Plan I

Plan A and Plan B and a lot of other plans for dealing with the horror of a Trump administration have crashed and burned. So, we're onto Plan I. This stands for Plan Implosion. 

What is it?

1. Trump's management of the federal government and the actions taken by Elon Musk as shadow President are so bad, that his administration is on a path to implode in public opinion and political support, now that his honeymoon period is coming to an end.

The New York Times has listed 22 major illegal actions his administration has taken so far, of which courts have already halted seven of them. He may win some of those battles, but he won't win all of them. 

His nominees are consistently mendacious, incompetent, and have profoundly flawed character.

And, as his actions are starting to be implemented, a lot of his supporters, who didn't read Project 2025, or didn't take his rhetoric seriously, are starting to realize how bad his policies are for them, and had bad both his policies and the chaos and uncertainty that his approach to implementing them has created are for the economy. Pretty much every major economic indicator has gone south since he has taken office, and sometimes in a seriously concerning way. Polls show that both most of his policies and many of his approaches to implementing them are seriously unpopular. And, his initial favorability rating is lower than any other President in the history of modern polling.

2. If Trump's administration implodes badly enough, he may see major defections in his own caucus in Congress, which is just a three representative majority in the House and a three Senator majority in the Senate, and we may see long shot Democrats win races for Congress in 2026 as the nation decides that maybe putting the Republicans in charge was a bad idea. The current Republican caucus in Congress is not known for its unity and cohesiveness, even though some of these internal conflicts are just simmering beneath the surface.

3. The U.S. Supreme Court has carried a lot of water for Trump so far, and has an uber-conservative agenda that it would like to advance. But Trump's complete disregard for the rule of law, and the mess of constitutional crises he is creating, can't sit well with all of them. I'm sure that even many of the conservative justices are shocked at how far Trump has gone to ignore the law. And, ultimately, their power derives from government officials obeying the law including their dictates.

This court's rulings have shown a marked tendency to ignore legal analysis in favor of what they see as practical and expedient. And, if the chaos reaches the point that it is approaching, where the whole Congressionally and constitutionally established framework of the federal government and legislative process starts to fall apart, the economy is crashing, and popular support for his administration is crumbling, they may finally see the error of their ways in appearing to give Trump everything and put on the brakes.  

4. Trump's abandonment of all of the traditional enemies of the U.S. and embrace of our former enemies as friends, greatly weakens the U.S. internationally and weakens Trump's political support from even conservatives, at home. There aren't a lot of single issue foreign policy voters on the right or the left. But the people who do care deeply about foreign policy tend to be powerful.

We're going to have to hope that the rest of Western Europe steps up to support Ukraine, now that the U.S. has turned on all of its NATO allies and is trying to throw Ukraine under the bus.

We're going to have to hope that Israel with the U.K.'s help, and the involvement of the international community, can handle the Middle East's woes in the face of Trump's whacky destabilizing proposals.

Could this just be wishful thinking?

Sure it could be. But, right now, this seems to be the best trajectory to aim for at the moment until a better plan comes along. The opposition doesn't exactly have a lot of options right now.

How Far Is China From The U.S.?

The closest U.S. territory to the People's Republic of China is Guam (which has about 166,000 people and substantial U.S. military bases) and is about 1,800 miles away from it (about the same as the distance from Denver to New York City). 

The Northern Marina Islands (which have a bit more than 40,000 people) which are an island chain that extends north of Guam. The Northern Marina Islands are 2,929 miles from the People's Republic of China (about the same as the distance from San Diego, California to Portland, Maine).

The People's Republic of China is about 4,000 miles away from Alaska (about the distance from Hawaii to Minneapolis), and is about 4,900 miles away from Hawaii (about the distance from Hawaii to Washington D.C.). Both Alaska and Hawaii have substantial U.S. military bases.

The People's Republic of China is about 7,200 miles from the closest point in the contiguous 48 states of the United States (about the distance from Albuquerque, New Mexico to Jerusalem).

Magnetic North Is Closer To True North Than It Has Been For Ages

 

The picture tells the entire story.

Don't Worry About China Controlling Our Food Supply

Concerns about Chinese ownership of U.S. farmland, or U.S. reliance on China for imported food, are driven entirely by paranoid xenophobia and have no legitimate basis in reality.

