The US senses that the clock is running rapidly down on its power. The question in Washington regarding war with China is not if, but when–and how.

In many traditions, when you paint or sculpt a Buddha, the eyes are the very last part to be painted. It’s only after the eyes have been completed that the sculpture is fully alive and empowered.

The US has just approved a $75 million weapons package to Taiwan province involving the sale of the Link 16 communications system.

The acquisition of Link 16 is analogous to “painting the eyes on the Buddha”: it makes Taiwan’s military systems and weapons platforms alive and seeing. It confers deadly powers, or more prosaically, in the words of the US military, it enables a multilateral coalition kill chain.

What exactly is Link 16? Link 16 is a key system in the US military communications arsenal. Specifically, it is the jam-resistant tactical data network for coordinating NATO weapons systems for joint operations in war. If this sale is completed, it signals serious, granular, and single-minded commitment to kinetic war: it would signal that the Biden administration is serious and unwavering in its desire to provoke and wage large-scale war with China over Taiwan, as it was with Russia over Ukraine, which also saw the implementation of this system. More important than any single weapons platform, this system allows the Taiwan/ROC military to integrate and coordinate all its warfighting platforms with US, NATO, Japanese & Korean militaries in combined arms warfare.

It would thus be the most deadly piece of technology yet to be transferred, because it allows sea, air, and land forces to be coordinated with others. It allows, for example, strategic nuclear/stealth bombers (US B-1B Lancers, B-2 Spirits) to coordinate with electronic warfare and surveillance platforms (EA Growlers, Prowlers, EP-3’s), fighters and bombers (F-16, F-22, F-35’s) as well as conduct joint arms warfare with US, French, British carrier battle groups, Japanese SDF destroyers, South Korean Hyun Moo destroyers, as well as THAAD and Patriot radars and missile batteries. It also allows coordination with low earth orbit satellites and other Space Force assets.

In other words, it supplies a brain and nervous system to the various deadly limbs and arms that the Taiwan authorities have been acquiring and preparing on the prompting of the US. It ensures interoperability and US control.

To give a shoe-on-the-other-foot analogy, this would be like China giving separatists in a US territory or state (e.g. Hawaii, Guam, Puerto Rico, Texas), not just arms and training–already a belligerent........

© Pearls and Irritations