China-US arms race set to quicken as American air force chief ups ante

Name: Nato says China presents ‘systemic challenges’
Uploaded: 2021-08-19T13:35:50.000Z
Duration: 3 min 29 s
Description: Nato says China presents ‘systemic challenges’

US Air Force’s new secretary Frank Kendall seeking to raise spending on technologies that could threaten adversaries

Chinese military modernisation is ‘moving faster than I might have anticipated’, he says

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The US’ B-21 Raider, a long-range stealth strategic bomber, was among the technologies cited by the American air force’s new secretary. Photo: Handout

Minnie Chan

Published: 9:35pm, 19 Aug 2021Updated: 10:43pm, 19 Aug 2021

The race between Beijing and Washington to develop advanced weapons is set to intensify with the American air force pledging to seek more funding for technologies that could threaten adversaries including China.

Frank Kendall, the new secretary of the United States Air Force, told Defence News Weekly in an interview published on Thursday that he would seek more spending in his budget to develop the next-generation technologies.

“The air force has been overly constrained … I think we’ve not been allowed to do things we really need to do to free up resources for things that are a higher priority,” said Kendall, a former Pentagon acquisitions chief who is well acquainted with military technology.

He said intelligence had proved that Chinese military modernisation was “moving faster than I might have anticipated”.

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Nato says China presents ‘systemic challenges’

“I’ve been obsessed, if you will, with China for quite a long time now, and its military modernisation, what that implies for the US and for security,” Kendall said.

Discussing what types of technologies had the potential to threaten adversaries, Kendall pointed to programmes such as an F-35 upgrade that will increase its computing power and add new weapons and sensors, as well as the B-21 bomber, Defence News Weekly reported.