Posted on 05/06/2020 10:31:56 AM PDT by BeauBo
As Washington and Beijing trade barbs over the coronavirus pandemic, a longer-term struggle between the two Pacific powers is at a turning point, as the United States rolls out new weapons and strategy in a bid to close a wide missile gap with China...
Now, having shed the constraints of a Cold War-era arms control treaty, the Trump administration is planning to deploy long-range, ground-launched cruise missiles in the Asia-Pacific region.
The Pentagon intends to arm its Marines with versions of the Tomahawk cruise missile...
The Pentagon also intends to dial back China's lead in what strategists refer to as the "range war."... China holds a clear advantage in these (longer range) weapons.
And, in a radical shift in tactics, the Marines will join forces with the U.S. Navy in attacking an enemy's warships. Small and mobile units of U.S. Marines armed with anti-ship missiles will become ship killers.
In a conflict, these units will be dispersed at key points in the Western Pacific and along the so-called first island chain, commanders said. The first island chain is the string of islands that run from the Japanese archipelago, through Taiwan, the Philippines and on to Borneo, enclosing China's coastal seas...
At first, a relatively small number of land-based cruise missiles will not change the balance of power... Longer term, bigger numbers of these weapons combined with similar Japanese and Taiwanese missiles would pose a serious threat to Chinese forces, they say. The biggest immediate threat to the PLA comes from new, long-range anti-ship missiles now entering service with U.S. Navy and Air Force strike aircraft.
"The Americans are coming back strongly,"... "By 2024 or 2025 there is a serious risk for the PLA that their military developments will be obsolete."
(Excerpt) Read more at taskandpurpose.com ...
"China derived an advantage because it was not party to a Cold War-era treaty - the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) - that banned the United States and Russia from possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges from 500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers. Unrestrained by the INF pact, China has deployed about 2,000 of these weapons, according to U.S. and other Western estimates.
While building up its missile forces on land, the PLA also fitted powerful, long-range anti-ship missiles to its warships and strike aircraft.
This accumulated firepower has shifted the regional balance of power in China's favor. The United States, long the dominant military power in Asia, can no longer be confident of victory in a military clash in waters off the Chinese coast, according to senior retired U.S. military officers.
But the decision by President Donald Trump last year to exit the INF treaty has given American military planners new leeway. Almost immediately after withdrawing from the pact on August 2, the administration signaled it would respond to China's missile force."...
"The budget documents show that the Marines have requested $125 million to buy 48 Tomahawk missiles from next year. The Tomahawk has a range of 1,600km, according to its manufacturer, Raytheon Company."...
"the Marines had successfully tested a new shorter-range anti-ship weapon, the Naval Strike Missile, from a ground launcher and would conduct another test in June. He said if that test was successful, the Marines intended to order 36 of these missiles in 2022. The U.S. Army is also testing a new long-range, land-based missile that can target warships. This missile would have been prohibited under the INF treaty."...
"Eventually, the Marines aimed to field a system "that could engage long-range moving targets either on land or sea," the statement said.
The Defense Department also has research underway on new, long-range strike weapons, with a budget request of $3.2 billion for hypersonic technology, mostly for missiles."...
"Bottling up China's Navy: "Military strategists James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara suggested almost a decade ago that the first island chain was a natural barrier that could be exploited by the American military to counter the Chinese naval build-up. Ground-based anti-ship missiles could command key passages through the island chain into the Western Pacific as part of a strategy to keep the rapidly expanding Chinese navy bottled up, they suggested.
In embracing this strategy, Washington is attempting to turn Chinese tactics back on the PLA...
"We need to be able to plug up the straits," said Holmes, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. "We can, in effect, ask them if they want Taiwan or the Senkakus badly enough to see their economy and armed forces cut off from the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean. In all likelihood the answer will be no.""...
"The United States has other counterweights. The firepower of long-range U.S. Air Force bombers could pose a bigger threat to Chinese forces than the Marines, the strategists said. Particularly effective, they said, could be the stealthy B-21 bomber, which is due to enter service in the middle of this decade, armed with long-range missiles.
