Military Technology and U.S.-China War in the Pacific — Manifold #51

 

TP Huang returns for the third time to discuss US-China strategic competition and military technology. 

Audio-Only version and Transcript: 

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/military-technology-and-u-s-china-war-in-the-pacific-51

Previous episodes with TP include: 

China's EV Market Dominance and the Challenges Facing Tesla — #48:

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/chinas-ev-market-dominance-and-the-challenges-facing-tesla-48 

Huawei and the US-China Chip War — #44: 

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/huawei-and-the-us-china-chip-war-44 

Steve and TP discuss: 

(00:00) - Introduction 

(02:23) - Hypersonic weapons and A2AD 

(08:15) - The evolution of China’s military technology 

(13:30) - Hypersonic missiles: targeting and interception 

(29:52) - Surprise attack on Hawaii or Seattle? 

(33:36) - Japan's role in a U.S.-China military conflict 

(36:15) - Chinese invasion of Taiwan 

(42:44) - Amphibious landing, boots on the ground 

(45:20) - Red lines and Taiwan independence 

(48:38) - PRC nuclear weapons buildup 

(51:17) - PRC-Russia alliance: natural resources, technology; Ukraine strategy disaster 

(59:37) - Future developments of military technology in China 

(01:11:44) - Predictions regarding US-PRC balance of power

Paul Huang, the real situation in Taiwan: politics, military, China — Manifold #40

 

Paul Huang is a journalist and research fellow with the Taiwanese Public Opinion Foundation. He is currently based in Taipei, Taiwan. 

Sample articles: 

Taiwan’s Military Has Flashy American Weapons but No Ammo (in Foreign Policy): https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/08/20/taiwan-military-flashy-american-weapons-no-ammo/ 

Taiwan’s  Military Is a Hollow Shell (Foreign Policy): 

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/15/china-threat-invasion-conscription-taiwans-military-is-a-hollow-shell/ 

Audio-only and transcript:

https://www.manifold1.com/episodes/paul-huang-the-real-situation-in-taiwan-politics-military-china-40

Steve and Paul discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

1:44 Paul’s background; the Green Party (DPP) and Blue Party (KMT) in Taiwan 

4:40 How the Taiwanese people view themselves vs mainland Chinese 

15:02 Taiwan taboos: politics and military preparedness 

15:27 Effect of Ukraine conflict on Taiwanese opinion 

29:56 Lack of realistic military planning 

37:20 Is there a political solution to reunification with China? What influence does the U.S. have? 

51:34 The likelihood of peaceful reunification of Taiwan and China 

56:45 Honest views on Taiwanese and U.S. military readiness for a conflict with China

Theodore A. Postol: Nuclear Weapons, Missile Technology, and U.S. Diplomacy — Manifold #12

Theodore A. Postol is professor emeritus of Science, Technology, and International Security at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is widely known as an expert on nuclear weapons and missile technology. 

Educated in physics and nuclear engineering at MIT, he was a researcher at Argonne National Lab, worked at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, and was scientific advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations. 

After leaving the Pentagon, Postol helped to build a program at Stanford University to train mid-career scientists to study weapons technology in relation to defense and arms control policy. 

He has received numerous awards, including the Leo Szilard Prize from the American Physical Society for "incisive technical analysis of national security issues that [have] been vital for informing the public policy debate", the Norbert Wiener Award from Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility for "uncovering numerous and important false claims about missile defenses", and the Richard L. Garwin Award "that recognizes an individual who, through exceptional achievement in science and technology, has made an outstanding contribution toward the benefit of mankind." 

Steve and Ted discuss: 

0:00 Introduction 

2:02 Early life in Brooklyn, education at MIT, work at the Pentagon 

20:27 Reagan’s “Star Wars” defense plan 

28:26 U.S. influence on Russia and China’s second-strike capabilities 

54:41 Missile defense: vs nuclear weapons, scuds, anti-ship missiles (aircraft carriers), hypersonics 

1:11:42 Nuclear escalation and the status of mutually assured destruction 

1:32:24 Analysis of claims the Syrian government used chemical agents against their own people 

1:44:45 Media skepticism 

Transcript.

Resources: 

Theodore Postol at MIT 

https://sts-program.mit.edu/people/emeriti-faculty/theodore-postol/ 

A Flawed and Dangerous US Missile Defense Plan, G. Lewis and T. Postol, Arms Control Today 

https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2010-05/flawed-dangerous-us-missile-defense-plan 

Review Cites Flaws in US Antimissile Program, NY Times May 17 2010 

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/18/world/18missile.html 

Improving US Ballistic Missile Defense Policy, G. Lewis and F. von Hippel, Arms Control Today, May 2018 

https://sgs.princeton.edu/sites/default/files/2019-10/lewis-vonhippel-2018.pdf 

Whose Sarin? by Seymour Hersh (2013) 

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v35/n24/seymour-m.-hersh/whose-sarin

Here is an excerpt from the transcript: 

Ted Postol: ... So, you've got to listen to Putin's voice dispassionately. And when you listen to him, he makes it clear numerous times, numerous times that he doesn't think American missile defense is a worth anything, but he also is worried about an American president who might believe otherwise, and who might take steps against Russia, that would then lead to an action-reaction cycle that would get us, get us all killed. 

In other words, he's not just worried about the system, whether it can work, he's worried about American political leadership and what they think, or if they think, or if they know. And that was, you know, I was very receptive to understanding that because that's exactly what I went through, you know, 30 years earlier when I was at the Pentagon, looking at this dog of a missile defense. 

And so, the Chinese look at this, they know the Americans are lying to them all the time. I could give you a good story about South Korea and the way we lied to the South Koreans and lied to the Chinese. 

I was really furious with that. That was under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. And my view is... 

Steve: THAAD? 

Ted Postol: THAAD, right. THAAD in South Korea. 

And my view is if you're lying to an ally and you're lying, you know, I have very good friends. I'm very, very proud to say I have some very good friends who are high-level diplomats, and I've asked every one of them, would you lie in a negotiation? And every one of them has said, no. In other words, your credibility depends on your honesty. You might not say something that, you know, could be relevant to a negotiation relevant to your adversary's thinking, but you would never lie because your credibility will, you'll never be believed again. That's their view of this. 

And here we were under Hillary Clinton lying to an ally and lying to the Chinese, who I knew through my personal contacts, understood that we were lying to them. I know from personal contacts with the Chinese.  

So, how do you expect people to treat you when they know you're a liar? To me, it's just simple human relations. And, and I now understand that because I have friends who are both diplomats and soldiers, and I know, if you have to lie to make a point there's something wrong and you're, you're jeopardizing your credibility with other professionals if, if you do that. 

So, we should not be surprised that the Chinese are increasing their forces. 

And when Putin marched out this horrifying Poseidon underwater torpedo, could potentially carry a hundred megaton warhead. It's nuclear-powered. It can travel at some very high speed, 50, 60 knots or more, and then it can go quiet, sneak into a Harbor, know coastal Harbor and detonate underwater, and destroy out to 30 or 40 kilometers, a complete area, urban area. And he has this weapon. He made it obvious that he had it. He showed plans for it. 

Ted Postol: Well, what he was doing is he was saying to an American president who knows nothing. All right, assuming that the president knows nothing, that your missile defenses will not do anything about this weapon. That's what he did it for. He was an insurance policy toward bad decision-making by American political leadership. That's why he built that weapon. That's why he ordered that weapon built. 

So not because, I mean, he may be a monster. That's another issue, but it's not because he was a monster, it's because he made a strategic calculation that that kind of weapon would cause any person, even if they were totally without knowledge and thought of how missile defense could work, to understand that you will not escape retribution if you attack Russia. That's why that weapon was built.

