Sea Lanes Protection Between the First and Second Island Chains in a Notional Sino-American War

On Tuesday, I summarized China’s potential wartime anti-ship capabilities between the First and Second Island Chains. It stands to reason that the U.S. and allied ability to avoid or parry any PLA attacks in these waters would depend upon the margin of temporary localized maritime superiority—or sea control, if you will—that could be extended around a transiting convoy, replenishment group, or naval battleforce.[i] This margin would likely be highest in the waters that could be persistently covered by fighters, Airborne Early Warning (AEW) aircraft, and wide-area anti-submarine aircraft operating from the Marianas, Japanese home islands, or the central/southern Philippines.

As this sea control coverage thinned out with range, PLA forces would in theory gain more operational flexibility. This might be offset, however, through the intelligent use of the one or two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers available in theater during a war’s opening weeks. I’ve previously noted how these carriers ought to be used to provide situation-dependent sea control support to Surface Action Groups (SAG) operating further forward, and alluded to their utility in providing situation-dependent tactical support to defenders in embattled First Island Chain territories like the Ryukyus. The positioning required for those tasks could also allow their fighters and AEW aircraft to screen CLF groups, military sealift convoys, and prioritized commercial vessels transiting outside effective land-based air coverage. With two carriers working together, it might even be possible to occasionally use actual or simulated shipping as ‘bait’ for luring Chinese strike aircraft raids into aerial ambushes.

It additionally should be noted that the U.S. and allied ability to delay or prevent the Chinese Ocean Surveillance System (COSS) from locating and correctly classifying transiting ships would severely complicate the PLA’s ability to cue effective anti-ship attacks. Emissions control, operational and tactical deception, and physical as well as electronic attacks against COSS assets would be essential aspects of any U.S. and allied sea lanes protection campaign. Emissions control and tactical deception would also greatly complicate PLA strike aircraft and submarines’ job of locating, correctly classifying, and targeting protected shipping. The use of “decoy groups,” perhaps using a mix of unmanned systems and actual manned low campaign-value platforms that together simulated a convoy or naval battleforce, might induce PLA attackers to waste precious time and weapons inventories engaging false targets. Better yet, it might cause them to move out of positions from which they could detect and intercept actual shipping. Attacking decoys would be particularly harmful to PLAN submarines, as every weapon wasted (and in the case of AIP boats, fuel burned moving into attack position and then "breaking datum") would eat into the amount of time the boat could remain on patrol before needing to head home for replenishment, and the time spent "breaking datum" would be time the boat would not be able to hunt effectively. Effective deception and concealment would likely have detrimental psychological effects on PLAAF and PLAN crews; over time these effects might become debilitating—and highly exploitable by U.S. and allied forces in their own right.

Lastly, U.S. political leadership might opt to selectively strike PLAAF airbases, PLAN submarine bases, and related PLA infrastructure on the Chinese mainland with long-range guided munitions in order to suppress PLA operational tempo. This would be especially likely if the PLA had set the escalation precedent of striking allied territories first at the opening of the war. Such strikes would have to be highly bounded and selective in terms of their targets in order to mitigate escalation risks. U.S. Navy submarines and U.S. Air Force intercontinental-range strike aircraft would probably perform these strikes, with additional strikes launched from Aegis combatants operating as offensive SAGs. Reducing the PLA’s ability to cycle anti-ship attackers into the Western Pacific would be of immeasurable help to the sea lanes protection effort.

With all these combined arms contributions in mind, the principal screening challenge from a surface combatant standpoint would be defending convoys and CLF ships against “leaker” anti-ship missiles fired by PLA strike aircraft and "pop-up” missile or torpedo attacks by PLAN submarines. The density of the PLA threat in a given area arguably would determine an escort’s necessary capabilities. Aegis combatants’ area air defense capabilities would probably be highly desirable for escort missions in the vicinity of the Ryukyus, Taiwan, and Luzon given the proximity to the Chinese mainland. It’s important to remember, though, that the U.S. only has nine Aegis combatants permanently homeported in Japan (with two more coming by 2017), and these warships would probably be charged with escorting the Navy’s Japan-homeported carrier, protecting the Navy’s Japan-homeported amphibious warships, executing offensive SAG missions, and performing ballistic missile defense tasks. The Navy has thirty-eight other Aegis combatants homeported in the Pacific, eleven of which are homeported in Pearl Harbor. However, not all would be surgeable due to the inter-deployment maintenance and training cycle (and this says nothing of the surge-readiness impacts stemming from the 2011 Budget Control Act). We might theorize that of the five West Coast-based carrier battleforces, the first might already be forward deployed in or near the Western Pacific as a crisis peaked, the second and third might be surgeable for arrival forward within 30 days, the fourth might be surgeable within 90 days, and the fifth would have to complete its ships’ (abbreviated) overhauls and pre-deployment workups before surging. Some of these Aegis combatants would not be detachable from their carrier battleforces, and those that were detachable might be needed more for offensive SAG operations.

