ANOTHER WARNING FROM CHINA – AT 9:15 A.M. ET:  While we contemplate major cuts in defense procurement, China is forging ahead.  Let us not forget that we experienced four large military drawdowns in the 20th century, and lived to regret all of them.  From first-rate military reporter Bill Gertz, at the Washington Times:

China's military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

I guarantee you that most Americans today don't know where Taiwan is, or think it's the name of a new Korean sports car.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center study on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China's so-called "assassin's mace" arsenal - weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

EMP weapons mimic the gamma-ray pulse caused by a nuclear blast that knocks out all electronics, including computers and automobiles, over wide areas. The phenomenon was discovered in 1962 after an aboveground nuclear test in the Pacific disabled electronics in Hawaii...

..."For use against Taiwan, China could detonate at a much lower altitude (30 to 40 kilometers) ... to confine the EMP effects to Taiwan and its immediate vicinity and minimize damage to electronics on the mainland," the report said.

And...

According to the report, China's electronic weapons are part of what are called "trump card" or "assassin's mace" weapons that "are based on new technology that has been developed in high secrecy."

"Trump card would be applicable if the Chinese have developed new low-yield, possibly enhanced, EMP warheads, while assassin's mace would apply if older warheads are employed," the report said.

COMMENT:  As one of our knowledgeable readers wrote at our Angel's Corner, it takes vastly greater time to develop weapons systems in the modern era than in, say, the 1940s.  We are making a terrible mistake if we cut important defense programs to save a little money up front.  We will wind up spending much more in the future to catch up...unless the cuts prove fatal.  We've been close before.

July 22, 2011