Nuclear modernization will receive at least $1.2 billion more this year than last year’s $23.5 billion if the president’s Defense Department budget request is approved. Modernization funding for nuclear weapons and their delivery systems comprise 4 percent of the defense budget and 0.6 percent of the Federal budget. These include : the Ohio-class submarine replacement program (ORP); a new long range bomber (LRSB); and a follow-on air launched cruise missiles (ALCM), as well as the ground-based strategic deterrent (currently the Minuteman missile system.)
Critics says that’s too much. They want to eliminate four of the ORPs while retiring four of the current submarines early and delaying by four years the procurement of the first new sub; delay buying the LRSB; cancel the ALCM and modernization of the ground-based cut upwards to allegedly save $75 billion over the next decade.
Are these reductions workable? Would they contribute to improving and enhancing our strategic deterrent, especially in terms of questions of stability and the future adequacy of our deterrent?
China has plans to grow its navy to 351 ships by 2020 as the Chinese continue to develop their military’s ability to strike global targets, according to a new report.
The 2014 U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommended to Congress the U.S. Navy respond by building more ships and increase its presence in the Pacific region – a strategy they U.S. military has already started.
The commission asked Congress to increase its Pacific fleet up to 67 ships and rebalance homeports such that 60-percent of the force is based in the region by 2020.
The commissions’ recommendations, which are based on Congressional testimony, expert assessments and open-source information on China’s military and U.S.-Chinese relations, are consistent with Pentagon’s stated plans for the region.
Overlooking China’s past objections, India, Japan and the United States are conducting joint naval war games this month in the Pacific Ocean, adjacent to the East China Sea. India’s decision to proceed with the trilateral exercise after five years of keeping Japan out, so as not to provoke China, indicates a new brand of maritime assertiveness. At the same time, both Indian and Chinese navies are actively building ‘blue water’ capabilities – an ability to carry out operations much farther than their territorial boundaries, across the deep oceans. As India juggles the dual imperative to simultaneously befriend and hedge against an economically and militarily rising China, the outcome of its blue water quest will influence the balance of power in Asia for years to come.
Japan's Ministry of Defence (MoD) on 11 June said that two Chinese Su-27 'Flanker' fighter aircraft had flown very close to Japan Self-Defense Forces aircraft over the East China Sea for the second time in less than a month.
According to MoD officials, a People's Liberation Army Air Force Su-27 flew to within 30 m of a Japan Air Self-Defense Force YS-11EB electronic intelligence aircraft at around 11.00 am-12.00 pm local time on 11 June.
At around the same time, another Su-27 fighter flew to within 45 m of a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force Kawasaki OP-3C reconnaissance aircraft. Neither of the Japanese aircraft suffered any damage.
Major war in East Asia is a very unpleasant, but not unthinkable scenario. Of course, the US would be involved from day one in any military conflict in the East or South China Seas. However, Europe’s role would be less clear, due to its increasing strategic irrelevance. Most probably, except the UK, Europeans would deliver words only.
India’s ambitious military modernization program to upgrade its Cold War-era vehicles and equipment is viewed as saber rattling by its neighbor and perpetual adversary Pakistan, a scholar of the region said June 3.
Abhijit Iyer-Mitra, program coordinator of the Centre for Strategic Studies at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, said India is modernizing its air force with newer, more-capable jets but not downsizing its ranks, according to its newly purchased capabilities.
The country is on the cusp of a $20 billion deal to purchase nearly 130 Dassault Rafale fighter jets that could be signed within three months, according to media reports. At 1,500 aircraft, the fleet would be 30 percent bigger than its Pakistani counterpart.
“Even though the air force is buying more expensive things, it should be downsizing in numbers like every Western air force has done, because you can do more things with fewer planes,” he said. “This is not happening.”
“Pakistan has been, traditionally, the quality air force and India has been the numerically superior air force,” he added. “So now, what you see is India is basically disrupting the balance. It is becoming supposedly qualitatively better and quantitatively better and that is scaring the living daylights out of the Pakistanis.”