Not all of the Aegis combatants would necessarily deploy with carriers, though. If we assume that two-thirds of the Pearl Harbor contingent surged as a crisis peaked, we might have seven Aegis combatants available for tasking along the First Island Chain. These warships would be well-placed for protecting shipping to the Ryukyus, Luzon, or eastern Taiwan. Even so, their use for these missions would trade against their use in offensive SAG operations.

The story would be similar with respect to the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force’s (JMSDF) Aegis contingent. Japan fields six Aegis DDGs and plans to build two more by 2020. Nevertheless, their principal mission of homeland ballistic missile defense would prevent some number of them from performing sea lanes defense operations. The South Korean Navy’s three Aegis DDGs are not counted in this analysis as it is unlikely they would be offered up for operations that did not involve direct defense of their country’s sea lanes.

It should be clear that Aegis combatants’ use for direct protection of shipping would trade against a large number of other high-priority missions. Moreover, Aegis combatants would generally be tethered to the western half of the waters between the two island chain lines. This would hardly preclude their use for sea lanes and CLF protection, for example as a forward screening layer by virtue of their positions, but they probably wouldn’t be able to closely escort shipping all the way from port to port.

Therein lies the logic of a small surface combatant possessing medium-range anti-air and anti-submarine capabilities. Such a combatant would be entirely sufficient for close escort within waters in which air defense is provided by friendly AEW and fighter aircraft supported by aerial refueling aircraft. Closer to the Ryukyus-Taiwan-Luzon line, this kind of combatant would backstop Aegis combatants’ defensive coverage of a convoy.

The proposed LCS-derived frigate will possess the towed active and passive sonar arrays as well as helicopter capabilities needed for effective anti-submarine warfare. CSBA’s Bryan Clark has also outlined how it could receive the requisite anti-air capabilities for shipping escort.[ii] These improvements would not allow the LCS-derived frigate to detect a submarine-launched sea-skimming anti-ship cruise missile raid beyond effective shipboard radar coverage, though. Land or sea-based AEW support via the Navy Integrated Fire Control-Counter Air capability would be crucial to that end.

Bryan has additionally proposed a longer-range shipboard anti-submarine missile than the legacy Vertical Launch Anti-Submarine Rocket; such a weapon could be very effective in disrupting a PLAN submarine’s attack preparations.[iii] It’s worth pointing out that if COSS could not provide a PLAN submarine with a targeting-quality tactical picture to support firing anti-ship cruise missiles from over-the-horizon, the PLAN submarine would have to close within the range of its onboard sensors. If we assume the primary use of sonar for this purpose, that range might be one to two convergence zones from a target (perhaps 30 nautical miles in the first case and 60 nautical miles in the second case). A shipboard “rocket-thrown torpedo” able to quickly reach out to the first convergence zone and ideally also the second would thus be highly useful.

It’s important to note that the JMSDF already fields two light destroyer/heavy frigate classes that would anchor shipping protection in the approaches to the Japanese home islands and Ryukyus.[iv] As I noted earlier, though, there might not be enough of them to fully carry the shipping escort load within the waters Japan was primarily responsible for protecting. This suggests the utility of the LCS-derived frigate gaining medium-range anti-air capabilities.

One final point is that there would be a demand for LCS-derived frigates to participate in offensive SAGs. It would accordingly be desirable to backfit as much of the LCS-derived frigates’ anti-surface and anti-submarine capabilities as possible into legacy LCS hulls in order to free up as many of the frigates as possible for shipping protection tasks. The logic for using backfit LCSs instead of the frigates in forward-operating SAGs is simple: since the frigates are not presently slotted to receive medium-range air defense capabilities, and since Aegis combatants would be principally responsible for SAG air defense anyway, then the inclusion of backfit-improved LCSs instead of air defense-capable frigates in the SAGs would not alter the existing concept of operations.

The bottom line is that protection of shipping, including the CLF, would likely be far more resource-intensive than is often assumed in the strategy debates. Sea lanes protection would be absolutely critical to the U.S. prevailing in the war, and as such merits extensive study and analysis. I will note that I have never participated in campaign analysis of these questions, nor have I ever been “read into” any such analyses that might have been conducted. Detailed quantitative analysis may very well prove that some of my key assumptions and conclusions are incorrect. Even so, my errors almost certainly center on the specifics of the threat and not on its general nature or the needed seriousness of the offsetting response.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

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[i] The discussion that follows is heavily influenced by CAPT William J. Toti, USN (Retired). “The Hunt for Full-Spectrum ASW.” Naval Institute Proceedings 140, No. 6, June 2014. Toti’s article is seminal on modern anti-submarine warfare and should be read in its entirety in parallel to this post.

