THE WATCH STAFF
Despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, U.S. Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall says the priority threat facing the United States remains “China, China, China.”
Kendall, speaking at the Air Force Association’s Warfare Symposium on March 3, 2022, in Orlando, Florida, repeated a view he has made since becoming secretary: The U.S. must modernize its military or fall behind in its ability to counter the advancements made by the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
The PRC with “both regional and global ambitions, the resources to pursue them, and a repressive authoritarian system of government, will be our greatest strategic national security challenge,” Kendall said, according to a transcript of his speech provided March 8 by Air Force Magazine.
“Our role, the role of the Department of the Air Force, is clear: to provide the Air and Space Forces that will deter aggression, and if necessary, defeat it,” he said.
(Pictured: U.S. Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall meets with Airmen at the Air Warfare Symposium. “Nothing is more inspiring to me than to have informal conversations with the men and women who wear the Air or Space Force uniform,” Kendall said in his March 3, 2022, keynote.)
The U.S. is currently “stretched thin” by its global defense commitments and an aging fleet of warplanes, Kendall said in his address, the Air Force News Service (AFNS) reported. “We have … average aircraft ages of approximately 30 years and operational availability rates that are lower than we desire,” he said.
Kendall said the PRC began reshaping its military capabilities to defeat U.S. power-projection forces after the first Persian Gulf War and has not let up.
“The U.S. has not stood still,” he said, “but we have not moved fast enough.”
Kendall thanked the U.S. Congress for the assistance provided during the current fiscal year but said the Air Force remains limited in its ability to shift resources from legacy platforms to free up funds for modernization.
The war in Ukraine has only served to increase the urgency of that transformation.
Politico, citing a Pentagon official, reported March 4 that the White House has delayed release of its National Defense Strategy — initially expected in February — because of Russia’s aggression.
“If President [Vladimir] Putin thought he could divide NATO, divide Europe, and even divide the United States, he was wrong. Now it’s up to all of us to ensure that something like this does not happen again,” Kendall said in his speech, according to Air Force Magazine.
To do that, Kendall outlined his seven imperatives for modernization. The space domain and its satellite architecture top his list.
“The simple fact is that the U.S. cannot project power successfully unless our space-based services are resilient enough to endure while under attack,” he said, according to the transcript. “Equally true, our terrestrial forces, joint and combined, cannot survive and perform their missions if our adversary’s space-based operational support systems, especially targeting systems, are allowed to operate with impunity.”
IMAGE CREDIT: TSGT ARMANDO A. SCHWIER-MORALES/U.S. AIR FORCE