China not only must develop an anti-ship ballistic missile but it should develop a range of carrier killing weapons to protect the country’s strategic interests, says an editorial in China’s Global Times. The Naval War College’s Andrew Erickson writes that while the Global Times is not an official government mouthpiece, it is sponsored by and produced by the People’s Daily, which is the official communi[st] party paper. …

The editorial says China has no intention of changing the balance of power in the Western Pacific (which of course sounds like an official line), and is only trying to “enhance its national defensive strategy.” The editorial’s authors recognize that China is venturing into uncharted territory with a weapon classified as a “strategic deterrence,” and should carefully explore how to present its deterrence.”

That last bit most likely refers to what appropriate tests China should carry out with the ASBM, if they get the thing to work. I’m guessing the question is more of where, in what part of the Western Pacific, to demonstrate it; a touchy issue in and of itself. …

China’s state media continued Wednesday to give big play to the killings of Hong Kong tourists in Manila, in particular trumpeting the official response from Beijing. …

Andrew Erickson, an associate professor in the Strategic Research Department at the U.S. Naval War College, argues that Beijing’s efforts to protect Chinese overseas are likely to increase. In an article published this month titled “Looking After China’s Own: Pressure to Protect PRC Citizens Working Overseas Likely to Rise,” he says that “Several factors increase the likelihood that the Chinese government may be more able and willing to respond with force to future hostage situations or other targeted violence against PRC citizens.”

They include the growing strength of the Chinese navy and the “Chinese leadership’s increasingly assertive worldview as the country emerges strongly from the deep global economic recession.” …

… This past week the DoD released its annual report Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China. This is a new name for the report, which previously was called Military Power of the People’s Republic of China, but was euphemistically called “Chinese Military Power” by many, in a nod to a well-known series of bi-annual reports produced in the 1980s titled Soviet Military Power. …

Unlike Soviet Military Power in its heyday, there is apparently nothing in Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China concerning China’s space program that could not be obtained by open sources. … It would be possible, if someone is so inclined, to produce a fairly detailed annual report on Chinese space activities using open sources. However, there is at present nobody willing to sponsor such an effort. (NASA was encouraged by Congress to report on China’s space activities a few years ago, but instead of producing a report, the agency reportedly merely delivered a bundle of press clippings.)

There are a few people in the West who occasionally write about the subject of the Chinese space program. Perhaps most notably is Andrew Erickson, an associate professor at the Naval War College and a founding member of the China Maritime Studies Institute, who has written a few articles about China’s space activities. In the March 2010 issue of the US Naval Institute’s Proceedings magazine Erickson described several of China’s recent developments of navigation, communications, and surveillance satellites. …

China has been engaged in a military buildup for a number of years now. One of China’s recent military developments that received a lot of attention was the country’s work on an anti-ship ballistic missile which could fly up to 1,500 kilometers before homing in on a target such as an American aircraft carrier. …

American military officials have commented that they do not believe that China has mastered the C4ISR required to usefully employ an anti-ship ballistic missile when they develop one. Admittedly, China has built some advanced radars for searching for ships, and made some general improvements in its maritime patrol aircraft.

But China has also stepped up its launching of surveillance satellites, launching its tenth Yaogan series satellite since 2006 on August 10. Rather remarkably, despite this substantial improvement in capability that indicates China is making a concerted effort to improve its space surveillance system, that subject received only one short paragraph in the Pentagon’s newly-released report. …

Relations between Taiwan and China have improved recently. At the same time, U.S.-Japanese relations have worsened, partly as the result of disagreements over Futenma Marine Air Station on Okinawa. As a result, the prospects of fighting between the United States and China over Taiwan and of U.S. reliance on Okinawa bases to supplement carrier airpower in the course of such a fight appear far-fetched, disastrous for the states concerned. Of course, military professionals and the defense analytic community need to think through unlikely and unwelcome scenarios. To that end, various analysts have contributed to a lively discussion of Chinese “antiaccess” systems designed to keep the United States at bay in the event of conflict. These systems include C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) assets like over-the-horizon (OTH) radar and increasing numbers of satellites, a more modern air force, more submarines with better weapons, and both cruise and ballisticmissiles to hold at risk our ships at sea and our air bases ashore. This article examines ballistic missile threats to carriers and air bases and the adequacy of U.S. active defenses.

China seeks the capacity to find U.S. aircraft carriers roughly a thousand miles from the mainland and to attack them with homing ASBMs (antiship ballistic missiles). China must overcome serious technological challenges to field the systems needed to do these things. The United States faces the prospect that China might overcome these challenges, perhaps as soon as five years from now. To attack fixed targets like American air bases in Japan, China has already developed a family of road-mobile, solid-fuel, short-range ballistic missiles. One of these missiles, the CSS-6, has the range to attack Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, a U.S. Air Force facility that is in many ways the best air base ashore for U.S. operations against China.