Geopolitics and Empire podcast: The End of the Unipolar Moment & the Cementing in Blood of the Eurasian Alliance

 

This was just recorded two days ago. Enjoy! 

From the show notes:

Physicist, startup founder, and polymath Steve Hsu discusses the end of the unipolar moment, the return of geopolitics, and the U.S.-China New Cold War. He believes China is not as fragile as some say. We talk Taiwan, how Beijing has caught up in military tech, and how the nature of naval warfare in the next war will be very different. On the technology and AI front, he feels the U.S. and China are at parity, but that the long-term trend is in China's favor. He feels the social credit system is advancing just as fast in the West as in China and that the digital yuan is rapidly gaining in stature. He gives his view on the Ukraine crisis and how it has been a huge strategic error by the U.S. because it has cemented the Eurasian alliance. He's concerned about a systemic financial meltdown, discusses being a victim of woke cancel culture, and knowing Richard Feynman.

The Balance of Power in the Western Pacific and the Death of the Naval Surface Ship

Recent satellite photos suggest that PLARF (People's Liberation Army Rocket Forces) have been testing against realistic moving ship targets in the deserts of the northwest. Note the ship model is on rails in the second photo below. Apparently there are over 30km of rail lines, allowing the simulation of evasive maneuvers by an aircraft carrier (third figure below).

Large surface ships such as aircraft carriers are easy to detect (e.g., satellite imaging via radar sensors), and missiles (especially those with maneuver capability) are very difficult to stop. Advances in AI / machine learning tend to favor missile targeting, not defense of carriers. 

The key capability is autonomous final target acquisition by the missile at a range of tens of km -- i.e., the distance the ship can move during missile flight time after launch. State of the art air to air missiles already do this in BVR (Beyond Visual Range) combat. Note, they are much smaller than anti-ship missiles, with presumably much smaller radar seekers, yet are pursuing a smaller, faster, more maneuverable target (enemy aircraft). 

It seems highly likely that the technical problem of autonomous targeting of a large surface ship during final missile approach has already been solved some time ago by the PLARF. 

With this capability in place one only has to localize the carrier to within few x 10km for initial launch, letting the smart final targeting do the rest. The initial targeting location can be obtained through many methods, including aircraft/drone probes, targeting overflight by another kind of missile, LEO micro-satellites, etc. Obviously if the satellite retains coverage of the ship during the entire attack, and can communicate with the missile, even this smart final targeting is not required.

This is what a ship looks like to Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) from Low Earth Orbit (LEO).  PRC has had a sophisticated system (Yaogan) in place for almost a decade, and continues to launch new satellites for this purpose.

See LEO SAR, hypersonics, and the death of the naval surface ship:

In an earlier post we described how sea blockade (e.g., against Japan or Taiwan) can be implemented using satellite imaging and missiles, drones, AI/ML. Blue water naval dominance is not required. 

PLAN/PLARF can track every container ship and oil tanker as they approach Kaohsiung or Nagoya. All are in missile range -- sitting ducks. Naval convoys will be just as vulnerable. 

Sink one tanker or cargo ship, or just issue a strong warning, and no shipping company in the world will be stupid enough to try to run the blockade. 

But, But, But, !?! ...

USN guy: We'll just hide the carrier from the satellite and missile seekers using, you know, countermeasures! [Aside: don't cut my carrier budget!] 

USAF guy: Uh, the much smaller AESA/IR seeker on their AAM can easily detect an aircraft from much longer ranges. How will you hide a huge ship? 

USN guy: We'll just shoot down the maneuvering hypersonic missile using, you know, methods. [Aside: don't cut my carrier budget!] 

Missile defense guy: Can you explain to us how to do that? If the incoming missile maneuvers we have to adapt the interceptor trajectory (in real time) to where we project the missile to be after some delay. But we can't know its trajectory ahead of time, unlike for a ballistic (non-maneuvering) warhead.

More photos and maps in this 2017 post.

War Nerd on US-China-Taiwan

Highly recommended. Read this article, which will enable you to ignore 99% of mass media and 90% of "expert" commentary on this topic.

THE WAR NERD: TAIWAN — THE THUCYDIDES TRAPPER WHO CRIED WOOF 

... The US/NATO command may be woofing just to get more ships and planes funded, but woofing can go badly wrong. The people you’re woofing at may think you really mean it. That’s what came very close to happening in the 1983 Able Archer NATO exercises. The woofing by Reagan and Thatcher in the leadup to those exercises was so convincing to the Soviet woof-ees that even the moribund USSR came close to responding in real—like nuclear—ways.

That’s how contingency plans, domestic political theatrics, and funding scams can feed into each other and lead to real wars.

Military forces develop contingency plans. That’s part of their job. Some of the plans to fight China are crazy, but some are just plausible enough to be worrying, because somebody might start thinking they could work. 

... What you do with a place like Xinjiang, if you’re a CIA/DoD planner, is file it under “promote insurgency” — meaning “start as many small fires as possible,” rather than “invade and begin a conventional war.”

And in the meantime, you keep working on the real complaints of the Uyghur and other non-Han ethnic groups, so that if you do need to start a conventional war in the Formosa Straits, you can use the Uyghur as a diversion, a sacrifice, by getting them to rise up and be massacred. Since there’s a big Han-Chinese population in Xinjiang, as the map shows, you can hope to stir up the sort of massacre/counter-massacre whipsaw that leaves evil memories for centuries, leading to a permanent weakening of the Chinese state.

This is a nasty strategy, but it’s a standard imperial practice, low-cost — for the empire, not the local population, of course. It costs those people everything, but empires are not sentimental about such things. 

... The Uyghur in Xinjiang would serve the same purpose as the Iraqi Kurds: “straw dogs destined for sacrifice.” If you want to get really cynical, consider that the reprisals they’d face from an enraged Chinese military would be even more useful to the US/NATO side than their doomed insurgency itself.

Atrocity propaganda is very important in 21st c warfare. At the moment, there’s no evidence of real, mass slaughter in Xinjiang, yet we’re already getting propaganda claims about it. Imagine what US/NATO could make out of the bloody aftermath of a doomed insurgency. Well, assuming that US/NATO survived a war with China, a pretty dicey assumption. More likely, CNN, BBC, and NYT would be the first to welcome our new overlords, Kent Brockman style. Those mainstream-media whores aren’t too bright but Lord, they’re agile. 

... Xinjiang, by contrast, can easily be imagined as One Giant Concentration Camp. After all, our leading “expert” on the province has never been there, and neither have his readers.

... The era of naval war based on carrier groups is over. They know that, even if they won’t say it.

If there’s a real war with China, the carriers will wait it out in San Diego harbor. I don’t say Honolulu, because even that wouldn’t be safe enough.

I’m not denigrating the courage or dedication of the crews and officers of USN vessels. At any level below JCOS, most of them are believers. But their belief is increasingly besieged and difficult to sustain, like an Episcopalian at Easter. You just can’t think too long about how cheap and effective antiship missiles are and still be a believer in aircraft carriers. As platforms of gunboat diplomacy against weak powers, they’re OK. 

... The thing is, and it’s weird you even have to say this: China is a big strong country coming out of an era of deep national humiliation and suffering, proud of its new prosperity. China’s success in lifting a desperately poor population into something like prosperity will likely be the biggest story from this era, when the canonical histories get distilled.

A nation hitting this stage is likely to include a lot of people, especially young men, who are itching to show what their country can do. Their patriotic eagerness is no doubt as gullible as most, but it’s real, and if you pay any attention in the online world, you can’t help seeing it.

