Poisoning Warfare

The use of poisons to kill or weaken targeted populations

• Agent Orange
• Depleted Uranium munitions

Atomic Warfare

Use of a pre-emptive nuclear strike in order to destroy “”“strategic”“” (civilian) targets

• Hiroshima
• Nagasaki
• US has a qualified 1st strike policy, meaning that they are open to using nukes offensively, and may do so before a potential enemy has escalated the conflict to that level

Guerrilla Warfare

The use of small, specialized fighting groups to disrupt an adversary. Operations include attacks on supply line, destruction of resources, and assassinations

• 600 assassination attempts on Fidel Castro
• Explosive drone assassination attempt on Maduro
• Sabotage attempts behind the Iron curtain. For example, I heard an anecdote from the DDR where explosives were found ready to destroy a bridge carrying passenger trains.
• Stay behind units organized as part of operation Gladio where fascists were organized into terror cells and supplied with weapons caches in order to disrupt a potential Soviet advance into Western Europe

Proxy Warfare

The manipulation and supply of foreign fighters to fight in foreign wars without open engagement

• Bay of Pigs
• Iran-Iraq War
• Mujahedeen
• Contras
• South Vietnam
• Pol Pot’s invasion of Vietnam

Terrorist Warfare

The use of terrorist attacks on civilians in order to direct public sentiment and opinion

• Operation Gladio
• 1997 Cuba Hotel Bombings

National Endowment for Democracy

Technological Warfare:

The battle for technological superiority to ensure that other nations remain generations behind in economy and defense

TL:DR at bottom

The air power of the US is far ahead of its competitors, both in numbers and in technology, and they have been since the cold war started. The USAF is the world’s largest air force, and the US Navy is the world’s 2nd largest air force. The capabilities of the US the produce and field large amounts of high tech equipment is a massive advantage the US has. In terms of 5th generation fighter aircraft, the F-35 has plenty of problems for sure, but the fact that over 600 have been built so far compared to China’s 50 J-20s and Russia’s 12 Su-57s should show just how much of an edge the US has over its rivals.

For air to air combat, the US has always held an overall advantage. The US were the first to develop and deploy heat seeking air-to-air missiles (AAM), and the Soviets didn’t develop one of their own until they were able to get their hands on a US made AIM-9B sidewinder fired from a ROCAF F-86 that got stuck in a PLAAF MiG-17 over the Taiwan strait and failed to detonate. Soviet short range heat seeking AAMs did manage to match the US in a fairly short amount of time, and were arguably superior by the end of the Cold war, but the US has almost always had a sizeable advantage over almost every other country in terms of beyond visual range (BVR) engagement capabilities. For example, the AIM-120, which is a long range fire and forget AAM, was in service starting in 1991, and Russia didn’t develop an equivalent until 2002. Earlier in the Cold war, the US radar guided AIM-7 sparrow AAM carried by the F-4 Phantom had far more range and maneuverability than the R-3R carried by the MiG-21s. When the MiG-23 came out, it had the R-23 which could finally match the AIM-7, but even then, the F-4 could carry 4 AIM-7s while the MiG-23 could only carry 2 R-23s. The only time the US didn’t have a BVR advantage was for a brief period in the 70s/80s when Soviet radar tech was finally able to match the range and capabilities of the US, and newly introduced Soviet aircraft like the MiG-29, MiG-31 and Su-27 where able to carry a similar amount of missiles as US equivalents like the F-14, F-15, F-16 and F-18. Even then they were almost always playing catch up, and the collapse of the USSR in 1991 once again allowed the US to massively increase its technological edge.

Air to ground engagements are another area where the US is far above everyone else. Basically every US aircraft is designed as a fighter-bomber, with individual fighter aircraft often able to carry at least as much ordinance as a WW2 heavy bomber, but more importantly is that they can use smart weapons across the board. Comparatively, countries like Russia and China are still mostly using dumb bombs and rockets which are far less precise, and require getting much closer to a target in order to hit accurately,

Jet engine tech is another big advantage the US has over China in particular. China’s domestic engine production is still not up to par with the quality of the US or Russia, and they are currently reliant on imports of Russian engines to equip their fighter aircraft. This means that domestically produced Chinese jet engines are generally less powerful than US engines, and US aircraft would have an advantage in short range engagements against Chinese aircraft equipped with Chinese built engines.

When it comes to a US vs China scenario, the only advantage China has in the air is its massive ground based air defense network, which would even the odds considerably, but at the end of the day the average Chinese aircraft is less advanced and comes in fewer number than the average US aircraft.

TL:DR: The US is (roughly) a generation above everyone else when it comes to aerial combat, and have almost always had an edge over everyone else when it comes to air power. Even the USSR spent most of their effort playing catch up to the US, and only maybe achieved parity right at the end of the cold war. The idea that China, who are still behind Russia when it comes to air power, would be able leap frog to being 2+ generations ahead of the US is laughably stupid. The best China could realistically achieve would be technological and numerical parity with the US within the next few decades, and it would probably take a century of development along with the partial/full collapse of the US for China to have the kind of aerial advantage that the currently US has.

Political Infiltration

The infiltration of political circles or of communities that can influence politics such as business circles and think tanks

Much of the anti-corruption drive under Xi Jinping can be traced back to a list of CIA operative within China that was leaked to the Chinese by a CIA double agent. It revealed/helped reveal that the CIA had a lot of CPC members on its payroll, and was giving money to CPC members who would then use the money to bribe their way into higher positions of power, thereby giving the CIA access to higher and higher levels of power within the CPC.

Sanction Warfare

The use of sanctions as a deterrent against actions that would affect a country’s own interests or as a weapon to attack a key industry in another country

Current

• DPRK
• Cuba
• Iran
• Venezuela
• Russia
• Yemen
• China

Past

• Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1996
• USSR and Warsaw pact nations
• Vietnam until 1994