The US has been getting 'its ass handed to it' in war games simulating fights against Russia and China
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In war games simulating a high-end fight against Russia or China, the US often loses, two experienced military war-gamers have revealed.
"In our games, when we fight Russia and China, 'blue' gets its ass handed to it," David Ochmanek, a RAND warfare analyst, explained at the Center for a New American Security on Thursday, Breaking
In these simulated fights, the "red" aggressor force often obliterates US stealth fighters on the runway, sends US warships to the depths, destroys US bases, and takes out critical US military systems.
Read More: US Air Force F-35s wrecked their enemies in mock air combat - even the new pilots were racking up kills against simulated near-peer threats "In every case I know of, the F-35 rules the sky when it's in the sky," Robert Work, a former deputy secretary of defense and an experienced war-gamer, said Thursday. "But it gets killed on the ground in large numbers."Neither China nor Russia has developed a fifth-generation fighter as capable as the F-35, but even the best aircraft have to land. That leaves them vulnerable to attack.
Aircraft carriers, traditional beacons of American military might, are becoming increasingly vulnerable. They may be hard to kill, but they are significantly less difficult to take out of the fight.
Naval experts estimate that US aircraft carriers now need to operate at least 1,000 nautical miles from the Chinese mainland to keep out of range of China's anti-ship missiles, according to USNI News."If we went to war in Europe, there would be one Patriot battery moving, and it would go to Ramstein [in Germany]. And that's it," Work explained, according to Breaking Defense. "We have 58 Brigade Combat Teams, but we don't have anything to protect our bases. So what difference does it make?"
Simply put, the US military bases scattered across Europe and the Pacific don't have the anti-air and missile-defense capabilities required to handle the overwhelming volume of fire they would face in a high-end conflict.
The Chinese would "attack the American battle network at all levels, relentlessly, and they practice it all the time," Work said. "On our side, whenever we have an exercise, when the red force really destroys our command and control, we stop the exercise and say, 'let's restart.'"
"These are the things that the war games show over and over and over, so we need a new American way of war without question," Work stressed.
Ochmanek and Work have both seen US war games play out undesirably, and their damning observations reflect the findings of an assessment done from last fall.
"If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan, Americans could face a decisive military defeat," the National Defense Strategy Commission - a bipartisan panel of experts picked by Congress to evaluate the National Defense Strategy - said in a November report.
Read More: The US could face a 'decisive military defeat' in a war with China or Russia today, an alarming new report warnsThe commission concluded the US is "at greater risk than at any time in decades."
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