Bryan Clark and Timothy A. Walton write: This week’s SeaAirSpace convention comes at a challenging time for the US Navy, which faces criticism about everything from its lack of strategy to subpar readiness. Lost in the wave of proposed solutions, however, is a fix to the growing shortfalls of naval airpower. Aircraft are increasingly important to counter threats posed by the People’s Liberation Army, which include proliferated sensors and thousands of precision weapons able to reach more than 1,000 miles from China’s coast, its long-range bombers, or illegally-created maritime features. Diluting and complicating Chinese attacks will demand that US naval forces distribute across the Western Pacific and concentrate their fires against enemy ships and facilities from a distance. Aircraft are essential to achieve this theater-wide reach as well as provide targeting and communications in what are likely to be degraded electromagnetic environments
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