People who mouth off about China never seem to imagine that anyone in China might hear, because as we are told over and over again, China-is-an-authoritarian-state. The implication is that nobody in China has any of the nationalistic fervor that we take for granted in our own Anglo states.

... Given the history of US/China relations, from the pogroms against Chinese immigrants to the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, through the demonization of Chinese mainlanders in the Cold War (which I remember distinctly from elementary school scare movies), the endless attempts to start insurgencies in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Fujian, to the nonstop violence and abuse of Asians in America, you don’t need to find reasons for Chinese people to want a war.

The odd thing is that most of them don’t seem to. That’s a remarkable testimony to the discipline and good sense of the Chinese public…so far. And it’s also, if you’re thinking clearly, a good reason not to keep provoking China in such gross, pointless ways. A population with that level of discipline and unity, matched with zooming prosperity, technical expertise, and pride on emerging from a long nightmare, is not one to woof at.

Of course the plan in the Pentagon is not real war. The plan is to slow China down, trip it up, “wrong-foot it” as they say in the Commonwealth. 

... So what will China do about Taiwan? China could take it right now, if it wanted to pay the price. Everyone knows that, though many fake-news sites have responded with childish, ridiculous gung-ho stories about how “Taiwan Could Win.” 

But will China invade? No. Not right now anyway. It doesn’t need to. The Chinese elite has its own constituencies, like all other polities (including “totalitarian” ones), and has to answer to them as circumstances change. 

So far China has been extraordinarily patient, a lot more patient than we’d be if China was promising to fight to the death for, say, Long Island. But that can change. Because, as I never tire of repeating, the enemy of the moment has constituencies too. And has to answer to them. 

So what happens if the US succeeds in hamstringing China’s economy? Welp, what’s the most reliable distraction a gov’t can find when it wants to unite a hard-pressed population against some distant enemy? 

That’s when China might actually do something about Taiwan. ...

See also Strategic Calculus of a Taiwan Invasion.

Note Added: Some readers may be alarmed that the War Nerd does not seem to accept the (Western) mass media propaganda about Xinjiang. Those readers might have poor memories, or are too young to know about, e.g., fake WMD or "babies taken out of incubators" or the countless other manufactured human rights abuses we read about in reliable journals like the New York Times or Washington Post.

Take these recent examples of US journalism on Afghanistan: 

The fake drone strike that killed 10 innocent family members, one of our last acts as we abandoned Afghanistan. (Fake because we probably did it just to show we could "strike back" at the bad guys.) Non-Western media reported this as a catastrophic failure almost immediately. But very few people in the US knew it until the Pentagon issued an apology in a late Friday afternoon briefing just recently. 

The drone strike was in retaliation for the suicide bombing at Kabul airport, in which (as reported by the Afghan government) ~200 people died. But evidence suggests that only a small fraction of these people were killed by bomb -- most of the 200 may have been shot by US and "coalition" (Turkish?) soldiers who might have panicked after the bombing. This is covered widely outside the US but not here.

If you want to understand the incredibly thin and suspicious sourcing of the "Uighur genocide" story, see here or just search for Adrian Zenz. 

Just a few years ago there were plenty of Western travelers passing through Xinjiang, even by bicycle, vlogging and posting their videos on YouTube. I followed these YouTubers at the time because of my own travel interest in western and south-western China, not for any political reason.

If you watch just a few of these you'll get an entirely different impression of the situation on the ground than you would get from Western media. For more, see this comment thread:

I want to be clear that because PRC is an authoritarian state their reaction to the Islamic terror attacks in Xinjiang circa 2015 was probably heavy handed and I am sure some of the sad stories told about people being arrested, held without trial, etc. are true. But I am also sure that if you visit Xinjiang and ask (non-Han) taxi drivers, restaurant owners, etc. about the level of tension you will get a very different impression than what is conveyed by Western media. 

... 

No nation competing in geopolitics is without sin. One aspect of that sin (both in US and PRC): use of mass media propaganda to influence domestic public opinion. 

If you want to be "reality based" you need to look at the strongest evidence from both sides. 

...

Note to the credulous: The CIA venture fund InQTel was an investor in my first startup, which worked in crypto technology. We worked with CIA, VOA, NED ("National Endowment for Democracy" HA HA HA) on defeating the PRC firewall in the early internet era. I know a fair bit about how this all works -- NGO cutouts, fake journalists, policy grifters in DC, etc. etc. Civilians have no idea. 

At the time I felt (and still sort of feel) that keeping the internet free and open is a noble cause. But do I know FOR SURE that state security works DIRECTLY with media and NGOs to distort the truth (i.e., lies to the American people, Iraq WMD yada yada). Yes, I know for sure and it's easy to detect the pattern just by doing a tiny bit of research on people like Cockerell or Zenz. 

... 

Keep in mind I'm not a "dove" -- MIC / intel services / deep state *has to* protect against worst case outcomes and assume the worst about other states. 

They have to do nasty stuff. I'm not making moral judgements here. But a *consequence* of this is that you have to be really careful about information sources in order to stay reality based...

Chinese Air Power: Justin Bronk RUSI UK

 

This is a good overview. Bronk (Research Fellow for Airpower and Technology in the Military Sciences team at Royal United Services Institute, UK) is good, Rupprecht also. (See show notes for links.)

However, both are looking at open source information and someone fluent in Mandarin with a technical background can do even better. 

Just a few notes for now -- I may revisit to add more detailed analysis. 

1. J10 and J20 are world class fighters, largely indigenously designed. J16 is best flanker variant in the world today. 

2. PLAAF missiles (PL12, PL15, cruise missiles, etc.): some argue that PL12 and PL15 are among the best AAM in the world right now. Note use of AESA seeker in individual missiles while IIRC Russians have not incorporated AESA radar in their fighters yet. 

3. WS10 and WS15 engines nearly mature -- WS10 now deployed in single engine J10. 

4. Note remarks about S400 sales to PRC and relatively small gap between PRC SAMs / air defense and Russian systems. 

5. Individual fighter characteristics are becoming less important compared to missile and sensor technology. For example, the low cost JF-17 (co-developed by PRC and Pakistan) is respectable (roughly comparable to early F-16 capabilities) as a plane, but with its block 3 sensor package and PL-12/15 missiles is competitive with much more expensive generation 4+ fighters. The fighter (eventually, drone or UCAV) becomes just a sensor and missile platform...

6. Slightly off-topic: I think the window for utility of stealth is closing fast as radar technology improves. Ubiquitous drones (which can, for example, image stealth opponents from above or behind) and sensor fusion mean that stealth missions over enemy territory against a peer opponent with good SAMs/air defense look very risky.

The two very obvious and critical technology gaps between PRC and the West were jet engines and semiconductors. It looks like both are on a clear trajectory to close in the next ~5y or so. My guess is that PRC military radar (EM hardware and hardware/software for post-processing), missile technology, and AI/ML are already on par with the US. Sensors, Missiles/Drones, and AI/ML will be the most important technologies for warfare in the coming decades. [1] [2]

With effectively no technology gap between US and PRC the military equation tilts in their favor over coming decades. Once a country has developed the full stack of military technology their costs are better estimated in PPP rather than exchange rate units: local costs such as compensation for engineers, factory workers, etc. predominate. Since the PRC economy is already significantly larger than the US economy in PPP terms, and growing faster, they can afford more (new, advanced) military hardware than we can in the coming decades. Add to this that their focus is concentrated in the Asia-Pacific region, while the US spreads its capability over the entire world, and it seems almost inevitable (barring economic collapse) that the military balance of power in the Asia region will shift in favor of PRC.

