Larry On David Petraeus.

Frankly speaking, by now somebody should have told David Petraeues that he embarrasses not only himself, which is fine, but that his rants reflect extremely poorly on the US Army. As Larry notes, Petraeus was...

... interviewed by the Georgian Service of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and confirms, by virtue of his responses, that he is either one of the dumbest men to ever pin on four stars or one of the most intellectually dishonest. Perhaps both.

After that Larry proceeds to methodically demolish Petraeus' "arguments", which even a lieutenant fresh from a combined arms academy would simply reject as pure military amateurism. And Larry is spot on when he points out: 

I have two words for General Dave — Iraq, Afghanistan. What major victories did he achieve in those two theaters? The answer is none. And he was not up against entrenched forces, with artillery and HIMARS, and tanks, and he failed to defeat guerrilla forces armed with assault rifles and an occasional mortar. He has never been in charge of a battle against forces using combined arms. This is just one more example of his arrogance and lack of critical thinking skills. I am not shocked by the shallowness and ignorance of Petraeus. It is those qualities that enabled him to earn four stars through his skilled practice in the art of sycophancy. And I assume that some of his proteges, who are gifted with the same degree of incompetence, are in command positions ready to lead U.S. forces into disaster.

Exactly! No American military leader has been in real combined arms war for ages. Beating the crap from backward, bought out and demoralized Saddam's Army in 2003 is NOT a combined arms, it is beating the crap from grossly, if not grotesquely, inferior opponent--nothing more, nothing less. But even here we know the result. Read Larry's excellent piece at his blog.

Which brings us to this. The American Thinker magazine noted six days ago:  

The West’s sanctions, the most severe ever imposed on a country, were meant to teach Russia the lesson that “aggression does not pay,” in the words of NATO’s Stoltenberg.  The ferocity of the sanctions, the subsequent cancellation of Russian artists and athletes in the West, and expectation of an end of the Russian Federation by political and military elites such as Former Commanding General of the US Army in Europe, General Ben Hodges, shocked Russia out of its complacency, and led it to learn very different lessons: That the West was determined to destroy it, and that its existence required it to arm itself to the teeth and end its economic interdependence with the West. The sanctions on Russia awoke the sleeping giant that had been Russia, and the West may soon be faced with the consequences.

Meanwhile, Li Shangfu is having a great visit in Russia, all against the background of Russia's Pacific Fleet showing the support for this visit. Yes, both events are coordinated, so stay tuned for the results of this visit, which, I suspect, will be extremely fruitful for both sides. Do not forget--the US cannot fight China on land, it is rather risible proposition due to its total... impossibility. But naval affairs in the region will be heating up and there is opinion out there that soon Taiwan will have issues with its chip products due to China closing the gap very fast. This has major geostrategic ramifications. Excellent Russian Sinologist Ruslan Karmanov thinks that the US is very interested in getting Japan (and ROK) into the actual shooting war with China. 10 years ago it would have been 50/50--today, no chance. As Chinese curse goes--let you live in interesting times. We sure as hell do.

Ships Are Just Platforms.

It matters what they carry as weapon systems which defines them as either "bad" or "good", to put it in the layman's lingo. Remarkably, this is not the idea former Senator Jim Talent and former armor officer Lindsey Neas can wrap their brains around, when they write, in the neocon rag The National Review, next:

There is good news at last for America’s armed forces, or at least for the Navy. A bipartisan group of legislators has sponsored a bill that has the potential to address at one stroke a first-order priority for American national security: upgrading and expanding the nation’s shipyards. ... The Shipyards Act is an outstanding first step on the path to revitalizing America’s sea power. Given the pressing need for a bigger Navy, however, the sponsors should also seek to set aside additional money from the proposed infrastructure bill to increase the Navy’s shipbuilding accounts and buy more vessels as the shipyards expand.

I write extensively on the pitiful state of the American shipbuilding industry in general, and commercial one in particular, in my latest book. So, the fact that some steps are being undertaken to revitalize some shipyards seems to be a logical set of actions. But the issue here is not that pouring money on the problem will somehow resolve a huge list of issues for the United States naval power in its attempt to shape itself up trying to meet China PLAN's challenge. Not only Congressional Budget Office (CBO) doubts that this whole thing will make huge difference, when writing about subs: 

CBO’s projection includes anticipated improvements in productivity. Automation is expected to lead to a onetime 3 percent increase in productivity—that is, tasks will take 3 percent less time, on average. For example, the design and manufacture of replacement parts is being automated in ways including computer-aided design and automated cutting of sheet metal. Because some tasks are more difficult to automate than others, the amount of time saved per task will vary greatly. The agency also projected that shipyards would realize the 5 percent efficiency gain that the Navy anticipates from the infrastructure improvements made under SIOP. CBO projected that both increases in efficiency would phase in from 2022 to 2031

