US to send marines to Australia

[Ray]

Why Washington wants a base here

The rationale for all this is not hard to discern. While the US has spent the past decade losing wars and squandering power, China has been studiously undercutting US advantages across virtually every realm of policy — economic, diplomatic and strategic. The transformation of Asia's order is well underway, and Washington is playing catch-up. Still, why the sudden interest in Australia? Three reasons stand out.

1. The proliferation of precision strike: over the past two decades, China has accumulated a formidable array of precision-guided strike capabilities, namely long-range ballistic and cruise missiles. These have been woven into an offensive war-fighting doctrine that places an operational premium on their use early and en masse. Since US bases in Japan, Korea and Guam are now at risk of being saturated by Chinese missiles at the outset of a conflict, they no longer constitute an indefinitely reliable basis from which the US can project power.

The countries of Southeast Asia offer no viable alternative; they also lie within range of Chinese missiles. And though their governments clamour for US support whenever China plays rough, they remain unwilling to be prematurely enlisted in US military plans at the risk of becoming a target or arousing Chinese antipathy. Thus, US interest in Australian real estate reflects a simple desire for time and space and a new operational sanctuary beyond China's striking range.

2. America's two-ocean strategy: as US strategists reckon with the scope of Chinese military progress, they are developing an Indo-Pacific strategy for fighting China. In the Pacific, the US Air Force and Navy are fleshing out the fledgling AirSea Battle concept, a war-fighting doctrine aimed at countering China's area-denial strategy from further back. It's a problematic concept, as I've written elsewhere: costly, risky and excessive. Still, by denying China's capacity for denial, the US intends to preserve its options for sea control and power projection, reinforcing its primacy and role as the region's dominant player.

The second aspect of the strategy involves exploiting China's substantial vulnerabilities in the Indian ocean. Such an approach would involve crippling China's economy by blockading or destroying its merchant shipping and energy supplies in war, and, in peacetime, holding them at risk to encourage Beijing's acquiescence. It's a strategy straight out of Washington's World War II playbook. Indeed, the mere presence of a powerful allied naval contingent along China's sea-lines would require Beijing to divert considerable resources away from its coastline, much as it did with Japan in the 1940s, thereby diluting the singularity of Chinese efforts in the western Pacific.

This is where Australia would come in: as a central point between the two theatres, a hub to reduce transit times between each end, and a base supporting an expanded commerce raiding or blockading campaign against China, most likely in the western reaches of the Indian Ocean, beyond China's naval reach.

3. Keeping Canberra on the leash: the third motivation for an expanded US presence in Australia is political. Washington is keenly aware of the centrality of China to Australia's economic wellbeing. American strategists also recognise the extraordinary geographic advantages that Australia enjoys — a shoulder each in the Pacific and Indian Oceans, its back to Antarctica and shielded by a long archipelago. They understand what many Australian fail to see: that Canberra could, with some clear thinking and a substantial yet sustainable increase in spending, defend itself without becoming entangled in the power-politics of Northeast Asia. And they are determined to prevent that from happening.

In this regard, Washington is being clever. It is taking full advantage of Australia's current strategic dependence, locking in Canberra's political and military support, thereby minimising the likelihood of any future Australian defection.

Extract from
Why Washington wants a base here

The US strategy to counter China appears to be very workable, even without India in the tow.

With India alongside, it will be quite formidable for China and the Chinese realise that and that is why they are raising a hue and cry over India's defensive plans along the border and military hardware acquisition!

China is suffering from a heavy dose of jitters!

 

[Ray]

One could ponder on this also:

America's Dangerous Battle Plan

The AirSea Battle concept for countering China's military rise is expensive and unhelpful. And could even spark a nuclear conflict.

The officer, a senior leader in US Pacific Command, looked down, fumbled with his papers and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. It was 2009, and he was answering a question about whether, in a Taiwan Straits crisis similar to that which occurred in the mid-1990s, the United States could confidently respond by again deploying aircraft carrier groups around Taiwan. 'No,' he conceded after a long pause, 'and it's the thing that really keeps me up at night.' It was a telling response.

Indeed, while China's new aircraft carrier grabs all the attention, the People's Liberation Army's maritime denial strategy is quietly maturing, leaving the United States facing some difficult choices. As submarines and precision-guided strike capabilities accumulate in Chinese arsenals – and are woven into war plans – the US capacity for sea-control and power projection in the Western Pacific, long taken for granted, is steadily being eroded. As a consequence, new doubts are emerging about the credibility of certain US strategic assurances, particularly in relation to Taiwan, which other US allies use as a barometer of Washington's regional commitment. In this regard, China's denial strategy is undermining the military, and hence political, foundations of US primacy.