[ii] See Bryan Clark. “Commanding the Seas: A Plan to Reinvigorate U.S. Navy Surface Warfare.” (Washington, D.C., Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2014), 27, 50-51.

[iii] Ibid; 27.

[iv] A third similarly-capable JMSDF destroyer class exists but would generally be tied to providing air defense support to Kongo-class DDGs on ballistic missile defense patrols.

Whither Air-Sea Battle?

I share Lazarus’s concerns regarding the decision to fold Air-Sea Battle into the new Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons (or JAM-GC if you will). Disregarding JAM-GC’s ambiguously-worded name, I might feel differently about the move in general had a reasonably-clear definition of the concept been released last week. The absence of such a definition makes it difficult to understand whether this new concept truly encompasses the threat sets and operational-strategic challenges that gave rise to Air-Sea Battle in the first place. It also makes it more difficult to assess how JAM-GC might flow from or otherwise inform overarching strategic concepts for dealing with competitors and potential adversaries.

This goes beyond Air-Sea Battle’s fate. Beginning in January 2012, the Joint Staff publicly declared that Air-Sea Battle was a means of implementing the Joint Operational Access Concept (JOAC). Unlike Air-Sea Battle’s authoritative documentation, the JOAC document publicly and unambiguously itemized specific capabilities and doctrinal tenets necessary for the Joint force to gain access to and establish freedom of maneuver within future combat theaters in spite of intense opposition by highly capable adversaries. Much serious thought concerning how the U.S. military should be configured for deterrence of major conventional wars has flowed from the parsing of JOAC.

It is not clear whether JAM-GC and JOAC are duplicative, or whether the former is intended to absorb (or render obsolete) the latter. This ought to be publicly addressed by those in a position to do so. The implications of these uncertainties and ambiguities risk affecting how Congress, not to mention leaders and opinion elites in allied/partner as well as potential adversary countries, ultimately interpret the apparent change in direction. The full details of JAM-GC need not be disclosed; they certainly were not for JOAC. Nevertheless, as we observed with Air-Sea Battle, the story the Defense Department and the services tell regarding future concepts for deterrence (and war-waging if necessary) matters immensely in terms of the support they can attract for making the requisite investments of national treasure and prestige.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author and are presented in his personal capacity. They do not reflect the official positions of Systems Planning and Analysis, and to the author’s knowledge do not reflect the policies or positions of the U.S. Department of Defense, any U.S. armed service, or any other U.S. Government agency.

Maritime Denial and Land-Based Missiles, Revisited

Last month I wrote a bit about the idea that U.S. ground forces should field ‘area denial’ missile systems of their own to defend allies’ frontline maritime territories as well as constrain potential adversaries’ wartime abilities to use adjacent waterspace and airspace. I believe land-based anti-ship and anti-air missile systems can do much to support strategic concepts for broad-spectrum conventional deterrence within maritime theaters. Even so, I noted in my post that these systems’ hypothetical combat utility—and thus their value as part of a deterrent—depends greatly upon when and how they would be deployed to wartime positions, how those positioned on territories within a hotly-contested maritime zone would be logistically sustained throughout a protracted conflict, and how anti-ship over-the-horizon targeting would be performed.

The comments I received on that post pointed out an additional consideration that I had overlooked: the underlying business cases. Given finite budgetary resources, the U.S. Army would have to trade the opportunity costs of developing and then fielding these kinds of systems against the opportunity costs of developing or fielding other types of ground units.

For example, a strong business case can be made for the Army to field relocatable wide-area air defense systems, as they are quite useful for protecting bases, other types of U.S. and allied ground forces in the field, and critical civil/economic infrastructure sites from aerial attacks. The original Patriot system was, after all, developed specifically for these purposes. It is not much of a leap, then, for the Army to use these systems to protect maritime bases, forces, and infrastructure. Nor is it a stretch to use these systems in ways that would lessen the demand on naval surface combatants to provide air defense coverage over islands or mainland coastal areas, thereby granting the warships more maneuvering room or otherwise freeing them for other tasks. Lastly, it is perfectly reasonable to use these systems where geographically possible to create barriers the adversary’s air forces must ‘break through’ in order to achieve their operational objectives. The preceding logic applies to Army BMD systems, as well. It follows that the Army’s existing Patriot (and THAAD) missile forces provide organizational, tactical, technical, and logistical foundations for any expanded (or new) air and missile defense capabilities the Army might choose to field in the coming years. This greatly lessens the associated opportunity costs the Army would face in doing so.

