The Necessary War

How China Plans to Win the Next World War
By Michael Raska

China’s cyber capabilities are continuously evolving in parallel with the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) ongoing military reforms and modernization drives. 

As the PLA invests in the development of comprehensive cyber capabilities, the character of future conflicts in East Asia will increasingly reflect cyber-kinetic strategic interactions.
In a potential conflict with Taiwan, for example, the PLA may put a strategic premium on denying, disrupting, deceiving, or destroying Taiwan’s Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems. 

This would be followed by the deployment of the PLA’s conventional air wings, precision ballistic missile strikes, and sea power projection platforms – all within the first hours of the conflict.
A key target for the PLA, for example, would be the highly-advanced US-made ultra-high frequency (UHF) early warning radar system located on top of Leshan Mountain near the city of Hsinchu. Activated in February 2013, the radar is reportedly capable of detecting flying objects up to 5,000km away, and provide a six-minute warning in preparation for any surprise missile attack from the Chinese mainland. 

The radar essentially tracks nearly every sortie of the PLA Air Force flying across China’s opposite coastline.
The Leshan Mountain radar also has capabilities to electronically jam China’s major signal intelligence station located at Dongjing Shan. 

Moreover, the radar is likely linked with the US Air Force’s Space Command Defense Support Program (DSP) that operates reconnaissance satellites for the US Satellite Early Warning System. The system is reportedly capable of providing comprehensive surveillance of North Korean missile launches.

PLA Concepts of ‘Network Swarming Warfare’:
The PLA’s Strategic Support Forces (SSF) envisions such operations under the conceptual umbrella of integrated network electronic warfare (INEW), or wangdian yitizhan. 

In China’s strategic thoughts, INEW has a holistic representation that combines coordinated use of cyber operations, electronic warfare, space control, and kinetic strikes designed to create “blind spots” in an adversary’s C4ISR systems.
These concepts have also been reflected in the PLA’s recent writings on “network swarming warfare” that envisions future campaigns as “multi-directional maneuvering attacks” conducted in all domains simultaneously: ground, air, sea, space, and cyberspace.
While specific operational aspects and capabilities are clouded in secrecy, papers by the PLA’s semi-authoritative military sources such as the National Defense University indicate a simultaneous application of multiple force elements, including small and multi-functional operational forces, electronic warfare and counter-space forces, cyber units, and long-range precision firepower.

Space-based information asset control
An essential element for China’s cyber operations is the control of space-based information assets as a means of achieving “information dominance.” 

Specifically, PLA authors acknowledge that space dominance is essential for operating joint campaigns and for maintaining the initiative on the battlefield. 

Conversely, they view the denial of an adversary’s space systems as an essential component of cyber operations and a prerequisite for victory.
Interestingly, Chinese writings note that the overall space system encompasses not only satellites in orbit, but also terrestrial launch, mission control, tracking, and telemetry and control (TT&C) facilities, such as the Leshan Mountain radar in Taiwan.
Consequently, establishing space dominance must incorporate offensive and defensive measures covering the full range of targets – orbiting systems, ground-based systems, and data.
To this end, the PLA maintains a strong focus on counter-space capabilities, both kinetic and cyber. These include developing space launch facilities; space tracking, telemetry, and control facilities; orbital space combat capabilities and units; strategic missile forces; ground-based space defense forces, and space logistics and safeguarding capabilities and forces.

Cyber Exploitation:
During peace time, PLA’s cyber units under the SSF are likely involved in comprehensive cyber reconnaissance – probing the computer networks of foreign government agencies as well as private companies.
These activities, which China denies, serve to identify weak points in the networks, understand how foreign leaders think, discover military communication patterns, and attain valuable technical information stored throughout global networks.
The scale, focus, and complexity of China’s cyber espionage over the past decade strongly suggest that these operations are state-sponsored or supported with access to financial, personnel, and analytic resources that far exceed what organized cybercriminal operations or multiple hacker groups operating independently could likely access consistently over a long duration.
Meanwhile, it is important to note that China is also relying on traditional human intelligence operations. 

According to Defense News, for example, China has been able to use its human intelligence network in Taiwan to gather information that would compromise the Leshan Mountain radar, as well as the island’s other strategic assets, including the Anyu-4 air defense network upgrade program, Po Sheng C4I upgrade program, Shuan-Ji Plan (electronic warfare technology project), Wan Chien (Ten Thousand Swords) joint standoff weapon, and the Mirage 2000 fighter aircraft.