This situation hasn't arisen overnight. The most pronounced shifts in the military balance have, however, occurred while the United States has been preoccupied elsewhere – and in the context of a longstanding but unrealistic expectation on Washington's part that China would be a different sort of great power, one that eschews power politics, like Japan, in favour of a more deferential posture.

Today, all aspects of that situation are changing. The advent of certain high-profile Chinese capabilities, together with Beijing's newly uncompromising demeanour, suggests that China is under no illusions about the means to success in international politics, and is cut from the same cloth as its great power predecessors. It also means Beijing can no longer maintain such a low-profile in US strategic headlights.

With the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq drawing to a close, US attention is gradually refocusing on Asia. As it does, some strategists have begun re-evaluating the centrality of power projection in US strategy. In particular, they are asking: what does it mean for the United States and its allies to lose military primacy in the Western Pacific? Does US credibility depend on the ability to dominate China's maritime periphery? And what are the implications of a military no-go zone in the Western Pacific?

These are questions that Washington will, in time, be forced to answer. In the meantime, the US Navy and Air Force have begun preparing AirSea Battle contingencies, a war-fighting doctrine aimed at countering China's denial strategy. By denying China's capacity for anti-access, the United States intends to preserve its options for sea-control and power projection, reinforcing its primacy and role as the region's guarantor of free navigation. This decision, in turn, reflects a deeper, more quixotic judgement that such an objective is both vital to the United States and attainable at a level of cost and risk commensurate with US interests in the region.

On both counts, though, there are reasons to be sceptical. First, the cost of AirSea Battle is likely to be prohibitive. Though it remains a largely notional concept, AirSea Battle will depend on an expansive set of upgraded capabilities: a hardened and more dispersed network of bases and C4ISR systems; more and better submarine, anti-submarine and mine-warfare capabilities; and new, long range conventional strike systems, including bombers and anti-satellite weapons. Then, of course, there are the aircraft carriers and other major surface combatants, strike-fighter aircraft, and possibly even amphibious ships.

Needless to say, these are expensive capabilities. Many are disproportionately costly (and vulnerable) relative to the platforms against which they're being fielded. And in some cases, particularly anti-submarine warfare and ballistic missile defence, their prospective cost greatly exceeds the operational effect they can be expected to produce. All of this would be exacting for the United States in peak economic condition. In a new era of fiscal stringency, with US debt expanding and the Pentagon looking to save hundreds of billions over the next decade, expecting the US military to do more with less is at best unlikely, and at worst wholly untenable.

It also risks failing to learn from history. Strategic competition in the Western Pacific is beginning to echo the Cold War, only this time the United States is at risk of reprising the role of the Soviet Union. Washington has already repeated Moscow's mistakes in Afghanistan. With AirSea Battle, Washington is trying to do too much with too little. It's facing off against an opponent in better economic shape whose smarter, more asymmetric strategy will impose a disproportionate military burden. For Washington, adopting such a maximalist doctrine risks playing into China's hands and, like the Soviet Union, spending itself into penury.

But cost factors are only part of the danger. An arms race is already underway in Asia. AirSea Battle will accelerate this process, with serious implications for regional stability and crisis management. First, by creating the need for a continued visible presence and more intrusive forms of surveillance in the Western Pacific, AirSea Battle will greatly increase the range of circumstances for maritime brinkmanship and dangerous naval incidents.

Second, AirSea Battle's emphasis on pre-empting China by striking early against the PLA will continue to compress the time available to decision-makers in a crisis. As military plans become increasingly dependent on speed and escalation, and diplomacy fails to keep up, a dangerous 'use it or lose it' mentality is likely to take hold in the minds of military commanders. This risks building an automatic escalator to war into each crisis before diplomatic efforts at defusing the situation can get underway.

And finally, AirSea Battle calls for deep strikes on the Chinese mainland to blind and suppress PLA surveillance systems and degrade its long-range strike capabilities. Such an attack, even if it relied solely on conventional systems, could easily be misconstrued in Beijing as an attempt at pre-emptively destroying China's retaliatory nuclear options. Under intense pressure, it would be hard to limit a dramatic escalation of such a conflict – including, in the worst case, up to and beyond the nuclear threshold.

