over the horizon

This is interesting:

The next big project the Air Force is considering is the Long Range Strike Bomber, a successor to the B-1 and B-2 whose specifications include an ability to do bombing runs deep into China. (A step so wildly reckless that the U.S. didn’t consider it even when fighting Chinese troops during the Korean War.) By the time the plane’s full costs and capabilities become apparent, Chuck Spinney wrote last summer, the airplane, “like the F-35 today, will be unstoppable.” That is because even now its supporters are building the plane’s “social safety net by spreading the subcontracts around the country, or perhaps like the F-35, around the world.”

I suppose that theoretically this embeds the prospect of an eventual US-China war.

But not so fast! If we're working on the F-35 principle here, in that the aim is to have the plane perpectually under development in order to ensure that the money keeps flowing, then what we have is a project to ensure that the US never has a bomber capable flying deep strike missiles into China, thereby delaying the prospect of apocalyptic US-China conflict indefinitely.

Indeed, it's possible that the perpetual development cycle of this theoretical long range bomber becomes so essential to China's own great power strategy that it ends up covertly subsidising the plane. In fact, if the US is smart enough it could end up offloading the whole cost to the PRC. In this scenario, China then bankrupts itself and the USA prevails peacefully in a 21st century version of the Cold War arms race. Fiendish occidental cunning, there.

Comments

[ajay]

The US definitely considered bombing China during the Korean War - both MacArthur and Ridgway wanted to use nuclear eapons on targrts in Manchuria.

[Malcs]

It might seem a pointless distinction, but is "deep" doing the work there? I mean I'm not exactly clear why nuking Shenyang or Jilin City would be less reckless than bombing Wuhan or Chongqing but isn't that the capability they're aiming for with the plane?

[ajay]

I would imagine that the point is to be able to hit Chinese ICBM fields, which are all over the place, including quite far away from the coast (see convenient map here http://fas.org/nuke/guide/china/facility/missile.htm). The USAF already has the capability to strike anywhere in China with a nuclear weapon.