Can The U.S. Military Compete And Stay Ahead Of China's Military?

A color guard of US and Chinese flags awaits the plane of China's President Hu Jintao at Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland in this April 12, 2010 file photo. President Barack Obama unveiled a defense strategy on Thursday that would expand the US military presence in Asia but shrink the overall size of the force as the Pentagon seeks to reduce spending by nearly half a trillion dollars after a decade of war. Jonathan Ernst/Reuters/File

Peter Dombrowski, War On The Rocks: Can American Compete With China's Great Military Leap Forward?

Is the technological arms race offered by the third offset strategy desirable or even winnable?

Invisibility cloaks? Mako anti-antisubmarine drones? Robotic “lobsters”? Stims? F-40 Shrike fighters? Imaginative science fiction or harbingers of the future? In his recent novel Ghost Fleet, Peter Singer, one of Washington’s most influential technologists, has written a fictional account of a future war with China that has caught the attention of national security geeks. With co-author August Cole he crafts a dystopian view of America’s wartime prospects against a fictional Chinese Directorate that allies Big Business and the PLA. It features capabilities and weapons at the far edge of the current science and technology spectrum but with just enough reality to provoke strategists and planners worried about the future of conflict. The tale is all the more credible for having been written by a Brookings Institution analyst with two big technology-centric books on drones and cyberwar under his belt, a daunting speaker’s schedule, and, presumably, an insider’s access to the latest thinking about military technologies.

WNU Editor: If the U.S. wants to compete/defeat China in any hypothetical arms race in the future .... and not fire a shot .... the first thing that the U.S. should do is to impose fair trade rules on China so that we do not have a situation like this .... Who Are The Winners And Losers From China Trade. Unfortunately .... we live in a world where commercial interests over-ride long term national security concerns.