How Washington is Begging for War with China

In the monthly archive of the foreign military sales which appear on the Defense Security Cooperation Agency's website for the month of June 2024, we find the following announcements of sales to Taiwan:

 

1.) Sale of Switchblade 300 Anti-Personnel and Anti-Armour Loitering Missile Systems:

 

Here is some background on the Switchblade 300 Block 20:

 

2.) Sale of Altius 600M-V Unmanned Aerial Vehicles:

 

Here is some background on the Altius 600M:

 

3.) Sale of F-16 Non-Standard Spare and Repair Parts:

 

4.) Sale of F-16 Standard Spare and Repair Parts:

 

 

These four sales of materiel to Taiwan in the month of June 2024 total $660.2 million.

 

All four of these sales fall under the proclamation that "the proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region".  If that was the case, why approve the sales?  As well, I'm sure that China's leadership would wholeheartedly agree that this is not a direct threat to their plans for the region.

 

Of the sales, the sale of 291 Altius 600m-V Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and 720 Switchblade 300 drones follow this speech by Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks' comments at a lunchtime speech in September 2023:

 

"Last week I gave a speech, you all may know, about our need to innovate with urgency in this enduring age of strategic competition with the PRC. And there I described, in some detail, much of what we have been doing to enable and unleash the potential of U.S. and partner innovators....

 

And we've been doing quite a lot: Mapping and debugging DoD's innovation ecosystem. Rapidly iterating and investing to be a data-driven and AI-empowered military now. Incentivizing more joint experimentation and concept development. Extending bridges and express lanes over the so-called valley of death; of course, there are many valleys of death. Accelerating software acquisition and procurement of innovative technologies. And so much more. 

 

Why the urgency? Because our main strategic competitor today, the PRC, has spent the last 20 years building a modern military carefully crafted to blunt the operational advantages we've enjoyed for decades....

 

Last week, I announced our Replicator initiative — the latest effort to overcome the production valley of death, beginning with accelerating the scaling of all-domain attritable autonomous systems.

 

First, let's be crystal clear: Replicator is not a new program of record. We're not creating a new bureaucracy. And we will not be asking for new money in FY24. Not all problems need new money; we are problem-solvers, and we intend to self-solve.

 

So, Replicator will use existing funding, existing programming lines, and existing authorities to accelerate production and delivery at scale — by exerting leadership focus and attention on a singular operational challenge and maturing solutions, because that's what ultimately delivers....

 

With Replicator, we're beginning with all-domain, attritable autonomy, or ADA2, to help us overcome the PRC's advantage in mass: more ships, more missiles, more forces....

 

Let me give you a window into the possibilities of all-domain, attritable autonomy.

 

Imagine distributed pods of self-propelled ADA2 systems afloat, powered by the sun and other virtually-limitless resources, packed with sensors aplenty, enough to give us new, reliable sources of information in near-real-time.

 

Imagine fleets of ground-based ADA2 systems delivering novel logistics support, scouting ahead to keep troops safe, or securing DoD infrastructure.

 

Imagine constellations of ADA2 systems on orbit, flung into space scores at a time, numbering so many that it becomes impossible to eliminate or degrade them all. 

 

Imagine flocks of ADA2 systems, flying at all sorts of altitudes, doing a range of missions, building on what we've seen in Ukraine. They could be deployed by larger aircraft, launched by troops on land or sea, or take off themselves.

 

Bigger-picture, ADA2 systems let us think and act differently in doing things we've always done. Recall in Ukraine, a Patriot battery intercepted a Russian hypersonic missile; that's how traditional platforms do missile defense — and it's an incredible accomplishment, underscoring why we need them. 

 

Elsewhere, ADA2 systems might counter missiles differently — perhaps like active protection systems on a tank, or other types of countermeasures. 

 

And those are just a handful of the use cases for ADA2 systems."

 

She refers to it as "the small, smart and cheap" philosophy of warfare through the use of thousands of drones which will be used to overwhelm the Chinese advantage in "mass".

 

Washington has taken the first steps toward its new "Replicator Initiative" by arming Taiwan with Switchblade 300 Anti-Personnel and Anti-Armour Loitering Missile and Altius 600m-V drone systems.  How the nation's ruling class can think that China won't view these sales as anything but a provocation over its stated goal of reunifying Mainland China and Taiwan is beyond my comprehension.