A Ship's a Fool To Fight a Fort

RANDs new Chinese - Taiwan cross-strait scenario report titled A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute (PDF) by David A. Shlapak, David T. Orletsky, Toy I. Reid, Murray Scot Tanner, and Barry Wilson is getting a lot of attention. In particular I enjoyed the analysis and summaries provided by Paul McLeary at Ares, Stephen Trimble's analysis at Flight Global, and David Axe at Danger Room. I think all three are really insightful posts on the RAND report.

A few words to begin. It is easy to fall into a trap with this RAND monograph because they attempt a rather miniscule political/economic view of the study outcomes. In a wargame, one never really knows how much of a State Department military strategy study the game becomes, so it is very hard to look at it in that context based on the conclusions as described. I recommend the new AEI report Deter, Defend, Repel, and Partner: A Defense Strategy for Taiwan (PDF) by Dan Blumenthal, Michael Mazza, Gary J. Schmitt, Randall Schriver, and Mark Stokes for a broader strategic view of the cross-straits challenge. The RAND report is scenario and salvo driven, so one has to be careful making too much of political assumptions addressed or skipped in the final report.

The RAND report is built primarily on salvo models, meaning someone actually whipped out the calculator and did some math to produce the analysis. This very analytical approach to military theory is both useful and not towards the conclusions of the RAND report in my opinion. On one hand, the math makes a good case that status quo thinking is quite flawed, but on the other hand the conclusions support too many symmetrical responses to suggests calculations in favor of blue forces based on the underlining theories of the scenarios.

A good example is the discussion on CSS-6 and CSS-7 short range ballistic missiles. The RAND report uses figures based on open source information including the 2009 DoD Defense Report for China (PDF). If we take a closer look, the DoD estimates China has 350-400 CSS-6s with between 90-110 launchers and 700-750 CSS-7s with between 120-140 launchers. However, lets think about these SRBMs for a second. The CSS-6 has a range of ~600km with a payload of 1,329bs. The CSS-7 has a range of ~300km with a payload of 1,100lbs. In other words, the total payload of 400 CSS-6s is 531,600 lbs and the total payload of 750 CSS-7s is 825,000lbs.

In other words, the entire short range ballistic missile payload of every CSS-6 and CSS-7 (potentially 1150 SRBMs) in the PLA Rocket Forces inventory is less than the total payload of every B-2 Spirit in the US inventory flying 2 sorties with 80 500lb JDAMs (80 JDAMS x 20 B-2s x 2 sorties = 3200 bombs).

My point is, the RAND report conclusions over emphasize redundancy for defense passive and active intercept systems against threats like SRBMs even as the report suggests defensive systems are largely going to be inadequate due to first strike nature and cost to defend against these rapid strike - but one off - weapon systems. In my opinion, the strategic priority isn't redundancy of active and passive systems so much as it is resiliency from stunning blows, because the metric to be influenced is time. SRBMs give the PLA the ability to strike fast and hard, or pull a Rumsfeld with 'shock and awe' military theory to deliver a stunning punch, but nothing described in the report suggests ballistic missiles serve as a knock out blow. Indeed, the inability of blue to deliver effective stunning punches to PLAAF comes off to me as the foremost missing ingredient based on the conclusions and scenario analysis.

The RAND report emphasizes the following point regarding the air battle in a cross-strait scenario that assumes 20 F-22s operating efficiently from Kadena.

Because the ROCAF does not appear operationally survivable in the first few days of a cross-strait war, the battle for control of the air over Taiwan must be considered in a new light.

Basing constraints mean that the United States alone cannot bring enough fighters to the battle to offset both China’s quantitative superiority and its narrowing of the qualitative gap. Geography dictates that if the USAF and USMC are pushed back from Kadena, they will be hard-pressed to find basing that both lies outside the range of China’s SRBMs and is reasonably close to the battlespace. For example, Misawa Air Base in northern Japan is almost 1,450 nm from the centerline of the Taiwan Strait, but only about 550 nm from Chinese territory; the distance to the strait is roughly tripled compared with Kadena, but the added distance between Misawa and China—on the order of 100 nm—is hardly significant.

