Page 54 - Australian Defence Magazine October 2019

“Of the directed energy weapons,
RF-based ones are more
likely to provide potential countermeasures, where you’re trying to upset the electronics.”
“On balance, hypersonics are an evolu- tion, not a revolution,” Prof Davies said. “The most revolutionary aspect could be to destabilise nuclear deterrence.”
But hypersonics couldn’t kill the warship anyway. The warship was already dead.
So who killed the warship?
To understand how the warship died, we need to zoom out – way out. Imagine you’re Chinese President Xi Jinping, sitting in your Beijing office and thinking about how to improve China’s strategic position.
Now consider your vulnerabilities. The only navigable passages through these seas are controlled by a wall of US allies and military bases: Japan and South Ko- rea in the north, Taiwan in the middle, the Philippines and Singapore in the south, all reinforced by Australia and Guam. You’re immensely vulnerable. It is as if Australia were fenced in by a string of Chinese military bases between East Timor and Vanuatu.
There is no feasible military solution to that problem. Any attempt to break through the wall by force requires a complex amphibious operation that will be attacked at sea by US and allied forces. Even if you manage to land soldiers on a foreign beach, your navy can only take around 25,000 in one trip. They’d be outnumbered sev-
eral times over by defending forces.
“The Chinese could prevent the US from establishing air superiority over the Taiwan strait,” Prof Davies said to ADM. “However, whether they’d have enough control of the air and sea themselves to do
anything is really debatable.”
For the sake of argument, let’s assume
you manage to establish a beachhead. You’ve then got to continuously transport enough troops across contested waters to outpace enemy reinforcement rates whilst fighting the world’s largest and most tech- nologically advanced navy and a suite of its allies. Remember, none of your military leaders or personnel have any combat ex- perience – something the Chinese leader- ship refers to as the ‘peace disease’.
Sure, you’ve got enough missiles to re- strict American surface ships’ access to the South China Sea and slow their rein- forcement rates. According to Professor Davies, you could also roll out enough mines in the Taiwan Strait overnight to prevent American submarine access. Your new hypersonic weapons and other long- range strike capabilities could hit US re- gional military bases, and your lower-cost dispersed force model could do some real damage. You certainly won’t give Wash- ington an easy victory.
“Numbers have a quality of their own,” Prof Davies said. “The Americans would have some really rude awakenings in terms of what dispersed, low capability anti-sub- marine warfare forces can do.”
Nonetheless, you can’t fully prevent allied submarines, land forces and air- craft from enforcing a distant blockade of global shipping lanes and effectively choking you out of a fight over time. You’d also face the challenges of occupy- ing and defending the land you’ve just seized against local resistance and a po- tential counter-invasion.
“People talk about the access problems we’d have in the waters around China,” Prof Davies said. “But China’s got an ac- cess problem to the rest of the world. The Chinese know that.”
Strategically speaking, you’ve also just shot yourself in the foot: the arteries of trade you went to war to secure must now pass through a hemispheric war zone in the Western Pacific. The US, on the other hand, can trade comparatively unmolest- ed. That means time is now on your op- ponents’ side, which is problematic given you’re the occupying force. Any attempt to take on the US or its allies by force also risks nuclear annihilation – particularly if you use hypersonic missiles.
The transient advantage of ship borne systems is under threat from hypersonic missile technologies.
First, consider your needs. You must ensure internal stability above all else, which means you need to secure enough resources to keep the economy growing. China’s history of catastrophic political implosions are a warning of what can hap- pen if you fail.
“The legitimacy of the Communist par- ty relies on two narratives,” Prof Davies said. “First, we’re bringing you prosperity, and second, we’re the protectors of Chi- nese nationalism.”
The vast majority of imports that bring prosperity to China, and thus keep the Communist Party in power and you safe in your office, pass through Southeast Asian seas before arriving at Chinese ports. You need to keep these maritime arteries open.
54 | October 2019 | www.australiandefence.com.au
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