The Necessary War

Why China Would Surely Lose a War Against America

By Harry J. Kazianis

What I am saying: America has one heck of a head start in such a war.
Let’s not mince words: a U.S.-China war would likely start World War III.

Billions of people would die if nuclear weapons were ever used in such a conflict.
The global economy would likely face ruin— that’s what happens when the world’s biggest economic powers start shooting at each other. 

The threat of such a conflict remains thanks to the many different pressure points in the U.S.-China relationship. 

Several days ago I examined in a short piece on these digital pages how China could do great damage to U.S. and allied military forces in a war. 

Thanks to over twenty years of large scale investments, the PRC has gone from being a third-rate military that could project very little offensive punch to arguably the second most powerful military machine on the planet. 

And with an emphasis on weapons systems that embrace anti-access/area-denial military doctrine (A2/AD), China seems to be developing the tools it needs if war with America did ever come to pass. Beijing’s motto these days: be prepared.
This article examines the challenges China would face against the U.S. in a conflict--but in a very broad, top-down, and practical sort of way. 

This time I will avoid the fun but sometimes easy to pick apart scenario-style type of analysis. 

While Beijing certainly has the tools to get the job done when it comes to a war with Washington, the challenges China would face in such a conflict would be immense— and many of them could be quite basic. 

The PRC would be going to war against the premier military power on the planet— some would argue the most lethal fighting machine of all time. 

In this essay we will review some of the important foundational reasons why many argue, quite convincingly, that the U.S. would very well defeat China in a war.

A Great Mystery: Just How Good Is China’s Military Anyway?
Yes, Beijing keeps cranking out those whizz-bang high-tech weapons of war like sausages. 

China has those shiny, new carrier-killer missiles that everyone is always fretting about (including yours truly.) 

Its building aircraft carriers, 5th generation fighters, multiple types of cruise missiles, nuclear and ultra quiet diesel submarines, drones, mines and so on.
It all looks really good— at least on paper.
When it comes to a war with the U.S. how well would Beijing be able to use all that stuff? 

The real question seems pretty simple: yes, China is certainly developing all the military and technology goodies to field a potent force. 

However, how well can it operate all that equipment in the pressure filled situation of a war? 

Sure, Beijing is certainly developing a world-class military, but can its soldiers operate all that equipment competently? 

Just how well trained are they? 

You can have the best military in the world but if you don’t know how to use it, well, you get the idea.
Opinions are mixed on this for sure. 

Ian Easton from Project 2049, in a piece for The Diplomat, reminds us of the possible capabilities, nature, and mission of the PLA— and its certainly not all about America:
The state of “software” (military training and readiness) is truly astounding. At one military exercise in the summer of 2012, a strategic PLA unit, stressed out by the hard work of handling warheads in an underground bunker complex, actually had to take time out of a 15-day wartime simulation for movie nights and karaoke parties. In fact, by day nine of the exercise, a “cultural performance troupe” (common PLA euphemism for song-and-dance girls) had to be brought into the otherwise sealed facility to entertain the homesick soldiers…
Easton continues:
While recent years have witnessed a tremendous Chinese propaganda effort aimed at convincing the world that the PRC is a serious military player that is owed respect, outsiders often forget that China does not even have a professional military. The PLA, unlike the armed forces of the United States, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other regional heavyweights, is by definition not a professional fighting force. Rather, it is a “party army,” the armed wing of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Indeed, all career officers in the PLA are members of the CCP and all units at the company level and above have political officers assigned to enforce party control. Likewise, all important decisions in the PLA are made by Communist Party committees that are dominated by political officers, not by operators.
So how much would the above impact the much-needed rapid reaction time essential to make quick decisions once the bombs begin to drop in a war with America? 

Is China up to the challenge? 

While the above exercise in 2012 could be just one isolated incident, the idea of the PLA being a “party army” is a very important reality. 

 What does this all mean in a war with America? 

Your guess is as good as mine.

How Good Can Beijing Fight “Jointly”?
There is no better way to make a modern military even more deadly than to fight “jointly.” 

Sharing intelligence and waging war by coordinating your forces across multiple domains (think air, sea, space, cyber and land) is the best way to achieve hard fought military objectives and is the ultimate force multiplier. 

It is something America and many other great powers are putting a lot of time, energy and resources into.
China is also working towards such a goal. 

And while sources vary on how well Beijing could wage a major joint operation against a determined foe— especially against the U.S.— many have their doubts. 

In a recent report by the RAND Corporation titled “China’s Incomplete Military Modernization” the authors have some serious doubts when it comes to Beijing’s joint warfighting capabilities:
Many Chinese strategists identify the inability to conduct integrated joint operations at the desired level of competence as the central problem China faces as it aspires to project combat power beyond its land borders. Indeed, Chinese sources highlight several problems that contribute to the PLA’s shortcomings in the area of joint operations and suggest that there is still a large gap between China and developed countries’ militaries, especially the United States.

In the same paragraph, the authors of the study also discuss issues with training, reinforcing my earlier point:
PLA publications also highlight continuing shortfalls in training, despite years of effort to make training more realistic and more valuable in terms of addressing shortcomings and improving the PLA’s operational capabilities. In addition, the publications point to persistent challenges in combat support and combat service support functions and forces, as reflected by frequent discussions of shortcomings in logistics and maintenance capabilities that appear in PLA newspaper reports and journal articles.

Can They Innovate?
When it comes to military technology, keeping ahead of the curve is key.
America seems to crank out new defense tech all the time.
The question over the long-term for China will be how well it can keep up in the tech game. Specifically, can Beijing develop advanced military systems indigenously?
This might be the biggest challenge for China when we look out over the long term (10-20 years in the future) in a conflict with America.
We all know China has a great track record of, well, permanently “borrowing” the designs of many of the world’s best combat systems.
However, one can only gain so much by playing copy cat.
Even a copy needs to be reverse engineered— and sometimes that isn’t easy.
A poor copy would do China no good on the battlefield.
Over the next decade Beijing will need to develop ingeniously many of the world’s most sought after pieces of military hardware and other intricate systems that make them go— things like jet engines— that are not easy to produce with precision and that they currently struggle with.
China will also need to get good at maintaining and improving world class equipment under the worst of conditions.
While it might not be sexy, innovation and keeping ahead of the curve would pay dividends in a war against America when we look out over the long term.
Only time will tell if Beijing is up to the challenge.
The best way to get good at anything is too actually go out and do it— and do it a lot.
 The challenge for China is that you can wargame all you want but unless you have experienced actual combat there will always be a learning curve.
 And the curve for China is steep: Beijing has not not fought a major war since its roughly one month skirmish with Vietnam in 1979.
Now, while knowledge from a conflict thirty-five years ago might not translate into success against America in a war, having little to no combat experience could pose some challenges for China. Washington going into any conflict with Beijing would certainly have a decisive advantage when it comes to war fighting.
While the conflicts America has fought over the last twenty-five years were not A2/AD battle royals, the last few decades has offered the U.S. military the capability to test out new systems and tactics, fix things that aren’t working when it comes to combat operations, and make important adjustments for future scenarios.
For example, the U.S. did not need to send F-22s into Syria, however, the opportunity to learn on the battlefield and gain experience is of vital importance and likely the main reason for doing so.
And it is one area that would have to be considered a major advantage in a battle against China.