The current U.S. response to these developments relies heavily on active defense—that is, deployment of antiballistic missiles (ABMs). To defend ships at sea, the United States is investing in Aegis/Standard Missile ABMs, and to defend air bases ashore, in Patriot PAC-3 ABMs. The Navy originally developed Aegis ballistic missile defense (BMD) to protect assets ashore, such as seaports of debarkation. Given China’s ASBM efforts, however, many officers see the counter ASBM mission as an important role for Aegis BMD. Indeed, the commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Admiral Patrick Walsh, recently characterized missile defense as “essential to our ability to operate freely.”

MY ARGUMENT IN A NUTSHELL

The U.S. ABM investments just described deserve critical scrutiny: asymmetries in the competition of Chinese ballistic missiles versus U.S. antiballistic missiles make it unlikely that active defense alone will succeed. To see why, we need to review China’s ASBM system threat to ships at sea and China’s short-range ballistic missile (SRBM) threat to U.S. air bases. …

On August 9, China launched the remote sensing satellite Yaogan-10 (military designation: Jianbing) into orbit from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center. … This event marks the sixth Chinese launch this year via the CZ-4C Chang Zheng-4C (Long March) launch vehicle and follows a surge in satellite launches that appear to reflect the Chinese determination to beef up its reconnaissance satellite network and end its dependence upon foreign satellite systems. …

The development of a space-based SAR system has been a priority for the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Such a system is considered a critical component to the PLA’s effort in achieving information dominance in future warfare. According to Andrew Erickson, associate professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, “Synthetic Aperture Radar [SAR] in particular offers wide coverage at sufficient resolution. Maritime surveillance, prioritized at the national level under China’s 863 State High-Technology Development Plan, is receiving significant funding” (Asia Times, April 22).

“Of particular note are the five Yaogan satellites that China has launched in the past five months. Yaogan-7 and 8 were launched in December. Yaogan-7 is optical and Yaogan-8 appears to be equipped with SAR,” said Erickson. “Yaogan 9A, 9B, and 9C, launched in March, share the same orbit, suggesting that they have a special mission to perform” (Asia Times, April 22). …

… The US Navy won’t say it, for whatever reason, but China is how they measure themselves. In a perfect world, the US Navy wouldn’t need to measure itself against any single nation – but with everything driven by budgets rather than strategy – it is what it is.

All we are really doing now is charting the potential course for the DF-21D, a course towards a capability that our naval leaders now believe is inevitable. The discussion is no longer what if, rather what now. I think as we observe the journey of this emerging Chinese capability designed to target US Navy forces, we need to continuously revisit anti-access / area-denial (A2/AD) strategies and continue thinking about what it means towards how naval warfare will be fought in the future. It should be noted that all of these discussions begin with force structure – a conversation the US Navy avoids. It is about platforms and systems – two specific force structure discussions the US Navy avoids and communicates with generic terms like modularity (or boxes). This strategic level conversation – in the information age – must take place at some level of detail in the public space – which to repeat a phrase – is a conversation the US Navy intentionally avoids. …

As two great powers that will influence much of the immediate future of our small and vulnerable planet, China and the United States are in a marriage of sorts—“united for the purpose of living together,” in the words of the Oxford English Dictionary. Like it or not, the two societies depend on each other. Environmental degradation, social unrest, economic problems, or pandemic outbreak in one must inevitably affect the other. Both must be active contributors to a peaceful, prosperous, sustainable, global community. Both governments emphasize their commitment to a positive and constructive mutual engagement.

At sea, however, that engagement is not always trouble free. Confrontation happens—and when it does, events do not always unfold in the way that policy makers might have intended or preferred. Like a married couple, both sides prefer to downplay to the outside world the extent and nature of quarrels. But despite this public posture, those in command of naval and maritime air forces understand only too well the potential risks of damage, injury, and even death at the tactical level. More worrying is the inherent risk of unintended consequences and the potential for an uncontrolled strategic-political spiral of unwanted escalation. It is bad policy and in no one’s interest to perpetuate a relationship in which an innocent mistake at sea can trigger an unwanted political crisis.

The maritime relationship between China and the United States is a vital element in their relationship and a strategic concern for other states. Their tactical-level interaction at sea is too complex to be governed solely by legal arrangements and political postures. It is too important to be conducted on-scene by best guesses about each other’s intentions, especially when things get exciting and the testosterone and adrenaline start flowing. And when things do go wrong, the resulting political fallout can be too serious to be addressed by rhetoric and dogmatic adherence to rigid positions. Interactions at sea are inherently fluid and must be managed mutually, responsibly, and predictably. At the moment, the maritime relationship between China and the United States is not working as effectively as it should—or must. The business of government is to manage events and minimize risk, so no political leadership should be satisfied with a situation in which an honest misjudgment or accident at sea can result in an unwanted international political problem at an inopportune time. …

The question of how the United States should respond to China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, has emerged as a key issue in U.S. defense planning. The issue is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many U.S. military programs for countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy’s budget.

