China’s Island Missiles Can Effectively Shut Out the U.S. Air Force
warisboring.com
warisboring.com
Realistically, in the event of hostilities, we wouldn't send in the air force to take the islands out. We'd launch a bunch of sea skimming cruise missiles from a submarine or a special forces raid onto the island to punch a hole in the air defense grid then let the planes through. We did something similar in Gulf War I & Gulf War II. Planes only went in after other forces ensured the air defense grid wouldn't be defending much.
Diego Garcia is a single island, more like Malta than the Japanese islands and islets. Diego Garcia's capacity for basing large strategic bombers close to potential conflict zones is a huge force multiplier, much like basing aircraft in Malta allowed the Allies to disrupt axis resupply efforts to North Africa.
As an air defense base, yes. As a FOB for non-wartime activities, no. As a defensible base in an all out war, yes.
That said, I can't imagine Diego Garcia's primary role is to act as a buffer/barrier so the two aren't really comparable in that way. After all, it has:
"two parallel 12,000-foot-long (3,700 m) runways, expansive parking aprons for heavy bombers, 20 new anchorages in the lagoon, a deep-water pier, port facilities for the largest naval vessels in the American or British fleet, aircraft hangars, maintenance buildings and an air terminal, a 1,340,000 barrels (213,000 m3) fuel storage area, and billeting and messing facilities for thousands of sailors and support personnel."
Is this comparable to what the is being done by the Chinese?
I think the problem for the Japanese was that they didn't have enough ships. Knowing that, they went for the island approach. Doing that, they gave up mobility in exchange for size and robustness. The mobility of the US navy allowed the US to concentrate firepower and take an island at a time. If distances between islands were smaller the Japanese might have been able to better defend against the US by rapidly moving planes and infantry between islands.
The war was all but over after the South Pacific campaign which started with our landing in Guadalcanal. Neither of us did anything particularly clever there, besides our only neutralizing vs. taking Rabaul, it was just a brutal slugfest where, for example, in one night action we lost two rear admirals (2 stars). By the end of it, IJN airpower, land and carrier based, was broken, and most of that was done by US land based aviation. For a really in depth look this book is highly recommended: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0813338697
You do have a point about our tactic of defeat in detail, when we were willing to expend enough lives and material we could and did take islands as we needed. I guess one of their big mistakes was thinking they could stop that for any particularly island with their air and naval forces in the region.
If they do want to sell a couple to Turkey, then a US plane being "accidentally" being downed by one due to operator error, would make for a good advertisement. I'm such a cynic.
One thing I've seen is that many government projects get their budget shrunk if they don't spend it all... So they use their entire budget even if they don't need to. That is only one small problem in a hugely broken system. A system that doesn't strive for their goal of "winning wars with minimal cost of life."
The sad thing is, most people don't seem to care. I even tried to discuss it with the Minister for Development (I'm in Germany) at some point, since I've been working in a place within his influence and saw people do ridiculous things with money near the end of the year, but he didn't even try to understand what I was talking about (he half-heartedly tried to get some names out of me though). Maybe he was too drunk, I hope he was.
(Then again, that particular place I worked at measures their progress towards goals in money spent, and that is what the bosses fret over.)
Maybe one of the reasons is that the government tries to stimulate the economy and thus keeps up the spending. Still, talking about austerity at the same time is a mismatch. I'm still trying to figure out this puzzle.
Does anyone here have any clues to the situation? Is there a good reason for this rule to exist?
> Technology failures. The American strategy for air superiority, not just with the F-35 but also with the F-22 and other modern aircraft, is based on two fundamental technologies. The first is “stealth“: using technology to help our planes to evade detection by radar. The second is “BVR”: using long-range missiles to shoot down enemy planes before the pilot can ever even see them. (The acronym stands for “beyond visual range.“) These technologies are the key to the plan for how a smaller, more high-tech force like ours can defeat a more numerous but lower-tech one like China’s.
This also holds true for China and BVR strikes against US naval assets [particular Aircraft Carriers] are critical to China's ability to actually invade Taiwan.
The truth is we simply don't know what the real outcome of a battle/war would be but things like the OP are pretty much useless unless China can hit us BVR because they are slow enough BVR strikes against them would be viable.
