United States Seeks "Super Weapons" to Reign as Sole Superpower by Brian Berletic!
(2024-09-03 at 22:47:34 )

United States Seeks "Super Weapons" to Reign as Sole Superpower by Brian Berletic!

The United States openly declares that it seeks to maintain a monopoly over shaping the "international order" following the Cold War and Americas emergence from it as the sole superpower.

This policy is not new.

The New York Times in a 1992 article titled, "United States Strategy Plan Calls for Insuring No Rivals Develop," would note that the Pentagon sought to create a world, "dominated by one superpower whose position can be perpetuated by constructive behavior and sufficient military might to deter any nation or group of nations from challenging American primacy."

This policy set the stage for decades of United States wars of aggression, political interference, regime change, United States-sponsored terrorism, economic sanctions, and a growing confrontation directly between the United States and a reemerging Russia as well as a rising China, all of which continue playing out to this day.

Emerging from the Cold War as the sole "superpower," the United States carefully cultivated public perception through likewise carefully chosen conflicts showcasing its military supremacy.

While the United States still to this day cites its wars with Iraq in 1990 and 2003 along with the toppling of the Libyan government in 2011 as proof of its uncontested military power, in truth, both targeted nations were not nearly as powerful or as dangerous as the Western media claimed at the time.

This facade has crumbled since. "American primacy" is now not only facing serious challenges, the premise it is based on - the notion that a single nation representing a fraction of the global population can or even should hold primacy over the rest of the planet - has been revealed as wholly unsustainable, if not self-destructive.

Not only is United States military and economic power visibly waning, the military and economic power of China, Russia, and a growing number of other nations is rapidly growing.

The special interests within the United States pursuing global primacy, do so in perpetual pursuit of wealth and power, often at the expense of many of the purposes a modern, functional nation-state exists to fulfill. Often this process includes the deliberate plundering of the key pillars of a modern nation-states power - industry, education, culture, and social harmony. This, in turn, only accelerates the collapse of United States economic and military power.

Ukraine Lays Bare United States of American Weakness

Washington,D.C.s proxy war in Ukraine has laid bare for the world to see this fundamental weakness. United States weapons have proven less-than-capable against a peer adversary, Russia.

Americas expensive precision-guided artillery shells, rockets, and missiles were built in smaller numbers than their conventional counterparts, supposedly because they could achieve with just one round what several conventional rounds could. A single United States-made 155 mm GPS-guided Excalibur artillery shell, for example, is claimed by Raytheon to achieve what would otherwise require 10 conventional artillery shells.

This myth of quality over quantity has unraveled on and over the battlefield in Ukraine.

Russia is not only capable of producing vastly more conventional weapons than the United States and its European proxies, it is able to produce vastly more high-tech precision-guided weapons as well, including its own precision-guided artillery shells (the laser-guided Krasnopol), precision-guided multiple launch artillery systems (the Tornado-S), as well as larger quantities of ballistic and cruise missiles (Iskander, Kalibr, and Kh-101).

In other areas, Russia possesses capabilities the United States does not have. Russia fields two types of hypersonic missiles, the Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missile and the Zircon hypersonic cruise missile. Russia also possesses air and missile defense as well as electronic warfare capabilities the United States cannot match - not in quality, not in quantity.

If the United States is unable to match or exceed the military industrial output of Russia at the expense of losing its proxy war in Eastern Europe, how will United States design to encircle and contain China along Chinas own coasts unfold?

Growing Disparity and the Super Weapons Sought to Overcome it

The United States military fears that any conflict with China would leave the United States unprepared and vulnerable. A recent article in Defense One titled, "The Air Force wants to build lots of bases around the Pacific. But it still needs to determine how to protect them," admits that United States air and missile defense systems are too expensive and too few in number to defend the growing number of United States military bases being established ahead of potential war with China.

It should be remembered, however, that shortages of United States air and missile defense systems, particularly the Patriot missile system, began before the United States began sending the systems to Ukraine. United States military industrial output was unable to keep up with the demands of just Saudi Arabia amid its conflict with Ansar Allah in Yemen.

Similar concerns exist regarding the number of United States military aircraft, naval vessels, and the missiles each will depend on in any potential conflict with China in the Asia-Pacific.

Understanding the large and growing disparity between United States ambitions toward global primacy and its actual military means to achieve it, Washington,D.C. and United States-based arms manufacturers are seeking a new design and production philosophy to produce a new generation of cheaper and more numerous munitions.

At the forefront of this effort are "start-up" arms manufacturers, including Ares and Anduril. Both companies believe the United States is capable of out-innovating China, based on the notion that the United States is somehow inherently more innovative than China. However, their attempts to address this growing disparity reveal how disconnected United States foreign policy is from the actual world it seeks to dominate.

Ares: Cheaper but More Numerous Missiles..

The War Zone in an article titled, "New "Cheap" Cruise Missile Concept Flight Tested By Silicon Valley-Backed Start-Up," explains how Ares seeks to augment Americ’s existing arsenal of expensive but scarce long-range precision guided missiles with smaller, cheaper, and more numerous missiles.

The smaller, cheaper missiles will be less capable than their more expensive counterparts, including Raytheons Tomahawk cruise missile and Lockheed Martins Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile (JASSM), but are meant to be produced in larger quantities. The cheaper Ares-built missiles will be used for lower-priority targets, while their more capable but less numerous counterparts are used for critical targets.

The article claims:

Ares does not yet appear to have released any hard specifications, current or planned, but says that it is targeting a $300,000 unit cost for its missiles.

