Viewed today, the 1950s casts a warm technicolor glow into America’s collective imagination, as a mystical time of post-war tranquility, prosperity, and suburban peace. In truth, it wasn’t so perfect. The nation was deeply divided over the Korean War, labor strife, fear of communism, and racial integration of schools.
In that light, our divisions today are trivial. Americans in the 1950s feared nuclear annihilation, and school children practiced duck-and-cover drills in their classrooms. Contrast that with the Chapman University Survey of American Fears which found that in 2019 American’s greatest concerns were “corrupt government officials,” followed by pollution of oceans and rivers, and “people I love becoming seriously ill.”
Among the top 10 fears in that 2019 study, five were environmental, like pollution and climate change, and just one mentioned any kind of threat: Cyberterrorism, was No. 7 at 59 percent; war, nuclear weapons, and the like didn’t crack the top 10. By 2022, “Russia using nuclear weapons” had grabbed the No. 2 spot behind corruption and just ahead of “people I love dying.” The threat of the U.S. “becoming involved in another world war” came in fourth.
Notably absent: any mention of China, America’s pacing threat, as stated by the U.S. National Security Strategy.
The U.S. must be a more ready, capable, and credible threat of force.
Nevertheless, China does register as a threat among those in the know, and it’s among the few unifying factors among congressional Democrats and Republicans. China is a concern in terms of our domestic supply chain, economic interests, political alignment with others, and military strength.
Still, the Chinese and Western economies are so intricately intertwined that many dismiss the risk of conflict. They see those ties as a security blanket: As long as China and the U.S. are mutually dependent economically, military conflict should be unlikely. But that only works if all parties remain rational.
Rationality depends on cold hard facts, not emotions.
The Chinese Communist Party was for a long time an opaque but predictably rational actor. Operating largely by committee, it subverted individual emotions to organizational groupthink. But as Xi Jinping concentrates his power—over the party, the military, and the government—what’s left is one-man, not one-party rule.
Look how that’s worked out in Russia: Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine last winter was an emotional choice imposed on the country by its leader. It also proved a massive miscalculation: Putin misjudged his military’s prowess, Ukraine’s will to fight, NATO’s resolve, and even his own political strength.
In China, a party machine that once prioritized economic growth over everything else now is now less predictable under its one true master. Xi’s zero-COVID policies, though briefly envied by some in the West, proved disastrous, and China’s economic recovery after COVID has been weak. When, in 2021, Alibaba’s Jack Ma pushed back against government interference with his digital empire, Xi crushed his most famous citizen, seized his company, and broke it up. Message to China’s business class: Don’t be too successful—and remember who’s boss. Finally, China revised its anti-espionage laws in July, a move that will surely dampen foreign investment.
“Beijing views inadequate government control of information within China and its outbound flow as a national security risk,” noted a bulletin from the U.S. National Counterintelligence and Security Center. That’s indicative of one pulling back from international economic cooperation, not one going all-in.
Also in July, AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies held a wargame in which the U.S. and its allies sought to stop China from seizing Taiwan. This is a near-impossible task. The issue isn’t can China seize Taiwan, but whether it is willing to pay the price such unilateral action would cost.
To ensure the answer to that question remains an emphatic NO, the United States needs to change its playbook. The U.S. must be a more ready, capable, and credible threat of force. Right now, China’s military is larger than ours and increasingly capable—indeed, in some ways, more capable.
The slow-drip modernization foisted on the Air Force due to other service priorities is hurting U.S. defense. The Air Force has tried for years to modernize at its own expense, an effort that has yielded an older, smaller force.
What’s needed is a large-scale infusion of cash to fund both sustainment of our most capable aerospace forces today and—concurrently—to add revolutionary new capability, at scale, tomorrow. To achieve that, Congress and the Pentagon must make a strategic shift in priorities, providing an additional redirecting of $10 billion to $20 billion annually to the Department of the Air Force. This is the only way to remain ready today while modernizing for tomorrow.
It’s not hard to see where those funds can be found. Just as we reduced the size of the Air Force to fund the expansion and equipment needs of the Army during the 20 years of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the time is now to reverse that trend.
Cutting the Army by 30,000 troops—just 6.6 percent of today’s Active-duty force—would free up about $9.6 billion a year. That’s not enough to solve all the Air and Space Forces’ shortfalls, but sustained over time it can accelerate delivery of new F-35 Block IV fighters, B-21 bombers, Next-Generation Air Dominance Fighters, and uncrewed Collaborative Combat Aircraft, along with a new constellation of communications and targeting satellites, new E-7 Wedgetail early warning systems, new tankers, and new electronic warfare capabilities.
USAF’s planes today average 30 years of age. Many fleets average over 60. The combat air forces amount to less than half the Air Force possessed in 1991, and that number is getting smaller, not larger. It’s been five years since the Air Force last offered a plan to size the force to what it really needs. That plan—386 operational squadrons required to meet the needs of the defense strategy—identified that the Air Force is about 24 percent smaller than required. It’s time to revive that kind of clear, strategy-driven force-sizing construct.
America can always raise a bigger Army, and it can do so in a relative hurry. But to build a bigger, better Air Force takes years, if not decades. We need to start growing ours today.