The way that the US is spending money (e.g. building a 1.5tn fighter jet that can hardly fight and a 35bn aircraft carrier that can't launch) I would actually start getting worried about adversaries with just a tenth of the US budget.
To put it differently, if the Swiss, population 8M, can figure out how to transport 1.8x the amount of rail passengers
compared to the entire US (no, not by capita, in absolute numbers [1]), it could also happen that a smaller budget military outmaneuvers US army, navy and marines. That being said, conventional armies made for symmetric warfare seem just about as useless now as at the height of the cold war. But not even the security of the nuclear arsenal seems a high priority in US politics today.
The US isn't spending $1.5 trillion on the F35. First, the costs will be spread over decades; second, the US will never order even half the planes in question; it never does when it comes to large systems orders. In 10-15 years they'll be slashing the buying down toward zero as with the F22 (as the military chomps at the bit to move on to new programs), the F35 program will cost half as much as claimed presently, as most of the cost projections are based on maintenance costs over 30 years for thousands of planes that will never be purchased (we're going to buy thousands of F35s over decades? yeah right).
That aircraft carrier will launch. Every country that has ever built one has had significant problems doing so, the US has a long successful history of building & deploying aircraft carriers, the latest one will be no different regardless of temporary problems.
You aren't reading favourably. It could well be that the whole stealth superiority fighter concept is outdated due to new cheap sensor technology (and its use in AA defense systems) and the whole concept of carrier groups could soon be outdated due to something new, like undetectable diesel/electric submarine drones that cost a 3 orders of magnitude less, thus could be built as swarms that become impossible to deal with. My main point is, don't just look at the spending. And (I think your comment is symptomatic), don't forget the damn nukes, those things should be the biggest worry of all.
Well I do think the F35 and carrier approach is very soon to be outdated. Which is also why there's zero chance we're going to order thousands of F35s; 10 years out, they'll already be wanting to kill that program to replace it with something else as the obvious inbound threats to traditional fighters (various cheap autonomous tech) become more blatant. That of course won't stop them from spending as you know.
The carriers are not hard to sink; they never really have been for a major opponent. China and Russia have been able to sink them for a long time. They're not for fighting adversaries that can sink them. They're force projection, intimidation, and for fighting countries that aren't Russia or China. Carriers will be useful in their present role for a few decades to come yet (their current role is not for potentially fighting Russia or China; anyone that thinks that is seriously confused). Military tier nations in the capability realm of Iran, might pose a real threat to carriers in 15-20 years. The trick with US carriers, is that anyone (again, not named Russia or China) that actually sinks one has a full scale war with the US on their hands. In that sense, carriers are a taunting device: you can try to sink one, but if you succeed, your country is going to be massively attacked (you're going to trade sinking a carrier for losing all your airports, your power grid is going to be taken down, your airforce is going to be neutralized, your economy is going to grind to a halt, etc).
Any country that will dear to sink an US aircraft carrier will either have the means to wipe out most of US population too (Russia, China) or just won't care about the consequences (North Korea / Iran, if they think US is about to attack them). In neither case is taunting particularly efficient.
US has about the same population density as Switzerland in multiple areas that are at least as large: LA, Bay area and especially Philadelphia-DC-NYC-Boston.
So.. how does size exactly stop the US from having the to-date most efficient mass transport? I'm not talking LA-NYC, noone is gonna do that until someone builds vacuum tubes. First you need good local and regional travel.
Switzerland also has to build tunnels, because of the Alps. I am not an expert on US geography, but there seem to be places with many people and much easier terrain to build rails on.
To put it differently, if the Swiss, population 8M, can figure out how to transport 1.8x the amount of rail passengers compared to the entire US (no, not by capita, in absolute numbers [1]), it could also happen that a smaller budget military outmaneuvers US army, navy and marines. That being said, conventional armies made for symmetric warfare seem just about as useless now as at the height of the cold war. But not even the security of the nuclear arsenal seems a high priority in US politics today.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_rail_us...