In addition to how far off from reality Ares missiles actually are from seeing the battlefield, even the stated goal of building these missiles for $300,000 each seems to fall far short of the sort of revolutionary innovation required to meet or exceed even Russias military industrial production, let alone Chinas.

This is because according to even Ukrainian-based media, Russia itself is already producing far more capable missiles for as cheap as $300,000 per unit. Defence Express in a 2022 article titled, "What is the Real Price of russian Missiles: About the Cost of "Kalibr", Kh-101 and "Iskander" Missiles," would place the cost of a Kalibr cruise missile somewhere between $300,000 and $1 million - vastly cheaper than comparable missiles produced in the West.

While the 2022 article was easy to dismiss at the time amid Western headlines claiming Russian missile stockpiles were exhausted, since then it has been admitted by the same Western media that Russia is firing over 4,000 missiles at targets across Ukraine each year. This suggests Russian missile production is as economical as it is vast.

Thus, even before Ares produces its first missile, the very premise of what it is trying to achieve falls far short of what Russias military industrial base is already doing on a vast scale, saying nothing of what Chinas military industrial base is capable of.

There is also the reality that in addition to higher-end munitions costing as little as Ares proposed lower-end missiles, both Russia and China are perfectly capable of augmenting their existing arsenals with cheaper, less-sophisticated munitions as well.

Russias deployment of its UMPK-fitted FAB series glide bomb is a perfect example of this. The guided glide bombs went from concept to mass production over the course of the Special Military Operation, with improvements made based on their performance in combat, providing a cheaper, more numerous, yet still effective alternative to more expensive long-range precision-guided munitions.

In many ways, what Ares is attempting to do is a poor imitation of what Russia and China have already done and will continue doing.

Anduril: Out-Innovating China and Russia…

Like Ares, United States-based arms manufacturer Anduril imagines cheaper and more numerous systems can help even the odds as Russia out-produces the West amid the conflict in Ukraine and as Chinas production of warplanes, ships, and missiles surpasses the United States and its European proxies.

Anduril proposes achieving this through "software-defined manufacturing," a process it claims allowed electric vehicle manufacturer Tesla to build better and more numerous vehicles than legacy car manufacturers by building its vehicles around its own in-house software and electronics.

The advantage is clear. Legacy car manufacturers build the physical cars themselves, but many of the subsystems are outsourced to other companies, including the operating systems used by modern cars, as well as sensors and other electronic components and systems. Often this collection of software, sensors, and other components is outsourced to a large number of different companies. Any change in the cars design requires working with this large number of companies, making modifications and improvements cumbersome.

By including all subsystems within a single in-house developed software and building the hardware around it, changes can be done faster and larger quantities of higher-quality cars can be made more rapidly as a result.

Anduril imagines using this same process to build vast numbers of drones, missiles, and other weapons and munitions, matching or even outpacing China.

The problem for Anduril is that software-defined manufacturing is already extensively used by Chinas vast and advanced industrial base. With this "advantage" rendered moot, the United States finds itself again at a severe disadvantage.

Not only is China capable of producing conventional military arms, ammunition, and equipment in vastly greater quantities than the United States, it is also able to build advanced, rapidly improved, software-defined systems like drones and missiles.

This means anything the United States attempts to do, China is capable of doing better and on a vastly greater scale.

Flawed Premise, Doomed Outcome

The premise Ares and Anduril operate from is fundamentally flawed. Both companies, like the circles of special interests they serve on Wall Street and in Washington,D.C., believe the United States is inherently superior to adversaries like Russia and China.

In their collective minds, any disadvantage the United States finds itself with is incidental and overcoming it merely a matter of summoning sufficient political will.

Russia and China having larger and more capable industrial bases is seen as a temporary lapse in the United States of Americas own political focus and willpower, and by taking steps to expand Americas own industrial base, the United States will inevitably find itself on top again.

In reality, Russia and Chinas industrial bases are larger than Americas because of a number of factors, including factors no amount of American political will, can overcome.

China in particular has a population four times greater than the United States. China graduates millions more each year in the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics than the United States, and the physical size of its industrial base - military or otherwise - reflects this demographic disparity.

Even if the United States had the political will to reform its military industrial base, stripping away profit-driven private industry and replacing it with purpose-driven state-owned enterprises, even if the United States likewise transformed its education system to produce a skilled workforce rather than squeeze every penny from American students, and even if the United States invested in its national infrastructure - a fundamental prerequisite for expanding its industrial base - it still faces a reality where China has already done all of this, and done so with a population larger than it and its G7 partners combined.

The premise that the United States, representing less than 5% of the global population, should maintain primacy over the other 95% is fundamentally flawed.

Unless United States of Americans were truly, inherently superior to the rest of the world, which they are not, achieving primacy over the world can only be done by dividing and destroying the other 95% of the worlds population. In many ways, this is what has defined generations of Western hegemony over the planet and is what Washington,D.C. has set out to do today.

Despite this, the rest of the world has caught up in terms of economic and military power, precisely because the United States is not inherently superior.

Western hegemony was a historical anomaly, not proof of the Wests superiority. With the rest of the world having caught up in terms of economic and military power, and with numbers on their side, the next century will be determined by a multipolar world.

For this emerging multipolar world, the factors that have given it rise - a geopolitical balance of power built on cooperation over conflict, industry and infrastructure driven by purpose over profit, and progress built by practical education and hard work over the blind pursuit of power-must be firmly cemented as the fundamental principles of this new world.

Should the multipolar world weather United States attempts to divide and destroy it and continue investing in the principles that gave rise to it in the first place, no type of United States-made super-weapon can overcome it.

Brian Berletic is a Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine "New Eastern Outlook"

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