with great and middle powers, the subconscious notion of carrier invincibility took place.

The United States has never lost a modern aircraft carrier. Yet, lately, as adversaries (especially China) develop and stockpile weaponry capable of harming US carriers, observers are being forced to reconsider the aircraft carrier’s vulnerability, and relatedly, the aircraft carrier’s deployability.

An aircraft carrier is a remarkable machine. Running on nuclear power, capable of operating indefinitely, with upwards of 5,000 sailors and 100 aircraft aboard, the aircraft carrier is a modern city and a floating airbase – a key to the international projection of American power.

But, the aircraft is still just a boat with a hull, screws, bow, and stern. And boats, as the designers of the Bismarck or the RMS Titanic could tell you, are sinkable – mainly when targeted with weaponry designed specifically to sink boats.

America’s adversaries, most especially China, has developed technology that is increasingly likely to sink an American aircraft carrier. Xi has overseen one of world history’s most ambitious shipbuilding sprees, under which the Chinese Navy has expanded to include various attack submarines and surface vessels that could potentially harm a US carrier.

China is also expanding its own carrier fleet, which could launch aircraft capable of targeting an American carrier, in the sort of carrier-on-carrier conflict that the US hasn’t experienced since the Pacific Theater of World War II.

And the aircraft that China would launch from that aircraft is increasingly sophisticated, increasingly capable of slipping past defensive lines and landing a blow.

More concerning still, China has stockpiled intermediate-range missiles (which until recently, the US was treaty banned from possessing) and developed hypersonic missiles (which the US cannot yet reproduce or defend against). Either China’s intermediate or hypersonic missile arsenal could be used to target an American carrier with lethal results.

The point is: US carriers would likely be vulnerable in a direct conflict with a great power, i.e., China.

The US has spent several decades deploying their aircraft carriers worldwide, without much concern for the vessel’s safety. Now, however, an aircraft carrier’s safety may be geographically determined.

Would the US deploy their carriers to a region where the carrier is at heightened risk? That would likely depend on public sentiment and on the nature of the conflict.

If the US public is committed to the conflict, as they were during World War II; if the conflict is perceived and approached as if it were existential, then yes, the US would likely deploy their aircraft carriers without reservation for the prospective loss of fiscal treasure, military hardware, or human life.

But if the US public is not fully invested, if the population is divided, or apathetic, or skeptical, (as in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan) then American war planners would be less likely to risk the sinking of an aircraft carrier.

And if the public is not fully supportive of a conflict, the US may want to reevaluate the necessity of participating in the conflict.

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.  

Summary: The US Air Force is shifting its procurement strategy, opting for fewer F-15EX and F-35 aircraft in fiscal year 2025. With a $217.5 billion budget request, the focus is on modernization, readiness, and addressing evolving threats. Secretary of the Air Force, Frank Kendall, stresses the importance of competitive funding amidst global shifts. Core functions remain air superiority, global strike, and space operations. The proposal allocates funds for Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) and space capabilities. Additionally, efforts to combat inflation include improving quality of life and retaining skilled personnel. Despite fewer new jets, the Air Force aims to sustain its operational effectiveness.

The United States Air Force is now opting to do more with less, as it was announced on Monday that it will seek to acquire fewer Boeing F-15EX Eagle II and Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II aircraft in fiscal year 2025 (FY25). The Department of the Air Force unveiled a $217.5 billion budget request, which put a greater focus on modernizing the Air Force and Space Force while maintaining readiness to respond to current threats, and addressing key capability gaps while investing to manage risks that are increasing with time.

The $217.5 billion proposal that Congress will now consider for fiscal year 2025 includes $188.1 billion for the Air Force and $29.4 billion for the Space Force. If enacted into law, the Department of the Air Force's overall budget would grow by 1.1 percent, $2.4 billion, from last fiscal year's budget.

"I think that 2025, while difficult, is at a level that I think we can accept, and it will still allow us to make progress on the modernization we need," said Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall, who further stressed the importance of adequately funding the military for competitiveness in a rapidly evolving global landscape.

The FY 2025 budget was built for each service's unique mission, the department further suggested.

"The Air Force's core functions remain unchanged: air superiority, global strike, rapid global mobility, command and control, and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance," added Kristyn Jones, performing the duties of the Under Secretary of the Air Force. "The Space Force's efforts reflect the indispensable support that underpins all other joint operations and its continued transformation into a warfighting service to secure our interests in, from and to space."

According to the newly released budget proposal, the service would receive a $14.9 billion investment to enhance competitive capabilities and maintain air domain lethality, along with $24.9 billion to ensure unmatched ability to deliver global strikes around the world. A further $29.4 billion would be spent towards readiness while continuing to make maximum possible investment in modernization, with $4.7 billion to proliferate a multi-orbit missile warning architecture to counter near-peer threats.

The budget would also direct $3.4 billion towards the Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) Family of Systems to augment current and future platforms in highly contested environments. The NGAD program includes the Air Force's efforts to develop a manned sixth-generation air superiority fighter that would replace the aging F-22 Raptor. In addition, it calls for an unmanned component of so-called loyal wingmen to operate alongside the manned fighter.

In addition, $538 million for Agile Combat Employment was earmarked to build the right mix of capabilities to defend against current and future threats, while $6.2 billion would be spent towards commercial space launches and resilient space data network to deliver capabilities to the Joint Force in, from and to Space. The budget calls for $4.4 billion in funds for integrating satellite communications to increase space superiority by connecting and supporting our allies and partners.

The Department of the Air Force also acknowledged the practicalities of economic factors, and the FY25 budget proposal accommodates inflation and rising fuel costs, and for quality of life and retention of personnel.

This includes $42.9 billion to improve quality of life for Airmen and Guardians including a 4.5 percent pay raise, along with $1.1 billion for bonus and retention programs for 118,000 critically skilled positions.

The United States Air Force continues to struggle to meet recruiting goals and faces an ongoing shortage of pilots, and as a result, has increasingly offered bonuses to trained pilots to extend their service. In December, the latest retention incentives would pay pilots between $15,000 to $50,000 per year to commit to three- to 12-year contracts – up to $600,000 in total.