Taken together, the costs and risks associated with AirSea Battle spell trouble for US primacy in Asia, and for the sea control and power projection capabilities on which it relies. Yet while Washington's comfortable hegemonic habits will be hard to kick – especially after so many peaceful, prosperous decades – it's not all doom and gloom. Primacy, after all, is only a means to an end, a way of preventing China from attaining regional dominance. There are other, more cost effective ways of doing that, including by playing China at its own game. That would involve developing a maritime denial strategy, focused mainly on the use of submarines, designed to inhibit China's use of the sea for its own power projection. Indeed, the same capabilities that imperil US power projection in the Western Pacific would have an equally profound effect on China's own fledgling efforts.

This strategy is no panacea for the region's problems, of course. It wouldn't be cheap or easy and it would involve Washington making some hard capability trade-offs as well as accepting greater limits on its capacity for intervention in the Western Pacific. But there are benefits as well. In particular, maritime denial would allow the US to continue to play a strong role in the region. It would enable Washington to fulfil its defensive commitments to regional allies, prevent Chinese dominance and, at the same time, by reducing its visible military footprint, give Beijing more political breathing room. To that end, a US maritime denial strategy would also help avoid the worst aspects of crisis instability that AirSea Battle would provoke. And all without breaking the bank.

Raoul Heinrichs is Sir Arthur Tange Scholar at the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU, and Deputy Editor of Pnyx.

America's Dangerous Battle Plan | The Diplomat

 

[Ray]

And read both the above posts of mine with this one too.

China's Two-Pronged Maritime Rise

China is following a two-prong strategy with its impressive maritime build-up. The West is making a mistake if it underestimates the implications.

For the past decade, while the West has been consumed battling Islamic extremists in the Middle East and Central Asia, China has been engaged in a rapid and impressive effort to establish itself as the supreme maritime power in the Eastern Pacific and Indian Oceans.

For years, China focused its military spending on the People's Liberation Army, while the Air Force and Navy served as little more than adjuncts to the Army. But with the launch of its first aircraft carrier next month, the rest of the world – and especially the United States' Asian allies – is taking note of how dramatically things have changed. China has big maritime ambitions, and they are backed up by a naval build-up unseen since Kaiser Wilhelm II decided to challenge British naval power with the building of the High Seas Fleet at the turn of the last century.

China's build-up is driven by a two-pronged strategy. First, China seeks to deny access by the United States and other naval powers to the Yellow, East China and South China Seas, thereby (1) establishing its own equivalent to the way the United States saw the Caribbean in the 20th century, from which its blue water navy can operate globally; (2) dominating the natural resources and disputed island chains such as the Spratly and Senkaku Island chains in those seas; and (3) giving it the capacity to reunify Taiwan with the mainland by force and without US interference, if necessary. China's assertiveness in confronting and harassing Asian and US civilian and naval ships in the region over the past decade shows a sustained level of determination on this front.

Second, China seeks international prestige and a power projection capacity in the Pacific and Indian Ocean sea lanes by deploying multiple aircraft carriers and fifth-generation stealth fighter-bombers. The booming Chinese economy has become ever more dependent on imported minerals and oil from Africa and the Middle East, and the ability to protect its Indian Ocean and Strait of Malacca sea lanes is a responsibility that China is no longer willing to delegate to other powers.

The officially reported Chinese military budget for 2011 is $91.5 billion, a massive increase from its $14.6 billion budget in 2000. China acknowledges that a third of its spending is now devoted to its Navy, yet even this big leap is almost certainly understated. China is notoriously non-transparent with its military expenditures, and most analysts believe that it spends significantly more on its armed forces than the publicly reported number. Further, Chinese military labour costs for its soldiers, sailors and airman is a fraction of what Western governments spend, where salaries, benefits and pensions are usually the largest share of defence budgets. This allows China to devote more of its budget to building weapons systems than its competitors. Unlike Western governments, which are slashing defence spending, China will continue to increase spending in coming years.

A key goal of China's maritime build-up is access denial. While multifaceted, China is building its access denial strategy around two backbone platforms: the DF-21D (Dong Feng) anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM), described as a 'Carrier Killer,' and an ever expanding and modern attack submarine fleet. US Navy Pacific Commander Adm. Robert F. Willard has characterized the DF-21D as already having reached the Initial Operational Capability stage of development, meaning that they are operable, but not yet necessarily deployable. Taiwan sources report that China has already deployed at least 20 ASBMs. Whether deployed now or in the near future, the US Navy believes China already has the space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, command and control structure, and ground processing capabilities necessary to support DF-21D employment. China also employs an array of non-space based sensors and surveillance assets capable of providing the targeting information necessary to employ the DF-21D. With a recently reported range of 2,600 kilometres, these missiles will give naval planners real concern when operating anywhere nearby the Chinese mainland.

