By Kris Osborn, President, Warrior
(Washington, D.C.) For many years, the Pentagon has talked about China’s well-entrenched anti-access/area-denial “bubble” throughout key parts of the Pacific designed to prevent US and allied forces from operating within striking range of mainland China.
This “bubble” or A2/AD apparatus involves a layered mix of multi-domain offensive and defensive weaponry, supported by deliberate and well-refined tactics. China’s famous “carrier killer” missiles such as the DF-26 are intended to force carriers to operate beyond striking range, its large arsenal of ballistic missiles can form a protective “ring” of offensive firepower beyond the Chinese coastline and the PRC might seek to leverage what it sees as a short term window of advantage in the realm of hypersonics to deny allied access to attack areas.
China has on several occasions test-fired a ship-launched hypersonic weapon called the YJ-21 and armed its H-6K bomber with an air-launched variant of the YJ-21 called the KD-21. These hypersonic weapons operate with a reported range of more than 1,500 miles and could present a substantial A2/AD threat for allied forces hoping to move within striking range of China.
China also of course has the world’s largest Navy and a growing fleet of technologically advanced warships, drones and surface launched weapons, along with both 5th-generation J-20 stealth fighter jets and an emerging H-20 stealth bomber.
Penetrating A2/AD
These variables have not only inspired numerous high-priority discussions in the Pentagon but also informed US and allied weapons development, training and concepts of operation. Clearly emerging platforms such as the new B-21 stealth bomber and F-47 6th-generation aircraft are intended to challenge if not “penetrate” China’s A2/AD bubble using breakthrough generations of stealth, speed and sensing.
The US Navy is also working on key tactical approaches aimed at countering China’s A2/AD to include a greater use of carrier-launched unmanned systems, multi-domain networking, carrier-launched refueling drones to extend air attack range and a new generation of kinetic and non-kinetic layered ship defenses. The idea is to sustain an ability to attack China from the ocean with long-range fires and carrier-launched aircraft with great effectiveness despite the PRC’s A2/AD effort. For example, a B-21 could use altitude and new generations of stealth to attack mainland China without the PRC knowing anything is even there, a 6th-gen F-47 could potentially attack China’s anti-ship and hypersonic missile launchers and air defenses, and Navy ship-launched 6th-Gen F/A-XX and F-35B and C stealth planes could blanket the area with a large air attack envelope designed to overwhelm and penetrate China’s A2/AD.
Perhaps the largest area of focus regarding the Pentagon’s joint effort to counter China’s A2/AD pertains to air, sea and land-fired long-range precision fires, stealthy air attack and its Multi-Domain Task Force training exercises. Joint networking, it seems, would be the tactical backbone necessary to enable coordinated high-speed surface, undersea, air and ground attack. A salvo of coordinated, multi-domain fires, if supported by sufficient AI-enabled networking, could potentially hit PLA Navy, Land and Air weapons, launchers and force concentrations with sufficient range and precision to exact an effect.
Army Precision Fires
A growing and often overlooked element of this equation pertains to rapid ground-to-sea and air fires being deployed by US Army Pacific Command. Long-range, precision-guided mobile land fires are increasingly demonstrating the ability to track and destroy enemy air, surface and land targets with added speed and multi-domain network-enabled sensing.
Army Pacific Commander Gen. Ronald Clark is working intensely on ensuring new innovative and tactically intelligent methods of supporting air and maritime combat components of any possible US-allied effort to penetrate PLA A2/AD
“Our adversary has built an anti-access, area denial bubble, if you will, that precludes the air and maritime forces from having air superiority, surface ships from having naval superiority,
…..in those instances where air and maritime superiority are contested, we provide strategic land power through our ability to disperse long range precision fires and assist with the access of air and maritime operations. We’re literally able to kill ships from land in the maritime environment. We’re able to defeat air threats in a maritime environment from locations that are dispersed, camouflaged and very difficult to target,” Clark said.
There are many recent Pentagon and US Army developments which greatly support these initiatives such as the services large recent buy of its new, land-fired, long-range Precision Strike Missile and the forward-deployment of its mobile Typhon mid-range missile capability (MRC) able to fire Tomahawk and SM-6 missiles at maritime, air and land targets.
Kris Osborn is the President of Warrior Maven – Center for Military Modernization. Osborn previously served at the Pentagon as a highly qualified expert in the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Army—Acquisition, Logistics & Technology. Osborn has also worked as an anchor and on-air military specialist at national TV networks. He has appeared as a guest military expert on Fox News, MSNBC, The Military Channel, and The History Channel. He also has a Masters Degree in Comparative Literature from Columbia University
