Sina Delenda Est

CHINA SHOWS OFF AIR FORCE IN DIRECT CHALLENGE TO INDIA MILITARY POWER IN ASIA
BY TOM O'CONNO 

The Chinese military has published photos of recent air force drills that at least one expert quoted in ruling party media identified Tuesday as a direct message to neighboring India.
Tensions between the two Asian powers have once again risen after they threatened to come to blows over a border dispute last summer. 

Officials have swapped provocative words in recent months, reigniting a potential crisis as rhetoric turned into military preparations. 

In the latest move, China’s armed forces, known as the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), published Friday rare images of Chengdu J-10 and Shenyang J-11 fighter jets landing in Tibet, the western region that borders India, after exercises that Chinese military expert and commentator Song Zhongping linked to recent escalations.
“Strengthening the 3.5-generation fighter jets or even stationing more advanced fighters in the Western Theater Command has been urgent for the PLA,” Song told Chinese Communist Party organ The Global Times in an article then posted to the official China Military Online.
“With India importing new jets, China will continue strengthening its fighter jets in the Western Theater Command,” he added.
A Chengdu J-10 fighter jet attached to an aviation brigade of the air force under the People’s Liberation Army Western Theater Command taxies on the runway during an aerial combat training exercise in western China on February 13.

Song noted that such upgrades to China’s defenses have often been first implemented in its southern and eastern commands. 

The western command, however, has received more attention as the rivalry with India heated up.
China and India have long quarreled over stretches of territory along their shared border and this even exploded into a war between the two in the early 1960s. 

One region, known as Doklam or Donglang, which borders India’s Sikkim State, Chinese Tibet and the Ha Valley of the tiny kingdom of Bhutan, revived hostilities last summer. 

India argued that Chinese construction near the trilateral border area last June threatened Bhutan’s claim to the region and deployed troops to confront the Chinese military in the area.
The standoff lasted nearly a month and a half and was believed to have resolved after both sides withdrew. 

Xi Jinping was seen shaking hands with his Indian counterpart Nehru Modi on the sidelines of the September 2017 BRICS Summit in Xiamen, China. 

This detente, however, has been undermined by recent statements from both sides claiming they won last summer’s dispute and could take on the other in a future fight.
During a regular press conference Thursday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang criticized a visit earlier that day by Modi to the nearby disputed Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, which China claimed as part of southern Tibet. 

Geng said China was “firmly opposed to the Indian leader’s visit to the disputed area” and would “lodge stern representations with the Indian side.”
Soldiers assigned to a brigade of the People’s Liberation Army 78th Group Army conduct a combat readiness training exercise in full battle gear during the 2018 spring festival holiday, in northeastern China, on February 15. China and India have long quarreled over stretches of territory along their shared border.

The Chinese military has also used recent remarks from Indian generals to justify its own urgent transformation into a force fully prepared to fight a war between states. 

Xi’s ongoing, massive bid to revolutionize his armed forces had the dual purpose of modernizing China’s military power and streamlining it to make it capable of protecting not only Chinese borders but also Chinese interests abroad. 

Xi has also sought tight ties with Pakistan, a crucial Chinese economic ally—and India’s longtime foe.
Following last week’s air force drills in Tibet, the Chinese military continued training through the week-long Chinese New Year, or spring festival, holiday. 

The Chinese navy and army were also pictured conducting maneuvers aimed toward realizing Xi’s goal of preparing his armed forces to handle any external threat.

Chinese Peril

China May Have Created a New Way to Sink U.S. Aircraft Carriers

By Dave Majumdar

The Pentagon just released its annual report on China’s military power, which once again highlighted Beijing’s efforts to put American aircraft carriers at risk. 

Right on cue, China announced a major milestone for a system that might be a key component of its antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy.

This week, Chinese state media reported that the Caihong-T 4 (CH-T4), China’s massive, solar-powered drone, for the first time flew at an altitude of twenty thousand meters. 

This is important because there are no clouds above twenty thousand meters, which allows solar-powered drones to operate for significantly longer periods of time.
How long? 

