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It seems likely that Russia and China will increase their naval capacity (Russia especially as the arctic melts fully due to global warming.) It makes sense to

• mrDmrTmrJ 6y ago
  Not sure why you're being downvoted, as you're completely right. Though China's fleet is the 'pacing threat' more so than Russia's. The single largest US Defense procurement goals is the ability to sink '400 ships in 48hours' as the key performance metric in a Taiwan defense scenario. [1] The authors are career academics who get press by being 'contrarian'. The argument they make in their paper (that this editorial is based on) is fundamentally a straw man. They compare ballistic missiles trajectories to hypersonic trajectories and conclude 'ballistic is faster', while ignoring they key point that hypersonic weapons are *conventional in US force posture (i.e. non-nuclear) compared to ballistic weapons. And they ignore that hypersonic trajectories are significantly harder to intercept, b/c of intercept timelines are governed by radar horizon issues and greater design cross range of hypersonic aerobodies. [1] See "The Kill Chain" https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tech/dp/031653353X https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Chain-Defending-America-High-Tec...