Tragedy of Empire / Mostly Sociopaths at the Top

 

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV) The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

Turn off the TV and close the browser tabs with mainstream media content produced by middlebrow conformists. Watch this video instead and read the links below. 

If you were surprised by events in Afghanistan over the past weeks, ask yourself why you were so out of touch with a reality that has been clear to careful observers for over a decade. Then ask yourself what other things you are dead wrong about...

Ray McGovern is a retired CIA analyst who served as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. Prior to that he served as an infantry/intelligence officer in the 1960s. 

McGovern wrote Welcome to Vietnam, Mr. President (addressed to President Obama, about Afghanistan) in 2009. 

See also: The Strategic Lessons Unlearned from Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan: Why the Afghan National Security Forces Will Not Hold, and the Implications for the U.S. Army in Afghanistan (Strategic Studies Institute and U.S. Army War College Press 2015) M. Chris Mason  

Related posts:

Tears before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam (Afghanistan darkness over Kabul edition) 

Resistance fighter negotiates with former torturer (Afghanistan edition) 

Decline of the American Empire: Afghan edition (stay tuned for more)

Afghanistan is lost (2012)

Podcast version of the interview at top:

   

More color here from Danny Sjursen, West Point graduate, former US Army Major. Sjursen is a combat veteran who served in Iraq and later as an Army captain in Afghanistan in command of 4-4 Cavalry B Troop in Kandahar Province from February 2011 to January 2012.

Added from comments:

At the strategic level it has been clear for 10+ years that our resources were better used elsewhere. It was obvious as well that we were not succeeding in nation building or creating a self-sustaining government there. I could go into more detail but you can get it from the links / interviews in the post. 

At the tactical level it should have been obvious that a quick collapse was very possible, just as in S. Vietnam (see earlier oral history post). Off-topic: same thing could happen in Taiwan in event of an actual invasion, but US strategists are clueless. 

Biden deserves credit for staying the course and not kicking the can down the road, as effectively a generation (slight exaggeration) of military and political leaders have done. 

The distortion of the truth by senior leaders in the military and in politics is clear for all to see. Just read what mid-level commanders (e.g., Sjursen) and intel analysts with real familiarity have to say. This was true for Vietnam and Iraq as well. Don't read media reports or listen to what careerist generals (or even worse, politicos) have to say. 

Execution by Biden team was terrible and I think they really believed the corrupt US-puppet Afghan govt could survive for months or even years (i.e., they are really stupid). Thus their exit planning was deeply flawed and events overtook them. However, even a well-planned exit strategy would likely not have avoided similar (but perhaps smaller in magnitude) tragic events like the ones we are seeing now. 

ISS attack on airport was 100% predictable. I don't think most Americans (even "leaders" and "experts") understood ISS and Taliban are mortal enemies, etc. etc. 

There is more of a late-stage imperial decline feel to Afghanistan and Iraq -- use of mercenaries, war profiteering, etc. -- than in Vietnam. All of these wars were tragic and unnecessary, but there really was a Cold War against an existential rival. The "war on terrorism" should always have been executed as a police / intel activity, not one involving hundreds of thousands of US soldiers. 

All of this is (in part) an unavoidable cost of having intellectually weak leaders struggling with difficult problems, while subject to low-information populist democracy (this applies to both parties and even to "highly educated" coastal elites; the latter are also low-information from my perspective). This situation is only going to get worse with time for the US. 

BTW, I could describe an exactly analogous situation in US higher ed (with which I am quite familiar): leaders are intellectually weak, either do not understand or understand and cynically ignore really serious problems, are mainly concerned with their own careers and not the real mission goals, are subject to volatility from external low-information interest groups, etc.

Tears before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam (Afghanistan darkness over Kabul edition)

Ecclesiastes 1:9 (KJV) The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

If you are following events in Afghanistan you know that the tragedy described below will soon be repeated.

The oral histories collected in this volume are heartbreaking and real, but today the events they describe are all but forgotten.

There was never any reckoning for the crimes and stupidity of the Vietnam war, and there won't be any in the wake of our 20 years in Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Our pathetic leaders and apathetic voters will find plenty of other things to distract them from a serious consideration of what happened. Strike up the band, and salute the flag.

Saigon, US Embassy evacuation, 29 April, 1975:

Kabul, US Embassy evacuation, 15 August, 2021:

From the introduction:

On March 10, 1975, the North Vietnamese Army launched what was to be its final major offensive against South Vietnam, assured that America had lost its will to fight or to finance the independence of South Vietnam. No longer fearful of American intervention, the North Vietnamese were certain that victory and the forceful unification of Vietnam was, after nearly thirty years of conflict, soon to be accomplished. Now the social and military fabric of South Vietnam began to unravel rapidly in many places at the same time. The South suddenly began to lose the war faster than the North could win it. The military forces of the South seemed to be imploding toward Saigon. Cities and provinces were abandoned to the North without a fight. ...Victory for the armies of North Vietnam became, in many strategically important places, a mere matter of marching. 

On March 29, the chaotic and desperate situation was recorded graphically by a CBS news crew that flew aboard a World Airways Boeing 727 to Danang, Vietnam's second largest city, to evacuate refugees. The plane was mobbed by soldiers who shot women and children and each other in a frenzied attempt to scramble aboard the aircraft and escape from the advancing North Vietnamese. As the plane took off with people clinging to the wheels, soldiers on the ground fired at it and a hand grenade blew up under one wing. The plane limped back into Saigon, and that evening a tape of the flight was shown on the CBS Evening News. American television viewers that Easter weekend saw the almost unbelievable horror of an army transformed into murderous rabble and a country thrashing about helplessly in the throes of a violent death. 

... As if to leave no doubt as to America's determination not to intervene again in Vietnam, on the evening of April 23, in a major address at Tulane University, President Gerald Ford announced that the war in Vietnam was "finished as far as America is concerned." The audience of students gave him a standing ovation. 

... On the morning of April 29, Operation Frequent Wind began. The exercise involved the evacuation of American and Vietnamese civilians and military personnel from Tan Son Nhut Airbase and from the American Embassy in Saigon to the Seventh Fleet in the South China Sea. The operation was completed early in the morning of April 30, a few hours before the surrender of the South. When the last Marines were airlifted from the roof of the American Embassy on the morning of April 30, they left behind more than four hundred Vietnamese waiting to be airlifted out of the compound. Throughout the previous day and night those same Vietnamese had been promised again and again that they would never be abandoned by the United States. They watched in silence as the last American helicopter left the roof of the Embassy. Even the final American promise to Vietnam had been broken.

Thomas Polgar was CIA Saigon station chief. This is his last transmission from the embassy before destroying the communications equipment:

“This will be final message from Saigon station,” Mr. Polgar wrote. “It has been a long and hard fight and we have lost. This experience, unique in the history of the United States, does not signal necessarily the demise of the United States as a world power. 

“The severity of the defeat and the circumstances of it, however, would seem to call for a reassessment... Those who fail to learn from history are forced to repeat it. Let us hope that we will not have another Vietnam experience and that we have learned our lesson.”

From his oral history:

... we got word to go, and the ambassador was finally told, ... "No, it's going to be from the roof after all." ...

I didn't have a great emotional attachment to Vietnam like some of my colleagues who really fell in love with the country. But in the end, seeing how it ended, I thought that we really did a miserable job for these people and they would have been much better off if we had never gone there in the first place. 