The Pentagon is already moving to boost the firepower of its existing strike aircraft in Asia. U.S. Navy Super Hornet jets and Air Force B-1 bombers are now being armed with early deliveries of Lockheed Martin's new Long Range Anti-Ship Missile, according to the budget request documents. The new missile is being deployed in response to an "urgent operational need" for the U.S. Pacific Command, the documents explain."...
""The U.S. and allied focus on long-range land-attack and anti-ship cruise missiles was the quickest way to rebuild long-range conventional firepower in the Western Pacific region," said Robert Haddick, a former U.S. Marine Corps officer and now a visiting senior fellow at the Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies based in Arlington, Virginia."...
Haddick, one of the first to draw attention to China's firepower advantage in his 2014 book, "Fire on the Water," said the threat from Chinese missiles had galvanized the Pentagon with new strategic thinking and budgets now directed at preparing for high-technology conflict with powerful nations like China.
Haddick said the new missiles were critical to the defensive plans of America and its allies in the Western Pacific. The gap won't close immediately, but firepower would gradually improve, Haddick said. "This is especially true during the next half-decade and more, as successor hypersonic and other classified munition designs complete their long periods of development, testing, production, and deployment," he said.
This is all just gamesmanship
the big boys have thousands of nuclear weapons and multiple reentry vehicles and none of this is ever going to conflagarate
That being said the economic losees cost by China’s malfeasance are going to have major ripples throughout the world economy for the next decades
China is focused and motivated. They know they want to best the USA and the battles will be cyber, biowarfare and space war. While China directs their efforts, we try to impeach the only elected official who opposes China.
The Chinese will best us, while a good deal of the American population hides under their beds, coming out only to hoard toilet paper and disinfectants.
Communist control over more than a billion Chinese, has vulnerabilities as well.
Freeing the Chinese people would be the real strategic victory.
The INF treaty was clearly counter to US security interests and Trump did well by withdrawing.
It should have been done 10 years ago.
I’m still an advocate for stationing a modern equivalent of the Pershing II in Korea, Japan, and the Philippines. Yes, with nukes.
And 1,000 conventional Tomahawks on Taiwan and Okinawa.
For the record....... what evidence do you have the Chinese people want to be free of the communist government?
If President Trump is re-elected and serves another full term (Please, Dear God), then the military reality on the ground (and at Sea) in Asia will fundamentally shift against communist China. So will economics and technology.
It is that important to us (and them).
A “Pershing III” of some sort in Korea (and/or Japan, and/or Taiwan) would cover the Han Chinese, and communist party’s elites, heartlands, quite well. It would put their most treasured assets at risk.
“what evidence do you have the Chinese people want to be free of the communist government?”
The Hong Kong protests? Tiananmen Square? The demonstrations that erupt routinely across China? All the political dissidents in prison and being executed? The mass Gulags they require for the Uighurs? The Tibetans? Falun Gong? Christians?
But really, it is human nature to want to be free of oppression.
Low trajectory, Mach 6 and a 15 meter CEP.
The Pershing II won the cold war in conjunction with the Trident.
We just need to ensure they are never in range of the heart of European Russia. That way they’ll always know our intent with them.
One problem the Chinese have is that fortified islands
don’t move.
It’s not about quid pro quo....it’s all about adopting Xi’s world view.
“The Art of War” is the blueprint on how to confuse, flatter, ego-stroke, infiltrate then manipulate the enemy, until they are in vulnerable position where they can be destroyed. China has used these same tactics to gain a strong grip on 40% of the globe.
Time to face China’s expansionist’s outreach in the Pacific, and its time the US shows it can contain it!
“fortified islands don’t move.”
...and are therefore sitting ducks for targeting with long range weapons.
“Freeing the Chinese people would be the real strategic victory.”
I’d settle for freeing the American people.
THAT idea has got to infuriate the Red Chinese.
It’s funny that since WWII, being aboard a Navy ship used to be the safest place to serve... Now it appears that it will be a death trap going forward.
Where in the world do people not want to be free? Are you a puppet of China or paid by them?
As evidenced by the China flu, the United States of America has a few, but they, as in the cases of the salon and saloon owners in Texas have and are being dealt with harshly and swiftly. When the firing squads will be activated for these hardened criminals remain yet to be seen. But that day is not far off.
Yes. And don’t forget the large ChiCom navy submarine supply facility they have constructed in the Bahamas, just 180 miles offshore of Fort Lauderdale.
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