Future Conflicts:
The progressive complexity in strategic interactions and interdependencies between cyber, information, cognitive, and physical domains will likely challenge traditional kinetic uses of force in future conflicts in East Asia.
For example, in ensuring operational access in the East or South China Seas, the US military will have to ensure the security, reliability, and integrity of its mission-critical C4ISR systems as well as combat support and logistics systems that will become increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats as well as other emerging forms of electronic warfare, including threats from electromagnetic pulse and high-powered microwave weapons.
A sophisticated cyberattack on these systems, whether by the PLA or other potential adversary, would likely result in cascading effects with ramifications on the individual US services and their abilities to carry out operational missions.
As conflicts move into the cyber and information domains, the centers of gravity are also going to shift. 

The value and more importantly, the accuracy and reliability of strategic information relevant for the situational awareness and function of the nation state as a system will become even more important with the increased dependence on cyberspace.
Cyber-enabled conflicts will evolve parallel with technological changes – e.g. the introduction of the next generation of robots, artificial intelligence, and remotely controlled systems that will continue to alter the character of future warfare. 

Ultimately, however, both cyber and information domains – whether civil or military – may become simultaneously targets as well as weapons, including for the armed forces of China, Russia and the US.

Chinese Aggressions

New Strategy: The Vietnam People’s Navy is shifting from sea denial to counter-intervention.
By Koh Swee Lean Collin

In 1287, Gen. Omar Khan of the Yuan Dynasty led a sizeable invasion force, including numerous war junks, against Dai Viet (present day Vietnam). 

With battle-hardened Mongols forming the vanguard, it seemed as if the campaign would be a walkover for China. But a naval battle the following year proved otherwise. 

In the estuary of the Bach Dang River near Ha Long Bay, Dai Viet general Tran Hung Dao repeated the feat accomplished by the earlier, celebrated general Ngo Quyen against the Southern Han Chinese invaders, back in the year 938.
Following Ngo’s approach, Tran planted iron-tipped stakes in the river’s northern distributaries—Chanh, Kenh and Rut—and waited until high tide to lure the Mongol fleet into the shallow waters. When the tide turned, those Mongol war junks were impaled upon those stakes. 

The much smaller Dai Viet war canoes then swarmed around the trapped Mongol fleet and their crews hurled “mud oil” grenades—little ceramic bottles filled with naphtha and sealed with betel-nut husk, which also acted as a fuse when lit—at the immobile war junks, setting them and their hapless crews ablaze. 

The Battle of Bach Dang saw grievous losses to the Yuan invasion fleet.
But unlike the battle in 938, which contributed to the end of the first Chinese domination over Dai Viet, the naval victory in 1288 did not alter the bilateral relationship—the Tran Dynasty accepted Yuan suzerainty until the latter’s demise.
The two naval battles at Bach Dang, and contemporary examples in the French Indochina Wars and the Vietnam War, as well as the brief but bloody Sino-Vietnamese border war in the late 1970s, highlighted Vietnamese ingenuity in conducting asymmetric warfare against a stronger foe. 

Yet the Battle of Bach Dang constituted a rare example of how the Vietnamese could pull off what were essentially land-based tactics in the maritime realm. 

Also of note is the fact that the naval battles at Bach Dang were fought in shallow waters close to the Vietnamese shores, instead of the open waters of the South China Sea, where Mongol war junks could optimize their combat performance.
No wonder, then, that in March 1988 the Vietnamese suffered a defeat at Chinese hands during a clash in the open waters of the disputed Spratly Islands. 

The Chinese navy proved more than a match for the Vietnamese, unaccustomed to fighting naval battles in the open waters, who found themselves outnumbered and outgunned. 

That battle was an attempt to stop the Chinese from encroaching upon what Hanoi claimed as sovereign territory in the Spratlys, and with the Vietnamese forces extended so far from the Vietnamese coast and shorn of quick and substantial reinforcements, the outcome of that battle was quick and decisive. 

Retaking those features, forcibly snatched from Vietnamese hands following the naval skirmish, was out of the question for Hanoi’s political and military leaders.
The Vietnamese were cognizant of their naval limitations. 

There was no way they could repeat their ancestors’ feat at Bach Dang against the Chinese. 

Hence, it has been taken for granted—almost by conventional wisdom—that in view of the gaping and still growing naval asymmetry between the Chinese and Vietnamese, Hanoi must adhere to a sea-denial strategy. 

Essentially, sea denial envisages denying or disrupting the adversary’s access to maritime areas of interest, while denying the one practicing this strategy free use of the same space. 

Wu Shangsu, for instance, has argued that Vietnam, standing little chance against Chinese military aggression, has no choice but to adopt a sea denial strategy. 

Furthermore, he added, a sea-denial strategy fits well within the broader ambit of Hanoi’s post–Cold War policy, emphasizing such principles as independence, non-alliance and defensive defense.
There is also a fiscal imperative, given that Vietnam continues to prioritize its socioeconomic development set in motion under the “Doi Moi” (Renovation) reforms, under way since the early 1990s (also a time that saw a downsizing in the manpower of the People’s Army of Vietnam). 