The biggest takeaway from the newly released budget proposal is that the United States Air Force could receive fewer new jets – notably the aforementioned F-15EX and F-35.

As Defense News reported, the service plans to buy 42 Lockheed Martin-made F-35As for $5.9 billion and 18 Boeing F-15EXs for $1.8 billion next year. That would be a reduction from the 48 and 24 fighters, respectively, the service originally expected to buy.

The Air Force had previously announced that it would cease acquiring additional F-15EXs after 2025 concludes, which will cap the entire fleet of Eagle IIs at 98 ­ six fewer than the 104 the service had been planning to buy. However, the Air Force's expected total purchase of 1,763 F-35As remains unchanged.

The F-15EX is a modernized variant of the F-15Eagle, which first entered service in 1979.

The Air Force also called for the culling of its current fleet by 250 aircraft in 2025, including 56 A-10 Warthogs, 65 older F-15 C and D Eagle fighters, 26 F-15E Strike Eagles with less-capable engines, 11 F-16 Fighting Falcons, and 32 Block 20 F-22A Raptors the service said would be prohibitively expensive to ready for combat.

Air Force officials have suggested that those retirements, if approved, would save the service more than $2 billion in fiscal 2025. However, they may face a fight from lawmakers in Washington, who have previously forced the service to retain its aging fighters.

Peter Suciu is a Michigan-based writer. He has contributed to more than four dozen magazines, newspapers, and websites with over 3,200 published pieces over a twenty-year career in journalism. He regularly writes about military hardware, firearms history, cybersecurity, politics, and international affairs. Peter is also a Contributing Writer for Forbes and Clearance Jobs. You can follow him on Twitter: @PeterSuciu. You can email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

Image Credit: U.S. Air Force. 

Despite the dramatic headlines, the leaked Russian military documents that discuss the conditions (including a Chinese invasion scenario) a beleaguered Moscow might resort to using nuclear armaments is not surprising. Nor should anyone be puzzled as to why the Russian military has contingency plans to cope with a possible Chinese invasion.

After all, one reason why progress was never achieved on drastically reducing tactical nuclear weapons, despite such proposals being on the table after the success of the 1987 INF Treaty, was that Russia has always seen tactical nuclear weapons as a last-ditch capability to protect the Russian state in the event of the complete collapse or defeat of its conventional military capabilities.

So, do these leaks, particularly about Russian plans to use such weapons to stop a Chinese invasion, change anything?

First, it is the job of military establishments the world over to envision and prepare for any scenario, no matter how unlikely. The United States maintained war plans for an invasion of Canada well into the twentieth century. Part of the calculations that informed the U.S. position on accepting limits on warship construction at the various naval conferences of the 1920s and 1930s was the possibility of a future conflict with Great Britain. Indeed, the very notion of capabilities-based planning (as opposed to scenario-based planning) assumes that the United States must be prepared to overcome capabilities rather than trusting the hands that wield those capabilities will be friendly and will not use them against the United States or its interests.  

While these documents were written between 2008 and 2014 during the Obama administration (in American terms, ancient history), the Russian general staff takes a long-term view. Current partners today—including Turkey and China—have, in the past, been strategic rivals. The Russian national security establishment remains guided by the maxim of Tsar Alexander III, who remarked that Russia's only true and enduring allies are its army and navy. In other words, Russia views its partnerships in fundamentally transactional and situational terms. Ankara and Beijing opposed Moscow in the past but cooperate today precisely because it is in their interests to do so. If that calculus changes, the relationship is also altered.

The founding editor of this journal, Owen Harries, once remarked that the United States “offers alliance on easy terms.” Washington assumes that allies would never have cause to turn against it. In contrast, Moscow believes that if it shows any sign of weakness or debilitation, its current strategic partners will see an opportunity to change the parameters of their relationship to their advantage. 

We have already seen this in the last two years as Russia expends the bulk of its power pursuing its “special military operation” in Ukraine while suffering considerable military losses from Ukrainian resistance plus economic damage imposed by Western sanctions. Under these conditions, both Turkey and China have been able to press for revisions to their partnership with Russia, especially in economic terms. Ankara is vital to the success of the “Eurasian roundabout,” which has enabled Moscow to blunt some of the impact of Western sanctions and shift the balance in both the Caucasus and the Black Sea in Turkey's favor. China has been able to change the terms of trade in getting Russian resources priced in renminbi and for China to receive additional discounts. If Russian power continues to decline, what might come next?

Two decades ago, Rajan Menon, in these pages, raised the prospect of a “reverse Manchurian” scenario where China, even if it did not formally annex formerly Russian territories in Siberia and the Far East (which previously had been part of the Chinese Empire) would be able to exercise de facto control. This feeds into the Kremlin’s long-standing geopolitical nightmare of a weakened Russia subdivided into Western European, Middle Eastern, and Chinese spheres of influence. 

Might these documents have been strategically leaked—at this particular point in time—to not so subtly remind China (and the United States) that Russia is contemplating a lower threshold for nuclear use as a warning against taking advantage of Russian weaknesses? The beauty of the leak is that the Kremlin can formally distance itself from the documents (and even claim that the documents are outdated) while still achieving its purpose. China is reminded that tangling with Russia would be costly, and Beijing’s aims and desires can be better accommodated by continued cooperation within the existing framework of China-Russia relations. Yes, the bear might be sick—but its claws remain sharp.

Nikolas K. Gvosdev is the director of the National Security Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Image: Shutterstock. 

Hungary’s dilatory approval of Sweden’s bid to join NATO brought much relief and high-fiving at alliance headquarters in Brussels. It took much diplomatic bribing of the pro-Russian Viktor Orban government in Hungary (as it did the ambivalent Recep Tayyip Erdogan government in Turkey) to get the unanimous vote of alliance countries to bring in another new member. To close the deal, Swedish prime minister Ulf Kristersson had to make a pilgrimage to Budapest bearing gifts—four Swedish-made Gripen fighter jets and a promise by Saab, the aircraft producer, to open an artificial intelligence research center in Hungary. The New York Times concluded that Hungary’s approval of Sweden’s accession sealed “a major shift in the balance of power between the West and Russia set off by war in Ukraine.” And the strutting and flexing within the alliance already seems to have started.

