Chapter 1446 Military Strength Enhancement Plan

Chapter 1446 Military Strength Enhancement Plan

Later in the day.

Across the ocean, Washington.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates had just finished a meeting in the White House and sat back in his large, soft office chair.

According to the schedule, he had an official meeting with Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in about fifteen minutes. The topic of discussion was how to correct the wrong decisions made in the past few years and minimize the negative impact on the combat effectiveness of the US military.

But before that, Gates opened his internal mailbox as usual and prepared to check today's routine briefing.

In such a core position in the cabinet, he was able to obtain the nomination of the Elephant Party and the permission to stay in office of the Donkey Party at the same time, becoming a "two-term old minister". In addition to his smooth stance and cautious personality, his abundant energy and workaholic characteristics also played a very important role.

Compared to his predecessor who had a wild and abstract personality and might even be missing in the office for days on end, Gates, although a civil servant, behaves in a military style. Not only does he have a tight work schedule every day, but he also never relaxes his attention to his job.

After his not-so-smooth visit to China at the beginning of the year, he directly ordered that the routine intelligence summary from twice a week be increased to once a day to avoid being caught off guard again.

But today, the summary materials that should have been sent long ago did not appear, and there were only a few unimportant work emails in the unread list.

This made the defense minister, who always had a tight work schedule, a little unhappy, so he frowned and prepared to call the secretary's office to ask why there were omissions in today's work.

However, just as he picked up the receiver and before he could dial the five-digit internal number, his assistant Sheikh Brandon appeared at the office door.

"Your Excellency, Minister."

Brandon knocked on the door, then came to Gates and placed a rather thick paper report on the desk:

"Today's summary is quite long, and... the content is quite important, so I think it is necessary to hand it to you in person."

Since the explanation was well-founded, the latter's anger quickly dissipated and he immediately opened the report.

However, because General Mullen was expected to arrive soon, he was afraid that he would not have enough time to read the entire content, so he had to glance over it at a quick glance, intending to take a quick look at it.

However, when I took a look at it, I was attracted by a part of the content in the introduction.

"The report of the military attaché in China, and the analysis of the cause of the malfunction of the destroyer HMS Courageous..."

These are indeed two very important parts of content, but the more important the content, the longer it is. In ten minutes or so, I am afraid you may not be able to finish reading any part of it.

Fortunately, Brandon saw the difficulty of his leader, stepped forward quickly, and summarized succinctly:

"General Andrew Scheer believes that in the military parade that China will hold this year, most of the equipment that will appear should be the existing main models that we are familiar with, or improved versions based on them. The proportion of brand-new equipment should be much lower than in 1999. The only models that can be confirmed and for which not much information has been collected before are a combined missile and artillery air defense system used by the army, a terminal air defense missile that has not appeared on any destroyer or frigate and looks similar to SeaRAM, and a medium- and short-range tactical missile that has been frequently tested in the past two years..."

While listening to the report, Gates turned to the back and glanced at the pictures between the text.

Obviously, the photos were taken from high-rise buildings on both sides of the road during the equipment transportation process, so they are mainly bird's-eye views.

As Scheer said, although equipment such as infantry fighting vehicles, long-range rocket launchers, and wheeled assault guns only appeared in the PLA's combat sequence after the new century, they are not new to insiders because they appear too often in daily news footage and even in foreign joint exercises and training.

Especially for someone who has experienced the "fourth-generation aircraft shock" of the Chinese, these equipments seem even more mediocre.

As a result, he quickly lost interest and simply made notes in the blank spaces next to a few of the photos.

And Brandon is still talking:

"However, General Scheer emphasized in his report that they noticed that the Chinese had reduced the size of an army air defense missile to about half of its original size, thereby obtaining 2.5 times the previous ammunition reserve. Although this model itself may not be very important, if similar technology is promoted to other equipment, then the other side may make a leap forward in rockets and missiles, especially air defense and air-to-air missiles, thereby offsetting our advantages in the performance of similar weapons..."

"..."

Gates's movement to turn the page froze.

After China successively acquired a series of cutting-edge equipment represented by regional air defense ships and stealth fighters, the main argument given by the Pentagon was that the other side "had guns but no bullets" -

Although on the surface we have weapons and equipment that are equal to those of the US military, these are just face-saving projects. There is still a huge gap in the ammunition actually used for combat. So don't worry, we still have an absolute advantage.

Although this explanation is exaggerated in some details, it is generally correct, so not only the congressmen and the North American public, but even the US military itself comforts itself in this way.

But if Scheer's report is true, comforting myself would be deceiving myself...

"In addition, information obtained from the UK shows that the cause of the failure of the Courageous is that the power of the WR-21 gas turbine dropped when operating in the tropics, and there was a problem with the control logic of the integrated power system, which led to..."

The first part had just begun when Admiral Michael Mullen, dressed in military uniform, appeared at the door.

Gates glanced at the time at the bottom right corner of the computer screen and found that it was indeed the agreed meeting time, so he quickly put down the summary report in his hand.

Brandon, who was interrupted by the knock on the door, was very tactful and stopped reporting, and quickly left the office quietly.

"Michael, I've been waiting for you. Come in and sit down..."

Following Gates's actions, Mullen's attention almost subconsciously shifted to the document, and then he naturally read the first half of the introduction.

Inside the Pentagon, there is no longer any secrecy about the prospect of confrontation between the two sides of the Pacific. Even a major task of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is to develop conflict plans and combat plans based on various hypothetical situations and to evaluate the outcome of the confrontation based on a comparison of the combat power of both sides.

When he saw the keyword "Huaxia", the latter, who was originally just looking for a topic to start with, quickly became serious:

"Is this a new development in China?"

"Yes."

The topic they were going to talk about today was originally related to the threat from China. Now that the other party had brought it up, Gates got straight to the point:

"Attaché Andrew Scheer has discovered some not-so-optimistic signs... Overall, he believes that China may quickly catch up with us in the field of solid rockets..."

Maren hadn't even sat down yet when he heard such a shocking judgment, and he was a little unresponsive for a moment.

After being stunned for a moment, he asked in disbelief:

"Is the news reliable?"

Gates was actually not sure at the moment, but out of trust in Schell and because this conclusion would help their next topic, he finally nodded:

“Basically reliable.”

The admiral's expression changed from cloudy to bright for a while:

"That is to say, our AIM120 and Standard 6 may not be able to meet the combat needs in the next 10-20 years..."

Gates shook his head and added, or rather corrected:

"In fact, compared to ammunition, I am more concerned about the situation of weapon platforms... Take the Navy for example. Although Arleigh Burke and Super Hornet are considered new equipment on the surface, they are actually old equipment dating back to the 70s."

"So I think it's time to put some pressure on Congress to speed up the DDG1000 and JSF projects..."