“The state budget is still limited while we have to invest in many significant areas such as transport infrastructure, resources for socio-economic development, welfare for the people who served the country well, healthcare and education,” said then defense minister Gen. Phung Quang Thanh in December 2014, who added, “so investment in defense should be taken gradually and be suited to our capabilities. We have two parallel tasks: protecting and building the country. We do not underestimate any of them but if we focus too many resources on defense, we will lack investment in development. Because of a lack of investment in development, we will lack future resources for investment in defense.”
Yet it would be misleading to view the Vietnamese as fatalistic. 

They have long recognized the limits of a traditional sea-denial approach, and thus have sought to enhance their strategy to forestall Chinese military aggression in the South China Sea.
As Hanoi’s navy has just received its final Russian-built Kilo-class diesel-electric submarine, and is on the cusp of operationalizing a complete submarine squadron within 2017, the image of a sea-denial-centered Vietnamese naval strategy is still in place. 

While it is true that a submarine, especially a conventionally powered one, is commonly associated with sea denial, it is necessary to look beyond this attribute in the Vietnamese case. 

All six boats are not only equipped for sea denial in the traditional sense—torpedoes and mines, for example—but they also possess Russian-made Klub-S sea-launched land-attack cruise missiles (SLCM) that can hit targets as far away as three hundred kilometers—well within the Missile Technology Control Regime, which places restrictions on exports of certain offensive missile systems to non-signatory states.
Long-time Vietnam military watcher Carlyle Thayer has opined that Vietnam’s SLCMs would be employed against Chinese ports and airfields, such as the Sanya naval base on Hainan Island, rather than cities arrayed along the southern Chinese mainland coast. 

This counterforce role would still fit well within Hanoi’s strategically defensive deterrent strategy, but acquiring such an offensive capability would certainly depart from a sea-denial approach. 

There is no way the Vietnamese can hope to forestall Chinese aggression without the means to raise the costs for Beijing—the potential destruction wreaked upon its forward-deployed naval forces in Sanya being one such instance.
If anything, Russia’s feat during its campaign in Syria in late 2015 demonstrated that it is feasible for small naval forces to conduct limited, expeditionary force projection. 

The Kilo boat Rostov-on-Don became the first conventionally powered submarine to launch SLCMs in deep, inland penetration strikes. 

However, the Russians could manage this by leveraging on their extensive command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR) capabilities, such as GLONASS satellite navigation, to allow the missiles to fly smoothly over wide swathes of the Middle Eastern land mass. 

The Vietnamese has a fledgling C4ISR program, focusing on unmanned aerial vehicles and remote-sensing microsatellites. 

Its current satellite-based targeting capability relies on commercially obtained satellite imagery—far from useful to carry out inland strikes.
Nonetheless, this shortfall would not hamper Vietnam’s counterforce ability against coastal targets. Without the strategic depth and naturally formed terrestrial features to shield it, China’s Sanya naval base is exposed to overwater missile strikes, which do not require C4ISR targeting capabilities like those for deep penetration attacks. 

And Hanoi is only keen to enhance the ability to punish Beijing and raise the costs of its aggression, beyond those submarines it has acquired. 

Referring to the Kilos, back in September 2014 a military official in Hanoi remarked that “they are not our sole weapon, but part of a number of weapons we are developing to better protect our sovereignty.”
So, to that end, Vietnam has made further moves to put into effect a more robust counter-intervention strategy that signals a departure from a traditional sea-denial approach. 

For example, its marines have trained for “island recapture” in the Spratlys—unthinkable back in 1988. 

In May 2016, Vietnam was reportedly negotiating with Russia the purchase of a third pair of Gepard 3.9–class light guided-missile frigates. 

What is so special about this purchase is that Hanoi wants these new ships to be armed with the Klub SLCMs. 

One recalls that the Russian Navy’s Caspian Flotilla corvettes—in the same size category as the Gepard 3.9s—along with the submarine Rostov-on-Don had proven that small surface warships are capable of launching SLCM attacks. 

Hanoi apparently caught on, and became inspired by Moscow’s feat.
The Vietnamese may not be oblivious to the fact that, like the battle of Bach Dang in 1288, any foreseeable war in the South China Sea with Beijing would result in a preordained strategic victory for the latter. 

But Hanoi has gradually shifted away from a traditional sea-denial strategy to one that would raise the cost of Chinese aggression. 

The completion of its submarine squadron in 2017 is just the first major step towards this direction. Vietnam’s modern-day versions of war canoes and “mud oil” incendiary antiship weapons now carries a wholly new significance.