War with China Casualties
	2016 Population	Killed		Survivors
CHINA	1 373 541 278	1 057 119 689	77%	316 421 589
UNITED STATES	323 995 528	19 089 783	6%	304 905 745
EUROPEAN UNION	513 949 445	371 356 958	72%	142 592 487
RUSSIA	142 355 415	30 924 816	22%	111 430 599
INDIA	1 266 883 598	1 158 499 174	91%	108 384 424
PAKISTAN	201 995 540	175 747 473	87%	26 248 067
JAPAN	126 702 133	114 241 889	90%	12 460 244
VIETNAM	95 261 021	84 340 688	89%	10 920 333
PHILIPPINES	102 624 209	92 732 902	90%	9 891 307
KOREA, NORTH	25 115 311	21 141 050	84%	3 974 261
KOREA, SOUTH	50 924 172	47 636 302	94%	3 287 870
TAIWAN	23 464 787	22 278 490	95%	1 186 297
	4 246 812 437	3 195 109 214	75%	1 051 703 223

Parting Thoughts: Does America Have the Edge?
Sometimes the best way to approach a problem is too look at it from multiple angles; not just from your typical scenario of move, countermove.
What are the actual weaknesses of the different players when it comes to effectively waging war against a modern and determined foe on a practical level?
The above demonstrates not only some of the basic challenges China would have over the short and long term in a fight with America but also clearly illustrates a much greater dilemma— creating a military that (at least on paper) can take on America.
That isn’t to say China couldn’t do it, for I am on record that Beijing could do incredible damage to American and allied forces in a fight, and maybe even win depending on the situation.
What I am saying: America has one heck of a head start in such a war.

Sina Delenda Est

With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific
By Steven Lee Myers

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at sea in April. First launched by the Soviet Union in 1988, it was sold for $20 million to a Chinese investor who said it would become a floating casino, though he was in reality acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

DALIAN, China — In April, on the 69th anniversary of the founding of China’s Navy, the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier stirred from its berth in the port city of Dalian on the Bohai Sea, tethered to tugboats for a test of its seaworthiness.
“China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier just moved a bit, and the United States, Japan and India squirmed,” a military news website crowed, referring to the three nations China views as its main rivals.
Not long ago, such boasts would have been dismissed as the bravado of a second-string military. 

No longer.
A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest.
While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies.
To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. 

Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.
To do so, it has developed “anti-access” capabilities that use radar, satellites and missiles to neutralize the decisive edge that America’s powerful aircraft carrier strike groups have enjoyed. 

It is also rapidly expanding its naval forces with the goal of deploying a “blue water” navy that would allow it to defend its growing interests beyond its coastal waters.
“China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” the new commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation process in March.
He described China as a “peer competitor” gaining on the United States not by matching its forces weapon by weapon but by building critical “asymmetrical capabilities,” including with anti-ship missiles and in submarine warfare. 

“There is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China,” he concluded.
Last year, the Chinese Navy became the world’s largest, with more warships and submarines than the United States, and it continues to build new ships at a stunning rate. 

Though the American fleet remains superior qualitatively, it is spread much thinner.
“The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” Xi Jinping declared in April as he presided over a naval procession off the southern Chinese island of Hainan that opened exercises involving 48 ships and submarines. 

The Ministry of National Defense said they were the largest since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Even as the United States wages a trade war against China, Chinese warships and aircraft have picked up the pace of operations in the waters off Japan, Taiwan, and the islands, shoals and reefs it has claimed in the South China Sea over the objections of Vietnam and the Philippines.
When two American warships — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — sailed within a few miles of disputed islands in the Paracels in May, Chinese vessels rushed to challenge what Beijing later denounced as “a provocative act.” 

China did the same to three Australian ships passing through the South China Sea in April.
Only three years ago, Xi stood beside President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden and promised not to militarize artificial islands it has built farther south in the Spratlys archipelago. 

Chinese officials have since acknowledged deploying missiles there, but argue that they are necessary because of American “incursions” in Chinese waters.
When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Beijing in June, Xi bluntly warned him that China would not yield “even one inch” of territory it claims as its own.
Ballistic missiles designed to strike ships on display at a military parade in Beijing in 2015.

‘Anti-Access/Area Denial’
China’s naval expansion began in 2000 but accelerated sharply after Xi took command in 2013. 

He has drastically shifted the military’s focus to naval as well as air and strategic rocket forces, while purging commanders accused of corruption and cutting the traditional land forces.
The People’s Liberation Army — the bedrock of Communist power since the revolution — has actually shrunk in order to free up resources for a more modern fighting force. 

Since 2015, the army has cut 300,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, paring the military to two million personnel over all, compared with 1.4 million in the United States.
While every branch of China’s armed forces lags behind the United States’ in firepower and experience, China has made significant gains in asymmetrical weaponry to blunt America’s advantages. 

One focus has been in what American military planners call A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial,” or what the Chinese call “counter-intervention.”
A centerpiece of this strategy is an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles designed to strike moving ships. 

The latest versions, the DF-21D and, since 2016, the DF-26, are popularly known as “carrier killers,” since they can threaten the most powerful vessels in the American fleet long before they get close to China.
The DF-26, which made its debut in a military parade in Beijing in 2015 and was tested in the Bohai Sea last year, has a range that would allow it to menace ships and bases as far away as Guam, according to the latest Pentagon report on the Chinese military, released this month. 

These missiles are almost impossible to detect and intercept, and are directed at moving targets by an increasingly sophisticated Chinese network of radar and satellites.
China announced in April that the DF-26 had entered service. 

State television showed rocket launchers carrying 22 of them, though the number deployed now is unknown. 

A brigade equipped with them is reported to be based in Henan Province, in central China.
Such missiles pose a particular challenge to American commanders because neutralizing them might require an attack deep inside Chinese territory, which would be a major escalation.
The American Navy has never faced such a threat before, the Congressional Research Office warned in a report in May, adding that some analysts consider the missiles “game changing.”
The “carrier killers” have been supplemented by the deployment this year of missiles in the South China Sea. 

The weaponry includes the new YJ-12B anti-ship cruise missile, which puts most of the waters between the Philippines and Vietnam in range.
The Chinese military is preparing for a limited military conflict from the sea, according to a 2013 paper in a journal called The Science of Military Strategy.
Lyle Morris, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, said that China’s deployment of missiles in the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands “will dramatically change how the U.S. military operates” across Asia and the Pacific.
The best American response, he added, would be “to find new and innovative methods” of deploying ships outside their range. 

Given the longer range of the ballistic missiles, however, that is not possible “in most contingencies” the American Navy would be likely to face in Asia.

Soldiers with the People’s Liberation Army Navy patrolling Woody Island in the disputed Paracel archipelago in 2016.

Blue-Water Ambitions
The aircraft carrier that put to sea in April for its first trials is China’s second, but the first built domestically. 

It is the most prominent manifestation of a modernization project meant to propel the country into the upper tier of military powers. 

Only the United States, with 11 nuclear-powered carriers, operates more than one.
A third Chinese carrier is under construction in a port near Shanghai. 

Analysts believe China will eventually build five or six.
The Chinese military, traditionally focused on repelling a land invasion, increasingly aims to project power into the “blue waters” of the world to protect China’s expanding economic and diplomatic interests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The carriers attract the most attention but China’s naval expansion has been far broader. 

