dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Anonymous ID: f70130 Oct. 21, 2020, 3:44 a.m. No.11186979 🗄️.is 🔗kun

tyb

OCT. 21, 2020 / 6:00 AM

Trafalgar offers history lesson for China threat

By Harlan Ullman, Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist

To many observers in the United States, China is America's main threat and enemy. The litany of wrongdoings and evidence of China's malevolence is long. Theft of intellectual property, militarization of tiny islets off its coasts in international waters; repression from Hong Kong to the Uighars, hostile penetration of American society and, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic, which started in Wuhan, are among China's obvious transgressions.

One solution, agreed to by Republicans and Democrats, is to increase America's military forces. In particular, the plans for Battle Force 2045 and a Navy almost double its current size of about 290 ships is illustrative. And the U.S. Army and Marine Corps have shifted strategic focus to the Pacific and a potential conflict with China.

Today marks the 215th anniversary of the greatest naval battle of the modern era and certainly since the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. On this day, Vice Adm. Lord Horatio Nelson hoisted his famous signal from the starboard yardarm of his flagship HMS Victory: "England expects that every man will do his duty." Then the Royal Navy obliterated the combined French and Spanish fleet under the command of French Adm. Pierre Villeneuve at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Of 33 Franco-Spanish ships of the line, 21 were captured and one sunk and about 4,500 sailors were killed. The Royal Navy lost no ships and had only one-10th the casualties with one major exception. Nelson died of wounds.

Perhaps the U.S. Navy has similar visions of a future sea battle against China's PLA Navy. And a similar outcome could occur. However, Trafalgar was fought in 1805. It would take a full decade until Napoleon Bonaparte and France would finally be defeated at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. No matter how decisive British sea power was in commanding the oceans, the war had to be won on the ground.

The current U.S. National Defense Strategy continues the Obama administration "four plus one" policy focusing on a great power competition with China and Russia. The Pentagon is directed "to deter and, if war comes, defeat" a list of adversaries topped by China and Russia. But nowhere are specific definitions to be found of what "compete, deter and defeat" mean; how each is to be achieved; and how success or failure is measured.

One suspects that the Cold War maxim of ensuring deterrence by virtue of maintaining countervailing military strength suggests that war with China will not arise as the risks are too great. That proposition obviously worked during the Cold War when thermonuclear war would have been existential and neither East nor West had irreparable differences that only could have been resolved by military force. But does that logic still apply today? That, to quote Shakespeare, is THE question.

MORE:

https://www.upi.com/Top_News/Voices/2020/10/21/Trafalgar-offers-history-lesson-for-China-threat/2311603136934/

IS ESPER’S NEW PLAN FOR THE NAVY ENOUGH

FOR THE INDO-PACIFIC?

MARK MONTGOMERY OCTOBER 21, 2020

Recent wargames suggest the U.S. Navy would have a hard time fighting China, but this might be nothing

Recent wargames suggest the U.S. Navy would have a hard time fighting China, but this might be nothing compared to infighting Secretary of Defense Mark Esper and his successors will have to manage to build a navy that can hold its own in the Pacific. The secretary will soon release a much anticipated and somewhat delayed Future Naval Force Study. This document, normally issued by the secretary of the Navy, was previously known as the 30-Year Shipbuilding Plan and is unique to the naval forces. Neither the Army nor the Air Force produce such a comprehensive, congressionally feted long-term procurement planning document. Ultimately the study will be a strong signal of the administration’s commitment to implementing the National Defense Strategy promulgated in 2018. Despite the delay in reporting it out, with the study coming too late to impact the Fiscal Year 2021 budget process, it is still a powerful statement for the secretary of defense to articulate the force structure that he sees as necessary to field the most critical forces (naval) for the most demanding adversary (China) for which his combatant commanders have to plan.

In his recent comments at the RAND Corporation and at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment, Esper provided an initial peek at the study. The media coverage of any naval force structure plan quickly spirals into a discussion of ship numbers — 355 or 500, in this case — and arguments over how to characterize unmanned vessels, and what size vessel “counts.” In reality, what is of greatest import is not the number of ships, but the composition of the fleet. One can produce a 450-ship Navy heavy on corvettes and amphibious ships and get nowhere against China. Conversely, one can build a 300-ship Navy with an emphasis on attack submarines and missile tubes, thus producing a war-winning capability. Therefore, before one can assess the value of the secretary’s plan, it is essential to know what it is being built to achieve.

