Record Defense Budget Flunks the China Test
By Jeffrey Jeb Nadaner
January 31, 2023
One consolation of the $1.7 trillion 2023 spending bill was a bipartisan Congress providing several tens of billions of dollars over the President’s narrow defense request. While most lines of that $858 billion defense appropriation are necessary, it fails in its totality. The record budget folds before our most important national security test: to rescue our precarious Pacific posture.
The bill rightly seeds pioneering capabilities that will be fielded in quantities in the 2030s. It refills Ukraine-depleted stockpiles, but these weapons, however, are generally short-range and of lesser utility vis-à-vis China.
In the vast waters between Hawaii and Shanghai, mid-to-long range strike forms the sine-qua-non of deterrence. Our current stores are miserable, the planned step increases off the mark. The 2023 budget funds just a little more than a thousand new mid-to-long range conventional missiles, to add to our inventories: approximately 80 Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles (LRASMs), 600 Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missiles (JASSMs), 90 Extended Range HARMs (AARGM-ERs), 100 Naval Strike Missiles (NSMs), and 150 Tomahawks.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2023/01/31/record_defense_budget_flunks_the_china_test_878724.html