It seems somewhat more difficult, though, to make a business case for the Army to field advanced ASCMs. Since the Army does not presently possess ASCM forces, there would be some opportunity costs in establishing the requisite organizational, tactical, technical, and logistical foundations. Developing an ASCM capability from scratch would also likely trade from a budgetary standpoint against expanding (or maintaining) existing ground force structure. Prior to this year, one might have rationalized this kind of trade based on a strategic assumption that global demands for ‘heavy’ U.S. ground forces would be low over the next ten to fifteen years. That assumption has been called into question by the Russo-Ukrainian War, not to mention Moscow’s increasingly aggressive military posturing against NATO’s eastern and the EU’s Scandinavian members. It is therefore harder to justify development of any new type of Army capability without a better understanding of how it might affect the service’s capacity for major ground combat in Europe.     

I have little doubt land-based ASCMs (with satisfactory over-the-horizon targeting support, of course) could be quite useful in defending America’s allies and constraining potential adversaries’ wartime operations along the First Island Chain in East Asia, the coasts of the Black and Baltic Seas, and perhaps the northern Norwegian coastline. However, I think there needs to be a critical examination of the trades that likely exist between developing new Army ASCM forces and maintaining/expanding the service’s existing combat arms. It also seems to me that an Army ASCM business case analysis should examine whether it makes more sense for America’s allies to field land-based ASCM capabilities themselves. Many of the allies the U.S. is committed to defend in the aforementioned regions already deploy such missiles, whether through indigenous production or through sales by other countries. Rather than duplicating what these allies are already doing, perhaps it would be better for the U.S. to provide the needier ones with financial assistance for establishing, improving, or expanding land-based ASCM arsenals. Or perhaps the U.S. might sell certain allies maritime surveillance/reconnaissance systems or C³ systems that would enhance their existing ASCM capabilities as well as allow them to better coordinate tactical actions with U.S. or other allied forces during wartime. It is even possible the U.S. might find mutually-beneficial opportunities to cooperate with key ASCM-producing allies on researching and developing selected advanced ASCM component technologies. 

Ultimately, I am not opposed in principle to the Army (or Marine Corps for that matter) developing land-based ASCM capabilities. I do believe, though, that their doing so requires a broader analytical basis that addresses the operational issues I previously noted as well as establishes a sound business case.

Air-Sea Battle and Offshore-Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: The Conclusion

For previous installments, see Parts I, II, and III

Political Objectives and Contingency Circumstances Must Dominate Strategic Concept Design

The main takeaway from this week's discussion should be that the form of a notional Sino-American war in East Asia would be dictated by its specific circumstances and the respective sides’ political objectives. Accordingly, as it is the revisionist power, China would likely establish most of the initial precedents for the conflict’s violence. If Chinese leaders’ valued their political objectives highly enough, any method for attempting to force them to restore the status quo ante would inherently carry horizontal and vertical escalation risks. This would be true for a U.S. embargo against Chinese trade that was complete enough to impose a high dose of pain, a highly successful U.S. limited war effort isolated to the contested zone, or a broader conventional conflict that included direct U.S. attacks against PLA targets on Chinese soil. The only differences between these methods would be the amount of time it might take for Chinese leaders to face a major escalation decision, and the sources and types of pressure pushing them to escalate.

This also means there is no guarantee Chinese leaders would follow their historical pattern of backing down or settling for symbolic gains once the PLA had inflicted ‘enough damage and pain’ for them to claim ‘China had taught its adversaries a lesson.’ Indeed, their willingness to do so in a given contingency would be relative to their political objectives, the circumstances that drove them to war in the first place, and their personal wisdom. Today’s China is not Mao’s China or Deng’s China—its current leaders enjoy a far more powerful country than did their predecessors, and neither they nor we know how they would actually act within the circumstance-unique fog, friction, and political pressures of a contemporary East Asian conflict. A strategic concept that is not structured to take these considerations into account is simply not practicable for either warfighting or deterrence.

U.S. political leaders must be sober in defining the nation’s interests in East Asia, deliberate in characterizing and valuing their political objectives, and resolute in developing, resourcing, and implementing their grand strategy for averting such a conflict. It follows that this strategy’s military component must address the entire spectrum of potential combat, as well as provide U.S. political leaders with a wide set of response options, if it is to stand a chance at preventing Chinese leaders from achieving their political objectives. Without doubt, this would be best accomplished by deterring a war altogether. The integration and evolution of relevant aspects of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control within a single strategic concept will be a first step towards accomplishing this crucial task.

Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: Part 3

For previous installments, see Parts I and II

Scenario #3: Major War

Now, let’s continue up the spectrum of conflict to explore what might happen if Chinese leaders placed a high value on less limited political objectives. Domestic political pressures; perceptions of the regional geostrategic order’s trendlines; or misinterpretations of U.S. and allied interests, intentions, capabilities, or resolve could dramatically affect Chinese leaders’ calculations by encouraging opportunism, exacerbating desperation, or a mix of both. Consider how Chinese leaders’ political objectives might be affected in the coming years if the Taiwanese people continue to refuse taking formal steps towards political unification with the mainland, or if the Taiwanese government took bolder steps towards political independence. Consider Chinese leaders’ objectives in a Korean peninsula scenario if they concluded the Pyongyang regime’s survival was endangered by U.S. and South Korean retaliation against some major provocation. Likewise, consider what might occur if the Pyongyang regime collapsed completely under its own weight and Beijing was unwilling to tolerate U.S. and South Korean forces moving northward to fill the security vacuum, secure weapons of mass destruction sites, and render humanitarian aid. Consider the stakes if factional competitions within the Chinese Communist Party’s senior leadership, bureaucratic politics, surging Chinese popular nationalism, or domestic economic policy failures and their sociopolitical fallout incentivized seeking a tangible strategic ‘win’ at the expense of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces or the Philippine military. Consider the possibility that Chinese leaders might seek to improve their geostrategic position by taking opportunistic advantage of some lesser issue, for example using a clash over the Senkaku Islands as a casus belli for a “short, sharp war” to force Japan to demilitarize and politically Finlandize the Ryukyu Islands. In short, no matter the economic and diplomatic incentives China enjoys courtesy of the existing international order, there is a quite-conceivable range of circumstances that could drive Chinese leaders to seek political objectives obtainable only via major deliberate escalations or general conventional war.

Achievement of this class of political objectives would almost certainly demand PLA bombardment, invasion, or violent blockade of a U.S. ally’s homeland ‘core.’ While escalation to such a level hardly seems conceivable at present, one must accept that political and strategic circumstances are highly dynamic and that the underlying factor driving the risk of a major East Asian conflict is the fundamental disagreement between China and its neighbors regarding the nature of the regional security order. Miscalculation, misperception, or accidental confrontation can definitely ignite a conflagration, but this can only occur when an underlying clash of interests and at least one side’s unwillingness to establish or adhere to substantive confidence-building and reassurance measures have already primed the environment.

It follows that if Chinese leaders were to characterize and value their political objectives along the above lines, then it is difficult to imagine how the PLA would be able to accomplish the major tasks that flow from those objectives with a high degree of confidence and at an ‘acceptable’ cost in blood and treasure in the face of a highly-probable major U.S. intervention. The PLA would have to preemptively neutralize U.S. forces in the Pacific to provide Chinese leaders that level of confidence at such a cost, plain and simple. Chinese leaders would no doubt be gambling against the historical record that such an attack would induce the U.S. to quickly concede (though perhaps with some token resistance and retaliation) rather than result in mobilization for major war.

A Chinese first strike would be the culmination of a regional crisis that either incrementally escalated over time or surged quickly depending upon the circumstances; it would never be a ‘bolt from blue’ occurring outside this context. It does not practically matter whether a first strike would occur as part of a pre-planned war-opening PLA offensive campaign, a major PLA intra-conflict escalation once Chinese leaders concluded they would not be able to achieve their objectives otherwise, or the culmination of an inadvertent crisis in which Chinese leaders did not recognize the diplomatic ‘offramps’ provided them by the U.S. and its allies (or chose to disregard them).

Might a PLA first strike be limited to a cyber-electromagnetic offensive against U.S. forces? This might be attractive to Chinese leaders in terms of relative escalatory risks. Also, U.S. C³ and scouting effectiveness in any maritime operation, U.S. forces’ operational security, and U.S. and allied air and missile defenses’ viability would depend heavily upon U.S. military networks’ security and availability. Differing operating concepts might use these networks in dissimilar ways, and technological as well as doctrinal measures exist for reducing a concept’s network dependency as well as increasing its resiliency. Nevertheless, it is important to appreciate that neither Offshore Control nor any other strategic concept addressing maritime warfare could succeed without using some form of modern networking.