Over the past two years, the Department of Defense has consistently identified the security challenge from China as the most significant long-term threat to the United States. Successive commanders of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command have consistently characterized the challenge of fighting the Chinese military as one that will come fraught with risk and necessitate naval forces beyond what the United States can put to sea today. The principal measuring stick for a naval force structure assessment should be how it contributes to the U.S. military’s ability to deter — and, if deterrence fails, defeat — Chinese aggression in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and Taiwan in both the near and distant future.

In planning for any crisis in the Western Pacific, one should remember that the geography of the theater makes the principal warfighting requirements air and maritime in nature. U.S. military commanders in the Pacific have been consistently asking the military services and Congress for certain capabilities and capacities. These can be generally put into six categories of planning requirements:

Hundreds of launch systems (aircraft, ships, and submarines) with missiles and torpedoes to destroy the People’s Liberation Army Navy while at sea.

Resilient and redundant satellites and aircraft systems to acquire and track Chinese maritime assets and communicate targeting data to launch systems.

A smaller number of launch systems (aircraft, ships, submarines, and land-based) with missiles to destroy “politically feasible” targets, most likely military assets on illegally developed maritime features in the South China Sea, and these would be complemented by cyber and electronic warfare tools that could somehow “touch” targets on the mainland of China.

Defensive systems (fighter aircraft, air defense ships, and maritime patrol aircraft) allowing the principal launch systems to operate with the temporary geographic air and maritime dominance necessary to destroy their targets.

Sea control forces (ships, submarines, aircraft, and surveillance assets) to either establish maritime blockades (surface ships and submarines) or break them (submarines and aircraft).

Logistics and force protection systems (refueling aircraft and ships, logistics ships and bases, air bases, weapons and fuel storage facilities) to support the operational forces.

Esper’s comments teased out a number of arguments about the naval force structure that are worth assessing against these priorities.

MORE:

https://warontherocks.com/2020/10/is-espers-new-plan-for-the-navy-enough-for-the-indo-pacific/

no doubt about it.

US Navy’s First ‘Stealth Warship’ Test-Fires SM-2 Missile From Is VerticalLaunching System – WATCH

Published 1 hour ago on October 21, 2020 By EurAsian Times Desk

The US Navy’s newest futuristic project has finally taken its first steps to its development. Marking its first operational achievement, the USS Zumwalt, the service’s first stealth destroyer, successfully test-fired an SM-2 missile out of its vertical launching system on October 13th.

Being the first ship of its class, the USS Zumwalt, just like its sci-fi name, has a non-traditional “futuristic” appearance and the project has faced many hurdles since its inception. A total of three ships are being built of this class, with two already being given Initial Operational Clearance (IOC) and third scheduled for 2021.

“Today’s successful test not only demonstrates the ship’s capability to fire missiles and conduct self-defence, it is also a significant step toward more advanced combat system testing and operations for our Navy’s most technically innovative warship,” said Capt. Matt Schroeder, DDG 1000 program manager. “The USS Zumwalt crew and Surface Development Squadron One are working hand-in-hand with the acquisition community to advance this ship’s operational capability,” reported the Navy’s press release.

About a week ago, the ship fired an SM-2 surface to air missile, demonstrating its ability to detect, track, and engage an anti-ship cruise missile. The structural test fire assessed the material readiness of the ship against shock and vibration of the weapon firing, as well as measure any hazards or degradations as a result of firing live ordnance.

https://eurasiantimes.com/us-navys-first-stealth-warship-test-fires-sm-2-missile-from-is-vertical-launching-system-watch/

Anonymous ID: f70130 Oct. 21, 2020, 4:08 a.m. No.11187095 🗄️.is 🔗kun >>7108

>>11187023

>>>See this…

>>11187046

^^^^

>>11187055

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kek

We Didn’t Need the Hunter Biden Revelations to Know It’s Wrong

By MICHAEL BRENDAN DOUGHERTY

October 21, 2020 6:30 AM

Hunter Biden’s emails show us what we already know.

