Posted on 03/11/2010 12:53:40 AM PST by ErnstStavroBlofeld
In the early 1980s, the Army, with Air Force cooperation, came up with a warfighting concept known as AirLand Battle designed to rain punishing ground and air strikes on Soviet shock armies before they could steamroll NATO defenses. Today, the military is formulating a new concept called AirSea Battle designed to counter China’s rapidly growing arsenal of anti-access and area-denial (A2/AD) weapons, such as aircraft carrier killing ballistic missiles, sea-skimming missiles, stealthy submarines, bristling air-defense networks, anti-satellite and cyber weaponry.
The 2010 QDR directed the Air Force and Navy to jointly develop the concept to “guide the development of future capabilities needed for effective power projection operations.” Andrew Krepinevich, president of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, has been thinking through just such a concept for the last two decades and has a new paper out titled “Why AirSea Battle?” that lays out the case for why its needed.
Krepinevich writes that China’s burgeoning anti-access arsenal is intended to, “raise the US cost of power-projection operations in the Western Pacific to prohibitive levels, thereby deterring any American effort to meet its defense obligations to allies in the region while setting the conditions for a potential latter-day Chinese Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere of influence.”
China is creating a “no-go zone” off its coasts with its “assassin’s mace” war concept designed to prevent freedom of movement of U.S. naval and air forces. Beijing has been building up its A2/AD network for decades, but things really accelerated since the 1996 Taiwan Straits crisis when the U.S. sailed two carrier strike groups into the strait.
(Excerpt) Read more at dodbuzz.com ...
China will probably succeed with its strategy. there’s probably not much we can do. So the world needs to arrange for a bigger part of chineese leadership - all in all we will live in a much more multi-polar world in the next years. It’s not a thing we like but there’s also not that much of a reason to fear it.
Author is named Greg Grant, not Clinton-Obama lawyer Greg Craig.
Interesting article
As China’s economy grows we ought to expect it to become more powerful. That’s a no brainer.
Still, China’s economy would be very vulnerable if they went to war with the US. Not only would they lose one of their their biggest customers but I doubt that China will at any point in the near future be able to protect its trade routes from a concerted military effort by the US. There is also the interesting issue of what would happen to our debt to China in the event of a war.
I’m glad to see that we are not completely asleep on this one and appreciate the article.
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Assuming, of course, that the US managed to “win”.
The chinese are putting a lot of effort into countering US carrier battlegroups - “assassin’s mace” and all that. Most of it looks pretty desperate to me, but you never know...in these matters it is always wise to assume a potential opponent is more formidable than they actually are.
By no means am I recommending complacency; I don’t think we have a disagreement here.
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