Who's Afraid of the Big Red Dragon?

A couple of interesting articles floating around out there concerning China that are worth a ponder - not because I think China is a threat to us from a military POV (I don't), but that it could be. 

I can't see the future any more than the next guy - which is why when it comes to national security, unless someone is without question an ally or at worst a neutral in almost any conflict, like the UK - you have to look at capabilities, not intentions. 

First, a little something from POPSCI,

In some ways, China’s rise echoes that of imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, Britain was the world’s undisputed economic and military superpower. When Germany decided to build battleships to match the Grand Fleet’s dreadnoughts, the two nations entered an arms race that helped set the stage for the first world war. But when war broke out, Britain didn’t lose a single battleship to Germany’s High Seas Fleet. German mines and submarines, on the other hand—new technologies that arrived unexpectedly and changed the rules of battle—sunk 13 British battleships.

Similarly, the PLA has more to gain by developing new technologies than by racing to match American sea and air power. China doesn’t have to amass a navy as powerful as the American fleet if it can make the seas too dangerous for U.S. ships to travel. To that end, the PLA is acquiring weapons such as mobile, truck-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles and radar-evading, ramjet-powered Sunburn cruise missiles, which tear toward their targets at Mach 2.5, giving defenses only seconds to respond.

China could also easily go after American vulnerabilities in space. More than 80 percent of U.S. government and military communications, which direct everything from soldiers in the field to precision missile strikes, travel over satellites. GPS satellites control the movement of 800,000 U.S. military receivers on everything from aircraft carriers to individual bombs and artillery shells. The system isn’t foolproof: In early 2010, a GPS “glitch” left almost 10,000 of these receivers unable to connect for days.

That outlines what I have stated for years is the realist China Maritime Strategy; regional porcupine with global peacetime presence. If war comes, make it too costly for the USA to get within the 1st island chain. In peace, create effects and show the flag in support of commerce. Kind of like ours a ~120 years ago.

The next is a dark view from down under. As I have been on a little Medieval and Classics kick as of late, it resonates;

THIS is how wars usually start: with a steadily escalating stand-off over something intrinsically worthless. So don't be too surprised if the US and Japan go to war with China next year over the uninhabited rocks that Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyu islands. And don't assume the war would be contained and short.

Of course we should all hope that common sense prevails.

It seems almost laughably unthinkable that the world's three richest countries - two of them nuclear-armed - would go to war over something so trivial. But that is to confuse what starts a war with what causes it. The Greek historian Thucydides first explained the difference almost 2500 years ago. He wrote that the catastrophic Peloponnesian War started from a spat between Athens and one of Sparta's allies over a relatively insignificant dispute. But what caused the war was something much graver: the growing wealth and power of Athens, and the fear this caused in Sparta.

The analogy with Asia today is uncomfortably close and not at all reassuring. No one in 431BC really wanted a war, but when Athens threatened one of Sparta's allies over a disputed colony, the Spartans felt they had to intervene. They feared that to step back in the face of Athens' growing power would fatally compromise Sparta's position in the Greek world, and concede supremacy to Athens.

Hopefully we have the right people looking at this scenario with a stable of solid COA to start with.

Hopefully. And let's hope they just sit there and collect dust like the TS plans from the 1980s I got a kick out of reading before I sent them off for destruction in the 90s. 

I like to joke to family and friends that the only way I will ever be recalled to active duty is if war breaks out with China ... so I'm not going anywhere. I don't want to eat crow; everyone behave yourselves.

Hope, eh?

Hawaii trades Sen. Inouye for ....

No further commentary needed if you know Inouye's background. Here is the life experience taking his place.

Brian Schatz grew up in Hawaii, attending Punahou School there followed by a B.A. in Philosophy from Pomona College in Claremont, California. While at Pomona, Schatz also spent a term studying in Kenya as part of the International Training Program, where Schatz developed skills as a public servant. After returning to Hawaii, Schatz taught at Punahou School before moving into the non-profit sector. ... Schatz first became active in the community when he became involved in the Save Sandy Beach movement in the 1980s. He served as CEO of Helping Hands Hawaii as well as Director of both the Makiki Community Library and the Center for a Sustainable Future. In March 2010, Schatz stepped down from Helping Hands to focus on his campaign for the office of Lieutenant Governor.

Oh I forgot ... he had this exceptionally challenging political position.