Given the exceptionally high degree of uncertainty in cyber-electromagnetic warfare, though, Chinese leaders would have minimal assurances that any such attacks would decisively prevent an effective U.S. intervention. This means the PLA would also likely have to execute some form of conventional first strike against relevant U.S. forces and their supporting infrastructure in East Asia (and perhaps elsewhere in the Pacific), as well as engage in trans-oceanic and intra-theater maritime lines of communication interdiction, in order for Chinese leaders to gain confidence in their chances of achieving their political objectives. Accordingly, it should not be surprising that preemptive strike concepts figure so prominently in publicly-available PLA doctrinal works, or that the PLA 2^nd Artillery Corps’ conventionally-armed medium range ballistic missile inventories appear sufficiently sized to execute a crippling war-opening offensive but not to attack targets of opportunity during a protracted conflict.

It is therefore curious why so many critiques of Air-Sea Battle implicitly assume China would either not engage in a conventional first strike, or if it did, that it would only do so if its leaders were threatened by certain ‘excessively provocative’ U.S. force doctrine, capabilities, forward positions and quantities, postures, or actions. Yes, in some situations U.S. forces’ configurations and employment might risk inducing Chinese leaders to attack first when they would have otherwise preferred not to escalate, and such extremes must be identified through war gaming and then avoided. It is equally true, however, that the U.S presence in East Asia and the Western Pacific would be geostrategically provocative to Beijing regardless of its specific characteristics if Chinese leaders’ political objectives were lofty enough. In other words, U.S. or allied military ‘behavior’ is not the solitary potential trigger of major Chinese escalation.

Any strategic concept for deterring Chinese aggression, and failing that for preventing a major Chinese offensive from achieving its main political objectives, must consequently explain how it can succeed if U.S. forces in the Pacific are subjected to a PLA multi-domain first strike that segues into a maritime lines of communication interdiction campaign. As the critiques of Offshore Control discussed in Monday's post pointed out, if U.S. and allied bases—particularly those in Japan—as well as U.S. intra-theater lines of communication are being effectively suppressed or neutralized by PLA forces operating from the mainland, it becomes difficult to envision how the U.S. could sustainably defend an embattled ally’s airspace, waters, or territory without returning the favor against those PLA forces’ support infrastructure and bases. The PLA’s advantages in operational tempo, intensity, and initiative by virtue of its quantities, positions, and effective striking reach would be too great otherwise. The obvious implication is that defensive forces’ sustainability in ‘frontline’ territories such as Taiwan or the central and southern Ryukyus, not to mention the flow of basic sustenance to these populations, might not be possible under such circumstances. In the case of the southern Ryukyus in particular, one must not overlook the intense political impact of Japanese citizens being held ‘hostage’ by a PLA maritime denial campaign even if Chinese troops never actually invaded those islands. These kinds of problems might even manifest in a Korean peninsula contingency.

If China drew first blood by unleashing a war-opening or war-escalating strike against targets on allied or U.S. sovereign territory, its leaders would have no legitimate standing to protest if the U.S. responded in kind against equivalent mainland Chinese targets. While striking first conveys significant operational-tactical advantages, it hands the victim an invaluable grand strategic trump card by establishing a precedent for conduct within the conflict as well as a legal and moral basis for retaliation. Notwithstanding the operational-strategic necessity of the U.S. responding tit-for-tat under these conditions, the popular passions aroused within the victimized allied nation(s) as well as within the U.S. following a PLA first strike would all but compel U.S. political leaders to hit back. Any U.S. counterstrikes against PLA targets on the mainland would therefore be primarily shaped by the PLA first strike’s precedent-setting characteristics.

Just as is the case with offshore operations against maritime surveillance/reconnaissance networks, there is a tremendous difference between physically striking air and naval bases being used by PLA maritime forces, 2nd Artillery Corps cruise and short range ballistic missile forces’ support infrastructure (as opposed to their launchers in the field, which would be very difficult to achieve), or theater-wide maritime surveillance sensors on one hand and physically striking 2^nd Artillery Corps nuclear forces and their supporting infrastructure or similarly-sensitive targets on the other. Certain PLA tactical and operational-level command posts might even be valid targets depending upon the circumstances, especially if the PLA struck U.S. or allied command posts first.

It must be reemphasized that offensive cyber-electromagnetic operations could play disproportionate roles in U.S. attacks against mainland PLA targets, as they might be more effective than conventional strikes against very specific target types while carrying fewer or more tolerable escalation risks. Cyber and electronic attack objectives would rarely be to destroy or disable targets, if that were even possible using such means, but rather to disrupt PLA operations or provide deception and concealment support to friendly forces.

Beyond these aspects, the U.S. war effort would look very much like what was outlined in the limited war scenario. U.S. and allied forces would strive to blunt the PLA offensive within the contested zone, and ultimately roll the PLA back from any occupied friendly territories through a combination of maneuver and attrition. In support of this main effort, U.S. leaders might opt to escalate horizontally by conducting economic warfare (distant blockade, special/irregular operations against Chinese economic interests elsewhere, use of the U.S. financial system against Chinese trading partners, etc.) as balanced against the provocation-of-neutrals issue and other escalation considerations. Chinese cessation of its offensive and (if applicable) restoration of the territorial status quo ante in exchange for nothing more than relatively symbolic gestures would be the central U.S. political objective.