Only about 0.03% of U.S agricultural imports come from China, about $9.5 billion in 2022 (about $28 per person per year in the U.S.) most of which is snack food. China actually imports $34 billion in U.S. agricultural goods (as of 2023, down from $36 billion in 2022, which is about $19,000 per year per U.S. farm), which makes it the largest single export market for U.S. agricultural goods.

China buying our agricultural land is also not a serious concern.

Most foreign owned farm land (more than 70%) is owned by Canadians or Western Europeans. Foreigners from all places own about 3.1% of U.S. agricultural land, and foreigners with Chinese connections own about 0.9% of that, i.e. less than 0.03% of U.S. agricultural land (about 383,935 acres), which is about 827 average sized farms out of 1,890,000 farms in the U.S., and not all in one place either. And, particularly near the Canadian border (e.g., in Maine and the UP) most foreign owners are Canadians.

The main legitimate concern about Chinese agents purchasing U.S. agricultural land is that the land might be close to U.S. military bases that could be used to spy on those bases. But the Biden administration addressed that issue:

A 2022 Chinese land purchase in the U.S. . . . raised concerns. That spring, a food producer called Fufeng Group bought 370 acres for corn milling near an Air Force base in North Dakota. This prompted the Biden administration to propose a new rule: any foreign company or individual who wants to buy land within 100 miles of certain U.S. military bases (the North Dakota base included) needs government approval. 

U.S. Air Force Starts Development Of Hypersonic Bomber And Other News

The news last week that the U.S. government is pursuing a Mach-5-capable bomber rippled across the globe at hypersonic speed. The Next Generation Responsive Strike (NextRS) program, a combination bomber and spy plane, will be the U.S. Air Force’s next project after its effort to build a sixth-generation fighter jet.

A hypersonic bomber would by far be the most technologically advanced aircraft project ever attempted—but is speed without stealth still relevant today? . . . 

The Air Force has previously bet the farm on stealthy strike aircraft, so it’s reasonable to ask why it is suddenly having a change of heart. In April 2024, according to Air & Space Forces Magazine, the Air Force said it did not want more than 100 B-21 Raider bombers.

Instead, it said, a new aircraft might come along by the time the initial order was fulfilled that would supplement the Raider fleet. That new aircraft is almost certainly NextRS.

NextRS won’t be a stealthy aircraft. A hypersonic bomber would need to prioritize aerodynamic efficiency over a low radar cross-section to maximize range and manage the blistering temperatures generated by high surface friction that would melt ordinary aircraft.

It would also generate a huge infrared signature that could be picked up by space-based sensors, giving an adversary a heads-up that a hypersonic aircraft or missile is on the way.

This raises two possibilities. One is that NextRS is not a bomber in the strict sense of the term, dropping unpowered, precision-guided munitions directly overhead a target. One of the aircraft’s design goals is the release of munitions at hypersonic speeds.

Hypersonic weapons could be fired outside the S-400’s 250-mile intercept radius, leaving it up to the missile to penetrate enemy air defenses. Another possibility is that the aircraft will be substantially faster than Mach 5—fast enough that the Air Force is confident it won’t face interception.

Unless it were launched directly underneath its target, a Mach-12 interceptor missile would be unable to overtake a Mach 12 NextRS traveling at 100,000 feet. The faster the aircraft can fly, the stronger the case to field it.

From here. 

If China's claims that it can detect U.S. stealth aircraft from more than 1200 miles away, using the heat emitted from their engines rather than radar, is accurate, the U.S. might be well-advised to stop putting all of its eggs in the stealth bomber/fighter basket, and have a speed based back up plan in place as well.

The proposed hypersonic long range bomber would be a successor to "the SR-71 Blackbird. The SR-71, retired at the end of the Cold War, was the fastest aircraft ever built, capable of Mach 3.2, or more than 2,200 miles per hour." It is sometimes called the SR-72 for sake of discussion. No publicly disclosed price estimate is available for the SR-72, but it will surely be more expensive than the B-21 Raider, so a flyaway cost of $1 billion each, or more, wouldn't be surprising.