Sweden’s geography does provide several advantages for NATO vis-à-vis Russia. Swedish territory includes Gotland Island, which helps control entry to and exit from the Baltic Sea. With Finland and Sweden in the alliance, it will be easier to bottle up the Russian Navy inside the Baltic and prevent its breakout into the Atlantic Ocean. Because Russia’s nearby Kola Peninsula is home to two-thirds of Russia’s second-strike nuclear deterrent, Swedish territory also makes a great outpost to spy on developments. Finally, in any NATO conflict with Russia, reinforcing NATO’s Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia would be more accessible from Sweden. 

Of course, because of its essential geography, Stockholm had received quiet defense guarantees from Washington even before accession. However, the perception that the formal accession of Finland and Sweden into the alliance alters the balance of power in Europe vis-à-vis Russia has a significant downside, starting almost immediately. 

A significant disadvantage of alliances—outside of the potential for freeriding —is that with the security guarantee of the leader, less powerful countries gain confidence to pursue riskier strategies. The danger of this phenomenon is illustrated by the recent loose talk from some of Europe’s leaders, who met in Paris about sending their troops to Ukraine. French president Emmanuel Macron has always been more favorable to European-driven military action. He publicly announced last month that he would not rule out the dangerously escalatory step of deploying European troops to Ukraine. Although he emphasized that no consensus was reached among the European countries—“in an official, approved, and endorsed way”—he also asserted that “anything is possible if it is useful to reach our goal,” which he argued was to guarantee that “Russia cannot win this war.”

The Biden administration should temper any indications of a growing resolve among European nations to intervene directly in Ukraine. To date, although the United States military aid to Ukraine vastly exceeds the combined sum provided by the Europeans, the Biden administration has exercised appropriate caution on actions that could escalate the war into a direct conflict with nuclear-armed Russia. 

As the eruption of World War I teaches us, alliances can drag countries into catastrophic wars that nobody wants. Today, this caution is especially required given NATO’s Article V security guarantee, which considers an attack on one member as an attack on all. As the North Atlantic Treaty stipulates:

...[A]n armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all and consequently they agree that, if such an armed attack occurs, each of them, in exercise of the right of individual or collective self-defence recognized by Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, will assist the Party or Parties so attacked by taking forthwith, individually and in concert with the other Parties, such action as it deems necessary, including the use of armed force, to restore and maintain the security of the North Atlantic area.

Smaller alliance members spooked about Russia’s recent limited gains in the Ukraine war and encouraged by the perceived positive shift in the NATO-Russia balance with Sweden’s entry could very well entangle the United States in an escalation with the United States and Russian nuclear forces squaring off. Thus, President Biden needs to squash such brash and unwise talk among its ever-growing number of security clients in Europe.

Ivan R. Eland is a Senior Fellow at the Independent Institute and Director of the Independent Institute’s Center on Peace & Liberty. Dr. Eland graduated from Iowa State University with an M.B.A. in applied economics and a Ph.D. in Public Policy from George Washington University.

Image: Anette Holmberg / Shutterstock.com.

Summary: Despite being larger and more heavily armed, the Montana-class would likely be ineffective in modern conflicts, particularly against a technologically advanced adversary like China. The advancements in naval warfare, emphasizing speed and stealth over sheer firepower, render the concept of battleships outdated. Even if built, the Montana-class ships, now would be 80 years old, making them ill-suited for current strategic military needs, underscoring the evolution of naval priorities towards aircraft carriers and smaller, faster vessels.

The mighty Iowa was the last class of battleship the U.S. ever produced – but not the last it planned. Montana-class battleships were authorized for construction, intended to succeed the Iowa. But as the U.S. Navy began to appreciate the importance of naval aviation – and of the aircraft carrier – the Montana­ was deprioritized, and the class was ultimately canned.

Decades later, tensions with China are rising, and pundits wonder whether the U.S. naval fleet is adequately prepared for great-power conflict. Would the existence of something like the Montana class help the U.S. in a conflict with China? Short answer: probably not. 

“In the late 1930s,  the U.S. government, recognizing the deteriorating world situation, sought to rebuild US. Naval power,” Kyle Mizokami wrote for The National Interest. “The crash of the stock market in October 1939, as well as the Washington and London naval treaties, had slowed the growth of the U.S. Navy and reduced its tempo of peacetime operations. By 1940, however with fighting raging in Asia and Europe, it was clear the United States needed to beef up its defensive capability to deter attack – or to prosecute a war if it were dragged into conflict.”

The result? The authorization of the “Two Ocean Navy,” which included five Montana-class battleships meant to supplement the Iowa-class vessels.

A variety of designs were proposed for the Montana, all of which had one factor in common: The Montana would be significantly bigger. 

Now, the Iowa was not exactly small. Measuring 860 feet long and displacing 58,000 tons, the Iowa carried considerable heft. One design for the Montana, though, proposed an 860-foot-long vessel with a 64,500-ton displacement. The Montana also would have featured more firepower than the Iowa, with twelve 16-inch/50-caliber guns, relative to the Iowa’s nine. 

The Montana, while larger and more powerful than the Iowa, would also have been slower, and hence more vulnerable. 

China is increasingly well equipped to harm American surface vessels. Chinese President Xi Jinping, having stockpiled attack submarines, quick surface vessels, aircraft carriers, advanced aircraft, and intermediate-range and hypersonic missiles, is well equipped to challenge American naval presence in the Indo-Pacific. Large, slow vessels like the Montana would be at particular risk in such an environment. Certainly, the Montana class would contribute offensively – even by modern standards, she would pack a considerable punch. But the question is: Would she be able to survive?

Had the Montana class actually been built, the ships would all be 80 years old at this point – the oldest in the Navy. Eighty-year-old ships are, for a variety of reasons, unlikely to be big contributors in a 21st-century great-power conflict. 