This scenario is comparatively the ‘least likely’ of the three, but nonetheless is the ‘most dangerous’ case. While it is to be hoped that Chinese leaders never establish political objectives that drive them towards pursuing this or any other kind of war, hope is not a strategy. Deterrence of a Sino-American war consequently rests on convincing Chinese leaders that the U.S. would be clearly able and willing to protractedly reciprocate if a PLA onslaught “went big,” with all the costs, risks, and uncertainties that would entail. 

Tomorrow, some concluding thoughts on how the range of contingency circumstances and both sides' potential associated political objectives must inform strategic concept design.

 

Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control are not Mutually-Exclusive: Part 2

Yesterday we summarized the main arguments surrounding Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control. We also noted several variables that thus far have been largely overlooked in the debate: the belligerents’ characterization and valuation of their political objectives, and a confrontation’s unique political and strategic circumstances. Over the next two days, we will use plausible interactions between these variables to outline how relevant elements of Air-Sea Battle and Offshore Control can be integrated within a single strategic concept that covers the full spectrum of potential conventional Sino-American conflicts.

Scenario #1: High-End Salami Tactics

Let’s suppose that Chinese leaders sought to extract some political concession(s) by forcibly blockading one of a U.S. East Asian ally’s populated maritime territories or seizing one of its remote, unpopulated/sparsely-populated maritime territories. Let’s stipulate, though, that the initial Chinese actions did not result in direct hostilities with the U.S. ally’s military forces, and that any clashes were limited to exchanges between the belligerents’ constabulary forces such as coast guards or national law enforcement agencies.

The U.S. response in such a contingency would likely involve positioning and posturing its in-theater conventional forces in order to latently support allied constabularies’ or military forces’ efforts to counter or delegitimize the Chinese actions, not to mention deter Chinese escalation. Some lower-campaign value American forces might overtly line up alongside the ally’s frontline defenders to show solidarity and create a latent tripwire threat; this kind of response would be very desirable for accompanying vessels running through a Chinese blockade. Heavier U.S. forces latently backing this frontline from ‘over the horizon’ would likely take measures to conceal themselves from Chinese maritime surveillance and reconnaissance; their aim would be to severely limit Chinese opportunities for an effective preemptive first strike and thus enhance crisis stability as well as U.S. deterrence credibility. As U.S. political leaders would likely strive to avoid placing U.S. military units in situations where they would risk setting use-of-force precedents themselves, it seems unlikely the U.S. would impose any kind of distant blockade against China at this stage. Instead, information operations and diplomatic maneuvers to build regional and global opposition (or at least disengaged neutrality) to China’s actions would likely dominate the U.S. grand strategic response.

It is important to note, however, that the absence of direct military action in the physical domains almost certainly would not extend into the cyber and electromagnetic domains. It is quite likely that there would be extensive cyber and Electronic Warfare (EW) skirmishing as both sides jockeyed for situational awareness advantages, harassed each other’s forces, or attempted to manipulate third parties’ perceptions. Both would accordingly face the challenge of waging this cyber-electromagnetic warfare without precipitating accidental or inadvertent escalation.

Scenario #2: Limited War in the Contested Zone

Now, let’s examine a scenario in which initial Chinese actions did lead to direct hostilities between the PLA and the U.S. ally’s forces at sea or on the territory in question. Let’s also assume that the PLA did not escalate by striking civil, economic, or military infrastructure located within the ally’s homeland ‘core.’ Let’s additionally stipulate that in its ‘first move’ the PLA neither struck U.S. forward bases and forces in the region, nor deployed to interdict America’s maritime lines of communication with the ally. We could therefore conclude Chinese leaders valued their political objectives highly enough to resort to direct military force, but that the limited scope of those objectives encouraged them to adopt strategically-significant degrees of restraint—at least during the conflict’s opening phase.

The American military response under such conditions would likely lean closer towards Offshore Control’s concept of a limited war within the contested zone, as U.S. political objectives would center upon arresting the Chinese aggression and eventually restoring the status quo ante without escalating the conflict unnecessarily. This means the U.S. war effort would likely be structured to conform to China’s precedent-setting actions in the conflict. Of course, nothing would preclude U.S. political leaders from determining that their own objectives and the conflict’s circumstances necessitated the setting of selected precedents by U.S. forces as well.The bias against doing so would nonetheless be high.

