Are we watching our Navy lose control of the seas?
Supporting land operations (as necessary as that was for Iraq and Afghanistan), sea-based ballistic missile defense, humanitarian missions, and simple showing the flag missions have crowded out the skill and attitude sets that are necessary to control the seas to carry out all those nice non-sea control missions:
In effect, then, the service has demoted war at sea, the raison d'être for any navy, to secondary status. Both the hardware (weaponry, sensors, and hulls) and the software (training and exercises) for sea control have doubtless suffered as a result. In an era of tight budgetary constraints, reversing two decades of steady decline in surface warfare will be neither easy nor quick. In short, prevailing assumptions about American naval supremacy are coming under strain.
We have sufficient superiority to make sure that this isn't fatal--since we can probably reinforce from global assets to overcome a bloody nose in the opening stage of a naval campaign near China--but if the trends don't change and we don't come to grips that we will need to fight to control the seas, even that best-case scenario won't take place.
Good grief, I was (and remain) horrified that our surface combatants--the core of our fleet--will in twenty years not even have the Harpoon missile that the article notes is outranged by newer Chinese anti-ship missiles.
And I think we all know what I think of carriers in a sea control mission (as opposed to a power projection mission).
But keep in mind that China doesn't have to be superior to us overall to wrest sea control from us in the western Pacific for at least a time because of China's geographic advantage, as those authors in The Diplomat explain:
Whether the Pentagon can afford to mount superior strength in a rival great power's backyard, whether the sea services are investing in the right people and hardware to constitute that strength, and whether American seafarers have the requisite skills to prevail when battle is joined are the only questions worth asking.
That casts U.S.-China competition in a whole new light, doesn't it? A purely fleet-on-fleet engagement is improbable within the China seas or the western reaches of the Pacific Ocean. In those expanses, Beijing has the luxury of throwing the combined weight of Chinese sea power into a sea fight, dispatching not just its surface fleet but missile-toting submarines and swarms of patrol craft. Furthermore, land-based implements of sea power can strike a blow in any fleet action that takes place within their combat radii. PLA Air Force warplanes can join the fray, as can anti-ship missiles fielded by the PLA Second Artillery Corps. Lord Nelson, who knew a thing or two about operating fleets under the shadow of shore-based weaponry, sagely counseled that a ship's a fool to fight a fort. That's doubly true today, when Fortress China can reach scores or hundreds of miles out to sea.
One part of the U.S. Navy, then, could conceivably confront the whole of China's maritime might. The U.S. sea services are dispersed throughout Asia and the world. To estimate the outcome of a fleet action, we thus have to determine how the contingent the U.S. Navy is likely to commit to battle — including its aerial and subsurface components, along with any assets supplied by allies like the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force or South Korean Navy — stacks up to the massed power of the PLA Navy fleet, backed by the array of anti-access weaponry at PLA commanders' disposal.
Yes. I've gone on about that Chinese geographic advantage for years:
I've beat this topic to death over the years. In a long war, we can mass more power than China can. But in a short war that China initiates, they can surge forces out of their ports without worrying about rotating ships in order to get everything out at once to hit our thin blue line in the western Pacific.
And let's make this even worse, shall we? China doesn't even have to defeat our Navy (and supporting Air Force) to inflict a defeat on us. I went on:
More likely than China inflicting a stunning defeat on our forward deployed fleet (though it is certainly possible the Chinese may come up with a silver bullet that we cannot counter, at lest initially) is that Chinese capabilities will induce so much caution in our fleet's movements to engage the Chinese fleet that the Chinese buy time to achieve their objective (say, conquering Taiwan).
We can tell ourselves soothing stories about our crew quality advantages. And they are likely quite superior. But such a qualitative advantage is so difficult to judge that it would be easy for us to disregard measurable quantifiable deficiencies while assuring ourselves that the quality issue balances everything out.
Hey, we assumed just that with the Japanese in 1941, now didn't we? Just remember, China doesn't have to go all the way to the central Pacific to strike our forward deployed strike force. The Chinese just need to leave port.
And Lord knows what the Chinese might achieve if they eject us from the western Pacific for even a short time.
This essay exploring a "Cool War" between America and China addresses this geographic reality with the effects of even a small victory over America based on that geographic advantage:
But to alter the balance of power in a fundamental way, China does not need to reach military parity with the United States -- and once again, Taiwan is the demonstration case. From Beijing's standpoint, the optimal strategy toward Taiwan is to build up China's military capacity and acquire the island without a fight. The idea is that the United States might be prepared to tolerate the abandonment of its historical ally out of necessity, the way Britain ceded control over Hong Kong when it had no choice.
To see why this scenario is so plausible, all that is required is to ask the following question: Would the president of the United States go to war with China over Taiwan absent some high-profile immediate crisis capable of mobilizing domestic support? If the United States were to abandon Taipei, it would have to insist to China, as well as Japan, South Korea, and U.S. citizens, that Taiwan was in a basic sense different from the rest of Asia -- that the United States would protect Asian allies from hegemony despite letting Taiwan go.
Failure to do so credibly would transform capitulation on Taiwan into the end of U.S. military hegemony in Asia. It would represent a reversal of the victories in the Pacific during World War II. It would put much of the world's economic power within China's sphere of control, not only its sphere of influence. To be the regional hegemon in Asia would mean dominating more than half the world's population and more than half its economy. Even without increasing its position in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America -- and without achieving military parity -- China could nonetheless be on a par with the United States in terms of global influence.
Again, I've gone on about the global effect of Chinese power that just dominates within 500 miles of China's shore.
And I've argued that the issue of tiny Taiwan's fate isn't just an issue about tiny Taiwan's fate:
For a long time, when China could not get past our fleet to attack Taiwan, it was easy to see the Taiwan problem as Taiwan's problem. But the loss of Taiwan would be a huge blow to our ability to resist Chinese dominance of the seas and countries near China. As we assess China's current and future military capabilities, we can't think of Chinese intent toward Taiwan in isolation.
To fight a war with China, we need to increase our ability to fight close to China and increase the ability of our allies to fight without our surface fleet coming to the rescue for perhaps several months.
Better would be to get China so involved in the interior of Asia--and so divide China's military resources--that China lacks the power to defeat us at sea.
Perhaps even better would be regime change in China. Or even multiple regime changes? And is unrest as unlikely as China's dramatic rising power makes it seem?
Don't assume victory at sea ia our God-given right. And if we can't win at sea when we need to win at sea, what other means are there to win?
