{"id":2525,"date":"2015-05-26T22:28:07","date_gmt":"2015-05-26T22:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/box5917.temp.domains\/~iriacom\/\/news\/?p=2525"},"modified":"2015-05-26T22:28:07","modified_gmt":"2015-05-26T22:28:07","slug":"us-general-warns-about-rising-air-power-of-china-and-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/us-general-warns-about-rising-air-power-of-china-and-russia\/","title":{"rendered":"US General warns about rising air power of China and Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

Head of the US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh has warned about the rising air power of Russia and China, saying the two countries\u2019 gap with the US military has closed.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cChina and Russia are two good examples of countries who will be fielding capability in the next three to five years; if they stay on track, that is better than what we currently have in many areas,\u201d Welsh told Fox News on Monday.<\/p>\n

\u201cFighter aircraft in the next three to five years that have more capability than what we currently have sitting on the ramp. The F-35 will stay a generation ahead of them. F-22 will, too. Everything else we have will not stay ahead. The gap has closed,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

The general made the comments during a three-day visit to Langley Air Force Base in Virginia.<\/p>\n

Welsh also said dozens of countries around the world would use Russian and Chinese top-end fighters in the future.<\/p>\n

American officials have expressed their concerns about the military power of China and Russia during the past years.<\/p>\n

This is while figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute showed that the United States spends more on its military than the next seven top-spending countries combined.<\/p>\n

The US spends nearly three times as much as China and its military budget is more than seven times as much as Russia.<\/p>\n

Washington\u2019s relations have been icy with China and Russia over Beijing\u2019s construction projects in the South China Sea and the Ukraine crisis respectively.<\/p>\n

The US accuses China of undergoing a massive \u201cland reclamation\u201d program in the Spratly archipelago of the South China Sea, and says China\u2019s territorial claims of the man-made islands could further militarize the region.<\/p>\n

Also Read:\u00a0Chinese state-owned newspaper warns: US-China war is \u201cinevitable\u201d unless US backs down<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

A Chinese state-owned newspaper warned Monday a war between the two superpowers is \u201cinevitable\u201d unless Washington stops demanding Beijing halt its construction projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf the United States\u2019 bottom line is that China has to halt its activities, then a US-China war is inevitable in the South China Sea,\u201d The Global Times, an influential newspaper owned by the ruling Communist Party\u2019s official newspaper the People\u2019s Daily, said in an editorial.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe intensity of the conflict will be higher than what people usually think of as \u2018friction\u2019,\u201d it warned.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Head of the US Air Force Gen. Mark Welsh has warned about the rising air power of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[124,62,1,125],"tags":[227,45,6,184,5,20,7],"class_list":["post-2525","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-pacific","category-europe","category-news","category-united-states","tag-air-force","tag-china","tag-defense","tag-maritime","tag-military","tag-russia","tag-u-s"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/05\/US-Gen-Mark-Welsh.jpg?fit=690%2C369&ssl=1","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7jJWb-EJ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2525"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2527,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2525\/revisions\/2527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2525"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2525"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ir-ia.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2525"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}