The Chinese Navy — officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy — has built more than 100 warships and submarines in the last decade alone, more than the entire naval fleets of all but a handful of nations.
Last year, China also introduced the first of a new class of a heavy cruisers — or “super destroyers” — that, according to the American Office of Naval Intelligence, “are comparable in many respects to most modern Western warships.” 

Two more were launched from dry dock in Dalian in July, the state media reported.
Last year, China counted 317 warships and submarines in active service, compared with 283 in the United States Navy, which has been essentially unrivaled in the open seas since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which drained its coffers during the Cold War arms race, military spending in China is a manageable percentage of a growing economy. 

Beijing’s defense budget now ranks second only to the United States: $228 billion to $610 billion, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The roots of China’s focus on sea power and “area denial” can be traced to what many Chinese viewed as humiliation in 1995 and 1996. 

When Taiwan moved to hold its first democratic elections, China fired missiles near the island, prompting President Bill Clinton to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the region.
“We avoided the sea, took it as a moat and a joyful little pond to the Middle Kingdom,” a naval analyst, Chen Guoqiang, wrote recently in the official Navy newspaper. 

“So not only did we lose all the advantages of the sea but also our territories became the prey of the imperialist powers.”
China’s naval buildup since then has been remarkable. 

In 1995, China had only three submarines. 

It now has nearly 60 and plans to expand to nearly 80, according to a report last month by the United States Congressional Research Service.
As it has in its civilian economy, China has bought or absorbed technologies from the rest of the world, in some cases illicitly. 

Much of its military hardware is of Soviet origin or modeled on antiquated Soviet designs, but with each new wave of production, analysts say, China is deploying more advanced capabilities.
China’s first aircraft carrier was originally launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 and left to rust when the nation collapsed three years later. 

Newly independent Ukraine sold it for $20 million to a Chinese investor who claimed it would become a floating casino, though he was really acting on behalf of Beijing, which refurbished the vessel and named it the Liaoning.
The second aircraft carrier — as yet unnamed — is largely based on the Liaoning’s designs, but is reported to have enhanced technology. 

In February, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation disclosed that it has plans to build nuclear-powered carriers, which have far greater endurance than ones that require refueling stops.
China’s military has encountered some growing pains. 

It is hampered by corruption, which Xi has vowed to wipe out, and a lack of combat experience. 

As a fighting force, it remains untested by combat.
In January, it was embarrassed when one of its most advanced submarines was detected as it neared Japanese islands known as the Senkaku. 

The attack submarine should never have been spotted.
The second aircraft carrier also appears to have experienced hiccups. 

Its first sea trials were announced in April and then inexplicably delayed. 

Not long after the trials went ahead in May, the general manager of China Shipbuilding was placed under investigation for “serious violation of laws and discipline,” the official Xinhua news agency reported, without elaborating.

Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea. The deployment of missiles on three man-made reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross — has prompted protests from the White House.

Defending Its Claims
China’s military advances have nonetheless emboldened the country’s leadership.
The state media declared the carrier Liaoning “combat ready” in the summer after it moved with six other warships through the Miyako Strait that splits Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and conducted its first flight operations in the Pacific.
The Liaoning’s battle group now routinely circles Taiwan. 

So do Chinese fighter jets and bombers.
China’s new J-20 stealth fighter conducted its first training mission at sea in May, while its strategic bomber, the H-6, landed for the first time on Woody Island in the Paracels. 

From the airfield there or from those in the Spratly Islands, the bombers could strike all of Southeast Asia.
The recent Pentagon report noted that H-6 flights in the Pacific were intended to demonstrate the ability to strike American bases in Japan and South Korea, and as far away as Guam.
“Competition is the American way of seeing it,” said Li Jie, an analyst with the Chinese Naval Research Institute in Beijing. 

“China is simply protecting its rights and its interests in the Pacific.”
And China’s interests are expanding.
In 2017, it opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, saying that it will be used to support its participation in multinational antipiracy patrols off Somalia.
It now appears to be planning to acquire access to a network of ports and bases throughout the Indian Ocean. 

Though ostensibly commercial, these projects have laid the groundwork for a necklace of refueling and resupply arrangements that will “facilitate Beijing’s long-range naval operations,” according to a new report by C4ADS, a research organization in Washington.
“They soon will be able, for example, to send a squadron of ships to somewhere, say in Africa, and have all the capabilities to make a landing in force to protect Chinese assets,” said Vassily Kashin, an expert with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The need was driven home in 2015 when Chinese warships evacuated 629 Chinese and 279 foreigners from Yemen when the country’s civil war raged in Aden, a southern port city.
One of the frigates involved in the rescue, the Linyi, was featured in a patriotic blockbuster film, “Operation Red Sea.”
“The Chinese are going to be more present,” Mr. Kashin added, “and everyone has to get used to it.”

Fighter jets on the Liaoning in the East China Sea in April.

Paper Dragon: Just How Good Is China's Military?

Fact: China lost the last war it fought... in 1979. 

By Harry J. Kazianis


While America’s ideas for negating A2/AD are important, Washington must move to the next level of operational and strategic planning. 

The United States must begin to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with A2/AD, and specifically Chinese A2/AD, and move past vague and often-contradictory operational concepts. 

At the same time, considering the alliances and strategic partnerships Washington holds throughout the Asia-Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific, allies must be consulted as such a strategy is developed. While marketing slogans like a “pivot” or “rebalance” sound good on paper or in the headlines, a strategy must be adopted that continues America’s military edge in the Asia-Pacific for years to come.
China’s military is growing in terms of raw power and basic power projection. 

Many of Beijing’s defense investments over the last two decades are aimed at limiting Washington’s ability to intervene in areas that China describes as being of “core interest.” 

But just how much should Washington worry about it? 

A good question, for sure. 

The answer, however, is as not as black and white as many might want it to be. 

And just how much should America prepare to duel with such anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) forces in the future?
Let’s start with the obvious: While various A2/AD combat scenarios can paint a decidedly bleak picture for America and its allies in Asia in the event of a conflict with China, there are a number of reasons such a war will never come to pass in the first place. 

While large trade flows have not stopped conflicts in the past, with U.S.-Chinese bilateral trade now valued at over $550 billion and growing, this vital statistic would likely be an important factor in both sides’ strategic calculus on a path towards some sort of large-scale kinetic conflict. 

However, as history has shown us, the rise of a new regional great power with the potential to wield hegemonic dominance can spark a security competition, even war. 

This is one of the key reasons nations in the Asia-Pacific have looked to Washington to provide a hedge or a “buffer” against a rapidly rising China.
One must also consider the simple fact that there have been many so-called “revolutions” in military affairs dating back to the beginning of human history. 

While China’s version of the A2/AD strategy boasts weapons that have headline-grabbing names, like “carrier-killer,” and are certainly cause for concern, one must look back to the past at how other nations have worked to negate potential changes in how wars are conducted and how new technologies impact modern warfare. 

One example is China’s DF-21D, the “carrier-killer” itself. 

The U.S. Navy has faced challenges to its dominance of the global commons at various times in the past. 

How will America deal with such a challenge this time around? 

In analyzing the DF-21D, what many consider the most potent A2/AD challenge facing U.S. and allied forces today, such tests have been met before, according to one source, and will be addressed yet again :
While a major advance in military capability, it is not the first “game changing” weapon system mitigated or countered by the U.S. Navy. 