The Chinese submarine programme has been especially vigorous. For most of the Cold War, China operated outdated Soviet-era coastal submarines. In the 1990s, China purchased Russian Kilo-class diesel-electric attack submarines, and has been launching two indigenously-built Song-class diesel-electric attack submarines per year for the past decade. It has also developed and launched the high tech Yuan-class diesel-electric attack boat, which may have the silent air-independent propulsion system. Analysts believe that China will in the coming years also launch the Shang-class nuclear-powered attack submarine, further strengthening its already robust submarine fleet. It has surely not escaped China's notice that US anti submarine warfare capability has atrophied significantly since the end of the Cold War.

But China's maritime capabilities are set to extend beyond access denial, into power projection. The systems that have gained most international attention are China's planned aircraft carriers and its new fifth-generation fighter bomber. Anytime now, the PLA Navy will commence sea trials for its first carrier, the ex-Ukrainian Varyag, which has been renamed Shi Lang. The former Soviet ship is larger than European carriers, but one-third smaller than US Nimitz class carriers. Moreover, China has publicly confirmed it has a second, larger, conventionally powered carrier under domestic construction that will likely be launched in 2015. China has planned or is constructing a third conventionally-powered carrier and two nuclear-powered carriers are on the drawing board, with a planned completion date of 2020.

Equally important as the warships, are the aircraft China plans to deploy on its flat tops. The main fighter-bomber in the PLA Navy carrier air wing will be the J-15 Flying Shark, which under current configuration is comparable in size and capability to the US Navy's retired F-14 Tomcat. The jet will have limited range given its weight taking off from the ski deck-configured Shi Lang, however, it's believed that advances in Chinese aeronautics and avionics, as well as a catapult launch system on forthcoming carriers, could put the J-15 in the same performance class as the USN F-18 Super Hornet in the future. China may also have developed a carrier-based airborne warning and control systems (AWACS) aircraft, which would be a major development. An Internet-sourced photograph that appeared in mid-May, meanwhile, shows a corner of a model of what is clearly a small AWACS aircraft inspired by the E-2 Hawkeye and the unrealized Soviet Yak-44 designs.

To put China's carrier programme in perspective, with the retirement of the USS Enterprise this summer, the United States will have only ten carriers to meet worldwide commitments; China will likely have five carriers devoted to the Asia-Pacific region alone.

China's build-up is being noted even in the popular Western media, which has given significant coverageto China's prototype fifth generation twin-engine stealth fighter-bomber, the J-20 Black Silk. The jet is larger than the USAF F-22 Raptor and could prove to be comparable in capability (although some US observers claim it is more similar to the slightly less sophisticated US and allied F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which will be the frontline US carrier fighter).

The J-20 prototype took off on its 'maiden' test flight in January from an airfield in the southwestern city of Chengdu, flying for about 15 minutes on the same day then-US Defence Secretary Robert Gates was in Beijing meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao, sending a strong political message and earning the jet a spot on evening news programmes worldwide.

China is believed to have received a major assist in developing the J-20 by obtaining materials from a downed US F-117 Night Hawk from Serbia, as well as from the believed cyber theft of JSF plans from US defence contractors. (With this in mind, US planners should also assume that Chinese engineers have had access to the rotor tail of the stealth helicopter that was ditched in the Osama bin Laden raid in Pakistan).

These rapid and high-level technical achievements have apparently surprised many Western observers, and the consensus is that the West has consistently underestimated the strength of China's military industrial capability and its determination to expand and modernize its armed forces, especially the PLA Navy. But it should now be more than clear that the world is facing a significant challenge to a maritime system that has been dominated for the past 200 years by Anglo-American navies. How the United States responds to China's challenge will define the balance of power in the Asia-Pacific for the rest of the century.

China's Two-Pronged Maritime Rise | The Diplomat

 

[bhramos]

AllGov - News - U.S. Shifting Military Forces Closer to China

 

[W.G.Ewald]

Just as another data point, a discussion on (US) National Public Radio today brought up the claim that the US Marines in Australia were there in case of need for humanitarian relief.

My personal limited view is that Marines are made to storm beaches and kill people

(People = enemies in uniform, specifically)