It is all fine and dandy, but if one follows Talent's and Neas' ideas of "sea power":

So the Navy needs a lot more ships. No less than six recent reports and studies — including the Navy’s formal position of a 355-ship fleet by 2030 — recommend a combined total of between 355 and 688 manned and unmanned vessels in the fleet. The exact nature of the needed expansion will depend on our maritime strategy; the evolution of technology, doctrine, and tactics; the size and capabilities on the PLAN, and the contributions of our allies and security partners. That said, the Navy needs to do at least the following over the next decade. First, sustain production of aircraft carriers, destroyers, and both attack and ballistic-missile submarines. Second, in keeping with a growing consensus, ensure a substantial number of smaller surface combatants that can provide both forward presence across the Indo-Pacific region, to conduct the wide array of missions necessary in littoral environs, and the kind of distributed threat that will strengthen deterrence against Chinese aggression.

One is immediately struck by, to put it mildly, "platform-centricity" of naval thinking of these two guys. Sure, numbers matter, they always do, but the issue, apart from making a strategic and operational sense to ramp up submarine production, where even today the US Navy enjoys a decisive technological edge over PLAN, is what those aircraft carriers and destroyers will carry as their weapon systems? I omit here a reality of building more carriers, but does the United states seriously think that it can "outcarrier" mainland China which was steadily improving what no US aviator encountered since Vietnam, its comprehensive air-defense system, and what no US aviator encountered since Korea--a very capable Air Force. Even authors of this alarmist and "give-us-more-money" piece admit:

The balance of hard power in the Western Pacific has been shifting for a number of years. The implications of that are obvious. Unless deterrence is strengthened — and that means, first and foremost, a stronger American naval presence in INDOPACOM — it is only a matter of time before Beijing attempts to use force to snuff out democracy in Taiwan. That would be a disaster for America’s vital national interests in the region. The Shipyard Act, if it passes, will be the first signal in a long time that Congress is really serious about preventing it.

But I have news for them, one doesn't fight wars with "presence". China today, apart from having a deterrence of her own, has weapon systems whose analogues the US Navy will not have for a long time, if ever and that makes all the difference in the world. I am talking about, of course, anti-shipping missiles which effectively annul any legacy surface force in case of a serious war. Not only the US Navy will not be able to deploy enough CBGs around Taiwan to impress China which did put her carrier-building program in the turbo-charged mode, but the whole area around Taiwan already today is an exclusion zone for any type of a surface force, simply on the merit of China having enough "weight" in salvo to effectively overwhelm any current sea-based air-defense and this capability, augmented in the nearest future with the hypersonic capability (and, most likely, Russia-provided targeting), makes no difference in terms of actual power projection, which, as a viable concept in peer-to-peer scenario, ceased to exist at least a decade or two ago. 

There are no reasons, so far, to believe that the United States can address this main, and a host of other related issues when planning for "containment" and "deterrence" of China--a set of the hollow Pentagonese catch-phrases and buzz-word which are absolutely meaningless in the world of accelerating development of a very to very long range anti-shipping supersonic and hypersonic missiles, which really do not discriminate what legacy air-defense they overcome or what legacy platform they hit--they can and will do that in case of war. This is the idea which is slow on arrival to the minds of the American naval thinkers who never graduated from the views on the naval warfare as a combination of impressive visuals and battles of carrier-centric navies of the Pacific War of 1940s. This merely underscores a complete strategic and doctrinal dead-end in Pentagon and inability to adapt to ever changing realities of a modern warfare. But, of course, visuals are important, wink, wink. But ships are merely platforms and if the US Navy thinks that it can fight China in her geographic vicinity with "alpha-strikes" of carrier aviation and with subsonic medium-range Naval Strike Missile, I think this era of naval warfare has passed long time ago. Ah, yes, I forgot--take a look at that. 

For illustration, this is a new PLAN's type 055 DDG. 

She carries 112-cell VLS, capable to accommodate a truck-load of YJ-18 anti-shipping and land-attack missiles, which are, and you may have guessed it already, Chinese versions of Russian 3M54/3M14 missiles, they even look the same, so if one thinks that such a ship cannot launch several salvos of M=3 on terminal anti-ship missiles (how about 3 salvos with 8 missiles in them?), they better check their facts. The US Navy simply has nothing comparable at its disposal. As I said, I repeat, it is how you are armed not how you look which matters. Chinese got that right, but then again--they had good teachers, wink, wink.