The naval mine, the self-propelled torpedo, the submarine, the airplane and the cruise missile all presented the same potentially lethal threat to surface warships. 

While naval leaders should respect the power of this weapon system, there is no reason to endow it with supernatural abilities or allow it to unilaterally limit operational thinking. 

As in the past, the inevitable march of technology will find an effective countermeasure or mitigating technique for this system and the DF-21D will just be another threat in a constellation of dangers inherent in the pursuit of war at sea.
To expand this line of thinking to the whole of A2/AD (and specifically Chinese A2/AD), the ideas inherent in such a strategy—limiting the ability of your enemy’s freedom of movement or, in an even broader sense, looking for weaknesses—are certainly rooted in past strategic and military thought. 

In fact, many other nations have used anti-access or area-denial–type strategies—the USSR and Imperial Japan are two often-cited examples. 

Strategic thinkers from competing nations are constantly looking for ways to negate and minimize the impact of new technologies, strategies and weapons systems. 

A2/AD, at its core, is part of a long line of past and present potentially disruptive military strategies that planners from around the world will now seek to improve on, mimic and defeat.
All in all, Washington must take a balanced approach towards China’s A2/AD challenge—not overhyping the threat, but certainly not underappreciating the challenge, either. 

In the very near future (some would argue even today), American strategists must now factor in the challenges presented by an increasingly robust Chinese military that holds growing capabilities to effectively deny large sections of the Pacific Ocean to U.S. forces. 

American defense experts are already at work recognizing the challenge and are developing the tools to negate such a scenario. 

Washington clearly realizes A2/AD weapons and strategies are diffusing around the globe, putting American and allied forces in danger, unless they evolve or adapt. 

This is why work towards the Third Offset strategy and the successor to ASB, JAM-GC, are of vital importance.
While America’s ideas for negating A2/AD are important, Washington must move to the next level of operational and strategic planning. 

The United States must begin to develop a comprehensive strategy to deal with A2/AD, and specifically Chinese A2/AD, and move past vague and often-contradictory operational concepts. 

At the same time, considering the alliances and strategic partnerships Washington holds throughout the Asia-Pacific and wider Indo-Pacific, allies must be consulted as such a strategy is developed. While marketing slogans like a “pivot” or “rebalance” sound good on paper or in the headlines, a strategy must be adopted that continues America’s military edge in the Asia-Pacific for years to come.

Why China Can't Conquer Taiwan in a War

The United States should focus on helping China’s neighbors deny China sea and air control in the region

By Zachary Keck

With Xi Jinping having consolidated his power at the 19th Party Congress, and the United States increasingly distracted at home, it may seem like a given that China will reestablish its predominance over the India-Pacific region. 

A new study casts doubt on this, however, arguing that Beijing doesn’t have the military power to defeat its neighbors. 

In fact, it probably can’t even conquer Taiwan.
The new study by Michael Beckley, an Assistant Professor of Political Science at Tufts University, was published in the academic journal International Security. 

In the article, Beckley argues that China’s neighbors could thwart Chinese military aggression through anti-access/area denial strategies with only minimal U.S. assistance.
“My main finding is that there is a budding balance of military power in East Asia, which the United States can reinforce at moderate risk to U.S. forces,” Beckley writes in the article. 

“Furthermore, this balance of power will remain stable for years to come, because China cannot afford the power-projection capabilities it would need to overcome the A2/AD forces of its neighbors. The main reasons are that power projection forces are more expensive than A2/AD forces by an order of magnitude.”
A2/AD is most commonly discussed in relation to China’s efforts to deny America the ability to intervene in any regional conflict or make it so costly that Washington is deterred from doing so. Some observers, including James Holmes, Toshi Yoshihara and Andrew Krepinevich, have argued that the United States and its Asian allies should this strategy around on China. 

Instead of seeking to maintain command of the sea and air as America has traditionally done, these scholars suggest Washington and its allies could simply seek to deny China the ability to achieve its goals. 

As Beckley puts it, “Under this strategy, the United States would abandon efforts to command maritime East Asia and, instead, focus on helping China’s neighbors deny China sea and air control in the region.
Beckley’s main contribution is to test the viability of this strategy for a number of foreseeable conflict scenarios. 

One of these, of course, is a Chinese invasion of the Taiwan strait. 

While amphibious invasions have always been the most difficult military maneuver to pull off, they are especially difficult in an era of precision-guided munitions that can pick off an invading force while they are still at sea.
To have any chance of successfully invading Taiwan, then, China would have to establish total air superiority and command of the sea in the area. 

As Beckley explains, “If Taiwan retained substantial air defenses and offensive strike platforms, a Chinese amphibious invasion would be impossible, because Taiwan could pick off PLA landing craft as they motored across the Taiwan Strait.” 

Although China has amassed an incredibly large missile force to destroy Taiwan’s defensive capabilities at the outset of a conflict, it would still need to take Taipei by total surprise to be successful. 

If Taiwan had some advanced warning of an attack, it could disperse its aircraft to some thirty-six military airfield across the islands, while also relying on a number of civilian aistrips and even some highways that double as emergency air bases. 

Taiwan also has a bunch of road-mobile missile launchers and anti-aircraft weaponry, as well as a number of ships and submarines capable of attacking Chinese forces with cruise missiles.
As Beckley points out, there is little reason to believe that China would be able to knock out all of these defenses in a surprise first strike. 

To begin with, Taiwan has sophisticated early warning air defense systems. 

Moreover, the United States has not even been able to achieve this level of destruction against much lesser enemies like Iraq during the First Gulf War or Serbia in 1999.
But if China was far more successful than the United States had been in those conflicts, Beijing’s ability to execute an amphibious invasion is still far from certain. 

For instance, Beckley notes that only ten percent of Taiwan’s coastlines are suitable for an amphibious landing, which would allow Taipei to concentrate its forces on a few key areas. 

Chinese forces trying to land would likely be severely outnumbered.
Thus, even using the the most optimistic assessments (from Beijing’s perspective), China would have its hands full trying to conquer Taiwan.

Consequently, Beckley writes, “the United States would only need to tip the scales of the battle to foil a Chinese invasion, a mission that could be accomplished in numerous ways without exposing U.S. surface ships or non-stealth aircraft to China’s A2/AD forces.” 

More specifically, by the U.S. military’s own estimates, America would need “10,000 to 20,000 pounds of ordnance to decimate a PLA invasion force on the beaches of Taiwan.” 

This could be done, Beckley notes, using a single B-2 bomber or an Ohio-class submarine.
Beckley goes on to demonstrate that China would have difficulty gaining control over the East and South China Sea, given the nearly certain resistance it would face from countries like Vietnam and Japan. 

Thus, China’s ability to militarily dominate the region is more unlikely than is commonly appreciated. 

That being said, China’s strategy to date seems to be to win without fighting. 

So far, this has been relatively successful.

The Reason China Has Built a Massive Military

By Harry J. Kazianis

Over several years in this publication, I have been exploring the dynamics of the budding U.S.-China security dilemma—a high-tech drama pitting anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) against what we used to refer to as Air-Sea Battle (ASB)—and have offered several different ways to lessen the possibility of such a dynamic from becoming cemented into the Asia-Pacific’s security architecture. 

However, China’s development and implementation of A2/AD clearly has various origins. 

