If you're interested in this subject, here's a post I wrote two years ago about how bad the U.S.'s strategic position in the South China Sea vis-á-vis China was even before these new missiles were deployed: http://jasonlefkowitz.net/2013/08/stovl-the-f-35-and-how-wer...
OK just skimmed parts and read conclusion. Going to go back to later but this is an awesome piece I want to point every strictly "Grow Military" republican friends I have to as, no don't grow the military but be SMART about allocation of funds in order to strengthen military. Money doesn't make a good anything if it's mismanaged.
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."
I've seen that a lot, and I've discussed it with quite a few people. I think that a lot of money could be saved if that was changed, though maybe organisation and allocation, making the next budget, could become harder.
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.
> 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...
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.
>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”...
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.
The problem in the Taiwan Straits scenario, the report points out, is that the U.S. has exactly one air base within 500 nautical miles of the strait — Kadena Air Base, on the Japanese island of Okinawa. There are other air bases in the region (in Korea, northern Japan, and Guam), but they all range from 800 to 1500 nautical miles away.
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.
As a taxpayer, I wish that many more nations would kick us out. Actually what was lost during the 25 year hiatus? ISTM nothing? Now that China's actions provide a reason for a USA military presence, there can be such a presence again.
Incorporating Patriot technology does not mean it's as good as a Patriot. Nor that they have enough of them to seriously threaten our non-stealth fighter fleet.
It's the same strategy the Japanese tried using in WWII to turn islands into stationary aircraft carriers. So long as you can keep them resupplied, it works to a certain degree. The moment the supply line gets into trouble, the island starts losing its ability to project power. Replacement parts, supplies for the ground crews, etc. all start disappearing. As a deterrent, they make a great show piece, as a practical matter, it's possible to either exhaust their supplies and bypass or take them out via other means.
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 not part of a defensive line, it is a force multiplier. The problem with using an island chain to defend yourself is that you must keep all the islands supplied, and this is a logistical nightmare. A single island is much easier to supply and defend.
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?
The comment I reacted to mentioned the strategy of the Japanese in World War Two. They had islands with lots of infrastructure (for the time), too.
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.
They also didn't have enough planes, the ability to make significantly better ones due to the engines, and not enough pilots (they didn't change to war tempo pilot instruction until way too late). They really had no business getting into a war with a mature and robust industrial power like us, their only hope was breaking our will and that, at best, would have only happened when we started invading the home 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.
As with all other Forward Operating Bases (FOB), it will face the same challenges as any island during conflict. If you can exhaust the island's supplies and constrict replenishment, the utility of the island diminishes. In the case of Diego Garcia, assuming a conflict with China, they lack the force projection capabilities to effectively shut down the flow of supplies to DG. (Assuming the US submarine force > chinese submarine force in capability). Their best bet would be to render it inert using cruise missile and non-nuclear ICBM strikes to disable the runways, mine the anchorages, and destroy the fuel supplies. Bonus points if they can sink ships in the lagoon.
That's only during wartime though. At present it is purely a show of force and a way to prevent the US advising "their" airspace.
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.
Right now it's being used to build out the Air Defense Identification Zone they claimed over the south china sea a couple years ago and back up their claim with the threat of shoot down. By projecting force over the South China Sea, they, in essence, use the islands to turn it into their own private lake and effectively take over what are considered international waters render moot the ongoing arguments at the UN regarding islands and mineral rights. If the geological estimates concerning the amount of oil in the SCS are correct, it's a major coup and has the possibility of turning China into a net oil producer.
War is Boring had an interesting article last year basically making the same argument, that the way for the U.S. to win a war with China would be to focus on disrupting its maritime supply lines: https://medium.com/war-is-boring/to-defeat-china-in-a-confli...
I'm wondering if it has been reported everytime the US has deployed some defensive missile batteries around the world... Pretty much US aircraft carriers have more fire power then these batteries. Do we report their movement as hard as this?
Like is this just agg-prop to some anti China sentiment?
This is newsworthy because the island exists within an area of overlapping territorial claims. The installation of the missiles is an escalation in an ongoing dispute.
Deploying missiles onto land that everyone agrees you own is one thing. Deploying missiles onto land that other people think they own, which could fire on planes flying over more land people disagree about, is clearly a different situation.
That said, I agree that the media under-reports provocative actions by groups we like.
Well you say "land that everyone agrees you own" and yet that point of view was not unanimous (for example the Russians didn't think so). From the Chinese point of view, perhaps it seems like it is "land that everyone agrees [they] own".
Ah, you're right. Russia annexing Crimea outright and pseudo-annexing eastern Ukraine (and the resulting rise in tensions) is totally nothing like China annexing the Spratleys.