U.S. war strategy would be based around the use of sequential (and sometimes parallel) Joint conventional combined arms campaigns that gradually attrited the PLA’s offensive capabilities within the bounds of the contested zone while dislodging Chinese forces from any territorial spoils. Unlike Offshore Control, though, the U.S. strategy would not strive for persistent denial of a sizable majority of the East and South China Seas to the PLA. Nor would the U.S. strategy strive for permanent absolute control of the oceanic approaches to East Asia. Sea control and denial of these magnitudes and durations are neither necessary nor practicable, as Julian Corbett observed a century ago in his masterwork Some Principles of Maritime Strategy.

Consistent with Corbett’s logic, U.S. forces would instead strive to deny the PLA’s ability to transit or occupy selected maritime areas for discrete periods. Short-duration denial efforts might entail concentrating U.S. air and naval power in time and space against PLA forces once the latter were detected at, over, or under the sea. Longer-duration denial efforts could take the form of leveraging pre-deployed land-based anti-ship/anti-air missile batteries as well as offshore minefields to protect friendly territories and chokepoints. Offensive minelaying in the approaches to Chinese naval bases would also be an option for longer-duration sea denial.

Similarly, U.S. forces would strive to control only those maritime areas that it and allied forces (as well as protected commerce) would need to traverse in order to achieve U.S. political objectives, and only for the periods of time necessary to do so. One could picture this type of control as a purpose-defined ‘moving bubble’ of superiority in time and space centered on the military force or commercial convoy in transit. Longer-duration (but not permanent) control over fixed areas would only be necessary in the maritime approaches to U.S. and allied territories, or otherwise in the areas surrounding PLA-occupied allied territories if U.S. and allied forces were engaged in forcible entry operations.

The U.S. and its embattled ally could also conceivably allow the PLA to seize and occupy one or more contested territories of relatively low military-strategic value, as that might induce China to excessively allocate scarce materiel and vulnerable forces in order to hold onto its spoils. Chinese assets exposed in this way could be subjected to withering and incessant attacks that would help gradually reduce the PLA’s quantitative advantages in theater. This might have the secondary effect of drawing Chinese attention and resources away from more important U.S. or allied operations elsewhere in the theater.

It is additionally possible U.S. political leaders might order some form of cumulative campaign to provide indirect support to the conventional campaigns and perhaps pressure the Chinese economy at the margins. This might include a distant blockade (as feasible given available forces and supporting infrastructure), plausibly-deniable special or irregular operations against Chinese economic interests in other countries, severing countries or foreign companies that attempt to engage in proscribed trade with China from access to the U.S. financial system, or other measures. U.S. political leaders would obviously have to weigh how these kinds of coercive actions might detrimentally provoke China as well as third parties to the conflict.

Above all, it must be appreciated that the U.S. would be not able to successfully defend a frontline ally in a limited conflict—never mind restore the status quo ante—in the absence of several key factors associated with Air-Sea Battle. For example, doctrine and capabilities that enhance U.S. forces’ resiliency against a conventional first strike are critical to intra-conflict deterrence credibility. The same is true with respect to capabilities that promote latent and highly survivable U.S. conventional escalation dominance such as submarines, long-range strike aircraft, and an intelligently-crafted balance between long-range and short-range guided munitions. Most importantly, U.S. air, ground, and naval surface operations within a contested zone would not be practicable and U.S. and allied intra-theater lines of communication would not be defensible without extensive operations against PLA maritime surveillance/reconnaissance networks. While some Air-Sea Battle critics have asserted such operations would carry the escalatory risk of attacking PLA nuclear forces’ C³ architectures, the former’s maritime sensors and their supporting data pathways outside China’s borders are most definitely not part of the latter. Even so, and depending on the operational and tactical circumstances, deception and concealment in the face of those sensors might be far more effective and impactful than destroying them.

If Chinese restraint held following a U.S. intervention along the lines I’ve suggested, both sides would be able to take advantage of deep operational-strategic sanctuaries for basing and maneuver within the combat theater. The practical result of this might be a protracted conflict that could remain limited unless one of the belligerents’ political objectives and perceptions of the conflict’s circumstances eventually came to demand escalation. Conversely, conflict protraction along these lines and unambiguously strong U.S. and allied resolve might drive Chinese leaders to seek out a mutually-tolerable negotiated settlement if their political objectives encouraged as much. In the second-best outcome, U.S. and allied forces would be able to induce China to break off its aggression and (if applicable) restore the territorial status quo ante in exchange for nothing more than relatively symbolic gestures. The ideal outcome would obviously be convincing Chinese leaders that a limited war within the contested zone would not be quick, cheap, or low-risk, thereby deterring them altogether from seeking one.

Tomorrow, addressing scenarios for major war.