Our reception on the Blue Ridge [ship] showed the American military at its worst. They started out by searching everybody. I think the ambassador was the only one who was not searched. And in normal peacetime I far outranked the admiral commanding the ship. Nobody objected, though. We were tired. We were pretty placid. And we were a defeated army.

From the epigraph:

Maybe if enough people know what happened to Vietnam, then my memories will never be lost. Maybe then they will be like tears before the rain. So listen. This is very important. This is what I remember. This is what happened to me. These are my tears before the rain. --Duong Gang Son

More from Son's oral history:

As we left Saigon, there was an American soldier standing at the back door of the plane, and he was shooting at the ground. He just kept shooting as we pulled away. And people were still crying inside the plane. I watched the soldier shooting and I wondered what he was shooting at. I think he was just trying to show American power one last time. ... But I can only guess. I don't think he knew what was happening, either. We were all confused. 

Anyway, that was my last look at my country. I saw Vietnam as we flew away and at the back door of the plane was a soldier with a gun shooting at it.

 

Tears before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam by Larry Engelmann 

CBS camera-man Mike Marriott was on the last plane to escape from Danang before it fell in the spring of 1975. The scene was pure chaos: thousands of panic-stricken Vietnamese storming the airliner, soldiers shooting women and children to get aboard first, refugees being trampled to death. Marriott remembers standing at the door of the aft stairway, which was gaping open as the plane took off. "There were five Vietnamese below me on the steps. As the nose of the aircraft came up, because of the force and speed of the aircraft, the Vietnamese began to fall off. One guy managed to hang on for a while, but at about 600 feet he let go and just floated off--just like a skydiver.... What was going through my head was, I've got to survive this, and at the same time, I've got to capture this on film. This is the start of the fall of a country. This country is gone. This is history, right here and now." 

In Tears Before the Rain, a stunning oral history of the fall of South Vietnam, Larry Engelmann has gathered together the testimony of seventy eyewitnesses (both American and Vietnamese) who, like Mike Marriott, capture the feel of history "right here and now." We hear the voices of nurses, pilots, television and print media figures, the American Ambassador Graham Martin, the CIA station chief Thomas Polgar, Vietnamese generals, Amerasian children, even Vietcong and North Vietnamese soldiers. 

Through this extraordinary range of perspectives, we experience first-hand the final weeks before Saigon collapsed, from President Thieu's cataclysmic withdrawal from Pleiku and Kontum, (Colonel Le Khac Ly, put in command of the withdrawal, recalls receiving the order: "I opened my eyes large, large, large. I thought I wasn't hearing clearly") to the last-minute airlift of Americans from the embassy courtyard and roof ("I remember when the bird ascended," says Stuart Herrington, who left on one of the last helicopters, "It banked, and there was the Embassy, the parking lot, the street lights. And the silence"). 

Kabul Update: right on schedule...

Biden, July 8: "There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan....The likelihood there’s going to be the Taliban overrunning everything and owning the whole country is highly unlikely." pic.twitter.com/VO17x0wKi9

— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) August 15, 2021

See also Decline of the American Empire: Afghan edition (stay tuned for more).

Strategic Calculus of a Taiwan Invasion

It seems implausible to me that PRC would risk an invasion of Taiwan in the near term, absent a very strong provocation such as an outright declaration of independence. Mastro's recent article in Foreign Affairs: China's Taiwan Temptation made the case for potential near term conflict, and caused quite a stir among analysts.

My guess is that PRC already has the capability to take Taiwan, but not without significant risk. However, as long as they continue to believe that time is on their side an invasion seems unlikely.

Some comments:

1. PRC would have local air and naval superiority at the beginning of the conflict.

2. I am uncertain as to the details of lift/amphibious assault -- discussed by Goldstein on the panel. This is the main failure mode for PLA.

3. I am uncertain as to Taiwan's will to fight. A quick surrender is not excluded, in my opinion. It seems that most US planners do not understand this.

4. Most westerners fail to understand that this is a frozen civil war, with very strong and emotional commitments from the PRC side. The involvement of Japan in this conflict, given their history of aggression in Asia and previous colonial occupation of Taiwan, could easily get them nuked again (this time with much greater megatonnage). It is unclear whether the present leadership of Japan appreciates this sufficiently.

5. The interests of the average person in the US or Japan (or any Asian country) are best served by working very hard to avoid this conflict.

What is happening across the Taiwan Strait? 

In March, Admiral Philip Davidson, then commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific (INDOPACOM), said in a hearing before Congress that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could take place within six years. His successor, Admiral John Aquilino, agreed that such an attack could occur sooner “than most think.” More recently, however, the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, General Mark Milley, testified that he believes that China has little intention to take Taiwan by force, and that the capability to do so remains a goal rather than a reality. 

On the other hand, the Chinese military has increased pressure on Taiwan in the past year, flying into the island’s air defense identification zone on numerous occasions. During one day in June, China flew 28 military aircraft toward Taiwan, the largest number in a single day, perhaps in response to G7 and NATO statements on China and Taiwan. 

On July 19, 2021, the National Committee hosted a virtual program with Lyle Goldstein and Oriana Skylar Mastro to discuss China/Taiwan/U.S. military relations. NCUSCR President Stephen Orlins moderated and NCUSCR Director Admiral Dennis Blair offered commentary. 

Lyle J. Goldstein is a research professor in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the Naval War College (NWC) and an affiliate of its new Russia Maritime Studies Institute. Founding director of CMSI and author of dozens of articles on Chinese security policy, he focuses on Chinese undersea warfare. On the broader subject of U.S.-China relations, Dr. Goldstein published Meeting China Halfway in 2015. Over the last several years, he has focused on the North Korea crisis. 

Dr. Goldstein received his bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard, his master’s degree in strategic studies and international economics from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies, and his doctoral degree in politics from Princeton. He speaks Russian as well as Chinese. 

Oriana Skylar Mastro is a center fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University where her research focuses on Chinese military and security policy, Asia-Pacific security issues, war termination, and coercive diplomacy; a senior non-resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute; an inaugural Wilson Center China fellow; and a fellow in the National Committee’s Public Intellectuals Program. She has published widely, including in Foreign Affairs, International Security, International Studies Review, Journal of Strategic Studies, The Washington Quarterly, The National Interest, Survival, and Asian Security. Her 2019 book, The Costs of Conversation: Obstacles to Peace Talks in Wartime, won the 2020 American Political Science Association International Security Section Best Book by an Untenured Faculty Member. 

Dr. Mastro holds a B.A. in East Asian studies from Stanford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. in politics from Princeton University.

Added from comments:

Russia is discussed by the panelists. My guess is that if PRC launched a surprise invasion of TW they would just sit it out. The panelists go so far as to speculate that Russia might collaborate with PRC in the planning of an invasion, and could even provide some geopolitical distraction in support of it. I'm not sure I believe that -- the risk of losing surprise due to information leakage from the Russian side would be a big negative against coordination. 

There would be huge repercussions from nuking Japan (PRC actually has a no first use policy), but the emotional effect of, e.g., seeing a large PLAN ship sunk by a Japanese missile would be very strong. Remember, to PRC it looks like a (very much still disliked) foreign power intervening in an internal Chinese dispute. Sort of like Britain helping the confederacy during our civil war, but much worse. At the beginning of a TW invasion PRC might issue some kind of very strong ultimatum of non-interference to all parties (US, Japan, etc.) and then feel justified if the ultimatum is not obeyed. 

Please don't confuse descriptive analysis with normative analysis. It's important to understand how this looks from the other side, in order to predict their behavior. 

