Winning a war with China would not be easy. Should we be caught up in a war with China we will have a difficult time replenishing munition stocks and replacing combat losses.

During World War II, the U.S. manufactured 300,000 aircraft. Today the total number of aircraft in the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps is 2,531. To put things in perspective, aircraft are more effective carrying more ordinance with stealth features. However, Pentagon practices concerning contracts often means that tooling and manufacturing capacity may not exist to increase the number of aircraft available and replace combat losses in wartime.

Because admirals and generals have a penchant for weapons with all the sophisticated bells and whistles an aircraft like the F35 designed in 1995 was not fully deployed until 2022. By comparison, the prototype of the P51, the best fighter of World War II, was rolled out in September 1940, just 102 days after the order had been placed and it first flew on 26 October 1940. The first aircraft entered service with the Royal Airforce in January 1942

The Chinese Navy has caught up with the U.S. Navy in the number of vessels. While the U.S. Navy currently operates eleven attack carriers to the Chinese Navy’s two; the Chinese navy has emphasized the construction of smaller vessels armed with a variety of “ship killing” missiles.

During World War II, the U.S. built 2,708 Liberty ships and 500 Victory ships. The U.S. also built 9,000 war vessels including 151 fleet and escort carriers, 8 high speed battleships, 377 destroyers, 72 cruisers, and 228 submarines. Today the great shipyards of World War II are gone. Today China has somewhere between 20 and 35 large shipyards and each one of them has a greater building capacity than all US shipyards combined.

Currently the U.S. Navy consists of 300 ships with a 355 vessel fleet set by statute which experts tell us would still be 100 short of what is needed. The Navy has 53 Nuclear Attack subs but needs double that number. With a need for many more vessels to carry out its mission and extremely limited building capacity it’s time for Washington to encourage the expansion of ship building capacity..

When you fight a war you must be able to replace all types of munitions. In the case of Precision Guided Munitions (PGM) that isn’t always easy. Weapons like the antitank “Stinger” missile can take years to replace because when a contract to build a PGM runs out with no prospect of a new contract there will likely be no tooling remaining, the expert workforce laid off and the plants closed down.

One solution suggested is to build flexible facilities that produces a wide range of precision guided munitions. However, for this solution to work both the Defense Department and Congress must work together and look beyond short term contracts.

The U.S. must also develop appropriate defenses against drones. In the Red Sea the Houthis have been firing drones at ships and while most drones have been shot down it is the case of a $30,000 drone being shot down by a $2 million missile. That is hardly cost effective.

Finally, it may be time to reconsider how we use aircraft carriers. For the last 83 years the Aircraft Carrier and their air wings have been the Navy’s primary means of force projection. Most other vessels in the fleet have been designed to either support or protect the carrier.

Many feel the day of the aircraft carrier is coming to an end superseded by the Nuclear Attack Submarine. Carriers like our newest USS Gerald R. Ford with a length of 1,106 feet and a flight deck 256 feet wide is a tempting target for an enemy with surface skimming hypersonic missiles.

Experts are concerned about the ability of U.S. carriers to survive a war with China because that nation has the largest arsenal of supersonic and hypersonic speed antiship cruise and ballistic missile. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a recent interview that China is building a military with the specific mission of taking out the U.S. military. He said carriers are the major tool in projecting our power globally but added that 15 hypersonic missiles could take out all 11 of our carriers in the first 20 minutes of a war because the fleet does not yet have effective means of defense against that threat.

Also, improvements in submarine technology have made carriers more vulnerable than ever to submarine attack. It has been reported in recent years that both the USS Theodore Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan have been scored as having been sunk by submarines in NATO exercises in the Atlantic.

Many defense experts tell us that the time has come to expand and further enhance our submarine fleet. Besides Ballistic Missile subs, the Navy has 53 Nuclear Attack Subs, and 4 Cruise Missile subs. Attack submarines typically carry torpedoes and land attack and antiship cruise missiles and Cruise missile subs are armed with torpedoes and 154 land and antiship cruise missiles.

The same experts add that the Navy must increase its attack sub fleet to 100 vessels but the Navy’s attachment to the carrier is solid with several more Ford Class carriers in the pipeline. The nature of war on land, sea and in the air is constantly changing. Hopefully this is not another example of the military being prepared to fight yesterday’s war.

Thomas Kirkpatrick Sr. is a Silver Creek resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com