Military Quick Hits

* The assumption that a large scale amphibious assault in a hostile entry, like the D-Day invasion, remains an important capability of the U.S. military, is unfounded. There hasn't been a significant amphibious assault anywhere in the world since the Korean War in the 1950s. What country would the U.S. invade that way? China? North Korea? Russia? Iran? It is hard to come up with plausible scenarios to motivate the need for this capability.

* Republicans in Congress are pro-disinformation. The U.S. Defense Department shamefully spread anti-vax disinformation about Chinese vaccines during the COVID epidemic.

* The U.S. Air Force isn't sure if it will move forward on building a "Next Generation Air Dominance" warplane, basically a successor to the F-22 and F-35. There is speculation that this may be driven by dissatisfaction with Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the only domestic defense contractors capable of building such a plan. Cost and viable alternatives are also factors:

Paying for this next-gen fighter, which is expected to cost about $300 million a pop, will be tough as the service expects to spend increasing amounts of money in the coming years on F-35s, the new B-21 Raider, and the next-gen Sentinel intercontinental ballistic missile. And in addition to budget constraints, new technology developments and drones have the service rethinking the future of air dominance.

NGAD may be the only place the Air Force can take a reduction, said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, given all the other programs the Air Force needs to pay for, and the desire to grow its new collaborative combat aircraft program.

The service also may be rethinking its overall concept of operations to rely on B-21, CCAs, and stand-off weapons [i.e. long range missiles] rather than a traditional aircraft, Clark said. But given emerging technologies, it’s still unclear what air dominance is exactly going to look like in the future.

The collaborative combat aircraft program, sometimes called the "loyal wingman" program, is a drone aircraft that supports a manned jet fighter. 

* In the short run it looks like naval warfare between China and the Philippines is more likely than war between China and Taiwan.