It appears that the B-21 Raider long range bomber (at a projected cost of $780 million each with a buy of 100 of them), which would supplement or replace the B-1 ad B-2 bombers, and looks very similar to the B-2, will come first, followed by the next priority after Next Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) sixth generation stealth fighter (it would like to buy 200 of them at a cost of several hundred million dollars each) with its "loyal wingman" collaborative combat aircraft (CCA), unmanned fighter aircraft supporting it (the Air Force would like to buy 1000 of them at $25-30 million each but that seems optimistic), and the SR-72 coming after that in the U.S. Air Force's procurement plans for new fighters and bombers. 

Meanwhile, the Air Force is rounding out its buy of fifth generation F-35A fighters. It is also buying some pimped out fourth generation F-15EX non-stealth fighters in the meantime at an estimated price of $90-97 million each as of November 2023, which is more than the F-35A, with "a primary focus on air superiority roles such as offensive counter-air, cruise missile defence, defensive counter-air capabilities and escort of high-value airborne assets, with a secondary mission of air-to-ground precision strike."

The U.S. Navy, like the U.S. Air Force, also doesn't seem to be entirely at peace with purchasing only the F-35C carrier based fighters designed for it, and F-35B vertical landing fighters designed for the Marine Corps, and is also exploring buying more carrier based F-18s. 

It isn't clear to me if the U.S. Navy has any next generation carrier based fighter, attack, bomber, or patrol aircraft in the works, other than the CCA (which is also officially an Air Force only program at this time), that could probably be adapted to work with both Air Force and Navy fighters. 

The U.S. Navy isn't part of the NGAD program, which sees itself as developing a successor to the fifth generation U.S. Air Force only F-22 stealth fighter and is currently aiming at a nominal 200 plane buy in the 2023 DOD R&D budget. 

The U.S. Navy does nominally have an F/A-XX program intended to develop a sixth generation carrier based successor to the F-18 and F-35C that it has been working on since 2008, but it seems to be mostly vaporware at the moment and hasn't been a budget priority for the Navy. Defense insiders suspect that the program may end up turning into an F-18 and/or F-35C upgrade program, rather than an entirely new fight aircraft design.

But the Navy's reticence may be appropriate as radar stealth may be becoming less valuable, and long range missiles and kamikaze drones are increasingly taking the manned fighter aircraft middle man out of long range strike missions, and anti-aircraft defenses are evolving rapidly. 

The F-35 Program

In all 3,532 F-35s of all variants have been ordered by the U.S. and 19 other countries, and 883 have been delivered so far (25% of those ordered). There may be some additional foreign orders before F-35 production ends, and there is a decent chance that the U.S. will reduce its final F-35 order based upon past experience. 

The U.S. military is in the middle of F-35 procurement with is projected to ultimately cost it $1,700 billion for 2456 fighters (about $692 million each including operations and maintenance over the lifetimes of the planes). But simply buying them is less expensive: "As of July 2024, the average flyaway costs per plane are: US $82.5 million for the F-35A, $109 million for the F-35B, and $102.1 million for the F-35C. . . . As of August 2023, the program was 80% over budget and 10 years late."

So far, the U.S. has received deliveries of about 514 of them. The U.S. Air Force has received 302 F-35As out of the 1,763 planned, the U.S. Navy has received more than 100 F-35Cs out of the 273 planned, and the U.S. Marine Corps has received 112 F-35s (a mix of F-35Bs and F-35Cs) out of a planned 280 F-35Bs and 140 F-35Cs. 

The U.S.  Air Force planned to buy 1,763 F-35As and 17 other countries plan to buy 836 F-35As, which entered service in 2016, for a total of 2599 F-35As planned, 591 of which have been delivered.

In all 933 F-35B/Cs have been ordered and 292 have been delivered. The U.S. Marine Corps planes to buy 280 F-35Bs which entered service in 2015. Four other countries plan to buy 240 F-35Bs of which 80 have been delivered (South Korea and the U.K. will be buying only F-35Bs and not F-35As, Japan and Italy will make mixed buys). The U.S. Navy and Marine Corps are the only purchasers of  the planned 413 F-35C variants, which entered service in 2019.

