According to Secretary Gates, “The Pentagon is buying new combat aircraft (F-35s, modernized F-15s, and a new, sixth-generation fighter.” This assessment is much too optimistic. The 72 F-35 and F-15EX fighters that the Biden Administration proposes the Air Force buy in its FY2024 budget proposal is barely enough to prevent further aging of an already very old force. Moreover,  the size of the fighter force will continue to fall. In its first budget proposal, the Biden Administration proposed cutting F-35 production to only 33 aircraft a year, almost a 50% cut in the Trump Administration’s projected level. (The Trump program had slightly reduced the average age of U.S. fighters to 29.1 years in 2021.) The Biden Administration’s FY2024 budget proposal calls for a F-35 production until the late 2020s at a rate of only 48 aircraft per year. This is of particular concern in light of the Chinese deployment of large numbers of the J-20 stealth fighter. Additionally, the Chinese are developing upgrades for it. The sixth generation fighter (NGAD) that Gates mentioned is almost a decade away. For the air dominance mission, the upgraded F-15 is a questionable program. While a great historic fighter, the F-15 is pre-stealth and has lost much of the dominance it had during the Cold War. According to a recent Heritage Foundation study, “Air Force readiness and capacity levels are at all-time lows.” (Emphasis in the original).

Current Navy procurement of the F-35 is so limited that it will take a decade to provide nine operational carriers with a single small squadron of F-35s. Most of the aircraft will continue to be 4.5 generation F-18s. The Marine Corp will be flying very old F-18s until 2030. The Navy dropped out of the JASSM long-range cruise missile program from 2004 to 2021; hence, its inventory is still quite small. The main focus of the Marine Corps aircraft program is not long-range strike but rather close air support.

Among the conclusions reached by the bipartisan United States Strategic Commission concerning United States conventional military requirements are the following critical points:

• “…. U.S. and allied conventional military advantages in Asia are decreasing at the same time the potential for two simultaneous theater conflicts is increasing.”
• “The speed and scale of success of U.S. forces in meeting that aggression in one theater may greatly influence the chances of conflict, or success in conflict, in the other theater.”
• “…Russian conventional forces, while inferior to fully mobilized NATO forces, will continue to have a space/time advantage against NATO states on Russia’s periphery, potentially enabling them to occupy such states’ territory in a fait accompli before NATO forces can fully mobilize in their defense, thus presenting an existential threat to territorial sovereignty of Allies and partners.”
• “…Russia’s use of large-scale conventional military force against Ukraine demonstrates a propensity to take risk and tolerate significant loss. The outcome of the war in Ukraine could influence future calculations – and indeed miscalculations – about the risks and benefits of aggression.”
• “The Commission heard significant concerns from regional Combatant Commanders regarding the capabilities and positioning of their conventional forces. In short, shifting to a necessary two-war construct requires increases in the size, type, and posture of U.S. and allied conventional forces. In the absence of such increases, the United States will likely have to increase its reliance on its nuclear deterrent.”
• “The United States [needs to] prioritize funding and accelerate long-range non-nuclear precision strike programs to meet the operational need and in greater quantities than currently planned.”
• “The United States urgently [needs to] deploy a more resilient space architecture and adopt a strategy that includes both offensive and defensive elements to ensure U.S. access to and operations in space.”
• “By the 2030s China’s conventional military build-up could turn the conventional military balance in Asia against the U.S. and its Allies.”
• “The United States and its Allies [need to] take steps to ensure they are at the cutting edge of emerging technologies – such as big data analytics, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence (AI) – to avoid strategic surprise and potentially enhance the U.S. strategic posture.”
• “[The United States needs to make] Strategic investments in research, development, test and engineering of advanced sensor architectures, interceptors, cruise and hypersonic missile defenses, and area or point defenses are urgently needed.”
• “The United States [needs to] develop and field homeland IAMD [Integrated Air and Missile Defense] that can deter and defeat coercive attacks by Russia and China, and determine the capabilities needed to stay ahead of the North Korean threat.”
• “U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) needs improved warning and defensive capabilities to protect critical U.S. infrastructure from conventional or nuclear attack from air- and sea-launched cruise missiles—systems that ground-based interceptors (GBIs) are not designed to counter.”