PRC faced down the US on the Korean peninsula when they had NO nuclear deterrent. (The historical record is clear that the US seriously considered using nukes against PRC over Korea and over TW in the past.) This would be a fight over (in their minds) actual Chinese territory, not Korea, and today they have a very credible MAD deterrent.

Re: item #3 above, I would like to see a detailed analysis of Taiwan's senior military leadership and their political leanings. I suspect that among them are many descendants of KMT military officers (like my father and grandfather), who largely still support the KMT political party and not the pro-independence DPP. These officers might lead a military coup in the event of a PRC invasion -- especially if it is a reaction to a DPP proclamation of independence, or other US-backed provocation.

 

This interview with Professor Alexander Huang of Tamkang University (Taiwan) Graduate Institute of International Affairs and Strategic Studies addresses the possibility of direct participation by the US and Japan in defense of Taiwan. In my opinion, Huang is realistic and well-calibrated.  

This is a clear explanation of the status quo, with opinion poll results:

LEO SAR, hypersonics, and the death of the naval surface ship

 

Duh... Let's spend ~$10B each for new aircraft carriers that can be easily monitored from space and attacked using hypersonic missiles. 

Sure, in a real war with a peer competitor we'll have to hide them far from the conflict zone. But they're great for intimidating small countries...

More on aircraft carriers.

The technology described in the videos is LEO SAR = Low Earth Orbit Synthetic Aperture Radar. For some people it takes vivid imagery to convey rather basic ideas.

In an earlier post we described how sea blockade (e.g., against Japan or Taiwan) can be implemented using satellite imaging and missiles, drones, AI/ML. Blue water naval dominance is not required. PLAN/PLARF can track every container ship and oil tanker as they approach Kaohsiung or Nagoya. All are in missile range -- sitting ducks. Naval convoys will be just as vulnerable. 

Sink one tanker or cargo ship, or just issue a strong warning, and no shipping company in the world will be stupid enough to try to run the blockade. With imaging accuracy of ~1m, missile accuracy will be similar to that of precision guided munitions using GPS.

 

Excerpt below from China’s Constellation of Yaogan Satellites and the Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile – An Update, International Strategic and Security Studies Programme (ISSSP), National Institute of Advanced Studies (NIAS -- India), December 2013. With present technology it is easy to launch LEO (Low Earth Orbit) micro-satellites on short notice to track ships, but PRC has had a sophisticated system in place for almost a decade.

Authors: Professor S. Chandrashekar and Professor Soma Perumal 

We can state with confidence that the Yaogan satellite constellation and its associated ASBM system provide visible proof of Chinese intentions and capabilities to keep ACG strike groups well away from the Chinese mainland. 

Though the immediate purpose of the system is to deter the entry of a hostile aircraft carrier fleet into waters that directly threatens its security interests especially during a possible conflict over Taiwan, the same approach can be adopted to deter entry into other areas of strategic interest. 

Viewed from this perspective the Chinese do seem to have in place an operational capability for denying or deterring access into areas which it sees as crucial for preserving its sovereignty and security.

ICEYE, a Finnish micro-satellite company, wants to use its constellation to monitor the entire planet -- Every Square Meter, Every Hour. This entire network would cost well under a billion USD, and it uses off-the-shelf technology. 

It seems plausible to me that PLARF would be able to put up additional microsats of this type even during a high intensity conflict, e.g., using mobile launchers like for the DF21/26/41. A few ~10 minute contacts per day from a small LEO SAR constellation (i.e., just a few satellites) provides enough targeting data to annihilate a surface fleet in the western Pacific.

Added from comments:

... you can make some good guesses based on physics and the technologies involved. 

1. Very hard to hit a hypersonic missile that is maneuvering on its way in. It's faster than the interceptor missiles and they can't anticipate its trajectory if it, e.g., selects a random maneuver pattern. 

2. I don't think there are good countermeasures for hiding the carrier from LEO SAR. I don't even think there are good countermeasures against final targeting seekers (IR/radar) on the ASBM (or a hypersonic cruise missile) but this depends on details. 

3. If the satellite has the target acquired during the final approach it can transmit the coordinates to the missile in flight and the missile does not have to depend on the seeker. On the Chinese side it is claimed that the ASBM can receive both satellite and OTH radar targeting info while in flight. This seems plausible technologically, and similar capability is already present in PLAAF AAM (i.e., mid-flight targeting data link from jet which launched the AAM). 

4. The radar cross section of a large ship is orders of magnitude larger than, e.g., a jet fighter. The payload of a DF21/26/17 is much larger than an AAM so I would guess the seeker could be much more powerful than the IR/AESA seeker in, e.g., PL-15 or similar. (Note PL-15 and PL-XX/21 have very long (BVR) engagement ranges, like 150km or even 400km and this is against aircraft targets, not massive ships.) The IR/radar seeker in an ASBM could be comparable to those in a jet fighter. 

I seriously doubt you can hide a big ship from a hypersonic missile seeker that is much larger and more powerful than anything on an AAM, possibly as powerful as the sensors on a jet fighter. 

On launch the missile will have a good fix on the target location from the satellite data. In the ~10m time of flight the uncertainty in the location of, e.g., a carrier is ~10km. So the seeker needs to find the target in a region of roughly that size, assuming no in-flight update of target location. 

https://www.iiss.org/public... 

https://sameerjoshi73.mediu... 

Finally, keep in mind that sensor (both the missile seeker and on the satellite) and AI/ML capability are improving rapidly, so the trend is definitely against the carrier.

USN guy: We'll just hide the carrier from the satellite and missile seekers using, you know, countermeasures!  [Aside: don't cut my carrier budget!]

USAF guy: Uh, the much smaller AESA/IR seeker on their AAM can easily detect an aircraft from much longer ranges. How will you hide a huge ship?

USN guy: We'll just shoot down the maneuvering hypersonic missile using, you know, methods. [Aside: don't cut my carrier budget!]

Missile defense guy: Can you explain to us how to do that? If the incoming missile maneuvers we have to adapt the interceptor trajectory (in real time) to where we project the missile to be after some delay. But we can't know its trajectory ahead of time, unlike for a ballistic (non-maneuvering) warhead.

Hot and Cold Wars in the 21st Century

Both panels below are, in my opinion, realistic and focused on the key issues. Good discussion of competition in military technology is, in my experience, difficult to find for various reasons. On the US side there are strong MIC vested interests (e.g., in preserving the carrier-centric Navy) that lead to self-censorship of difficult realities. Also, very few analysts have actual technical and military expertise -- they are more likely to be "policy entrepreneurs" without deep knowledge.

See also The East Is Red, The Giant Rises and Ditchley Foundation meeting: World Order today.

See T.X. Hammes' report:  An Affordable Defense of Asia and this podcast interview with Marine Radio.

 

Robert Atkinson was also a guest on Manifold:

Bonus: blockchain based digital RMB?

 

PRC ASBM Test in South China Sea

 

This is an interesting discussion of PRC Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM), including the DF21, DF26, and DF17 systems. You can set the captions to English if necessary. 

In response to US activity in the South China Sea and elsewhere, PRC recently conducted a test of DF21 and DF26 in the open ocean. Reportedly, a US "Cobra Ball" RC135S missile intelligence aircraft was present to monitor the activity. 

The YouTube video discusses PRC ASBM capabilities, including 

1. Infrared and radar final targeting

2. Maneuver capability

3. Capability of the missile to receive (ground based) over-the-horizon radar and satellite information while in flight. 

These are the frequent subject of speculation in Western sources: "There is a long kill chain and we are not sure whether it is operational..." etc.