So while the Montana represents capabilities that the U.S. Navy left on the table, unrealized, in preparation for World War II, those capabilities have long become outdated and would be ill-suited to conflict with China. 

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

Image Credit: U.S. Navy. 

Summary: U.S. aircraft carriers, formidable and nearly invulnerable since WWII, face new survivability concerns against modern adversaries like China. China's military expansion, including shipbuilding and missile stockpiles aimed at American vessels, highlights these threats. While carriers benefit from advanced missile defense systems and a robust support network aimed at evading detection and countering attacks, reliance on such defenses is seen as a last resort. The challenge of tracking and targeting these moving behemoths across vast ocean spaces has been mitigated by technological advancements, yet the potential vulnerability of these naval giants in conflict scenarios remains a pressing issue.

Can missile defense systems keep U.S. aircraft carriers safe in a conflict with an advanced adversary like China or Russia? Missile defense systems are a useful tool, and they increase a carrier’s survivability. But hopefully, preservation of the U.S. carrier fleet won’t come to rely on missile defense systems.

U.S. aircraft carriers have operated with relative impunity since the end of World War II. Nuclear-powered behemoths surrounded with an entire carrier strike group, America’s 11 operational supercarriers are hard to kill. 

But concerns have grown about the survivability of the aircraft carrier in a modern conflict environment. Enhancements to China’s military capabilities are especially worrying. China is in the midst of one of history’s most ambitious shipbuilding sprees, adding attack submarines, lithe surface vessels, and even aircraft carriers of their own. 

More concerning still, China has stockpiled intermediate-range missiles, hypersonic missiles, and anti-ship missiles – undoubtedly with American vessels in mind.

Hopefully, U.S. carriers would only rely on missile defense systems as a last resort.

“The first step in attacking a carrier is to find it,” the Lexington Institute wrote in 2001. “Most adversaries would have difficulty doing this as long as the carrier remains in the open sea, takes prudent evasive actions, and actively counters efforts at detection.”

China would need to monitor millions of square miles of ocean in any conflict with the U.S.. “For instance,” Forbes reported, “the South China Sea, comprising a fraction of the area that China would need to monitor in a conflict, consists of over 1.4 million square miles of ocean.”

If an adversary can find an aircraft carrier, the adversary must then continuously track it, “because a carrier is likely to be far from the location where it was first detected by the time weapons arrive there.”

Two decades ago, “few if any nations” had “an assured capacity to track carriers continuously,” the Lexington Institute wrote. “All of the relevant methods – radar, electronic eavesdropping, electro-optical and acoustic sensors – have major drawbacks such as high cost, vulnerability to pre-emption, and inability to precisely discriminate.”

China has worked to augment its carrier-tracking abilities in recent years, launching “half a dozen electronic intelligence satellites into low earth orbit,”Forbes reported. But “the U.S. could degrade such satellites using both kinetic and non-kinetic means.”

And should an adversary find and track a carrier, the ship may still depend on an integrated defensive network.

“The carrier commanding a carrier can expect to have diverse defensive assets stationed within reach of his or her constantly moving vessel – Aegis air-defense destroyers, Virginia-class attack subs, overhead assets, etc. – all networked together into a layered defensive system that detects any approaching threats,” Forbes reported. “Once identified, each threat is assigned the optimum sensors and weapons to assure early interception, even if they are on different warships scattered across the ocean.”

The defensive measures surrounding an aircraft carrier are layered and redundant. “The architecture of the defensive perimeter dictates that if an enemy penetrates one layer of protection, it will then face another, and another,” Forbes reported. “So even if the adversary can find a carrier in the vastness of the Western Pacific, the likelihood its weapons will reach the carrier and do serious damage is not great.”

Still, given the time, money, and human capital invested in each aircraft carrier, the mere hint of vulnerability is concerning. 

Harrison Kass is a defense and national security writer with over 1,000 total pieces on issues involving global affairs. An attorney, pilot, guitarist, and minor pro hockey player, Harrison joined the US Air Force as a Pilot Trainee but was medically discharged. Harrison holds a BA from Lake Forest College, a JD from the University of Oregon, and an MA from New York University. Harrison listens to Dokken.

Aircraft Carriers in the Age of Near-Peer Warfare: The U.S. Navy's Strategic Pivot: The U.S. military in recent decades fought against weaker states such as Iraq, or against non-state groups like al-Qaeda, the so-called Islamic State, and the Taliban. The U.S. Navy used its aircraft carriers for ground support missions during these operations. Carrier battle groups didn’t have to worry about enemy long-range munitions, sabotage, submarines, or air attacks. 

Now that the Global War on Terror is largely over and near-peer conflict is back on the menu, carriers will have a harder job on the battlefield. But would the U.S. military really risk its aircraft carriers in a war with Russia or China?

Aircraft carriers are mighty expensive. The latest carrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, cost American taxpayers $13 billion. Although subsequent ships of the class will cost less, their price tag will still hover in the several billions. 

The total fleet of U.S. aircraft carriers cost nearly $60 billion. This number covers only the carriers themselves. It does not include the expensive fighter jets they carry, such as the F-35B/C Lighting II, F/A-18 Super Hornet, and EG-18 Growler, or the supporting warships of the carrier battle group. 

Meanwhile, near-peer adversaries have developed advanced capabilities that pose a significant threat to these invaluable assets. China in particular has been investing heavily in missile technology. It is also creating a robust anti-access/aerial denial bubble in strategic areas in the Indo-Pacific in an attempt to prevent U.S. aircraft carriers from entering a potential conflict. 

In sum, aircraft carriers are very expensive, and U.S. adversaries have more powerful options than they did in the past to destroy, sink, or restrict them. 

Considering this combination of factors, a logical question that comes up is whether U.S. aircraft carriers are now relegated to fighting wars only against those who can’t fight back.

The answer is no. 

The Pentagon spends so much money on aircraft carriers because they are still the ships that can determine a naval battle and influence the course of a war. Advances in technology might mean that carriers are once more vulnerable to enemy fire – much like they were in World War Two – but there hasn’t been a “Midway moment” to turn the carrier battle group obsolete. 