In 2008, Schatz worked as spokesman for the Hawaii campaign of Barack Obama. He was elected chairman of the Democratic Party of Hawaii at the state convention in May, 2008.

I may not have been on the same page as Senator Inouye on many things - but one thing I knew - it was good to have someone in the 100 who knew what he knew about war and those who serve. Well ... soon to be Senator Schatz - good luck. I am sure you bring to the Senate something it is very lacking - career political experience and community activism with other people's money, something you are very good at.

Retro Wednesday: VOGE

Back in the heyday of the Hairy Navy ... a little shot of the USS VOGE (FF-1047) coming alongside for UNREP.

Watch it the whole way through as a reminder that those who say, "but the sea is so calm," usually speak too soon.

Speaking of the VOGE ... one of my favorite frigate stories involves her.

Who wouldn't want to write this OPREP?

Why Gunowners Do Not Trust the Government or the Press

In what is probably one of the best descriptions of why many citizens - and almost no gun owners - have faith in any information they give the government. 

Behold what a newspaper in New York has done. Yep - if you have a registered gun, everyone knows and it is on a map. 

Privacy? Just wait until the guv'munt starts keeping all your medical data too.

Every day this experiment in self government in a representative republic fades a little more. Police dressed as some fascist shock troops. Police conducting cavity searches on the side of the road. In an effort, in theory, to protect us from young men who are trying to blow up aircraft, we do full body pat downs on small children and people in wheelchairs. American citizens are looked at being imprisoned without charge or trail. Our institutions of higher learning have speech codes.

None of the above even touches on the unsustainable peace time debt that has exploded in the last half decade. 

The 4th estate, who exists only because of a few words in our Constitution, aggressively goes after another few words on the same document. They won't be the first to go, but they will follow shortly once the other basic Rights of free people are cut away bit, by bit by bit. It is the way it always happens.

In a nation held together not by geography, ethnicity, religion, or unique language - but an idea - when you parse that idea in to nothing, then the experiment is over. If the experiment is over, what holds the whole thing together?

Interesting times.

Merry Christmas ....

.... and I hope you didn't have to do any mandatory fun.

Oh, that threat ...

Syndey and John, I hate to break it to you - but they have already degraded - well over a decade ago, this started during the "peace dividend" of the 1990s ... and when 911 took place, it just got worse.

The U.S. Navy's anti-submarine warfare (ASW) skills are getting rusty during the same period that quiet submarine technology in China and Iran is improving at a noticeable rate.
I wish that were the only bad news on the submarine warfare front, but it isn't. We have U.S. ASW capability going backward, submarine capability of U.S. strategic adversaries going forward, and U.S. Navy capability as a whole in decline, according to a top Navy official.

In all fairness, it got that way for understandable reasons;

During a decade of relentless focus on counterinsurgency, the military has let other skills erode, skills it will have to struggle to get back even as budgets tighten. In particular, the capacity of the US and allied navies to hunt enemy submarines has suffered even as potential adversaries like China and Iran have built up their sub fleets.

This is rather simple. ASW expertise on the surface side of the house has always been outside the Aegis mafia. The SpruCans are long gone, that left the FFG. Let's be honest; the DDG side of the Aegis house did/could not make ASW a priority.

On the air side of the house, we all know how the S-3 community was treated by TACAIR. The RW side of the house as been multimissioned in to the jack of all trades, master of none. The MPR community has tried their best, but overland reconnaissance combined with much less actual non-compliant ASW operational experience (quality and quantity deficit) and aircraft that are usually partially mission capable at best with decades old technology. At least they have a new aircraft coming online with the P-8, but the one thing that is missing is the institutional knowledge that is needed for exceptional ASW - which is why they got rid of their MAD in the American (but not Indian) P-8, it has been so long since they had enough that worked, they forgot its utility.

The subsurface community ... well, we'll just assume that they are silent but deadly. You cannot fight the ASW battle from under the sea alone.

The path to success in ASW is simple, but not easy.
1. Stop combining ASW with MIW. It hurts both.
2. Stop putting your faith in PPT thick futurist ASW programs, some of which have been making the same promise for decades. Others have good specific uses, but will not be the thing that will get you to the point you can kill the submarine. No one needs to say more.
3. Admit that our ASW weapons are not what they need to be. No one needs to say more about that either.
4. In peace, you have to exercise against the thing you need to kill at war. If we are not going to buy/build our own non-nuke submarines, then greatly expand inviting other nations to deploy here and exercise with us extensively ... and help pay their tab. These exercises need to be brutally realistic, as unscripted as possible, and debriefed properly. The best I have seen done since the end of the Cold War were at RIMPAC.
5. Acknowledge what has always been known about Agonizingly Slow Warfare; it requires specialists. It requires investment of time and personnel. It is not something you do once a quarter and consider yourself expert. It isn't something you can master in simulation. You need be actually at sea, with actual targets.

