Washington Wednesday: The U.S. military’s readiness

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: Washington Wednesday.

NICK EICHER, HOST: Today, military readiness. As the war in Ukraine enters its seventh month, some are questioning whether the United States is ready for a war of its own, particularly against a rapidly gathering threat from China.

U.S. adversaries are building increasingly advanced weapons, unlike any seen in the wars of generations past.

So, how ready is the US military for its next military conflict and what more must be done to prepare?

Joining us now is Bradley Bowman. He has served as a top national security adviser to members of the U.S. Senate.

REICHARD: Bradley, good morning!

BRADLEY BOWMAN, GUEST: Good morning! How are you?

REICHARD: Glad to have you. Let’s start with the proxy war we’re already fighting in Ukraine. How prepared is the United States to help Ukraine in the months ahead to actually win this war against Russia?

BOWMAN: It's a great question. And it might be more difficult to answer than one would initially think. Because, for example, winning, right? That's a term that many of us use when we're at our kids baseball game. And we also use it in questions of war and peace. And winning, you have to define, right? But what do we see happening right now in Ukraine? Ukraine we see the largest invasion in Europe since World War II. We see a war of choice by Vladimir Putin, unprovoked, where thousands and thousands of Ukrainians have died, have been injured, and have fled as they confront this invasion of their homes. And so, at the beginning of this latest invasion from Vladimir Putin—not the first as some students of history will remember—the United States confronted some serious policy decisions. Like do we send U.S. troops to fight there? Do we establish a no fly zone that would force the United States to potentially shoot down Russian aircraft and put those two great powers in direct conflict with one another? What do we do with NATO? What do we do on NATO's eastern flank? How do we help Ukrainians? Those were some of the leading policy decisions. And what I recommended and where the Biden administration landed, I think to its credit, is that the United States would provide Ukraine the means to defend their homes, Ukrainians, the means to defend their homes, while unifying NATO, and beefing up NATO's eastern flank, doing all we can to help Ukraine while avoiding direct conflict between United States and Russia. That's more or less the grand strategy, if you will, since February 24th. And I think the Biden administration on balance deserves credit for the speed and the sense of urgency and agility that they brought to that endeavor—with some exceptions—but overall, pretty darn good since February 24th.

Now, how have we done that? Well, how have we armed Ukraine? There have been two primary means by which we've tried to do that. One is taking our own equipment, our own U.S. military equipment and sending that to Ukraine. And the other is putting things on contract, buying it, putting it on contract, developing it and sending it. The first, often called presidential drawdown authority, where we're literally drawing down our own equipment. The advantages of that is that you can send it quickly. In some instances, 2, 3, 4 days after the announcement, it's literally been on the ground in Ukraine. But the downside is that, as I said, we're drawing down our own equipment. And my priority is making sure that our forces have what they need to defend our interests. And so I've supported doing that. But you can actually take that too far and make ourselves more vulnerable than we would want. And so over time, we're going to have less and less of that U.S. equipment to send and we're going to have to rely on developing new capabilities or producing additional capabilities that don't currently exist. And that will take more time. And then that's where you get into challenges and issues related to our American defense industrial base and all the other things we're trying to do in the world.

REICHARD: We’ve already seen Russia deploy a hypersonic missile. China also has them. Sen. Angus King said recently that the United States is lagging behind its top adversaries in hypersonic missile technology.

Bradley let’s get basic here. What are hypersonic missiles? Why are they dangerous, and what needs to happen to secure the United States?

