Carriers in the Crosshairs
China/Taiwan expert Mark Stokes, a retired Air Force officer (and my former supervisor at DOD ) has once again broken new ground in his new study of the People’s Liberation Army’s nascent conventional precision strike capability.
In many ways this study is a follow-on to the path-breaking work Stokes did in 1999 on China’s aerospace industries. In the 1999 study, Stokes was one of the few China watchers to recognize a shift in PLA doctrine. At the time, the conventional wisdom among China analysts was that the PLA was a “paper tiger,” in Mao’s words–an attack on Taiwan by the PLA would be a “million man swim;” China’s military was “hollow,” and not worth worrying about.
In analyzing the great leaps that the PLA aerospace industry had made, Stokes identified the priority that the CCP had given to the use of ballistic missiles as a coercive instrument of statecraft. Stokes’s study changed the nature of the Washington debate about the PLA. Maybe the PLA wasn’t thinking about a traditional D-Day style invasion of Taiwan, after all. Instead, Stokes argued, PLA leaders had internalized lessons from the US/NATO war in Kosovo, and believed that they could conduct a coercive air and missile campaign against Taiwan without landing any troops on the island.
In his new study, done for the Project 2049 Institute (where he is executive director), Stokes focuses on both China’s anti-ship ballistic missile program and its plans for developing a long-range global precision strike capability.
The use of ballistic missiles (ASBMs) against ships at sea is itself a doctrinal innovation. It appears that the PLA has solved the problem of how to hit a mobile maritime target with land-based missiles–missiles whose range may extend out as far as 1,500-2000km. (This new capability will probably be adapted for missiles carried on ships and aircraft, as well.) Moreover, the PLA concept of operations includes the creation of an integrated maritime ISR (intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) capability. The PLA has focused its research and development efforts on building an integrated architecture of high-altitude airships, space-based remote sensing capabilities, over-the-horizon radar, and unmanned aerial vehicles. Over time, according to the Stokes report, the PLA would like to build longer-range conventional precision-guided ballistic missiles that can hit bases on Guam, in Australia, in Hawaii, and in the continental United States.
Three issues raised by the report merit special attention. First, the development of the ASBM capability–and the possibility that this is just the first phase of a nascent conventional precision-guided munitions (PGM) strike capability–may well change the strategic balance in Asia. The United States has had more or less assured access to East Asia to defend its allies and project military power since the end of the Cold War. China’s ballistic missile program had already put at risk land bases around the PRC’s immediate periphery. Now, China potentially puts at risk U.S. carrier battle groups, the traditional American means of projecting power. Over time, the PLA may well be able to strike bases in Hawaii and Guam with precision and alacrity.
Second, China has shown itself quite capable of technological breakthroughs. Developing PGMs required the PLA to integrate on-board guidance and target acquisition technologies. It seems that China’s access to the West’s commercial microelectronics market has paid off. ASBMs need very small and high-speed integrated circuits that would have very strong computational abilities. China’s sometimes licit, many times illicit, use of controlled, dual-use, high-end technology has undoubtedly helped the PLA become a far more potent military and a greater threat to America’s military preeminence in the region.
Third, China’s defense industry, according to the report, is becoming increasingly dynamic and innovative. It is distributing contracts in a competitive bidding process, and breaking down traditional, Chinese-style, bureaucratic stovepipes. One example of the latter is the creation of the General Armaments Department Precision Guidance Expert Group. This group brought together industry, academia, and the PLA to solve technical problems associated with developing PGMs. In addition, the PLA appears to be reaping benefits from globalized defense and high-tech industries.
I did a quick internet search on the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC)–the company leading the PGM effort–and found it is working with two American companies: Trimble, a producer of advanced positioning technologies (e.g. GPS technology), and Kinesix, a producer of software for command and control. These are technologies that could very well be used for the kind of ISR capability that serves as the operational backbone for a PGM program. Yet, aren’t U.S. companies banned from selling these technologies to China? If not, why? Trimble claims that its business arrangement with CASIC only has applications in the commercial market. But how can we be sure that’s the case, given the restructuring of China’s defense industry to better utilize China’s civilian sector? And Kinesix in particular is noted to have supplied DoD with software for the Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS), our next generation ballistic missile early warning satellite system. Yet it also supplies software to the organization in China (the Second Academy) responsible for developing interceptors to shoot down our SBIRS satellites. I give Trimble and Kinesix the benefit of the doubt that they believed their technologies would be used for civilian purposes. But these examples highlight the need for a new look at our export policy given the changing relationship between China’s defense and civilian high-tech sectors.
Like the anti-satellite weapon test of 2007, most Americans will not pay attention to the new Chinese ASBM capability until the PLA conducts a major demonstration– which Stokes argues could happen soon. The diplomatic shockwaves of such a test will no doubt be felt by our increasingly nervous allies in Asia. While the United States may say that it can continue to keep the peace in Asia, our friends who live in the neighborhood certainly have their doubts.
Daniel Blumenthal is a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.