The Biden Administration has repeatedly stated it has taken no action to enhance U.S. nuclear deterrence during the current Ukraine crisis. This is in stark contrast with Vladimir Putin who in December 2023 said that, “…Given the changing nature of military threats and the emergence of new military and political risks, the role of the nuclear triad, which ensures the balance of power, the strategic balance of power in the world, has significantly increased.” As a result, the United States is in a serious crisis with a non-crisis nuclear deterrent posture. The U.S nuclear deterrent will continue to age and decline in effectiveness until the 2030s, and even then improvements will be very gradual. If Xi invades Taiwan in 2027, even by Biden Administration estimates, China would have increased its “operational” nuclear warheads about 40% to 700. The 700 warhead estimate will likely understate the growth of Chinese nuclear warhead numbers.

According to former Assistant Secretary of Defense and senior National Security Council official Frank Miller, there is no sense of urgency in the U.S. strategic nuclear modernization program. While China is massively expanding its nuclear forces and Russia says it has modernized 95 percent of its strategic nuclear force, the comparable United States number is zero since 1998. By 2027, the existing U.S. nuclear modernization program will not have deployed a single new nuclear delivery vehicle. Thus, during this period, the U.S. nuclear deterrent will continue to age. As the Heritage Foundation has observed, “Age degrades reliability by increasing the potential for systems to break down or fail to respond correctly.” Except for a small number of B-21 bombers, all of the U.S. strategic modernization program will not even start until after 2030. Furthermore, the new Sentinel ICBMs, the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines and the B-21 bombers are already behind schedule. The only improvement between now and 2027 will be the introduction of the B61 Mod 12 and 13 bombs which are nothing more than nuclear Joint Direct Attack Munitions (JDAM) versions of 1960 vintage bombs. They will give the B-2 bombers a very tiny standoff capability compared to the previous gravity bombs. The Air Force does not regard the JDAM as adequate against advanced air defenses and is developing a conventional “…successor to the JDAM that would have longer range, reduced signature, and greater maneuvering capability to avoid terminal air defenses…” The United States Strategic Posture Commission report concluded, “Russian modernization and expansion of its air and missile defense capabilities beyond the Moscow region will pose a growing threat not only to the efficacy of U.S. nuclear forces but to conventional forces as well.”

As Secretary Gates indicates, a national consensus that dealing with the current threat is certainly important. In December 2023, President Putin even declared that his war against Ukraine would ensure Russia’s “global sovereignty.” What is at stake is much broader than the future of Ukraine. As Russia expert Vladimir Socor has pointed out, “Most Western governments, nevertheless, remain unwilling to recognize that Russia is also at war with them in Ukraine. With Ukraine as the central arena, Russia conducts a wider, hybrid war against the West in multiple theaters to revise the international system.” Putin now denies any intent to attack NATO. Yet the Putin regime said the same thing for months prior to its 2022 invasion of Ukraine. Indeed, his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov even denies that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an “invasion.”

However, another trillion-dollar U.S. defeat like President Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco will not prevent a NATO conflict with Russia. Noted China expert Gordon G. Chang has quite reasonably linked the message sent by President Biden’s “precipitous withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021” to “A series of catastrophes [that] continue to this day.” These include the stronger Russia-China alliance, their support of insurgencies in Africa, the Russian war against Ukraine and the current crisis in the Middle East. Played out in Europe, the consequences would be much more serious. The Biden Administration’s no-win approach to conflict is: 1) determining our assistance policy toward Ukraine, 2) lengthening the war, 3) increasing the cost of assistance by the United States and the NATO nations, and 4) making the conflict more deadly. Chang notes that, “With China and Russia fully supporting disruptive elements, it is no wonder that the world has passed from a period of general calm to one of constant turbulence.” He compared these developments with the period leading up to the Second World War.