Assuming that PRC ASBM have these capabilities, which seems quite plausible to me, this test was presumably a demonstration for the US, to make sure that our military appreciates the PLARF ability to hit a moving target (e.g., US aircraft carrier) at sea. Once this mutual understanding is in place, FONOPs in the South China Sea become mere theatrics for the dim witted.

See related posts

The Future of the U.S. Aircraft Carrier: Fearsome Warship or Expensive Target? (Heritage panel; video) 

On the military balance of power in the Western Pacific (South China Sea, ASBM, etc.)

Machine intelligence threatens overpriced aircraft carriers (first principles analysis of final targeting problem)

A2AD fait accompli? (Yaogan satellite surveillance of the western Pacific)

Sebastian Junger: Meaning from War and Technological Isolation in America - Manifold #29

This conversation occurred just after President Trump withdrew US forces from Northern Syria. Steve, Corey and Sebastian debate ISIS and the Kurds. Sebastian argues that men who went to war after 9/11 wanted to experience communal masculinity, as their fathers and grandfathers had in Vietnam and WWII, a tradition dating back millennia. When they came home, they faced the isolation of affluent contemporary American society, leading to high rates of addiction, depression, and suicide. War veterans in less developed countries may be psychologically better off, supported by a more traditional social fabric.

Transcript

Sebastian Junger

Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging (Book)

War (Book)

Hell on Earth (Trailer)

Restrepo (Trailer)


man·i·fold /ˈmanəˌfōld/ many and various.

In mathematics, a manifold is a topological space that locally resembles Euclidean space near each point.

Steve Hsu and Corey Washington have been friends for almost 30 years, and between them hold PhDs in Neuroscience, Philosophy, and Theoretical Physics. Join them for wide ranging and unfiltered conversations with leading writers, scientists, technologists, academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and more.

Steve Hsu is VP for Research and Professor of Theoretical Physics at Michigan State University. He is also a researcher in computational genomics and founder of several Silicon Valley startups, ranging from information security to biotech. Educated at Caltech and Berkeley, he was a Harvard Junior Fellow and held faculty positions at Yale and the University of Oregon before joining MSU.

Corey Washington is Director of Analytics in the Office of Research and Innovation at Michigan State University. He was educated at Amherst College and MIT before receiving a PhD in Philosophy from Stanford and a PhD in a Neuroscience from Columbia. He held faculty positions at the University Washington and the University of Maryland. Prior to MSU, Corey worked as a biotech consultant and is founder of a medical diagnostics startup.

Combat Drones

These are inexpensive, slow-moving drones -- but potentially quite effective. The Turkish drone should have "lock in" capability on stationary targets, so that the radio link to the operator is unnecessary near the end of the flight (i.e., the drone is invulnerable to jamming near the target).

A larger drone such as an ASBM (Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile) or UAV would not need the operator to perform the targeting  -- it could have enough AI/ML to recognize an aircraft carrier from ~10km distance (e.g., using some combination of visual, IR, radar imaging). Given a satellite fix on the carrier location, just launch to that coordinate and let the AI/ML do final targeting.

See also

Death from the Sky: Drone Assassination

Assassination by Drone

Strategic Implications of Drone/Missile Strikes on Saudi Arabia

Strategic Implications of Drone/Missile Strikes on Saudi Arabia

The Iranian / Houthi drone shown above might look like a toy, but it is likely capable of flying hundreds of miles, perhaps using GPS guidance and optical imaging for final targeting. Compare to the hobbyist radio controlled jet aircraft in the video at bottom. These weapons are inexpensive and easy to engineer, yet potentially very effective.

In Machine Intelligence Threatens Overpriced Aircraft Carriers (2017) I noted that

Within ~10y (i.e., well within projected service life of US carriers) I expect missile systems of the type currently only possessed by Russia and PRC to be available to lesser powers. I expect that a road-mobile ASBM weapon with good sensor/ML capability, range ~1500km, will be available for ~$10M. Given a rough (~10km accuracy) fix on a carrier, this missile will be able to arrive in that area and then use ML/sensors for final targeting. There is no easy defense against such weapons. Cruise missiles which pose a similar threat will also be exported. This will force the US to be much more conservative in the use of its carriers, not just against Russia and PRC, but against smaller countries as well.

... Basic missile technology is old, well-understood, and already inexpensive (compared, e.g., to the cost of fighter jets). ML/sensor capability is evolving rapidly and will be enormously better in 10y. ... Despite BS claims over the years (and over $100B spent by the US), anti-missile technology is not effective...

One only has to localize the carrier to within few x 10km for initial launch, letting the smart final targeting do the rest. The initial targeting location can be obtained through many methods, including aircraft/drone probes, targeting overflight by another kind of missile, LEO micro-satellites, or even (surreptitious) cooperation from Russia/PRC (or a commercial vendor!) via their satellite network.

Anthony Cordesman writes for the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS):

The Strategic Implications of the Strikes on Saudi Arabia:

.. UCAV/RPV (drone) and cruise missile attacks offer precision strike options with high levels of accuracy from small, easily dispersible systems that are very hard to locate and target... Iranian systems do have both GPS and imagery capability to home in even more precisely on a target. UCAV/RPVs and cruise missiles are also small air defense targets compared to fighters, can fly evasively, and have flight profiles that are hard to detect. Saudi fighter and SAM intercept capabilities to cover wide areas with any effectiveness are uncertain, and ballistic missile defenses can only cope with a different threat.

This is why the success of the existing strikes will – at a minimum — act as a major incentive to Iran, the Hezbollah, and other such powers to develop such forces as well as precision guided ballistic missiles and cruise missiles.

... Looking further into the future, the strikes on Saudi Arabia provide a clear strategic warning that the US era of air supremacy in the Gulf, and the near U.S. monopoly on precision strike capability, is rapidly fading. UCAV/RPVs, cruise missiles, and precision strike ballistic missiles are all entering Iranian inventory and have begun to spread to the Houthi and Hezbollah. Nations like North Korea are following, and other areas of military confrontation like India and Pakistan will follow. All of these systems can be used at low levels of conflict intensity and in “gray area” wars...

We are entering an era in which an inexpensive, easy to obtain device can fly rapidly (~500mph if jet powered), evasively, and automatically to a designated GPS coordinate. It can even use visual or radar information to adjust final targeting. Terrorists could easily attack any public event: i.e., large stadium (sporting event or concert), public speech by politician, etc. They could also attack key infrastructure such as a power station or oil pipeline/refinery. It's the era of the mobile smart IED...

See also Assassination by Drone.

The Vietnam War, Ken Burns and Lynn Novick

Ken Burns' Vietnam documentary is incredibly good. Possibly the best documentary I've ever seen. It's heartbreaking tragedy, with perspectives from all sides of the conflict: Americans and North and South Vietnamese, soldiers from both sides, war protestors, war planners, families of sons and daughters who died in the war.

I was a child when the war was winding down, so the America of the documentary is very familiar to me.

Here's the PBS web page from which you can stream all 18 hours. I have been watching the version that contains unedited explicit language and content (not broadcasted).

Machine intelligence threatens overpriced aircraft carriers

The excerpt below is from a recent comment thread, arguing that the US Navy should de-emphasize carrier groups in favor of subs and smaller surface ships. Technological trends such as rapid advancement in machine learning (ML) and sensors will render carriers increasingly vulnerable to missile attack in the coming decades.

