[It] appears China is moving to win a second bloodless battle by using its industrial strength to outbuild the U.S. Navy in conventional military power and push the U.S. further away from the western Pacific and its allies there. The goal of these two battles is to win a bloodless war by making the cost to the U.S. of intervening to counter an invasion of Taiwan too high.
The Chinese strategy has put the U.S. military in a bind, perhaps best illustrated by the U.S. Navy’s struggles to develop an achievable force structure that can deter or defeat Chinese ambitions at an acceptable cost in treasure and, if necessary, blood.
Although manning ships with trained crews that China can churn out is a different issue altogether, of course. And basing them. Long-range American missiles might see vistas of Pearl Harbors strung out along the Chinese coast.
Still, the Navy needs help from the other services with shore-based and air-launched anti-ship systems, unmanned smaller ships, and help from allied navies. Other than unmanned ships these are nothing new in history. Although maybe PT Boats would be the manned equivalent of the USVs.
But for numbers the Navy could also consider modularized auxiliary cruisers, as I proposed some time ago. Stockpiling the weapon and system modules could be done in peacetime.
And given that we have allies with shipbuilding industry, could their shipyards be used in wartime to build our hulls?
It won't be Navy-on-PLA Navy combat that defeats China. It will be multi-service American forces and allied forces against multi-service PLA combat.