It's news because it changes the balance of power in the South China Sea, waters that China has been gradually asserting are its own territorial waters rather than international waters governed by the United Nations. This assertion has China and the U.S. inching towards military confrontation, because if China's assertions become de facto reality Western sea and air access to important regional trade partners like Taiwan, the Philippines and Vietnam could be limited or cut off completely whenever Beijing feels like it.
From the international perspective, china unilaterally declared the islands sovereign territory, and specifically claimed there were no military intentions for the island. China has contradicted its previous claims, and alienated the neighboring territories by claiming disputed territory. The international community is understandably displeased with china.
The US certainly has its faults, but compared to China on human rights it is really no contest, especially as it pertains to the last 60 years. Mao's cultural revolution killed 30 Million people. Communism hosts a toxic culture incredibly prone to corruption.
DU is not a "nuke". It's kind of the opposite. It's the byproduct of the process of separating the more active isotopes from the almost non-radioactive one, U-238.
There is one difference, which is that popping a nuke over a live target would make a Very Big Statement: "You have crossed a line that we believe now makes you an existential threat. Consider your next move very carefully." Which would then prompt the adversary, staring into the abyss, to search their soul a little before pressing matters any further.
(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.)
both WW so far have been labeled conventional, saw use of those 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.
The minerals, fish and shipping of the area makes up most of the other countries economies. With control of this area china could exert pressure directly onto these other countries.
> The addition of the HQ-9 — which was first reported by Fox News on Feb. 17 — would greatly increase the People’s Liberation Army’s air defense capabilities in the region. Like the Russian-made Almaz Antey S-300 air defense system, the HQ-9 has the ability to render vast swaths of territory into virtual no-fly zones. Only the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit stealth bomber can safely operate in the vicinity of an HQ-9 for any length of time.
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.
> 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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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:
The problem isn't what happens after the shooting starts, it's how these developments make the starting of shooting more likely. Nobody in the West wants to get into a war with China, but by covering the region with sophisticated defenses the Chinese could conceivably put the West in a position where they either have to accept Chinese hegemony over the region, or launch the exact war they don't want to fight in order to restore the old status quo.
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.
An economic threat backed by military power doesn't require a military response. We and the Vietnamese have all sorts of potential economic responses, although of course our's are much greater, including the "nice pile of US Treasury debt you have there, it would be a shame if we declared it worthless to anyone who might buy it".
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.
> the PRC's actions are already getting its neighbors to band together, even with Japan (!).
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.
I should think the batteries would be themselves targeted by stand-off missiles as soon as any situation deteriorated to a shooting match.
> 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.
I doubt they'd shut out an A team of Navy Seals with C4 however. War is boring is one of the better military blogs out there, but this is a silly article. If the US really wanted the islands, a few anti-aircraft weapons will not stop them.
AA/AD isn't done by one thing. They need anti ship ballistic missiles and submarines to make sure no carrier group would ever go anywhere anywhere near (i.e. near enough for standoff weapons that would hurt the anti air weapons) and so on. You need all the different pieces of the puzzle to have effective area denial.
The hard part about reading these kinds of things is that China is doing essentially what the United States has been doing since WWII. We put missiles everywhere... Right in China's doorstep even.
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.
Right now China faces an interesting social problem -- their population includes millions of military-age men who are demographically doomed to remain single.
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.
I can't see how a Chinese vs US war is in either parties interest. Surely China knows they can never take the US mainland and the US can't take China proper, so even if they win they get, what exactly? Other than deep hatred for their biggest trading partner?
Neither party you mention is a monolith. Don't consider China's interest or USA's interest. Rather, think of the interests of decision-makers and of those who can influence them (including those who can do so indirectly through a gullible public).
It's not unusual for rising powers to flex their new muscles by claiming new rights and privileges at sea; the U.S. did it in the 1890s and early 1900s, establishing its power in the eastern and central Pacific by overthrowing the government of Hawaii, driving the Spanish out of the Philippines, establishing bases on Midway Atoll and Wake Island, etc.
(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.)
This is a bit concerning, though the title of "Shut out the USAF" is kinda clickbait-y exaggeration. It's certainly an escalation in the little island "cold wars" of the pacific. Many countries have competing claims on the island and play a little military "chicken" every now and then, usually with minor ships or handfuls of troops. This is the first I've read of any country putting major semi-fixed military hardware on any of these contested islands, though.
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?
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[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 180 ms ] threadOne 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.
"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
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.
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?
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.
I mean why do they even want that space?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone
Overall it's a chess move. It allows China to exert pressure on the region. Similar to Iran and the strait of Hormuz.
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:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yulin_Naval_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.
What is happening with Hacker News?
> 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.
(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.)
(great if an admin would like to update the url)
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?