1. US carriers are very vulnerable to *conventional* Russian and PRC missile (cruise, ASBM) weapons.

2. Within ~10y (i.e., well within projected service life of US carriers) I expect missile systems of the type currently only possessed by Russia and PRC to be available to lesser powers. I expect that a road-mobile ASBM weapon with good sensor/ML capability, range ~1500km, will be available for ~$10M. Given a rough (~10km accuracy) fix on a carrier, this missile will be able to arrive in that area and then use ML/sensors for final targeting. There is no easy defense against such weapons. Cruise missiles which pose a similar threat will also be exported. This will force the US to be much more conservative in the use of its carriers, not just against Russia and PRC, but against smaller countries as well.

Given 1. and 2. my recommendation is to decrease the number of US carriers and divert the funds into smaller missile ships, subs, drones, etc. Technological trends simply do not favor carriers as a weapon platform.

Basic missile technology is old, well-understood, and already inexpensive (compared, e.g., to the cost of fighter jets). ML/sensor capability is evolving rapidly and will be enormously better in 10y. Imagine a Mach 5 AI kamikaze easily able to locate a carrier from 10km distance (on a clear day there are no countermeasures against visual targeting using the equivalent of a cheap iPhone camera -- i.e., robot pilot looks down at the ocean to find carrier), and capable of maneuver. Despite BS claims over the years (and over $100B spent by the US), anti-missile technology is not effective, particularly against fast-moving ballistic missiles.

One only has to localize the carrier to within few x 10km for initial launch, letting the smart final targeting do the rest. The initial targeting location can be obtained through many methods, including aircraft/drone probes, targeting overflight by another kind of missile, LEO micro-satellites, or even (surreptitious) cooperation from Russia/PRC (or a commercial vendor!) via their satellite network.

Some relevant links, supplied by a reader. 1. National Air and Space Intelligence Center report on ballistic and cruise missile threats (note the large number of countries that can utilize basic missile technology; all they need is an ML/sensor upgrade...), and 2. Stop the Navy's carrier plan by Capt. Jerry Hendrix (ret.), director of the Defense Strategies and Assessments Program at the Center for a New American Security:

... the Navy plans to modernize its carrier program by launching a new wave of even larger and more expensive ships, starting with the USS Gerald Ford, which cost $15 billion to build — by far the most expensive vessel in naval history. This is a mistake: Because of changes in warfare and technology, in any future military entanglement with a foe like China, current carriers and their air wings will be almost useless and the next generation may fare even worse.

... most weapons platforms are effective for only a limited time, an interval that gets shorter as history progresses. But until the past few years, the carrier had defied the odds, continuing to demonstrate America’s military might around the world without any challenge from our enemies. That period of grace may have ended as China and Russia are introducing new weapons — called “carrier killer” missiles — that cost $10 million to $20 million each and can target the U.S.’s multibillion-dollar carriers up to 900 miles from shore.

... The average cost of each of the 10 Nimitz class carriers was around $5 billion. When the cost of new electrical systems is factored in, the USS Ford cost three times as much and took five years to build. With the deficit projected to rise considerably over the next decade, defense spending is unlikely to receive a significant bump. Funding these carriers will crowd out spending on other military priorities, like the replacement of the Ohio class ballistic missile submarine, perhaps the most survivable and important leg of our strategic deterrent triad. There simply isn’t room to fund an aircraft carrier that costs the equivalent of the entire Navy shipbuilding budget.

... The Navy’s decision on the carriers today will affect U.S. naval power for decades. These carriers are expected to be combat effective in 2065 — over 150 years since the idea of an aircraft carrier was first conceived. ...

See also Defense Science Board report on Autonomous Systems.

On the military balance of power in the Western Pacific

Some observations concerning the military balance of power in Asia. Even "experts" I have spoken to over the years seem to be confused about basic realities that are fundamental to strategic considerations.

1. Modern missile and targeting technology make the survivability of surface ships (especially carriers) questionable. Satellites can easily image surface ships and missiles can hit them from over a thousand miles away. Submarines are a much better investment and carriers may be a terrible waste of money, analogous to battleships in the WWII era. (Generals and Admirals typically prepare to fight the previous war, despite the advance of technology, often with disastrous consequences.)

2. US forward bases and surface deployments are hostages to advanced missile capability and would not survive the first days of a serious conventional conflict. This has been widely discussed, at least in some planning circles, since the 1990s. See second figure below and link.

3. PRC could easily block oil shipments to Taiwan or even Japan using Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) or Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (ASCM). This is a much preferable strategy to an amphibious attack on Taiwan in response to, e.g., a declaration of independence. A simple threat against oil tankers, or perhaps the demonstration sinking of a single tanker, would be enough to cut off supplies. A response to this threat would require attacking mobile DF21D missile launchers on the Chinese mainland. This would be highly escalatory, leading possibly to nuclear response.

4. The strategic importance of the South China Sea and artificial islands constructed there is primarily to the ability of the US to cut off the flow of oil to PRC. The islands may enable PRC to gain dominance in the region and make US submarine operations much more difficult. US reaction to these assets is not driven by "international law" or fishing or oil rights, or even the desire to keep shipping lanes open. What is at stake is the US capability to cut off oil flow, a non-nuclear but highly threatening card it has (until now?) had at its disposal to play against China.

The map below shows the consequences of full deployments of SAM, ASCM, and ASBM weaponry on the artificial islands. Consequences extend to the Malacca Strait (through which 80% of China's oil passes) and US basing in Singapore. Both linked articles are worth reading.

CHINA’S ARTIFICIAL ISLANDS ARE BIGGER (AND A BIGGER DEAL) THAN YOU THINK

Beijing's Go Big or Go Home Moment in the South China Sea

HAS CHINA BEEN PRACTICING PREEMPTIVE MISSILE STRIKES AGAINST U.S. BASES? (Lots of satellite photos at this link, revealing extensive ballistic missile tests against realistic targets.)

Terminal targeting of a moving aircraft carrier by an ASBM like the DF21D

Simple estimates: 10 min flight time means ~10km uncertainty in final position of a carrier (assume speed of 20-30 mph) initially located by satellite. Missile course correction at distance ~10km from target allows ~10s (assuming Mach 5-10 velocity) of maneuver, and requires only a modest angular correction. At this distance a 100m sized target has angular size ~0.01 so should be readily detectable from an optical image. (Carriers are visible to the naked eye from space!) Final targeting at distance ~km can use a combination of optical / IR / radar  that makes countermeasures difficult.

So hitting a moving aircraft carrier does not seem especially challenging with modern technology. The Chinese can easily test their terminal targeting technology by trying to hit, say, a very large moving truck at their ballistic missile impact range, shown above.

I do not see any effective countermeasures, and despite inflated claims concerning anti-missile defense capabilities, it is extremely difficult to stop an incoming ballistic missile with maneuver capability.


More analysis and links to strategic reports from RAND and elsewhere in this earlier post The Pivot and American Statecraft in Asia.

... These questions of military/technological capability stand prior to the prattle of diplomats, policy analysts, or political scientists. Perhaps just as crucial is whether top US and Chinese leadership share the same beliefs on these issues.

... It's hard to war game a US-China pacific conflict, even a conventional one. How long before the US surface fleet is destroyed by ASBM/ASCM? How long until forward bases are? How long until US has to strike at targets on the mainland? How long do satellites survive? How long before the conflict goes nuclear? I wonder whether anyone knows the answers to these questions with high confidence -- even very basic ones, like how well asymmetric threats like ASBM/ASCM will perform under realistic conditions. These systems have never been tested in battle.

The stakes are so high that China can just continue to establish "facts on the ground" (like building new island bases), with some confidence that the US will hesitate to escalate. If, for example, both sides secretly believe (at the highest levels; seems that Xi is behaving as if he might) that ASBM/ASCM are very effective, then sailing a carrier group through the South China Sea becomes an act of symbolism with meaning only to those that are not in the know.