Basically, indefinitely. 

According to China Daily, “future improvements will enable it to remain aloft several months or even several years.”
Jeffrey Lin and P.W. Singer, who write the excellent Eastern Arsenal blog, note that the CH-T4 is an impressive combination of big and light. 

The drone’s wingspan is around 130 feet, which is wider than a Boeing 737. 

At the same time, the CH-T4 only weighs between 880 and 1,100 pounds. 

By way of comparison, Boeing 737’s lowest typical operating empty weight is over seventy thousand pounds, and its maximum gross takeoff weight can reach as high as 170,000 pounds. 

Besides being slender, the CH-T4’s lightness is due to its carbon fiber and plastic components.
The drone can also travel at speeds of 125 miles per hour. 

However, it will also be able to cruise at sixty-five thousand feet, so it will be able to cover a huge swath of land without moving very far. 

Indeed, Lin and Singer point out: “It can utilize its high flight ceiling to maintain line-of-sight contact with over 400,000 square miles of ground and water. That's about the size of Egypt. For both militaries and tech firms, covering so much territory makes it an excellent data relay and communications node.”
What Lin and Singer don’t mention is that these capabilities will make the CH-T4 an excellent asset in China’s quest to hold America’s aircraft carriers at risk in the Western Pacific. 

Much of the attention given to that effort focuses on China’s so-called “carrier-killer” missile, the DF-21D. 

But as I noted last week in relation to North Korea, the missile itself is only one piece of the puzzle. Even more important is the sophisticated “kill chain” of surveillance, radar and communications systems needed to track and provide updated targeting information to the antiship ballistic missile while it is in flight.
Publicly available information indicates that America’s efforts to defeat China’s antiaccess/area-denial strategies focus on disrupting this “kill chain.” 

For example, in 2013, then chief of naval operations Jonathan Greenert and then Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh coauthored an essay in Foreign Policy on how Air-Sea Battle intended to overcome A2/AD threats. 

In the article, they wrote that “Air-Sea Battle defeats threats to access by, first, disrupting an adversary’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; second, destroying adversary weapons launchers (including aircraft, ships, and missile sites); and finally, defeating the weapons an adversary launches.”
The logic of this approach, they argued, is that it “exploits the fact that, to attack our forces, an adversary must complete a sequence of actions, commonly referred to as a ‘kill chain.’ 

For example, surveillance systems locate U.S. forces, communications networks relay targeting information to weapons launchers, weapons are launched, and then they must hone in on U.S. forces. 

Each of these steps is vulnerable to interdiction or disruption, and because each step must work, our forces can focus on the weakest links in the chain, not each and every one.”
Once it is operational, the CH-T4 will complicate these efforts by increasing the redundancies in China’s kill chain. 

For instance, if America is able to disrupt or destroy Chinese satellites, Beijing can rely on the drone to provide the information necessary to track American ships. 

The CH-T4 will have other comparable advantages over other surveillance systems. 

On the one hand, they will be cheaper and more flexible than satellites, while at the same time flying higher and farther away from the battlefield than different surveillance aircraft and ships. 

This combination will make it more difficult for Washington to destroy the surveillance step of the kill chain, although it could still focus on other steps such as disrupting the communication networks.
None of this is news to the U.S. military. 

Although the Pentagon’s newest report on China’s military didn’t mention the CH-T4 by name, it did note that “the acquisition and development of longer-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will increase China’s ability to conduct long-range ISR and strike operations.”
Fortunately, the U.S. military will have some time to figure out its response, as China Daily reports that it will “take several years for designers and engineers to improve and test the aircraft before it is delivered to users.” 

If the United States’ own record at developing this type of technology is any guide, Beijing should expect a few more hiccups along the way. 

NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) began working on the Helios Prototype well over a decade ago. 

In 2001, it completed an important milestone by flying at an altitude of ninety-six thousand feet (29,260 meters). 

Yet a Helios crashed during a flight test just two years later. 

Europe, meanwhile, is also trying to develop so-called pseudo satellites.