It’s debunked.

It’s disinformation.

And insofar as it’s true, it just shows Joe Biden is a great dad.

You should be prevented from sharing it on social media, maybe you should be punished for trying to share it. Because it’s debunked.

A Washington Post story, quoting other people who were in on this thing that didn’t happen, says it’s fake news. You’re doing Putin’s work for him. We’re going to have truth and reconciliation commissions after this election to deal with this kind of thing.

Listen, maybe it looks bad, but it’s not illegal.

That’s how the media has responded to the Hunter Biden disclosures at the New York Post. They can probably keep it up through Election Day and even inauguration. Though as I write, Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani seem to be preparing the conservative mediaplex to feast on revelations of some kind of East Asian bathhouse bacchanal, with a heaping side of financial subornation to the Chicoms.

But we didn’t need the Post revelations or sordid photos of Hunter Biden to know this story had the potential to derail the Joe Biden campaign.

You know who knew it was a problem? The Joe Biden campaign, which tried to handle the story last year by releasing details to the New Yorker in a piece titled, “Will Hunter Biden Jeopardize His Father’s Campaign?”

Who else knew it was a problem? The State Department in 2015. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State George Kent explained that because Ukraine was under Joe Biden’s portfolio in the Obama administration, “it looks terrible” that his son Hunter Biden was taking a board seat on a Ukrainian government-connected energy company that had serious ethical and legal problems, especially with Joe Biden bragging about his own interventions in the legal landscape of the country. Biden’s office reportedly told Kent that Vice President Biden didn’t have the “bandwidth” to deal with Hunter.

The New Yorker attempt at extinguishing the Hunter Biden story told us that “Hunter saw himself as a provider for the Biden family.”

More top kek here:

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/10/we-didnt-need-the-hunter-biden-revelations-to-know-its-wrong/

New Twist in the Hunter Biden Saga: A White House Meeting

for Elite Chinese Group

By ANDREW C. MCCARTHY

October 20, 2020 9:37 PM

The younger Biden’s associates reportedly arranged a 2011 meeting with then-VP Joe Biden, and got the entourage “all taken care of in DC.”

Just imagine if something like this happened during the Trump administration, and ask yourself what the media-Democrat complex would be saying.

In November 2011, an elite group of Chinese Communist Party members and billionaire cronies of the repressive regime in Beijing secured a meeting in the White House, said to be with Vice President Biden and other Obama administration officials, through Hunter Biden’s associates.

News of the meeting has been broken by Peter Schweizer and Seamus Bruner. Schweizer, who has spent years tracking Washington’s web of money, influence and access, is the author most recently of Secret Empires: How the American Political Class Hides Corruption and Enriches Family and Friends, which focuses on the Biden family — among other intriguing money trails on both sides of the political aisle.

Schweizer and Bruner have obtained the cooperation of Hunter Biden’s former business partner, Bevan Cooney, who is serving a federal prison sentence for a fraud scheme. Another Hunter Biden business partner, Devon Archer, was also convicted (and has had his conviction reinstated by the Second Circuit federal appeals court after a trial judge in the Southern District of New York set it aside). Hunter Biden was featured in the evidence but not charged.

Cooney has given the investigative journalists access to his email account, which contains years of correspondence with Biden, Archer, and others. The authors have begun writing reports published at Breitbart, and Schweizer has also been interviewed about it on Sean Hannity’s Fox News program. Obviously, those are very pro-Trump venues, so it is worth noting that solid reporting Schweizer did on the Clinton Foundation (the subject of his book Clinton Cash) was closely examined and relied on by the New York Times (see “Cash Flowed to Clinton Foundation Amid Russian Uranium Deal”).

Based on Cooney’s emails, the authors report that in November 2011, Hunter Biden’s business associates arranged meetings at the Obama White House for a delegation of the “China Entrepreneur Club.” Established in 2006, the CEC is led by high officials of the Chinese Communist Party, some government officials (including diplomats), and billionaire business executives with close ties to the regime.