One such origin that deserves to be explored is the China’s subjugation at the hands of various colonial powers.
In many respects, China is trying to solve a centuries-old problem that never went away: how to defeat in battle military forces that are at least in a symmetrical sense superior to its own and will be for some time to come. 

If we alter our perspective and take a much longer view of Beijing’s own military obsolescence, a strategy that emphasizes anti-access makes tremendous sense. 

According to Admiral Wu Shengli, former commander of the PLA Navy, “in China’s modern history, imperialist and colonists initiated more than 470 invasions of China, including 84 large ones, from the sea.” 

If China’s military were to deter or halt the deployment of superior military forces into areas of Chinese territory or areas Beijing perceives as a core interest, another period of what leaders in China might see as a new form of subjugation could theoretically be avoided. 

A2/AD allows Beijing to compete with the United States asymmetrically—an important point when one thinks through how many years away China is from competing with America ship for ship or plane for plane.
The following serves as an account of what many Chinese consider their own historical nightmare at the hands of foreign forces and why A2/AD would protect China from being subjugated yet again.

A Lost Opportunity
There are several events in Chinese history that mainland scholars, politicians and academics point to that weakened the collective power of the Chinese nation and diminished its global standing for generations. 

Indeed, Chinese strategic planners are keenly aware they have missed multiple “revolutions” in military affairs looking back several centuries—a driving factor in China’s subjugation by the West and other Asian powers. 

Critical transitions from cold-weapon warfare (knives or blunt striking instruments) to hot-weapon warfare (such as guns and firepower) and from hot-weapon warfare to mechanized warfare (tanks, armored naval vessels, airplanes and so on) were lost opportunities to transform the military establishment into a modern fighting force.
The consequences were shocking. 

When well-armed Western powers forced their way into China two centuries ago, the Chinese were defenseless, thanks to obsolete technology. 

When Western powers developed mechanized weapons during and after World War II, China was in the midst of internal turmoil and suffered from foreign invasion (i.e., the Chinese Civil War and Japanese invasion); it did not have the capacity to keep up with the devel­opments of new military technology.

“Century of Humiliation” Begins: The First Opium War
Numerous current Chinese scholars speak of China’s “century of humiliation” or subjugation by various powers that led, according to their line of argument, to the loss of China's great-power status, loss of territory, and in many respects, national sovereignty. 

Defeat on the battlefield marked the beginning of this century of loss and humiliation. 

The first major military loss at the hands of Western powers that had wide-ranging repercussions for China and large parts of the Asia-Pacific was its defeat at the hands of the British during the First Opium War (1839-1842). 

As scholar Richard Harris explained: “The Chinese have one very broad generalization about their own history: they think in terms of ‘up to the Opium war’ and ‘after the Opium war’; in other words, a century of humiliation and weakness to be expunged.”
The consequences of the conflict—China’s crushing defeat—were felt far and wide. 

Beijing’s geostrategic position in Asia was weakened dramatically. 

China’s military was crushed in a series of defeats by a vastly smaller, but technologically superior, British force. 

Chinese military technology, tactics and strategy were not on par with the West’s. 

This defeat sparked the first of what has been referred to as the “unequal treaties.” 

Five ports were opened to foreign traders, and the British colony at Hong Kong was founded (which would not be returned until 1997).

The Sino-Japanese War
A second military defeat, this time at the hands of Japan, during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895, also had wide-reaching consequences for Beijing. 

For several decades, Japan and China had spared in various domains—largely political and diplomatic—over control and influence on the Korean Peninsula. 

For China, Korea had been a vassal state, having been heavily influenced by Chinese culture. 

Japan, having undertaken a massive effort to Westernize under the Meiji Restoration, was undertaking efforts to bring Korea under its sphere of influence. 

Both nations were actively pursuing efforts to modernize their armed forces.
While a larger study of the conflict has been done across many formats and is beyond the scope of this article, the war and its aftermath are of extreme importance. 

Japan would defeat China convincingly, most importantly at the Battle of the Yalu, an important naval victory. 

While China had by this time been clearly passed by Western powers and had lost considerable stature and territory, to now be defeated by a neighboring Asian nation-state was even more humiliating. 

Korea would be declared free of Chinese influence and placed effectively under Japanese control. China would be forced to pay large reparations to Japan. 

Tokyo would also receive the Liaodong Peninsula, which it was forced to give up, due to Western pressure.

A Chaotic 1930s, Civil War and World War II
A series of events from the early 1930s until the eventual victory of Mao’s communists in 1949, establishing the People’s Republic of China, would also have a lasting effect on today’s China. 

While each event is worthy of its own larger study, a narrow focus will be utilized for the purposes of this article.
In 1931, Japan occupied the Chinese territory of Manchuria, creating a puppet state named Manchukuo. 

In 1937, tensions flared once more when an incident at the Marco Polo Bridge would become the catalyst for full-scale war between China and Japan. 

Both nations waged a bloody conflict until the end of World War II in 1945. 

Large sections of Chinese territory were held by Japan, and vast areas of Chinese commerce, industry and farmland were destroyed. 

China was also in the midst of a civil war from 1927 until 1937, which was halted to combat the Japanese invasion. 

The civil war resumed in 1946, when China once again suffered severe losses. 

The Kuomintang or KMT under Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949. 

The status of Taiwan to this day has yet to be resolved and is a major factor in Chinese strategic thinking on A2/AD.
China suffered dearly during this period of its history. 

Countless lives were lost during Japan's invasion and during the civil war. 

Even though almost seven decades have passed since the end of World War II, Chinese and Japanese emotions on the subject are considerably heated, serving as a source of tension, which drags on positive bilateral relations.
Such a tumultuous period of Chinese history would have far and wide repercussions on the Chinese people, its collective sense of history and its national psyche. 

Chinese scholars have debated for several decades the role of such a period when thinking about its place in today’s international order. 

During this century, China would have to redefine itself, its place in the global order, its place in Asia and its own sense of history. 

As one scholar notes: "China had to redraw its world map: where it had for millennia sat comfortably at the center of a ring of tributary relationships with neighboring countries, it now found itself a weak competitor in a world of dozens or even hundreds of nation-states. Where Chinese rulers and intellectuals had before had little concept of an international arena, they now had to grapple with the notion that there existed a global system of power relationships whose dynamics – though almost entirely out of China’s control – would determine her fate".

Chinese History: Chinese A2/AD?
As noted by many analysts (including myself), Chinese A2/AD strategy seeks to target selected perceived weaknesses in U.S. military technology, force structure and strategic doctrine—all while not having to match U.S. forces in all combat domains. 

At present, even though China possesses the second-largest economy in the world, it still does not have the economic or technological base to challenge America in a symmetrical military matchup. What China can do is devise an asymmetric strategy that is designed to inflict maximum damage on American forces if they were to intervene militarily close to China’s perceived interests along its coasts and out towards the first island chain.
History clearly shows us China has suffered from technological obsolescence on the battlefield for some time—allowing various nations to take advantage. 

A century of humiliation has taught Chinese planners that to allow military forces to be able to approach the coast and be able to build up forces for a possible attack invites strategic weakness and possible subjugation by foreign powers. 

Beijing does not feel it has the luxury of time to wait for the development of a first-class military if it were challenged by Washington or another great power. 

A2/AD solves an age-old problem for China and might just be able to at least deter America and others from possible infringement on China's core interests. 

