NEW DEFENSE DEPARTMENT AIRCRAFT AVAILABILITY REPORT
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) on September 10 released a new audit report confirming that the Air Force and Navy failed to meet aircraft availability goals between 2011 and 2015, with worsening numbers over time for almost 50% of the assessed models.
According to the GAO report: “The Air Force and Navy share a variety of sustainment challenges, including the age of their aircraft as well as maintenance and supply support issues. These challenges have led to half of the aircraft in our review experiencing decreasing availability [between 2011 and 2016] and to the aircraft in general not being able to meet aircraft availability goals.”
The report covered the F-16 Fighting Falcons, F/A-18A Hornets, F/A 18E/F Super Hornets, F-22 Raptors and the AV-8B Harrier II’s. It also examined numbers for the B-52 Stratoforce bomber, and a number of early warning, electronic surveillance, cargo, and transport planes.
Only one of the aircraft models audited achieved its availability goal. And, five failed to achieve their goal in all five years covered in the report. The Defense Department concurred with report which stated: “The Air Force and Navy are operating many of their fixed-wing aircraft well beyond their original designed service lives and therefore are confronted with sustainment challenges.” This follows eight years in which the Obama Administration pushed for decreases in the Defense budget.
RUSSIAN-CHINESE SPACE RELATIONS
It appears the Russian space corporation Roscosmos is prepared to supply rocket engines to China in yet another sign of the strengthening, strategic relationship between the two countries.
The move goes beyond a single engine sale. Space Daily reports that Hu Bin, a counselor in China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while attending a UN Conference on Space and Law Policy said he believes it is a good idea that “can be put into the framework of cooperation on space exploration.”
Russia and China will continue to work together for the foreseeable future to thwart efforts by the west to limit their influence throughout the world as they have no other alternative partners or other viable policy options. However, while China and Russia consistently make public relations statements affirming their close and friendly relationship, under the surface there remains a strong distrust and resentment of each other that historically dates back the Unequal Treaties period in the mid-1800’s. That distrust was further cemented when Moscow reneged on a promise to give China the bomb in the late 1950’s, in a move seen in Beijing as a great betrayal among communist brothers.
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To the West this is a bygone era; to China this is current news. The underlying message United States policy makers need to recognize, is that out of necessity these two communist giants are collaborating to stop American influence, but as history shows it is not a bond of deep trust. The opportunity remains for Washington to bring China into the fold of responsible world powers if The US plays its China card correctly in the coming years.
CHINA
State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert announced that the United States is deeply troubled by China’s worsening treatment and crackdown of the Muslim Uighur minority in western China, Kazakhs, and other Muslim groups. Earlier this year the State Department invited a group of Uighur journalists, among others, to Washington to press for human rights at the Religious Freedom Ministerial conference.
“There are credible reports out there that many, many thousands have been detained in detention centers since April 2017, and the numbers are fairly significant from what we can tell so far. Some of those disproportionate controls on ethnic minorities – expressions of their cultural and also their religious entities – have the potential also to incite radicalization and the recruitment of violence,” she said.
China has long feared “luan,” or chaos in its domestic politics. The leadership in Beijing has a history of intolerance of any political dissent or protests over human rights that could be organized and turned against the government or Communist Party. China’s leaders remain wary of minority groups, such as the Uighurs, who they say could increase pressure on Beijing to relax regulations on religious expression and practices and undermine stability within the country.