Future strategies concerning US bases on Phillipines

**Totoro** · 06-10-2012, 01:47 AM

There has been more and more talk that USN will shift most of its fleet to the pacific, that USAF will shift some additional forces there, that the bases on philliphines will be re-made etc. Now i dont want to talk about whether it will happen.

Let us assume with certainty that it WILL happen. That by 2020. US will have reopened Subic bay naval base and Clarke air force base on the Philliphines. And base a lot of its forces there. Alongside that, there will still, of course, be bases in japan, notably the AFB on Okinawa, and base in Guam.

My question is: What should Chinese MoD do to neutralize, as much as possible, those added bases and added forces? I am not talking about war right now, i am talking about strategic military and logistic shifts in PLA to counter the new developments.

Even more MRBMs for those bases? More carriers? More frigates? More long range bombers? Plans for amphibious assault? Extensive mine laying platforms? How much of each? would mere increases in numbers be a solution? or should some thinking outside the box be required?

Is it possible to prevent that? Is it plausible to literally shower the philliphines with hundreds of billions, give them the territorial claims they want, in return for symbolic military presence of chinese on the philiphines - not as a meaningful force, but merely as a sign that there is no room for the US forces there. Would the philippines accept, given enough political/economic gifts? would that even be worth it? or would a conventional military build up be more cost efficient?

Of course, we dont know how much forces would the US station there but in their old versions those philliphine bases were basically largest in the world. New ones could be just as large. We could be talking abour literaly hundreds of planes, tens of destroyers, subs etc.

**antiterror13** · 06-10-2012, 04:50 AM

The Chinese don't need to worry of whether USN will re-open Subic Bay. It means very little to Chinese security. But it will bleed USN budget badly. What China need to do is to strengthen its navy and also its MRBM and AAM force .. and it will be much more cost effective.

The Philliphine is a significant country, I believe this time they choose a wrong side, the future for Asia is China, not the USA.

Philippine' nominal GDP is only merely $200B very insignificant, China' nominal GDP is $7,3T or roughly 37x the Philippine'

Every year China add another roughly $1T nominal GDP or something like 5x the Philippine's ... imagine that :-)

**Kurt** · 06-10-2012, 05:27 AM

Against naval bases long distance mining with self-propelled unmanned mining vehicles as well as mini-sub commando operations are a very convenient measure to threaten enemy fleets of being bottled up in base and easy to target with long range anti-ship missiles. The main targets of these naval operations are the naval auxiliaries and chartered supply ships.
Against air forces you can as well deploy this kind of "mines" by sending in very low observeability UAV with long range AAM and the mission to target AWACS, tankers, transports and bombers, but not the high-tech high-surviveability fighter-bombers.
Bases on land can lose much of their power projection support capability because they are located target areas for such countermeasures.

China's interests are safe transit through the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The weak link would be the South China Sea and so far there's no Chinese ally in this region. Myanmar can provide an alternate route, but the economic centers on the Chinese coast derive no improvement of their connections from this fact. In geostrategic terms China is at a very serious disadvantage in the Western Pacific Rim and would have to compensate with an enormous build up of green to blue water amphibious capabilities under sea-based fighter cover in order to be able to reverse this situation quickly enough in a conflict (similar to US-NATO plans to occupy Persian Gulf oilfields in a dire emergency).
It would help a lot to have Chinese allies there instead of urgently sending warships and the US clearly plans to use their greater political leverage to gain this advantage against China that in military expenditure PPP will be their equal in 10-20 years.