BOWMAN: Yeah, absolutely. I’ll address the technical specific question, and then would love to zoom out if I can. First, the technical question. So hypersonic missile, as distinct from a ballistic missile, a missile that most Americans will be more familiar with that flies at a certain speed and has an arc, a ballistic arc that it takes. A hypersonic missile is a missile that travels at a faster speed, as the name would imply, and a key other element of it, a key second element that the name wouldn't necessarily imply is that it is maneuverable, it maneuvers. So when you combine increased speed with maneuverability, that makes it more difficult for us to intercept. And that's why Americans should be concerned about it. That's why it's concerning that Russia already has these, that China's working on them aggressively. And that, frankly, America, generally speaking, has been behind. Hypersonics are not new. They've been around for a long time. This is something that the American defense technology sector has long understood, but because of finite resources did not make the investments necessary to fill them. And now we're playing catch up as we so often do. And so, a few months back, I hosted a discussion with the director of the U.S .Missile Defense Agency, and we talked about hypersonic missiles. And the bottom line is that these hypersonic missiles can be used to threaten our homeland—the continental United States and Hawaii and Alaska. They can also be used to threaten our bases overseas. And they can also be used to threaten particular assets like an aircraft carrier. And again, what makes them difficult is the speed and the maneuverability. And that maneuverability allows them to avoid being detected or sensed and it also allows them to try to outwit our means to shoot them down. And so this just, as anyone who studied physics can understand, that's an incredibly wicked problem that we're actively working on both to develop our own hypersonic defense capabilities, and also to develop hypersonic weapons of our own as a means to deter the use of them by China and Russia in particular.

REICHARD: Sen. King called hypersonic missiles a nightmare weapon for aircraft carriers. One big advantage of the US military is its carrier fleets. Essentially, airbases in the ocean. Do these weapons negate that advantage?

BOWMAN: My short answer would be no. So America is the preeminent naval power in the world. We have roughly 11 or 12 aircraft carriers with a good portion of those in maintenance, refurbishment at any given time. But, you know, China has two to three aircraft carriers that they're building and that they're deploying. They're not as good as ours, their sailors are not nearly as capable as ours or as experienced. But the fact that China is building and deploying aircraft carriers should tell listeners something, right? That China believes they have utility. And I think they are wise in that assessment. Because, yes, aircraft carriers are more vulnerable now than they've ever been. They will become more vulnerable as China continues to focus billions and billions of dollars in developing the means to sink our aircraft carriers. But you got to think about it this way, compared to what? Well, I mean, the purpose of an aircraft carrier is to take aircraft and get it close to the area of operation so that they can operate from there. Basically, it's sovereign American territory that you can move around. Well, compared to what? Well compared to an airbase. So it's much easier for our adversaries to target a stationary air base than an airbase that moves, an aircraft carrier. So yes, aircraft carriers are more vulnerable than ever, but they still make sense because they are harder to predict their location than a fixed air base in Japan or Guam or somewhere else. So the truth is, we need aircraft carriers. They provide value, but they are more vulnerable than ever. And we have to think about how to defend them and what other capabilities we need in our Navy to deter aggression and to defeat that aggression if deterrence fails.

REICHARD: Well, let’s talk about the adversary that poses the biggest threat, and that’s China. How is the US military retooling—or how should it retool to prepare for any possible future war with China, be it over Taiwan or anything else?

BOWMAN: Yeah, if I can start with the biggest threat. People like me use that word a lot and sometimes it's thrown around without a lot of thought behind it. I do believe and have felt for a long time that the Chinese Communist Party is the preeminent threat to the freedom, prosperity, and security of Americans. And I say that for three reasons. One is the Chinese Communist Party has a hostile ideology. We saw that during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. The Chinese Communist Party is fielding a military that is dramatically and quickly improving, and in some cases is better than our own. And we saw some of that during the Cold War with the Soviet Union. But what's different with China relative to the Soviet Union is the size of their economy. Anyone that studies grand strategy or national security related issues understands we build our defense on an economic foundation. So in some ways, the strength of your defense is only as strong as the economy that it rests on, and that funds its development. And so if you face an adversary that has a hostile ideology, and dramatically proven military and huge economy with which to build that military, that's something new. Arguably the United States in our entire history since 1776, I would argue, has never confronted an adversary that combines those three factors of power in the way the Chinese Communist Party does. And I think Americans need to understand loud and clear that when you hear about possible contingencies in the Taiwan Strait, the United States may win, but it could, and many people believe it would come at the cost of thousands of American lives. Envision sunk aircraft carriers. Envision sunk ships. Envision dozens or hundreds of aircraft being shot down. This is not scare mongering, this is me telling you what I think actually could happen. The reason I'm saying this now is because there are steps that we can be taking now to prevent that aggression in the first place. Steps that we could have taken, arguably, with respect to Ukraine, that either make it not happen or that when it comes, we’ll be more successful and more Americans will come home to their families.

REICHARD: Bradley Bowman is senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. Bradley, thank you so much. Appreciate your time.

BOWMAN: Thank you.

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