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  • China is on don't forget Russia, it's going to be a very interesting nation within the next few months or days now.

    • You raise a good point Jeff. The USA is not the only adversay China has. The Russian Federation is just next door, and with borderline bickering.

    • All I can say is this "ALL HAND ON DECK" it's going to get nasty.

  • with the Democrats who are in the office, China will do whatever it takes to gain power over the United State of America that's where we are headed.

  • They are just waiting for Biden to run to the UN which china owns. They will set the terms of our surrender without a shot being fired.

  • They are already in the Gulf and off all our coasts... the missile launched in 2010, just NW of Catalina Island was in all probability launched from a Chinese nuclear-powered missile submarine... they have 5 in service and 5 more ready this year... they are silent and have what appears as stolen US Sub technology.  They can set off any of our costs nearly indefinitely and threaten our nation with a nuclear holocaust that our anti-missile systems may not have time to defend...

    Also, they could use a high-altitude EMP weapon and knock out our nation's entire electric grid... ultimately killing millions for lack of power.  Our electrical system and dependence on electronics make us highly vulnerable to an EMP Strike and our government has ignored this problem for decades.... holding us hostage to what is almost certain suicide if we are exposed to an effective EMP attack.

    • Ron I thought that our ABM system was dismanteled during the cold war with the MAD system put in its place instead. But I might be wrong, when I was in the Navy during the 70's we were only training for the Soviet Union, not China.

    • Our AMB system was reinstated under Pres Bush and Trump...  Below follows an extract from an executive summary explaining our current ABM system(s)

      Contact: Kingston Reif, director for disarmament and threat reduction policy, 202-463-8270 x104


      Executive Summary

      Two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors are launched during a successful intercept test. (Photo: US Missile Defense Agency Flickr)

      Two Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) interceptors are launched during a successful intercept test. (Photo: US Missile Defense Agency Flickr)

      According to Missile Defense Agency (MDA) estimates, Congress has appropriated over $200 billion for the agency’s programs between fiscal years 1985 and 2019. That total does not include spending by the military services on programs such as the Patriot system or the many additional tens of billions of dollars spent since work on anti-missile systems first began in the 1950s.

      For nearly two decades, U.S. ballistic missile defense (BMD) policy has sought to protect the homeland against limited long-range missile strikes from states such as Iran and North Korea, but not major nuclear powers like Russia and China as that mission would pose significant technical, financial, and geopolitical challenges. The United States has also pursued programs to defend U.S. troops and facilities abroad, as well as some close allies, from attacks by ballistic missiles—and to a much lesser extent cruise missiles.

      The overall U.S. missile defense effort enjoys strong bipartisan support in Congress. Additionally, many U.S. allies place a high value on missile defense cooperation with the United States.

      However, the U.S. pursuit of effective missile defenses has been accompanied by intense debate about the technical capabilities of the system and realism of testing, the scope of the ballistic missile threat, the deterrence and assurance benefits of defenses, the cost-effectiveness of shooting down relatively inexpensive offensive missiles with expensive defensive ones, and the repercussions for U.S. strategic stability with Russia and China.

      According to the Defense Department’s independent testing office, existing U.S. missile defenses have "demonstrated capability" to defend the U.S. homeland against a small number of intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) threats that employ "simple countermeasures." The testing office assesses that defenses to protect allies and U.S. troops deployed abroad possess only a “limited capability” to defend against small numbers of intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and medium-range ballistic missiles (MRBMs). The capability of defenses against short-range ballistic missiles is labeled as “fair.” Apart from the point-defense Patriot system, no systems in the U.S. BMD arsenal have been used in combat.

      Leaders of the U.S. missile defense enterprise have increasingly voiced concerns that the current U.S. approach to national and regional missile defense is unsustainable and that existing defenses must be augmented with emerging capabilities to reduce the cost of missile defense and keep pace with advancing adversary missile threats.

      The Trump Administration

      In May 2017, pursuant to direction from President Donald Trump and Congress, then Defense Secretary James Mattis formally announced the beginning of the department’s Ballistic Missile Defense Review, which is taking a wide-ranging look at missile defense policy and strategy. The review was finally released in February 2019, one year after its original completion target.

      Broadly, the review proposes to expand the role and scope of U.S. missile defenses by focusing not only on ballistic missiles, but also other types of missile threats, such as regional cruise and hypersonic missiles. It also proposes placing greater emphasis on the importance of space and new technologies to intercept missiles during their boost phase when they are traveling at their slowest. The review also calls for integrating offensive attack operations more closely with missile defenses and to supplement the defense of the U.S. homeland with the Aegis Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) Block IIA interceptor.

      The review also re-affirmed previously announced plans by the Trump administration to arm unarmed aerial vehicles with lasers to zap long-range missiles during their boost phase, expand the Ground-Based Midcourse Defense (GMD) system from 44 to 64 interceptors by 2023 (though this plan has since been indefinitely delayed), focus on “left of launch” capabilities to destroy a missile threat before it launches, and field a space-sensor layer to provide birth-to-death tracking of ballistic missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles. The review also called for 11 follow-up studies, which are detailed in the below section, The 2019 Missile Defense Review To-Do List.

      Since President Trump’s inauguration, the administration has vowed to expand national and regional missile defense systems of every kind, and Congress has supported these efforts. In fiscal year 2018, Congress approved $11.5 billion for the Missile Defense Agency, an increase of $3.6 billion, or 46 percent, from the Trump administration’s May 2017 initial budget request. The appropriation is the largest Congress has ever provided for the agency after adjusting for inflation. 

      Congress approved another big increase for fiscal year 2019, approving $10.3 billion for the agency, an increase of $1.4 billion above the budget request of $9.9 billion.

      Notably, the fiscal year 2020 request seeks $380 million over the next five years to develop and test by 2023 a prototype space-based laser weapon to destroy ICBMs during their boost and midcourse phases of flight.

      For ballistic missile and missile defense basics, as well as the historical background of missile defense programs, please visit “Missiles and Missile Defense Systems at a Glance.”

      It must be noted that we remain very vulnerable to ABM attacks due to the lack of sufficient ABM Batteries and their current distribution... leaving us vulnerable to China and Russia's Submarine Launched ICBMs.  Also, a whole new family of HYPERSONIC missiles is under development by Russia and China... missiles so fast that the current generation of ABM we have will prove ineffective.  

      Kingston Reif, Director of Disarmament & Threat Reduction Policy | Arms Control Association
    • Shall we wonder if nuclear exchange seems tenable to the CCP?

    • No...While Mao was alive he stated more than once China was the only nation in the world that could come out of a nuclear war with more people than in the USA before the war... he believed China could survive a nuclear war.  What does that say about today... with the current CCP and the PRC's military rapidly expanding their OFFENSIVE NUCLEAR Weapons and DELIVERY systems?  Guess?

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