And if history is any guide, it seems clear that is exactly the outcome Beijing wants.

The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The Forgotten Showdown Between China and America

It made Asia what it is today.
By J. Michael Cole

Twenty-one years ago this week, as Taiwanese were readying to hold their country’s first direct presidential election later in March, China flexed its military muscles by holding a series of military exercises and firing missiles within thirty-five miles off the ports of Keelung and Kaohsiung, causing a panic in Taiwan and prompted U.S. President William J. Clinton to deploy a carrier battle group to international waters near Taiwan.

The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, as the events came to be known, disrupted naval shipping and commercial air traffic, causing harm to Taiwan’s economy. 

Amid fears of a possible invasion—fuelled by planned People’s Liberation Army (PLA) exercises simulating an amphibious assault and live-fire exercises near the outlying island of Penghu—Taiwanese scrambled to reserve seats on flights to North America.
In the end, crisis was averted, likely due to the U.S. intervention, and Beijing’s efforts to coerce the Taiwanese backfired: Lee Teng-hui, the candidate from the ruling Kuomintang (KMT) whom China suspected had pro-independence inclinations, was elected with a majority instead of the expected mere plurality. 

According to historians, China’s military threat gave Lee a 5% boost in the March 23 election, the first indication, perhaps, that coercion, rather than cow the Taiwanese into submission, was a counterproductive policy.
Besides exacerbating momentum toward a more Taiwan-centric sentiment across the fledging democracy, Beijing’s military maneuvers (which had begun a year prior in response to President Lee’s visit to the U.S.) likely also convinced Washington of the necessity of providing Taiwan with more means to defend itself as part of its policy under the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, passed in response to the establishment of official diplomatic relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).
While many historians argue that the mass killings surrounding the 2-28 Incident of 1947 by KMT forces constituted the “birth certificate” of Taiwan as a distinct nation, it could also be argue that the Missile Crisis of 1995–96 represented a breaking point in the Taiwan Strait, when Beijing’s belligerence made it clear it would not countenance the wishes of the Taiwanese to continue down the road of democratization after nearly four decades of authoritarian rule. 

Years before it became fashionable to do so, China’s actions made it clear that the “one country, two systems” framework, formulated by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in the early 1980s to handmaiden the reunification of Hong Kong, Macau and eventually unification with Taiwan—was seriously flawed.
Learning from its overreaction and humbled by the U.S. naval deployment, Beijing did not resort to similar intimidation as Taiwanese continued to exercise their democratic right. 

It even showed self-restraint when, for the first time in 2000, a candidate from the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. 

Beijing’s rhetoric remained harshly opposed to Taiwan independence, but it had learned that coercion by military means was counterproductive. 

Instead, Beijing shifted its strategy, and for the next decade and a half it instead attempted to win the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese through economic interdependence, a process that deepened under President Chen Shui-bian of the DPP and accelerated by leaps and bounds under his successor, Ma Ying-jeou of the KMT (2008–16).
Nevertheless, the injury to Chinese pride in 1996, as well as the display of overwhelming U.S. military capability during the Gulf War of 1991, convinced Beijing of the need to modernize its military. 

The result was an intensive program of double-digit investment, foreign acquisitions (primarily from Russia and the Ukraine) and indigenous resourcing to turn the PLA into a force capable of imposing Beijing’s will within its immediate neighborhood and, eventually, beyond. 

China’s embracing of an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy, supported by the means to enforce such a plan, was a direct response to the humiliation it suffered in 1996 at the hands of what it regarded as a “foreign intervention.”
Thus, a direct line can be drawn between the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis and China’s current efforts to displace the U.S. as the hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. 

The repercussions of this national trauma reverberate through time and are inarguably part of Beijing’s rationale for creating a new naval architecture all the way to the South China Sea, which it is busy militarizing, and beyond into the West Pacific.
Twenty-one years on, memories of the Crisis—and perhaps the lessons learned from it—appear to have faded. 

Ask ordinary Taiwanese what happened twenty-one years ago this month, and most will be unable to answer. 

For most people in Taiwan, therefore, the reality of military force and its implications are now an abstract concept. 

This partly explains why, despite the existential threat they face, the Taiwanese have not been willing to support spending on national defense that is commensurate with the nature of the external challenge.
On the Chinese side (at least within the elite and the PLA), the humiliation of direct contact with U.S. military may have dissipated, but it hasn’t been completely forgotten and may now serve as justification for the desire to expel the U.S. from the region. 

Moreover, the cultivation of an expansionist nationalism, added to the belief that China has “arrived” and is deserving of respect as a major power, borders dangerously close on hubris, one of the most powerful agents of national amnesia. 

Finally, given the failure of Beijing’s attempt to win over the Taiwanese through economic incentives and cultural propaganda (support for unification has been dropping since the early 1990s and reached an all-time, single-digit low last year), combined with Xi Jinping’s statement to the effect that the Taiwan “issue” cannot be allowed to fester indefinitely, may reinforce the notion in some circles that the only way to resolve the conflict is by use of force, in similar fashion to how Russia handled the Crimea issue.
A wavering commitment to national defense in Taiwan, stemming in part from the forgotten trauma of 1996, added to a resurgent China fixated on exorcising past humiliations and doubt over continued U.S. commitment to security and stability in the Asia Pacific, is a recipe for trouble.
Furthermore, China’s ability to coerce Taiwan today is orders of magnitude greater than it was twenty-one years ago. 

The Second Artillery Corps, the branch of the Chinese military that controls the conventional and nuclear missile arsenal, has made leaps and bounds both numerically and qualitatively; thus, not only has the number of missiles targeting Taiwan increased (according to estimates, the total number is now 1,500 ballistic missiles, plus a few hundred cruise missiles), but the destructiveness and accuracy of those missiles has also improved markedly with the decommissioning of old DF-11s and their replacement with more precise ones, as well as the addition of longer-range DF-15s and 16s. 

China’s ability to zero down on targets in and around Taiwan has also improved dramatically thanks to much better intelligence, such as GPS and aerial/orbital surveillance. 

Additionally, the number of platforms from which the PLA can launch attacks against Taiwan has increased and now includes the full spectrum of land, air and sea. 

And it is now multidirectional, as the PLA Navy (PLAN) and PLA Air Force (PLAAF) have now demonstrated their ability to operate in parts of the West Pacific and therefore on the Eastern side of Taiwan. 

The December 2016 sortie of China’s first aircraft carrier the Liaoning, which broke through the “first island chain” and looped around Taiwan before transiting the Taiwan Strait on its return home, makes it clear that naval and aerial attacks against the island-nation will no longer originate from a single direction—i.e., the Chinese mainland. 

Realizing this, Taiwan’s military recently deployed U.S.-made PAC-3 units in Hualien and Taitung to defend eastern parts of the country.
In light of the new nature of the threat and a rapidly changing security environment in the Asia-Pacific, Taiwanese authorities should implement some measures to ensure preparedness. 

Among other things, it should use history so that the Third Taiwan Strait Crisis, and the lessons learned from it, aren’t forgotten. 

While it may seem like a long time ago, there is nevertheless a precedent for use of force by the PLA against Taiwan, and the quiet period since 1996 does not signify that Beijing has shelved that option. Although such a scenario arguably constitutes an extreme, military coercion very much remains part of China’s strategy, and the current conditions could make their use seem more appealing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chinese ultranationalists. 