Hey, speaking of ignoring the human side of ASW;

The Navy's long-term solution for this shallow-water sub hunt is the Littoral Combat Ship, a small, high-speed vessel built to take different "mission modules" so the same vessel can switch from hunting subs to fighting small attack boats to clearing mines. For now, however, the LCS sub-hunting module is still in development, with entry in service in fact delayed until 2016.

Yes. A few might show up in 2016, and then it will take years until you know what you can do with them, and if that CONOPS can actually work for the weeks-long effort that is ASW on average. Months-long? With that endurance? No. LCS will be at best, even if the technology works, the modern equivalent of a high-grade sub-chaser.

As with what the Army and USMC found out a decade ago when they had to go where the enemy has a vote - with ASW we will have to get back to fundamentals - those uncomfortable fundamentals that aren't sexy, but are essential to success at war. Those start with properly equipped and realistically evaluated operators, with enough sensors and weapons to be able to operate in sustained ASW operations when called on to do so.

It is good to look forward to new technology and new ideas - but you do not throw away what works for an unproven promise. When you do that, you get people killed. You also produce junk like in the video below that just screams, "Did you have anyone murder-board this? Does no one in your team ask any hard questions?"



Seriously, just a quick top-3 on that bucket of goo.
1. Seastate & Weather.
2. What if you are under EMCON and/or have no satellite access?
3. In line with #2, what if you find yourself in a non-permissive EW environment?

Can we even start to talk about the odds of a submarine just sitting there waiting to be killed/tracked? Talk about who is doing the processing and contact classification? For the one use I can find for this perhaps, as a SURTASS surrogate, what is stopping a bunch of gomers in a fishing boat with sledge hammers making short work of it (remember our Chinese friends)? .... OK, my 3 went to 6, sorry. I would just be much happier if this money was spent of something that can survive the follow-up question. 

Merchant community will LOVE having something tooling around their SLOC that cannot be reached on channel 16. OK, I went to 7. I need to stop.

Good news? Iran is no more scary from an ASW POV than she has been for awhile, and China's growth still gives us time to get back to where we need to be. We have the nucleus. The big question will be money, as it always is. That and institutional support. Hmmmm. Let's see. FF(not-so-G) are going away and have no sponsorship anyway. Aegis mafia really does not care about Aegis radars & VLS tubes doing ASW. TACAIR doesn't have a bird in this fight. The RW community to too busy doing everything else but ASW. The MPR community is, well, doing whatever they are doing. The submarine people will take care of submarine people ... so ... how about that senior level sponsorship for ASW? Besides those who want to work for SAIC after they retire? Bueller?

Outside the submarine community, I will believe it when I see more money going towards something to kill besides the LWT. When we start treating, openly, the Chinese submarines like we did the Soviets. Until then, we will limp along waiting for a crisis. That bucket of goo in the video tells me we aren't serious. We are just playing around.

Best of China & its Neighborhood; on Midrats

As you are taking time to open all your stuff with the "Made in China" label, I thought the Sunday before Christmas it would be good to think about what all the money and debt is doing to shape the geopolitical landscape.

Today from 5-6pm EST, step back with us to SEP11 with our guest Mark Stokes, the Executive Director of the Project 2049 Institute. As a stepping off point for our discussion we will be using the institute's latest report, Asian Alliances in the 21st Century.

Previous to his present position with 2049, Mark was the founder and president of Quantum Pacific Enterprises, an international consulting firm, and vice president and Taiwan country manager for Raytheon International. He has served as executive vice president of Laifu Trading Company, a subsidiary of the Rehfeldt Group; a senior associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies; and member of the Board of Governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan. A 20-year U.S. Air Force veteran, Stokes also served as team chief and senior country director for the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs. He holds a B.A. from Texas A&M University, and graduate degrees in International Relations and Asian Studies from Boston University and the Naval Postgraduate School. He is a fluent Mandarin speaker.

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