The Navy should adjust its fire and invest more in light aircraft carriers to complement its supercarriers. More ships would divide adversary resources and increase overall survivability, providing the time and resources necessary to prevail. 

The “Lightning Carrier” concept that pairs amphibious assault ships – essentially small aircraft carriers – with advanced fighter jets like the F-35B Lightning II can still achieve a lot on the battlefield and help determine a naval clash. More of these ships, coupled with investment in anti-missile technologies such as directed-energy weapons and hypersonic munitions, could be decisive factors in the next near-peer conflict.

Stavros Atlamazoglou is a seasoned defense journalist specializing in special operations and a Hellenic Army veteran (national service with the 575th Marine Battalion and Army HQ). He holds a BA from Johns Hopkins University and an MA from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). His work has been featured in Business Insider, Sandboxx, and SOFREP. Email the author: Editor@nationalinterest.org.

The war in Gaza has not only resulted in a ghastly loss of life for Israelis and Palestinians, but it has also added to the burdens the United States faces in a world it no longer dominates. Conflicts rage in Ukraine, Gaza, Myanmar, the Sahel, Sudan, and potentially in Taiwan and Iran. Right-wing populism is rising in rich and poor countries, dividing societies into militant camps of the people versus the elite. Three decades after the Cold War ended, the envisioned community of nations linked together by a rules-based system of international relations modeled on America’s liberal-democratic values now seems like a gossamer dream.

The convergence of regional crises and far-right populism presents a formidable challenge for the United States and the stewardship of President Joe Biden. As explained in the Biden administration’s National Security Strategy, global peace and prosperity require containing countries that combine authoritarian governance with a revisionist foreign policy, strengthening alliances in Europe and the Indo-Pacific, and building partnerships in developing regions.

Alas, the Biden administration is seeing the trees but not the forest. Like every administration that has preceded it since the end of the Cold War, it is stovepiping the world into a discrete set of regional problems that it seeks to manage with rhetorical exhortation and technocratic ingenuity. What elected officials from the Left to the Right fail to see is that the turbulence we are experiencing is part of a panoramic upheaval on the part of emerging and developing states that seek a redistribution of global power. They may favor a rules-based order, as Indian foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar has said, so long as it does not compromise their interests. A “world order that is still very, very deeply Western,” he bluntly put it, is giving way to a multipolar world.

Although it is unclear what framework will emerge from the current geopolitical disorder, the United States must prepare for a world in which power politics rather than liberal ideals will prevail. To preserve international stability, the United States and the West will need to devise new rules of the road in concert with autocracies such as China and the middle powers so that they will become stakeholders in the global order they helped create.

Dominance and Decline

Military Might: For some scholars and policy analysts, multipolarity is an oversimplification of reality. Given the competition for primacy between the United States and China, political scientist and former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government Joseph S. Nye, Jr argues the world is also bipolar. On a military basis, he maintains, it is unipolar. To be sure, China is developing its nuclear arsenal, Nye points out, but America’s military footprint is unmatched. With 750 bases in eighty nations and a network of alliances and partnerships, the United States fields a technologically innovative fighting force that receives 12 percent of all federal spending.

Even so, the U.S. military might not have inhibited Russia from invading Ukraine or China from threatening to bring Taiwan under its control by force. Indeed, the prospect of a larger war in Europe or a clash with China has understandably prompted caution in Washington. Competition from America’s adversaries is still more worrisome. Despite slowing economic growth, China is steadily chipping away at America’s dominance. It is rapidly modernizing its military, including an expanding nuclear force of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the construction of some 350 new missile silos, longer-range sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and new DF-17 medium-range missiles equipped with hypersonic glide vehicles.

Benefiting from an average of more than 9 percent GDP growth since the late 1990s, China now possesses the world’s largest navy, one that aspires to blue-water capability. Its Jin-class nuclear submarines are equipped with longer-range SLBMs, which can target the northwestern part of the United States as well as Guam, Alaska, and Hawaii. Despite China’s sagging economic growth, the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) is projected to have 356 battle-ready vessels by 2033, while the United States expects a reduction of its fleet to 290 by the end of this decade. China persists in militarizing atolls and islets in the South China Sea and is expanding its military presence in the Middle East, Africa, and the South Pacific.

Russia’s militarily disastrous invasion of Ukraine aside, Moscow continues to update its nuclear force. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) anticipates economic growth of 2.6 percent in 2024 thanks to continued energy exports. Moreover, Russia will allocate one-third of its budgetary spending to defense this year. It plans to modernize the dual-capable Iskander-M short-range ballistic missile system, which is deployed in Kaliningrad, and develop new delivery vehicles such as the land-based (and dual-capable) 9M729 cruise missile Washington has declared a violation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Russia is also developing the Sarmat ICBM, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle, and a submersible nuclear-powered drone releasable from submarines to attack carrier groups and potentially cities along the U.S. coast.

Other U.S. adversaries’ military arsenals are also growing. Iran has increased its defense cooperation with Russia since the outbreak of war in Ukraine, including the supply of drones and possibly surface-to-surface ballistic missiles. Iran intends to acquire Russian technology and military equipment to increase the accuracy and lethality of its short- and medium-range ballistic missile forces, naval forces, and air and defense assets. As for its nuclear program, Iran has increased its enrichment of uranium up to 60 percent uranium-235, which is close to weapons grade. To sustain combat operations in Ukraine, Russia has also turned to North Korea to supply it with artillery shells and other munitions such as rockers and howitzers. The price Kim Jong-un will likely demand for such assistance is Russian missile and satellite technology. With its successful test of a solid-fueled hypersonic missile, North Korea now has a delivery system with the range, reliability, and maneuverability to strike American territory. Although the size of its nuclear arsenal is unknown, it is estimated that North Korea could have enough fissile material for more than 100 weapons.