US's BVR problem for is it is really limited to aircraft and they need to be able to stop China in the air/water because a protracted land war is untenable.
China's BVR problem is the fact they can't stop us throwing as many missiles as we can afford/manufacture at them while maintaining a supply line.
I know which problem I'd rather have and it sure as hell isn't supplying an invasion force while my opponent can throw effectively unlimited missiles from BVR at me. Sure, I might be able to stop 80% of them but the US can build basically unlimited quantities of them in a serious war.
I'm not sure a U.S./Chinese war that came down to raw industrial production capacity would be as favorable a scenario for the U.S. in (say) 2020 as it would have been in 1990...
They are substantially cheaper than even China can build amphibious transport ships for, let alone the munitions & troops they'd carry.
Even China's manufacturing capacity isn't enough to handle the massive cost difference of a transport vs. sinking it.
Do you have anymore about the RAF's cold-war Harrier plans?
The chapter titled "The Cold War Concepts of Operation for the RAF Harrier Force" (p. 55-63), written by Group Captain Jock Heron, will be of particular interest.
While the F-35 does rely entirely on stealth, the ATF program that gave birth to the F-22 emphasized both stealth and extreme performance. High speed and high altitude complement stealth by reducing the adversary's reaction time while increasing the reach of one's own weapons.
Something I remembered while reading this, is that Philippines is thawing a bit to the idea of the presence of USA war matériel. There aren't any bases open yet, and Subic Bay would still be 500 nm away from Taiwan, but if China continues as they have, a number of new opportunities might come up.
Fuck 'em. We had a big air base and a big naval base in the Philippines, and they kicked us out.
But, as Henry Kissinger frequently reminded us, we don't have friends or allies, we have "interests". And I'll grant you, right now it is very much in the US's "interest" to have an expanded presence in the area.
Clearly missiles like this are a concern for the USAF, but the technology and tactics are in place to deal with them. They certainly do limit the kind of operations that any opposing AF would be willing to undertake without carrying out a strike against the missiles. Like sure, we could probably take them out with the latest fighters and missiles on a well-planned mission, but how willing would we be to send transport or recon aircraft or lone fighters wandering around where they might be in range of these things? What might we, or any other nation, be willing to do around them without attacking them and thus possibly triggering a much larger war? That's the level they're operating at here.
I wonder if any other nations will start basing their own high-end hardware on contested islands, or ask the US to do it?
> the very fact that the HQ-9 could compete for an international missile tender against American, Russian and European systems — and win — is an indication of just how capable the Chinese weapon is.
The odd-one-out in that list is Russia. Turkey might be very reluctant to deploy a Russian system, however cheap it might be up-front. Although relations were much warmer back in 2015, Turkey even then would not want to be dependent on Russia's good-will to keep a missile system running.
So shouldn't that quote read "cheap" rather than "capable"? Almost all defence acquisitions are really about backhanders and trade deals etc.
Yep. As usual, warisboring is wrong. These kinds of bases will be ignored in peacetime and quickly destroyed in wartime.
I just pray that as China grows in military strength they'll also grow in a desire for peace. Right now they are behaving like someone that has something to prove.
Unfortunately, from their leadership's perspective, that means that the lives of those young men are cheap disposable resources. If the Chinese want to become belligerent, expansionistic players on the world stage, right now's the best shot at it they'll ever have.
(great if an admin would like to update the url)
Like is this just agg-prop to some anti China sentiment?
That said, I agree that the media under-reports provocative actions by groups we like.
There's a good timeline on how things have been playing out here: http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-south-china-sea-time...
Right so the significant military assets the US have in Taiwan, Korea, and Japan go completely unreported.
The US had slavery, And attempted a genocide in their own country, can we count those things?
(Note that all of these locations would become key flashpoints in the war between the U.S. and the Japanese Empire a few decades later.)
The title is simply wrong.
1) B-2, F-22, and F-35 can all be used to throw missiles at these sorts of targets and then exit the area. The HQ-9 / Patriot can't track stealth aircraft at extreme range effectively. Or you throw sea skimming / low altitude cruise missiles with jamming to provide EW cover.
http://nationalinterest.org/blog/the-buzz/american-f-22s-b-2...
