Controversial Topics

Strategy to Defeat China in The SCS

The air campaign in Desert Storm was a watershed for air power. It demonstrated the effectiveness of precision munitions, marked a high water point for electronic warfare and introduced radar stealth in a decisive manner. It also established a template for the application of air power that has taken root in Air Force culture and remains firmly established a quarter century later.

At the outset of the war sink all surface Chinese ships and submarine, after radar and SAM coastal batteries have been neutralized using our airforce stealth bombers and jet fighters.

Limit the access of the Chinese Surface ships to the Western Pacific islands by mining the ports and islands. Limit the energy resource and commercial intercourse which China is so dependent upon

Chinese military force design has been built specifically to counter the U.S. Air Force’s reliance on stealth and forward basing, and to reduce the threat of carrier aviation by developing weapons designed to keep the carriers far away from the action. Our response has been to plan to fight symmetrically, matching our technological widgets against theirs in a battle in the PRC’s front yard.

Strategically, this methodology replays the successful strategic campaign, whereby the USSR spent itself into collapse trying to match American technological prowess. This time, however, the United States is on the wrong side of that strategy.

There is benefit of adopting an asymmetric offset strategy to deal with the PRC’s general technological parity and commanding position. There is additional benefit of adopting a strategy that could be executed today, without being dependent on technologies that have yet to emerge. The reality of the Chinese force structure is that it is largely a defensive structure whose utility wanes rapidly with distance from the Chinese coastline.

Unlike Imperial Japan, China lacks a carrier-capable, blue-water navy with which to challenge the United States, and has not begun an overt territorial expansion that provides overseas basing facilities. Like Imperial Japan, China is heavily dependent on overseas supply lines, and thus subject to interdiction of critical warfighting resources, especially energy.

China’s import dependency is particularly acute for energy supplies, which have to travel long distances through unfavorable maritime terrain, only to then be dependent on a limited domestic transportation infrastructure which is itself energy-intensive. This means that the PRC is vulnerable to a counter-logistics campaign intended to limit China’s energy supplies in a fashion that reduces or eliminates their capability to project military power.

The foundation for a military campaign against the PRC, presumably with the objective of stopping or reversing Chinese aggression, could be based on strategic interdiction, a.k.a. SI — a joint effort designed to prevent the movement of resources related to military forces or operations. An SI campaign would be designed to repeat the fundamental success of the Pacific War — isolating Japan to the point where it could no longer impede Allied operations in the Pacific.

A sinking Japanese transport ship through the periscope of USS Tautog in January 1945. U.S. Navy photo

Historical background

A counter-logistics campaign has historical precedent in the Pacific. Indeed, we have volumes of data documenting the execution and effect of such a strategy against Japan.

In February of 1942, Japanese forces wrested Rabaul, New Britain, from the outnumbered and unsupported Australian detachment. In short order, Rabaul became the primary forward base in the South Pacific and a major obstacle sitting squarely between both Allied theaters in the Pacific. Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s plan to recapture the island fell afoul of resource constraints and the higher priority held by the war against Germany.

By August of 1943, the President made the decision that Rabaul would instead by bypassed rather than seized, largely because of the emerging realization that Rabaul did not have to be captured in order to be neutralized. Operation Cartwheel, starting in December, neutralized the island citadel without a direct and costly amphibious assault, and without requiring resources above what was already allocated for the theater.

Rabaul was attacked by air, isolated by maneuver and starved by air and naval forces to the point where it could no longer be used as a venue for power projection. Australian forces liberated Rabaul without a shot fired, surrendering four days after the surrender ceremony in Tokyo Bay.

While directed against only a small island group, the isolation of Rabaul is a relevant historical example of the success of a long-term strategy to neutralize powerful military forces in a critical position. Operation Cartwheel was a small example of what became a general strategy for the conduct of the Pacific War — that Japanese garrisons would be isolated and cut off, attacked in place and that the home islands would be deprived of materials, energy and supplies that relied on water or rail transport.

By the end of the war, a coherent maritime interdiction campaign brought the Japanese home islands to the brink of surrender, while an air campaign against Japanese railroads tied up domestic transport to the point that needed resources could not even be moved internally.

A well-designed, pre-planned strategic interdiction campaign provides a potential way forward for a war-winning air and naval power application, specifically tailored to the PRC’s specific characteristics. In particular, the campaign is intended to apply lessons learned against Japan to China, as if China were in fact an island.

From a transportation standpoint, China is over 98 percent island. China’s international land transportation networks, even in combination, are dwarfed by any of China’s larger ports taken singly, and its land transportation already suffers from a lack of capacity and susceptibility to disruption — both exploitable vulnerabilities.