Economic Primacy: America is likewise the world’s paramount economic power. U.S. per capita income is 30 percent higher than that of Western Europe and 54 percent higher than that of Japan. At the end of the Cold War, the corresponding figures were 24 percent and 17 percent, respectively. Median wages continue to rise, as does productivity, because of the efficiency of labor and capital inputs. Immigration, the expansion and mobility of the workforce, and a high fertility rate (compared to other wealthy nations) have increased the working-age population by 30 percent over the past three decades, compared to 13 and 7 percent, respectively, for Europe and Japan.

Innovation in the workplace and skill levels have also risen. More American universities and corporations are considered among the world’s best than those of any other country. Six of the world’s ten biggest corporations in terms of sales, profits, and market value are American, according to Forbes magazine, and roughly half of the top twenty. Evaluated by market capitalization alone, eight of the top ten and sixteen of the top twenty are American.

The U.S. share of world GDP has been halved from the statistically aberrant 50 percent it enjoyed after World War II. The United States currently accounts for slightly more than 25 percent of world GDP at market exchange rates, a figure that has remained relatively constant since 1990. China and the European Union (EU) each represent roughly 18 percent, and the Asia-Pacific region’s share is about 37 percent. However, at purchasing power parity rates, America does not fare as well. In contrast to the Asia-Pacific’s share of 45 percent—19 percent of which is contributed by China—the United States, like the EU, represents about 15 percent of the total.

American universities and corporations also no longer enjoy the commanding heights they have in the past. The number of American universities in the top 100 declined from forty-three in the Times Higher Education survey of 2018 to thirty-four in the 2022 compendium. In the London-based Quacqarelli-Symonds study, American universities represented half of the top ten in 2022 as opposed to six in 2010, and ninety-one of the 177 reviewed in 2022 declined in rank. A comparable trend is discernible in the rankings of American corporations. Measured by market capitalization, American firms accounted for eight of the global top ten in 2022 versus six in 2000. Using metrics such as revenues, profits, and assets, however, Forbes ranked only three American corporations in the top ten and five in the top twenty in 2010. In the 2023 global list released by Forbes, China accounts for three of the top ten.

China is not the only rising economic power in the global transition. Although only one of its corporations is ranked in the world’s top fifty by Forbes, India accounts for nearly 7.5 percent of global GDP. It is now the world’s fifth-largest economy at market prices and third-largest in purchasing power parity. With a younger and highly educated labor force and annual economic growth forecasted by the IMF to exceed 6 percent over the next five years, Morgan Stanley expects India to become the third-largest economy by 2027, surpassing Germany and Japan.

China and Europe are also encroaching on America’s technological dominance. In 2020, the United States accounted for about 25 percent of global R&D investment versus 69 percent in 1960. China has increased its share from 4.8 percent of global spending in 2000 to 23 percent in 2020, and Europe accounts for around 22 percent. China is far and away the largest producer of patents, more than double that of the United States. It is also the largest market for electric vehicles. It sold 22 million passenger vehicles in 2022, compared with less than 13 million in Europe and the United States. Fearful of the competition from cheaper and technologically superior Chinese cars, the European Union is threatening to raise tariffs on its imports, which Beijing is countering by opening a factory in Hungary. The Biden administration may follow suit, prodded by pressure from the bipartisan United States House Select Committee on Strategic Competition between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party to ban an array of imports.

As growth of 4.9 percent in the third quarter of 2023 attests, the United States has nonetheless continued to demonstrate its economic resilience despite the great recession of 2008-09 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Powered by the Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act, CHIPS Act, and Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the United States has created roughly 14 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and unemployment has declined to 3.7 percent. China, meanwhile, is stagnating under massive government debt and deflation from an unraveling property market, slowing exports, an aging population, and inflexible leadership.

Still, it may be premature to herald the new American renaissance as New York Times columnist David Brooks has done. The increase in America’s GDP relative to Europe’s is partly a function of the euro’s declining value. And while China’s sputtering economy may replicate the economic crisis in Japan after its asset bubble burst in 1990, regional growth rates historically fluctuate. Asia produced 61 percent of world output in 1820 compared to 25 percent from Europe, only 20 percent in 1950, but 48 percent in 2018 versus Europe’s share of 15 percent.

To be sure, declining energy prices and the apparent end of the Federal Reserve’s interest rate hikes have increased the prospect of a soft landing. Even though inflation fell to 3.1 percent by the end of 2023, the message from the index of leading economic indicators is that a recession may lie ahead, according to the Conference Board. U.S. growth is further likely to be hampered by China’s continuing economic struggles. China is the largest trading partner of some 120 countries, including Japan, South Korea, the Association of Southeastern Asian Nations (ASEAN), and the EU. It is America’s third-largest export market and the largest purchaser of U.S. treasury bonds. While China’s deflationary spiral has benefited countries battling inflation, anemic demand has hurt exporters of industrial goods as well as the tourism industry.

By the same token, the prospect that China will recover from its current malaise should not be dismissed. According to a study by the Australian Strategy Policy Institute, it enjoys a technological lead over the United States in thirty-seven of forty-four fields, from AI to robotics. China graduates 1.4 million engineers annually and dominates the supply chain of rare earth materials, controlling 70 percent of their extraction and 90 percent of the processing.

The threat to American economic primacy presented by China’s trade-distorting subsidies and theft of intellectual property is only one of the reasons the Biden administration has opted for industrial policy. Bidenomics also aims to produce new manufacturing jobs for working- and middle-class Americans. Critical of the inequality produced by unfettered free trade, Biden avers that industrial policy will lead to a more egalitarian and geopolitically secure society.

Both propositions are dubious. China has already responded to Washington’s ban on the export of computer chips by restricting exports of gallium, germanium, and graphite—elements used in semiconductor manufacturing, fiber-optic networks, and military kits—and more recently, graphite, a component of electric vehicle batteries. Expanding supply chains to other producers of rare earths is economically prudent. But even if the United States can find alternative sources in, say, Vietnam, Australia, India, or Peru, it is not likely to erode China’s dominant position or alter the reality that America’s Indo-Pacific partners remain dependent on their economic ties with Beijing. Industrial policy is far more likely to reinforce the tit-for-tat dynamic that is playing out between Washington and Beijing and divide the world into competing blocs.