> The Raptors “kick down the door” using their unique combination of stealth, high altitude and blistering speed to target the nodes of the integrated air defense system so that the B-2s can proceed to their targets unmolested. It’s a mission the F-22s have only gotten better at with the Increment 3.1 upgrade that allows the jet to geo-locate emitters much more precisely than before. And that capability will continue to improve with the Raptor’s forthcoming Increment 3.2B upgrade.
> The other option to take down an integrated air defense system is to use a combination of standoff weapons like the JASSM and JASSM-ER cruise missiles together with electronic attacks from a platform like the EA-18G Growler. The Growler can not only jam the enemy’s radar, but can generate an ellipse to target the missile site. The problem there is precisely updating the cruise missile with current track data before the enemy moves during the incoming weapons’ time of flight.
2) HQ-9 [if based on Patriot] is actually less effective than the modern Russian systems. Without the ability to move substantial distances, HQ-9 isn't a serious threat to the US. However, pretty much every US ally in the region isn't capable of standing up to that sort of thing. Given the region is largely divided into the US / Chinese spheres of influence at this point it doesn't really matter because there aren't neutral parties.
3) I'm honestly more concerned about China sparking a major war than I am about their ability to create no-fly zones.
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EDIT:
Since I'm rate limited:
Realistically, whether you realize or it, China is in that position and has been for 20 years.
A missile base in Hainan would have the range to hit anything transiting to Vietnam via the sea. Short of taking Hainan away from China, Vietnam can be closed to ships by China at any time.
China isn't interested in provoking a military conflict but rather guaranteeing its security and a world position equal to the US in all theaters.
Similarly, its why Hainan has a semi-covert submarine base:
Like, say China keeps building up its defensive network in the region, and then one day they announce that henceforth no freight or passenger vessels will be allowed to pass into Vietnamese (or Philippine, or Taiwanese, or Japanese) airports or seaports without first getting Chinese approval. Vietnam would obviously oppose that, and so would the U.S., because they are important trade partners with each other. But the Chinese could just say "if you don't like it, come fight us over it." And then the only choices available to the U.S. are to accept the new status quo, effectively abandoning Vietnam to becoming a Chinese client state, or to launch World War III to keep the trade routes open. That's not a position anyone in Washington wants to be maneuvered into.
And the PRC's actions are already getting its neighbors to band together, even with Japan (!).
Or there's the convoy approach, we task some ships and subs to escort convoys of merchant ships to and from Vietnam, following our long freedom of the seas policy. We're already sending the occasional Arleigh Burke class destroyer into the new areas of the ocean that the PRC is claiming.
Yes, this is probably the best argument that can be made that the PRC's strategy is failing -- the bluntness of it is definitely drawing the whole region into a new anti-Chinese bloc, which (combined with the U.S.) could present a formidable counter to Chinese regional power. A more subtle "divide and conquer" strategy might have let them take on potential opponents one by one, or even play them against each other.
And the HQ-9 or shorter range systems surround it are more than capable of shooting down any anti-radiation missiles fired towards it.
"According to Missile Threat, the Chinese developed much of the HQ-9’s technology from a Patriot battery Beijing acquired from Israel"
Is this true?
Inb4 a bunch of downvotes
It can't operate from a carrier though
I mean why do they even want that space?
Overall it's a chess move. It allows China to exert pressure on the region. Similar to Iran and the strait of Hormuz.
What is happening with Hacker News?
In all out conventional warfare you bring out the tactical nukes via various deployment mechanisms.
If the batteries form a big threat, they'll get wiped.
(Or so goes the theory, anyway. In reality nobody knows how a nuclear-armed adversary would respond to that Very Big Message, because it's outside the realm of previous human experience. For all we know it could have the opposite effect, causing them to panic and unload their whole nuclear arsenal out of fear.)
By definition conventional warfare does not include bio, chemical and nuclear weapons.
full out thermo-nuclear warfare with the intent of wiping out the enemy completely has not been done, obviously ever. yet. US vs. USSR was at this stage. US vs. China is not due to China's smaller arsenal.