Decisions that Congress and the executive branch make regarding U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military capabilities could affect the likelihood or possible outcome of a potential U.S.-Chinese military conflict in the Pacific over Taiwan or some other issue. Some observers consider such a conflict to be very unlikely, in part because of significant U.S.-Chinese economic linkages and the tremendous damage that such a conflict could cause on both sides. In the absence of such a conflict, however, the U.S.-Chinese military balance in the Pacific could nevertheless influence day-to-day choices made by other Pacific countries, including choices on whether to align their policies more closely with China or the United States. In this sense, decisions that Congress and the executive branch make regarding U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military forces could influence the political evolution of the Pacific, which in turn could affect the ability of the United States to pursue goals relating to various policy issues, both in the Pacific and elsewhere.

China’s naval modernization effort, which began in the 1990s, encompasses a broad array of weapon acquisition programs, including anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), submarines, and surface ships. China’s naval modernization effort also includes reforms and improvements in areas such as maintenance and logistics, naval doctrine, personnel quality, education, training, and exercises.

DOD and other observers believe that the near-term focus of China’s military modernization effort has been to develop military options for addressing the situation with Taiwan. Consistent with this goal, observers believe that China wants its military to be capable of acting as a so-called anti-access force—a force that can deter U.S. intervention in a conflict involving Taiwan, or failing that, delay the arrival or reduce the effectiveness of intervening U.S. naval and air forces. Some observers believe that China’s military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, is increasingly oriented toward pursuing additional goals, such as asserting or defending China’s claims in maritime territorial disputes, protecting China’s sea lines of communications, displacing U.S. influence in the Pacific, and asserting China’s status as a major world power.

Placing an increased emphasis on U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military capabilities in coming years could lead to one more of the following: placing a relatively strong emphasis on programs for developing and procuring highly capable ships, aircraft, and weapons for defeating Chinese anti-access systems; assigning a larger percentage of the Navy to the Pacific Fleet (and, as a result, a smaller percentage to the Atlantic Fleet); homeporting more of the Pacific Fleet’s ships at forward locations such as Hawaii, Guam, and Japan; increasing training and exercises in operations relating to countering Chinese maritime anti-access forces, such as antisubmarine warfare (ASW) operations; and increasing activities for monitoring and understanding developments in China’s navy, as well as activities for measuring and better understanding operating conditions in the Western Pacific. …

Aerospace power is unquestionably defining the future strategic environment in a region whose vast distances place a premium on speed and agility that defy the laws of gravity. This monograph addresses trends in China’s force modernization, strategy, and doctrine; development of conventional air force, air and missile defense, and long range precision strike modernization in Taiwan, Japan, India, and the United States; and options for countering the coercive utility of evolving PRC aerospace power, including cooperative threat reduction initiatives. …

U.S. Rep. Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland), the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee’s (HASC) Subcommittee on Air and Land Forces, testified on 20 May 2010 at a hearing by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission on “China’s Emergent Military Aerospace and Commercial Aviation Capabilities.” The following is an excerpt from Rep. Bartlett’s testimony:

… China’s efforts to enhance its anti-access capabilities bear directly upon the balance of air power in the Pacific Region. I would like to draw your attention to China’s development of a carrier-killer missile. U.S. Navy Adm. Robert Willard, US PACOM, testified to Congress on March 23, 2010 that China is “developing and testing a conventional anti-ship ballistic missile “designed specifically to target aircraft carriers” as part of its anti-access, area-denial efforts. This development [is being] studied closely by Andrew Erickson, a researcher at the China Maritime [Studies] Institute at the U.S. Naval War College. As reported in Defense News on April 4, 2010, “Chinese Anti-ship Missile Could Alter U.S. Power,” by Wendell Minnick, Andrew warns that

“…such a missile “could change the strategic equation” and “dramatically diminish” America’s power projection.”

“…a Chinese ASBM would affect U.S. strategy in the region, for even the “likelihood of a capability may have a large deterrent effect.” …

***

For a full text version of the article to which Rep. Bartlett refers, see Wendell Minnick, “Chinese Anti-ship Missile Could Alter U.S. Power,” Defense News, 5 April 2010, p. 6.

For details on Chinese ASBM development, see “China Testing Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile (ASBM); U.S. Preparing Accordingly–Now Updated With Additional Sources.”