Industrial policy will also undermine the efficiencies of the international trading system that lowered the cost of goods and raised real incomes during the 1980s and 1990s. While it is true that cheap Chinese imports destroyed manufacturing jobs in the industrialized world, the decline mainly resulted from the labor-cutting efficiency of modern technology and shifting comparative advantage. The cumulative effects of economic nationalism will raise the cost of goods to American consumers and inhibit innovative research on climate change. Industrial policy has already prompted the EU to launch a “Buy Europe” project to incentivize the domestic production of green technology and semiconductors. India, South Korea, Australia, and Canada are acting correspondingly.

The United States and other wealthy nations’ gravitation toward protectionism and deglobalization will further create hardships for low-income countries, which lack the ability to provide lavish subsidies to domestic producers. Worse, it will erode the economic progress they have made since 1990 in raising the incomes of the world’s poorest populations. Protectionism will constrict participation in global value chains, deprive poor countries reliant on farming of export income needed to pay for imports and cover debt service for loans and create more failed states, thereby sabotaging economic development and intensifying global instability.

Political Authority: In confronting the geostrategic challenges posed by Russian revanchism and Chinese militancy, the United States remains the keystone of its alliances in Europe and Asia. However, the uncontested political power that it wielded during the Cold War and in the decade after the collapse of the Soviet empire is fading. Shifting geopolitical interests and alignments among emerging regional powers who demand a voice in global governance is a major reason. Dissention between the United States and its allies in Europe and Asia on a host of global threats is another.

Intent on asserting their views, countries in the rich and developing world have increasingly impugned Washington’s policy preferences. In some cases, dissent has been broad-based; in others, powerful voices have stymied the United States. Undeterred by President Bill Clinton’s opposition, Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy challenged the world to ban landmines, which produced 164 signatures to the Ottawa Treaty in 1997. Though many countries joined the “coalition of the willing” in the second Gulf War in 2003, U.S. military action was publicly opposed by France, Germany, Russia, and the European Parliament, as well as by Latin America, the Arab League, and the African Union.

The collapse of the Doha Round of trade negotiations in 2008, on the other hand, resulted from Sino-Indian insistence on agricultural subsidies over U.S. objections. In 2010, Brazil and Turkey defied President Barack Obama’s decision to ratchet up sanctions on Iran, reviving earlier proposals for a fuel swap deal. Although the Obama administration proceeded with its sanctions resolution, Turkey and Brazil had both contested Washington’s authority and elevated their international status.

Continuing criticism of the West for its quasi-colonial dominance of the international economic and political order further reflects the Global South’s clamor for a voice in international decision-making. Irritated by the persistent gap in GDP per capita between North and South, developing countries have long sought to curb the de facto veto power the United States and Europe enjoy as respective heads of the World Bank and IMF. The Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank created by China in 2016, which now numbers 109 countries, and the BRICS Development Bank have emerged as a sort of second Bretton Woods to challenge the West’s dominance.

Thirty-five countries have more recently registered their resentment toward the rich world by abstaining from censuring Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in the United Nations vote in October 2022. Many have chastised the United States for provoking the conflict, deriding the hypocrisy of the rules-based order that sanctions Russia but ignores Israel’s unremitting absorption of Palestinian territory.

Emerging powers are also becoming more transactional in their relationships with global adversaries. Although Indian prime minister Narendra Modi implicitly reproached Russian president Vladimir Putin in the fall of 2022, saying, “Today’s era is not an era of war,” India has expanded its trade ties with Russia. Along with China, Turkey, and Brazil, it has massively purchased discounted Russian oil, which helps Moscow sustain its war. A founding member of the BRICS, India has joined the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue along with the United States, Australia, and Japan to counter China’s growing influence in Asia. Yet India remains reliant on China for cheap consumer goods and the critical semiconductor chips and circuit boards on which its industries depend.

Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan is equally keen to give Turkey the global status the Ottoman Empire once held. Defying Washington’s warnings, Erdogan purchased the S-400 missile defense system from Russia. He has denounced Russia for its invasion of Ukraine but abstained from joining the West’s sanctions regime lest it provoke economic reprisals from Moscow. Even so, Turkey and Russia have backed opposing sides in the civil wars in Syria and Libya. Erdogan displayed similar transactional behavior in the summer of 2023 when he agreed to support Sweden’s accession to NATO to ensure the purchase of F-16s from the United States, which followed in January.

Other emerging and developing countries that favor a multipolar world order are similarly inclined to straddle tensions between the West and the China-Russia strategic partnership. Though it is a “major non-NATO ally” of the United States, Brazil has opposed the dominance of the U.S. dollar in international trade. During a visit to China in April 2023, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva called for the de-dollarization of international trade and urged the BRICS group of nations to devise their own currency. Aspiring to a larger role on the world stage, Indonesia, an emerging power in Asia and chair of the 2022 G20 summit, has indirectly chided the United States for its “megaphone diplomacy” on Ukraine and refused to take sides in the Sino-American competition. However, it has criticized China’s claims in the South China Sea, conducted military exercises to safeguard its maritime interests and increased defense spending by 20 percent in November 2023.

Concerns about the impact of U.S. sanctions on Russia have prompted some countries to settle payments in renminbi, as Singapore and Malaysia have done. However, the main reason for the Global South’s interest in de-dollarization is the growing trade with and aid from China. ASEAN’s trade with China more than doubled in 2022, now accounting for one-fifth of the region’s global trade. Trade between Brazil and China rose to $154 billion in 2022. Not only is China the lender of first and last resort for many developing countries, but it is also the principal supplier of developmental aid to sub-Saharan Africa. Brazil is also increasing its commercial presence in Africa. India, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates are also involved.

Even smaller countries assert their interests in a world that seems increasingly unmoored. Tiny Qatar, home to a U.S. air base and a haven for exiled Hamas leaders, has assumed a surprising diplomatic presence in the world. It helped to evacuate tens of thousands of people from Afghanistan following the Taliban takeover in 2021 and mediated the release of Israeli hostages and wounded Palestinian fighters in the war in Gaza. At the other end of the spectrum, the Houthis, a militant Shia sect in the failed state of Yemen financed by Iran, have attacked commercial vessels in the Red Sea in retaliation for Israel’s offensive in the Gaza war. To protect shipping through the Red Sea and Suez Canal, the United States and the United Kingdom have launched airstrikes against Houthi missiles, which could provoke a military response from Iran.

