Weekly Recon 24 June

Good Saturday morning and welcome to Weekly Recon. On this day in 1948, one of the most dramatic standoffs of the Cold War begins as the Soviet Union blocks all road and rail traffic to and from West Berlin. The blockade turned out to be a terrible diplomatic move by the Soviets, while the United States emerged from the confrontation with renewed purpose and confidence. The United States response came just two days after the Soviets began their blockade. A massive airlift of supplies into West Berlin was undertaken in what was to become one of the greatest logistical efforts in history. The successful American airlift merely served to accentuate the technological superiority of the United States over the Soviet Union. On May 12, 1949, the Soviets officially ended the blockade. 

The F-22 Isn’t Coming Back – Many have lamented the early end to the production of the F-22A Raptor. The

The F-22 is the Air Force's premium fifth-generation fighter asset.

plane’s community of committed fans was let down this week when the Air Force finally released its report on the feasibility of reactivating the F-22’s production. The report revealed that it would be far too expensive, estimating that merely reactivating the production line, shut down since 2011, would cost up to $10 billion. It would cost and additional $40 billion to double the current fleet, at a per unit price of up to $216 million ($79 million more than the last F-22 to roll off the line), not to mention the amount of maintenance and continual upgrades. Already the most expensive plane in the Air Force’s arsenal to operate.

Aside from the expense, the F-22, designed in the 1980s, are technologically outdated.  The Raptor’s avionics are capable of only 1/25 the computing power of the original iPhone. As Dave Majumdar has pointed out at The National Interest:

To be fair, the F-22 is the most formidable fifth-generation fighter in service, and arguably the best air-superiority fighter in existence. F-22 devotees often point to former Defense Secretary Robert Gate’s decision to terminate production at just 187 planes, citing the plane was not “relevant to post-Cold War conflicts such as those in Afghanistan and Iraq.” Revisiting the F-22 simply doesn’t make sense, both regarding cost and aging technology.   Last week’s NDAA defense markups show that the Pentagon and Congress are looking to the next generation of aircraft. The loss of the F-22 will, as many hope, lead to a technologically superior 6^th generation fighter fleet.

Secretary Shulkin’s Plan for Veterans Affairs – RealClearDefense’s David Craig attended a Christian Science Monitor hosted breakfast this week where Veteran’s Affairs Secretary David Shulkin was the guest of honor and keynote speaker. Shulkin laid out his 13-step plan to reinvigorate the department, and bring it out of what he described as “critical condition.” Shulkin was brought in from the private sector by the Obama administration in 2015 to run and reform the Under Secretary of Veterans Affairs for Health, where he took the reins of the VA’s medical operations of the VA after the department had been engulfed in controversy surrounding excessive waiting times, which have been linked to the death of many veterans.

Now, as the Department’s chief, Shulkin has laid out his plan to ensure the VA is providing the best care available to our veterans when they need it. His greatest priority is reducing the high rate of veteran suicides. To offer better care, Shulkin is emphasizing innovative in thinking as his path forward for VA reform. This is best exemplified by his “Choice 2.0” initiative, which “will allow veterans that either live over 40 miles from a VA facility or that have waited over 30 days for an appointment to seek care outside the VA System at fixed Medicare cost.” Speaking at the CSM even this week, Shulkin emphasized five priorities that demand his immediate attention. You can read more about those priorities in David’s coverage of the event here.

South China Sea Tensions Simmering to a Boil – North Korean provocations have dominated headlines in the Asia-Pacific region while confrontations in the South China Sea are on the rise. Tensions between China and Vietnam came to a boil once more this week when Beijing canceled a literal fence-mending ceremony, denoting the healing of Sino-Vietnamese relations following the 1979 border war, and following the military-to-military dialogue in Hanoi. The Chinese delegation soured as the talks turned into disputes over the South China Sea and Vietnam’s strategic engagement with the U.S. and Japan.

In this Friday, April 21, 2017, file photo, an airstrip, structures and buildings on China's man-made Subi Reef in the Spratly chain of islands in the South China Sea are seen from a Philippine Air Force C-130 transport plane of the Philippine Air Force.

AP Photo/Bullit Marquez, File

Contributing to rising tensions is the U.S. Navy’s new approach to the South China Sea, continuing Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPs) in the region, but under the radar. In an interview with the Financial Times, Admiral Scott Swift, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, noted that the decision to not report FONOPs is indicative of the United State’s new “softer” regional posture. He continued, however, that, “[t]he number of days spent by US ships in the South China Sea was on track to exceed 900 in 2017 — higher than the long-term average of 600-700 days…” The U.S. and Japan recently conducted drills in the South China Sea, which included Japan’s largest naval ship, the helicopter carrier Izumo.

China is also stepping up its military posture in the South China Sea, recently deploying its newest submarine hunting aircraft on Hainan Island. This follows Beijing’s February call for all submarines traversing the South China Sea to do so on the surface.

Even as negotiations progress toward the increasingly enigmatic China Sea code of conduct, tensions are on the rise and threaten the fragile security arrangement in Southeast Asia.

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