Nor is it likely that carrier-based aviation could make up for the loss of ROCAF capability, let alone the suppression of Okinawa or a withdrawal to a relatively safe but distant outpost such as Guam. In rough numbers, we would expect a fully operational ROCAF to produce on the order of 650 first-day sorties from its fleet of 317 fighters, not making any allowances for attrition. We assess each carrier deck as putting roughly 50 fighters a day over the strait, again without attrition. Simple arithmetic suggests that to replace lost ROCAF sorties on a one-for-one basis in our base case, where Taiwan manages to generate only 100 sorties on the first day, would require 11 carriers to make up for the 550 “missing” ROCAF sorties. Even if this calculation is pessimistic by a factor of two, meaning only five carriers would be needed to replace the combat power lost due to the ROCAF’s suppression, it is still highly unlikely that the U.S. Navy could hope, let alone promise, to have so many on the battle line in the first days of a war.

Superior training, aircraft, avionics, and weaponry can, likewise, only do so much to offset Red’s advantage. As a limiting case, look again at the first-day base case sortie totals from Table 4.4. The PLAAF flies 387 sweep and escort sorties, along with another 250 multirole fighters dedicated to attack missions but carrying modern BVR weapons for self-defense. The USAF, meanwhile, flies a total of 20 F-22 missions from Kadena. If every F-22 launches every one of the eight missiles it carries, and every one of those missiles shoots down an enemy fighter, the PLAAF will suffer 160 losses. Sixty percent of the Chinese fighter sorties and all of the roughly 400 ground-attack sorties would survive their encounters with the deadly U.S. fighters and their infallible missiles.

What this means is that the United States and Taiwan can no longer be confident of winning the battle for the air in the air. This represents a dramatic change from the first five-plus decades of the China-Taiwan confrontation. Limiting the amount of air-delivered punishment inflicted on Taiwan demands new concepts and capabilities to hold the PLAAF at bay.

I see several concepts at work in the conclusions that can be drawn from this kind of analysis. First, the combination of ballistic missiles and large quantities of tactical aircraft by the PLAAF suggests endurance to be a critical element to success. The report later goes on to note that if Guam is well defended and does not suffer significant damage, F-22s in blue force achieves a much greater advantage that seems to increase over time.

In the end, I think there is a lot of interesting military theory in the analysis, but it skips some major points. Where are naval forces? While I agree a CVN would only be able to contribute 50 sorties per day (which may be high btw), and it should be noted these would only be CAP sorties, not strike, I think the analysis is weak in the analysis regarding how naval forces would substantially influence both sides. It discusses the saturation capabilities of short range ballistic missiles, but dismisses the Tomahawk cruise missile and almost suggests the Tomahawk is an obsolete strike weapon in this scenario. Uhm, tell that to the submariners on SSGNs and SSNs when they saturate red forces airfields with hundreds of Tomahawks.

The scenario results suggest to me the following capabilities need serious thought if this is indeed the scenario by which to shape defense forces (that last point is very important, because I do not believe this scenario should shape defense forces).

Bombers still matter. The next generation bomber is very important in any future military scenario with China.

More strike options are needed. We used to talk about SEALANCE towing a strike package payload. Perhaps we should be talking about towing strike payloads with aircraft carriers and submarines to increase surface and submerged strike options. While it may look silly, a CVN towing 24 conventional ballistic missiles for a rapid strike capacity may be an effective way to deliver stunning blows from sea.

For you naval history buffs, I look at towed missile boxes in the context of the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807 when the Royal Navy towed 26 gunboats to deliver fire rockets to shell the city from the coastal waters. There is something to be said for a submarine that can tow a 64 cell VLS Tomahawk payload, buoy the payload at 100 ft underwater in the middle of nowhere, and with the use of a small UUV come back and reestablish a tow as necessary to reposition the payload. The idea of towing ballistic missile payloads with CVNs is just another way to add a rapid strike capacity, and in theory those towed surface payloads can be towed in and out of theater by MSC ships that will be rotating supplies anyway.

Range matters. I don't think this scenario is much different whether the Navy is flying FA-18s or F-35s, because in the end it will be about the same number of sorties. Ultimately, the necessity for the US Navy to take tanking seriously would be a good place to start, but the UCAS is also a very promising evolution.

Finally, tactical fighters will be high density but low demand platforms in this type of major war scenario. What is needed is AAW and persistent strike capacity when air bases locations are either limited or under siege. Without better range, tactical fighters will be very reliant on tankers, and without speed the distances necessary to stand off an aircraft carrier will insure very low sortie rate contributions from the US Navy. I'd like to see the submarine community get with the Hawkeye and Growler crowd and figure out how to get submarines involved in AAW intercept of enemy platforms within the enemies anti-access/area denial zones. It isn't enough to just strike an airport with cruise missiles, if a SSGN can be a mobile SM-2 launcher coordinated with a Hawkeye deep into enemy territory, the conditions and assumptions that govern an air war anywhere near water would be significantly changed.