Future of A2AD in the Pacific (Direct Sino War scenario Closed)

A New War in the Pacific Could be ‘Trench Warfare’ at Sea
Recent studies suggest A2/AD and AirSea Battle lead to costly stalemate, not victory.

Two recent studies from academia and think tanks take deep looks into the potential ‘shape’ of a future conflict between the United States and China.

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The two studies are as follows:

1. The RAND Corporation study, War with China: Thinking Through the Unthinkable


Lowy have a good critique of the RAND study, which includes a look at a land war in the Korean peninsula. See below.



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2. Future Warfare in the Pacific


On this lengthy study, again, they don't consider what would happen on the Korean Peninsula.

But a more important flaw is looking at what happens when you have 2 landmasses with opposing A2/AD networks which are within 400-600km of each other Eg. China-Taiwan, China-Korea, China-Vietnam.

In a mature A2/AD environment, airborne assets on both sides will have a continuous line of sight of each other. In the example of China and Taiwan, it means that the entire island of Taiwan is under continuous AWACS and JSTARs surveillance by China.

That surveillance means that all those dispersed Taiwanese vehicles with radars and missiles leave their bases or are used, they can be tracked continuously and they cannot use their mobility to hide, and essentially become easy targets for Chinese missiles. Therefore Taiwan's ability to maintain a working A2/AD network becomes questionable, as Taiwan has no strategic depth like China and is too isolated from support elsewhere.

In the example of the East China Seas, the Ryukus Island chain simply doesn't have enough land area, nor is urbanised enough to hide large numbers of vehicles. Plus the large number of islands means mobile vehicles are essentially stuck on a small island with a very limited land area, which makes them easy to locate.

So in summary, when 2 competing A2AD networks are within range of each other, the stronger system should be able to destroy the weaker system. Ref the China-Taiwan example.

If we still use the trench warfare analogy, in WW1 the opposing sides could choose how far to place their trenches from each other. That doesn't apply when you have large fixed landmasses and in the case of China-Taiwan, the trenches are that close together that one side can overwhelm the other side which has no secondary trenches to use.

This doesn't take into account how the introduction of railguns will turn a China-Taiwan conflict into a huge artillery duel where China will have a large numerical advantage. Plus Chinese guns would be able to range over the whole of Taiwan and its airbases, whereas China has access to safer rear areas for its air assets to operate from.


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Some other thoughts include:

Using the Ryukus Island Chain as an A2AD barrier only works if those islands can be resupplied. If we look at Ishigaki as mentioned in the study, it probably lies within the Chinese A2AD envelope generated from the Chinese mainland. Therefore Ishigaki would be cut off and under blockade.

Plus Ishigaki itself is too small and too isolated to generate an effective A2AD bubble of its own. It would rely on the support from Okinawa, but I suspect Okinawa would be under heavy pressure as well.

Okinawa is about 640km from the Chinese mainland, so it should be easy enough for Chinese forces to concentrate sufficient forces to temporarily push out their A2AD bubble / reconnaissance-strike complex to cover Okinawa. However, aircraft carriers and air defence destroyers could operate behind the islands, and would be able to create their own A2AD / sea-control bubbles to support the Ryukyu islands and also sally forth towards the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands as well.

The Taiwan-Okinawa-Kyushu gap is over 1000km, so it would seem likely that China could still create gaps in any A2AD perimeter which relies on the landmass of the Ryukyu chain islands.

In a battle over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands (in No-man's land), theoretically the side with the larger force could achieve the political objective of controlling those islands.

Although the notional scenario date is 2040, let's have a look at the situation in 2025

The US economy was approximately $18 Trillion in 2015. With a reasonable growth expectation of 2.5% per year for the next 10 years, the economy grows to $23 Trillion in 2025 which is a 27% increase.

In comparison, China's GDP is 67 Trillion RMB in 2015. If we apply a 10% increase due to the SNA 2008 update and a reasonable 5% growth per year for the next 10 years. That is based on the performance of the other East Asian Economic Tigers who share many similarities. So the economy grows to 121 Trillion RMB which is a 80% increase.

If we use current exchange rates that comes to $18 Trillion USD. But in the long-run, the Chinese currency should appreciate and equalise towards its PPP exchange rate. If that happens, China's GDP would equate to some $34 Trillion USD in 2025.

Yet at that point, China should still be able to grow faster as the average person would still be significantly poorer.

So in 2040, China would have a significantly larger economy (possible more than twice the size of the USA) and presumably a lot more in military spending as well.

On satellites, they haven't considered the development of geosynchronous spy satellites like Gaofen-4, which has a viewbox of 7000km x 7000km with a 50m resolution.

A 50m visual resolution is sufficient to classify an aircraft carrier plus the viewbox means the camera would be able to track that carrier and provide a targeting solution, as the skies would be clear for most of the time.

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The paper also questions whether the presence of satellites are an advantage for the USA. If both sides scoured the skies of satellites, then yes, long-range targeting would suffer for both sides. But remember that China operates on interior lines of communications on its landmass, whereas the USA is reliant on a small number of fragile satellites and fibre-optic cables to communicate between Asia and the Americas.

It is clearly madness for Taiwan to take part in the war here considered. ( Is it within the rules to consider such a war?). So is there something left to consider? Will US have to conclude that they cannot attack China just as China cannot attack US?
At any rate it is in China's interest not to start a war, as it always was.

SD Rules do not allow direct war scenario discussions between China and other nations...particularly nuclear war it says, but that is only stated after:

• No "what if" discussion about war...between China and other nations, or between any nations."

We let a few statements go in other threads on occassion as long as they are hypothetical...but this is an entire thread about it.

THREAD CLOSED