Depending on their outcomes, a raft of global elections in 2024 could exacerbate turbulence in world politics. Though Xi Jinping has thus far exercised restraint, the victory by the Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s presidential election on January 13 will certainly increase friction between Beijing and Taipei. The U.S. presidential election in November 2024 will likely have a more profound effect on international stability.

A second term for Biden would result in a continuation of policies pursued during the past three years. International turbulence would persist, but sufficient guard rails would be in place to contain it. If Donald Trump regains the White House, however, a winners-versus-losers standard would replace Biden’s democracy-versus-autocracy argument, which would redound to the benefit of Xi, Putin, and other tyrants. Trump’s continued indifference to democratic values would reinforce the Global South’s perception that the rules-based order is a hypocritical contrivance to justify Western dominance. The planned 10 percent tax on all imports Trump has proposed would cripple global trade, provoke beggar-thy-neighbor policies not seen since the interwar period of the twentieth century, and set relations with Beijing on a collision course.

Moreover, America’s support for Ukraine would wither, as would any prospect of negotiations. The prospect of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would end, and the United States would abandon any interest in the Middle East save for drawing closer to Saudi Arabia. America’s alliances in Europe and Asia, which Biden has restored, would languish or cease to exist. Putin would expand westward, probably starting in the Baltic States. The United States would avoid a conflict with China, however, because Trump is likely to concede Taiwan to China.

Toward a More Stable World

The turmoil that engulfs today’s world is the antithesis of the liberal-democratic order that Washington confidently envisioned would reshape the world in America’s image. As it happened, the United States failed to see that resurgent nationalism, historical grievances, and, beginning with the Yugoslav wars, recurring violence were incompatible with a world bounded by America’s values. The current disorder may presage a return to the balance-of-power system that maintained an uneasy equilibrium prior to World War I or succumb to the anarchy of the Hobbesian state of nature. But it could transmute into a stable world order, the emergence and persistence of which will depend on a mutuality of interests to sustain it rather than a vague rules-based order that lacks universal consent and thus validity in international law. Determined by non-Western and Western countries, democracies and autocracies, the rules must be consensual, enforceable by the stakeholders when disruptions of peace occur, and subject to dispute settlement by the principal parties to the dispute and the larger international community.

Restoring America’s commitment to the United Nations as the global forum for reasoned debate and conflict resolution will contribute to stability. The United States should cease its penchant for responding to the collective will of the UN, a body it conceived as an option rather than an obligation. It should further assume a leadership role in extending UN Security Council membership on a permanent and/or rotational basis to countries from the developing world so that every region shares a stake in preserving international stability.

Even though it will no longer be the sole rule-maker, the United States will still play a vital role in ensuring the stability of the evolving world order. Militarily, it will be incumbent on Washington to balance the competing interests of major adversaries such as China and Russia and regional powers. Both to deter countries from unwelcome actions and to respond to threats, it will be important for the United States to maintain a robust and operationally ready military force, restrict access to certain dual-capable technologies, and champion arms control agreements. Strengthening relations with America’s allies in Europe and Asia, as the Biden administration is doing, and, in concert with China, harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to control its destructive power will be critical to preserving U.S. security and geopolitical stability.

Maintaining a dialogue with America’s adversaries is essential. This is especially important with China, where the United States has a codependent relationship in trade and investment. Unfortunately, partly out of ignorance and partly out of fear that U.S. global preeminence is ebbing, Americans on the Right and Left have demonized China as the latest anti-Christ. If its history is any guide, it seems unlikely that Beijing’s ambition is to control the world, its military modernization and power projection in the South China Sea notwithstanding. More plausibly, China wants to be recognized by Washington as a great power with core interests no less important than those of the United States.

The thaw in U.S.-China relations that has followed the Biden-Xi summit last November is a positive sign. But it beckons more than opinion-page cheerleading to evolve substantively. At the very least, the Biden administration should end its industrial policy and unwind trade sanctions against Beijing, which are bad for American business and the public and unlikely to impede Chinese trade with Southeast Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Protectionism intensifies bilateral hostilities and elevates the risk of military confrontation.

Restoring free trade will pay economic as well as geopolitical dividends. In an increasingly competitive world, creativity and innovation will be the key to comparative advantage. Instead of raising import barriers to contain China’s rise, the United States should seek to regain its former leadership in science and technology by increasing government R&D spending in semiconductors, robotics, quantum computing, AI, and medical science. The objective should be to increase investment to the level it had reached two decades ago.

Lastly, the United States can remain a powerful force for political and economic liberalism in the world. Liberalism has not outlived its purpose, as Putin self-servingly claimed before the G20 summit in 2019. True, only 8 percent of the world’s population lives in a fully functioning democracy, but more than half of the world’s population will go to the polls in 2024 to voice their individual opinions. Rather than lecture the developing world to practice democracy, like nineteenth-century circuit riders preaching the gospel in rural America, the United States can again become a model for others to emulate. To do so, it must dampen the culture wars that divide the country into hostile camps, reduce crime, resolve the border crisis, increase educational opportunities and skills training for women and minorities, acknowledge the reality of value pluralism, and increase developmental aid to the most vulnerable societies, as China and other countries have done.

Good intentions aside, when all is said and done, cynicism may triumph, and this century will look no different from the previous one. However, the more concretely people everywhere can envision a future of shared responsibility to preserve order in an interdependent world, the more likely the prospect is that the nascent multipolar era will be a stable one.

Hugh De Santis is a former career officer in the Department of State. He also chaired the Department of National Security Strategy at the National War College and served as senior advisor for Asian regional integration at the CIA. He is the author most recently of The Right to Rule: American Exceptionalism and the Coming Multipolar World Order. He thanks Stanley Katz and Carolyn Fuller for their constructive comments.

Image: Shutterstock.com.