By keeping memories of the 1995-96 Missile Crisis alive with the public, Taiwanese authorities would diminish the likelihood of panic, overreaction—and perhaps surrender—should the PLA once again be called upon to intimidate Taiwan.
Besides China’s growing missile arsenal, which it should be stated does not only target Taiwan, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs has also awakened the region to the threat. 

South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines are now all potential targets to missile attack by an adversary. 

Earlier this week, Pyongyang test-fired four ballistic missiles, ostensibly as part of a simulated attack on U.S. military bases in Japan. 

Meanwhile, in response to the threat from the North, South Korea has agreed to the deployment of a U.S.-made Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system on its territory, with the first units arriving earlier this week. 

Beijing, which sees a potential use of the system to counter its own missile force (including the possibility that the radar systems could be used to monitor the Chinese military), has reacted with consternation and launched a series of punitive measures against South Korea.
For its part, Japan is a target of both North Korean missiles and, due to its longstanding disputes with China over history and territory in the East China Sea, to PLA attacks. 

U.S. military bases across Japan, which would play a crucial role in contingencies in both the Korean Peninsula and the Taiwan Strait, would be prime targets during the initial phase of hostilities, particularly if China decided to launch major military operations against Taiwan. 

Given the threat it faces on two fronts, Japan, working in conjunction with the U.S. military, has had every incentive to take early warning, tracking, air defense and mitigation seriously. 

Pyongyang’s missile tests, while unsettling, have nevertheless contributing to better preparedness by the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) and U.S. military forces deployed in the region.
Should tensions between China and North Korea on one side and South Korea, Japan, Taiwan and the U.S. on the other continue to increase—much of this contingent on the kind of policies the Donald J. Trump administration adopts for the region—the latter group may feel compelled to increase intelligence sharing on the missile threat emanating from China and North Korea. 

U.S. satellite and aerial surveillance, combined with South Korea’s early warning systems (including the X-band AN/TPY-2 radar guiding the THAAD system), Japan’s EW systems and Taiwan’s long-range early-warning radar on Leshan—a modernized version of the AN/FPS-115 Pave Paws which can track any air-breathing target 4,000 km inside China—could form the basis of a nascent missile tracking/intercept quadrumvirate within the region.
As one of the corners of that square and due to its proximity to China, Taiwan should do its utmost to ensure it has a seat at the table, both as a provider and consumer of such critical real-time EW information. 

Given the affinity between Japan and Taiwan for historical reasons, Japanese jitters at the thought of a PLA presence in Taiwan, and the greater role the U.S. is expected to give Tokyo in a transforming regional security architecture, the time might be ripe for closer security cooperation between Tokyo and Taipei, something which may already have begun since the election of the DPP’s Tsai Ing-wen to the presidency in 2016.
Buttressing the desire to share intelligence (and perhaps technology), moreover, is the fact that all four countries are U.S. allies/partners and democracies aligned against two revisionist, authoritarian, and destabilizing regimes. 

Thus, despite the growing threat it faces from an increasingly powerful China and the high uncertainty surrounding the future of the region, circumstances—particularly the potential for Beijing to alienate Seoul should the relationship continue to sour—could in fact turn more favorable for Taiwan, thus creating an opportunity to play a greater role in regional security.

The Just War

A sea-based Pershing II missile can blunt China's A2/AD threat and help restore regional strategic balance.
By Gabe Collins

Speed kills. 

This simple but powerful concept applies in spades to strike assets—particularly when speed and lethality can be obtained at sufficiently low costs to be deployed at scale. 

Consider, for instance, China’s intensive investment in ballistic missiles as part of its ongoing anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) strategy aimed at restricting U.S. forces’ capacity to operate and project power along the country’s maritime periphery during a potential conflict.
The current crop of U.S. precision-strike platforms, especially those with the standoff range to cope with an increasingly deadly People’s Liberation Army integrated air-defense system, tend to be expensive or launched by scarce and expensive aircraft and fly slowly. 

To blunt China’s growing asymmetric advantage and retain strategic credibility with regional allies, U.S. forces need a prompt regional strike capability that is reliable, cost-effective and legal. Modernizing and improving the MGM-31 Pershing II medium-range ballistic missile design and deploying it at sea would fulfill all three requirements.
First, the Pershing system uses a fully developed, 1980s-vintage airframe that could be resurrected, mated with modern guidance and warhead systems, and pressed into service much more rapidly and cost-effectively than new hypersonic weapons systems built from scratch. 

The core challenge in producing Pershing II missiles, or a modernized follow-on version, centers on retooling and training the workers responsible for the manufacturing process, rather than developing entirely new systems and technologies from the ground up, which is what the Pentagon’s Prompt Global Strike program is doing with the Advanced Hypersonic Weapon. 

The fact that a Pershing II derivative can likely be brought into service more quickly than other hypersonic strike systems would allow it to play an important “gap filler” role as the Pentagon builds out a full hypersonic weapons portfolio.
Second, the Pershing II would also likely be more cost-effective than other regional hypersonic weapon options, both in terms of the cost of the missile and the cost of the associated launch infrastructure. 

A 1983 Congressional Budget Office report suggests the unit cost of the Pershing II was $4.2 million, or approximately $10.1 million in 2016 inflation-adjusted dollars. 

In other words, each Pershing II round could likely be had for the price of a single Standard SM-3 ballistic missile interceptor or two Standard SM-6 missiles—both of which would likely be tasked to defend against China’s DF-21D antiship ballistic missile.
The Sea Launch commercial space launching platform gives a sense of potential “high-end” launch system costs, while the modification of the USS Ponce gives a sense of the time and costs that a simpler capability might entail. 

Sea Launch aims to provide equatorial ocean-based space launch services. 

To do so, the company utilizes a converted semisubmersible drilling platform that has been extensively retrofitted to support the launches of massive, liquid-fueled Zenit rockets.
Replicating Sea Launch’s path of converting a semisubmersible drilling platform would be the more expensive route. 

A fairly recent data set from ODS-Petrodata (via the U.S. Energy Information Administration) showing construction costs for semisubmersible platforms and drillships reveals that the ninety-three semisubmersibles in the dataset cost an average of $593 million, while the 140 drillships carried an average price tag of $700 million. 

If the structure of the vessels was changed from the outset with a mission of missile launching in mind, then that would allow the yard to forego adding the drilling rig and fitting other labor-intensive internal equipment needed for a vessel to drill reliably in harsh deepwater environments. 

The potential reduction in vessel cost from building the ship frame without the drilling equipment suite is not clear, but it seems reasonable that it would knock at least $125 million, if not more, off the cost numbers found in the ODS-Petrodata data set.
Sea Launch built a deck structure capable of withstanding the thermal violence wrought by a space launch vehicle lifting off with more than one million pounds of thrust. 

Indeed, the Launch Platform Odyssey Vessel even managed to survive an epic on-deck explosion of a massive Zenit-2S rocket largely intact. 

The physical toughness of Sea Launch’s platform suggests the engineering barriers to creating a vessel able to sustain launches of the much smaller Sea Pershing–class missiles, which would likely have forty thousand to fifty thousand pounds of thrust, would be meaningfully lower, and thus less expensive. 