The F-35 has also been sold to many allies including Australia (72 F-35As delivered), Japan (38 out 105 F-35As delivered and 42 F-35Bs ordered), South Korea (40 out of 65 F-35Bs delivered and 20 F-35Bs planned but not yet ordered), Israel (39 out of 75 F-35Is, and F-35A variant, delivered including one prototype electronic warfare fighter), Belgium (35 F-35As delivered), Denmark (10 out of 27 F-35As delivered), Italy (17 out of 75 F-35As and 6 out of 40 F-35Bs), Netherlands (38 out of 52 F-35As delivered), Norway (40 out of 52 F-35As delivered with a minor local modification), and the U.K. (34 out of 138 F-35Bs delivered, but one lost in an accident).

There have been no deliveries yet to other allies who have ordered F-35As including Singapore (12), Canada (88), Czech Republic (24), Finland (64), Germany (35), Greece (20), Poland (32), Romania (32), and  Switzerland (36). Requests from Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and UAE to buy F-35As were ultimately declined (in the case of Turkey even though eight were built and are ready for delivery).

New Navy Drones

The Navy is also exploring having a single kind of fairly large and simple drone warships that put more anti-ship missiles into its fleet and amplify the military clout of destroyers escorting commercial ships:

The Navy currently has six unmanned surface vessel prototypes: the so-called “Overlord” ships Nomad, Mariner, Ranger, Vanguard and the smaller Sea Hunter and Seahawk, all members of the Navy’s “ghost fleet” of unmanned vessels. Nomad was put up for sale last year and her status remains unknown.

The unmanned ship Ranger successfully launched an SM-6 missile in 2021, and a smaller unmanned vessel launched that weapon in 2023,. The service has expressed support for building a single type of unmanned ship, closer in size to the Overlord ships that can each carry four, 40-foot container payloads.The Navy wants these ships to be up to 300 feet long with a displacement of up to 2,000 tons. For comparison, the Navy’s frontline manned ship, the Arleigh Burke class destroyer, is about 509 feet long and displaces about 9,900 tons in its current variant. . . . 

The data and experiences gleaned from the deployment to the Red Sea would allow the Navy to make smart decisions about how best to use the unmanned ships. For example, one proposal is to use the larger, Overlord-type unmanned ships as escorts and supplements to manned combatant ships. Just as the battleship seldom put to sea without an escort of destroyers to defend it from surface and undersea torpedo craft, today’s surface warships need their own escorts to aid in air, missiles and drone defense, as well as conduct antisubmarine and scouting missions.

In theory, the larger unmanned ships might carry a dozen or more missiles of their own, accessible as additional magazines for the manned warships with which they sail.

The advantage of the unmanned ships is that they could be built in vast numbers quickly and in shipyards around the United States to include those on the Great Lakes and Western Rivers. If these unmanned ships work as combat augmentation for manned ships, then the Navy might embark on a vast building program with the goal of every manned ship being a “flotilla” leader of unmanned combatants. The Dutch Navy is already planning this for their guided missile frigates.

So basically, the Navy is looking at a loyal wingman model for its large, missile bearing drone warships. These large drone surface warships have "an estimated cost of $497.6 million [in 2027], with procurement of the next two the following year at about $326 million apiece."

Stealth Surface Combatants

Image from Wikipedia.

The real stealth surface combatants of the future are less likely to be high tech purpose built warships with designs that reduce their radar profile, like the experimental prototype shown above, and more likely to be like the ones in this Star War video excerpt that look like ordinary cargo ships, but are actually outfitted with military grade anti-ship missiles hidden away in structures that are indistinguishable from those found on ordinary cargo ships, manned by military personnel.

These secretly armed cargo ships can come quite close range with opposition warships, because they don't look like a threat, and blend in with normal merchant ship traffic, before striking opposition warships. This close range engagement can reduce the target warships' ability to employ defenses to the attack in the short moments after they realize what is going on, just as effectively as a far more sophisticated hypersonic missile attack from a much greater range fired from a conventional warship.

A recent incident where a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Mediterranean sea near the entrance of the Suez Canal was struck by a 53,000 ton cargo ship with a history of prior collision incidents, illustrates how unsuspiciously the U.S. Navy currently responds to ships of this kind, even though that ship was unarmed and the collision was apparently a matter of mutual negligence rather than malice. The captain of the aircraft carrier was relieved of his command after that collision (which did significant but not disabling damage). 

But it isn't clear that there has been any deeper tactical doctrine adjustment by the U.S. Navy even though the technique I describe was used with devastating effect in a U.S. Navy war game in the year 2002 whose outcome is now declassified.