The platform’s launch system could—and should—be kept as simple as possible and consist of few hangars from which transporter erector launchers (TELs) can drive onto the reinforced launching area.
If global oil prices remain low, then there is a strong likelihood that commercial drillship and semisubmersible platform owners would be willing to entertain purchase offers for idle equipment. As of September 2016, Bloomberg reported that nearly half of the global floating rig fleet was sitting idle. 

Additionally, deepwater contractor Ocean Rig believed that as of April 2016, the global fleet might need to shed nearly two hundred units to fully rebalance itself. 

Other classes of large commercial ships—including bulk carriers, container ships and oil tankers—are also suffering from overcapacity and could offer conversion opportunities.
The possibility of essentially having a ship with a large flat “driveway” from which TELs can be driven onto from a hangar, shoot their missiles and then drive back in for reloading (or be reloaded by a crane on deck) also suggests that existing naval transports or amphibious warfare vessels or merchantmen could be converted at far lower cost than building new platforms. 

The cost advantages of retrofitting suitable existing platforms are exemplified by the conversion of the amphibious transport dock USS Ponce into an “afloat forward-staging base,” an act which cost $65 million, as opposed to the estimated $1.5 billion it would have cost to build a new vessel for the desired purposes.
With potential per-vessel costs in the range of $450 million to $550 million (and perhaps closer to half that amount for converted bulk carriers or containerships), the outlays are significant in absolute terms, but pale in comparison to the $4.2 billion average unit cost of the U.S. Navy’s Zumwalt destroyers or the nearly $13 billion price tag of the new USS Gerald R. Ford. 

The Navy’s USNS Montford Point expeditionary transfer dock, which was based on a converted oil tanker, costs $500 million per vessel. 

This analysis assumes that the ship to carry Pershing II missiles would cost $500 million per vessel and that each missile round would collectively cost $20 million. 

On that basis, the Pentagon could deploy twenty-five Sea Pershing II Prompt Regional Strike vessels for the cost of a single new nuclear carrier and could build an inventory of more than two hundred missiles for the price of a single Zumwalt-class destroyer.
Third, a sea-based version of the Pershing II would confer powerful prompt regional strike capabilities while keeping Washington, DC compliant with its obligations under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty. 

In a nutshell, the INF forbids the United States and Russia from possessing ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500–5,500 kilometers. 

Yet the INF in no way restricts sea-based missile systems from operating within the same range envelope, which means that a Sea Pershing II could be legally deployed under the treaty.
In addition, the treaty’s language states that as long as the missile is intended only for sea-based deployment and not launched from the launch platform, which would fire it as a weapon, then it can be tested at onshore facilities. (“A ballistic missile which is not a missile to be used in a ground-based mode shall not be considered to be a GLBM if it is test-launched at a test site from a fixed land-based launcher which is used solely for test purposes and which is distinguishable from GLBM launchers.”)

How a Sea Pershing II Could Transform U.S. Strategy—And Complicate China’s
A cost-effective, highly accurate prompt-strike capability in the East Asia region and beyond would be transformative on the operational and strategic levels. 

It would place U.S. forces firmly on the “right side of physics” and enable them to credibly—and in an economically sustainable manner—hold a range of land-based fixed-point targets at risk. 

The Pershing II traveled at Mach 9, bore an 880-pound warhead and could deliver it with a circular error of probability of thirty meters.
Targets U.S. forces could credibly hold at risk with the system would include infrastructure point targets, such as oil refineries, fuel dumps, power plants, militarily relevant manufacturing facilities, naval and air bases, and ballistic-missile launchers and critical air-defense systems (using submunition warheads).
The missile’s high speed would also change the profile of “how” U.S. forces can hold various targets at risk because the weapon’s response time is so much faster than that of existing systems. 

Whereas a Tomahawk Land Attack Cruise Missile fired at a target one thousand kilometers away would take more than an hour to impact, a Pershing II could rain its warhead on the same target from nearly 1,800 kilometers within ten minutes.
Sea-based Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile missile launchers would face the risk of counterattack during a conflict. 

Yet the system’s presence in theater would complicate the opportunity-cost calculations of Chinese planners by forcing them to choose between allocating precious long-range survivable strike assets, such as antiship ballistic-missile systems, and the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s most modern nuclear attack subs to attack U.S. capital ships (i.e. carrier groups) or instead direct them toward cheaper—but highly threatening—sea-based missile platforms.
Such a dispersible, fast-response firepower footprint would pose an unprecedented challenge to Chinese military planners. 

A modified tanker, container ship, or drillship with less drag than its commercial counterparts and capable of steaming at fifteen knots could fire missiles and, six to seven hours later, launch again from a position roughly one hundred miles away from the first, significantly complicating an adversary’s search and targeting response.
In effect, the sea-based launchers could become an important lightning rod that distracts relatively scarce Chinese long-range and prompt-strike assets from being able to focus fully on carrier groups and forward air and naval bases. 

Doing so would spread Chinese assets thinner, which in turn would stand to increase U.S. forces’ ballistic-missile defense capacity and create additional opportunities for offensive and counterstrike actions by forcing Chinese long-range strike platforms to confront two fundamental options: (A) engage and deplete weapon inventories, or (B) be held out of the fight.

Conclusion
For the reasons outlined above, the new administration should consider dusting off the Pershing II’s blueprints, tooling up the production line, and acquiring and building multiple launch vessels. 

The ships and their hypersonic missiles’ prompt regional strike capability would help shift the A2/AD balance in East Asia back in Washington’s favor. 

The point of the system would not be to destabilize—although China’s leadership might say as much. To the contrary, the Sea Pershing II system could help reinject strategic stability by raising the costs of Chinese military action in the region and commensurately bolstering U.S. allies’ belief in Washington’s strategic credibility.
A mobile, sea-based prompt regional strike capability would also have great utility for the counterterrorism missions that the new administration emphasizes as a key tenet of its foreign policy. Since ISIS and other groups lack China’s sophisticated access denial weaponry, the Sea Pershing II mother ships could come much closer to hostile coastlines and conceivably interdict targets as far as one thousand miles inland, with flight times from launch to impact of ten minutes or less. 

The Pershing II missile was long ago developed into a deployable weapon and could have its warhead enhanced with modern technology, several basic frameworks for building the launch ship already exist, and the system can likely be brought into service much more cheaply than new hypersonic weapons developed from scratch.
The case is strong: the new U.S. administration’s defense advisors should take a hard look at resurrecting the Pershing II, modernizing it and sending it to sea. 

In doing so, they should take inspiration from the very attitude that helped China achieve high-end A2/AD capabilities in the first place. 

In 1999, still smarting from their inability to counter American military intervention in the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, China’s leaders were shocked when an American warplane accidentally bombed its embassy in Yugoslavia. 

As Andrew Erickson explains in his book on Chinese ASBM development, Chinese president Jiang Zemin did not let that crisis go to waste. 

Instead, he used it to consolidate support for launching some of the very megaprojects that now underpin the country’s increasing formidable A2/AD capability.
That’s exactly the spirit Pentagon planners need to channel now. 

Consider the success that China achieved under strategic pressure and with limited resources. 

Now, picture what American enterprise can bring to the table. 

Whether or not a sea-based “Pershing-plus” ends up being a workable way of turning the tables on Chinese A2/AD, this is the kind of creative but practical thinking that will be required to get there. Critics waiting in the wings should focus on solutions and suggest affordable alternatives of their own. Consider this article a new salvo in a much-needed discussion.