The Chinese Air Force: Evolving Concepts, Roles, and Capabilities

History

HALLION, Richard P.

University, National Defense

Cliff, Roger

Saunders, Phillip C.

Strategic Studies, Institute for National

Asia

lulu.com

This volume represents an early attempt at assessing the Long War, now in its 14th year. Forged in the fires of the 9/11 attacks, the war includes campaigns against al Qaeda, major conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and operations in the Horn of Africa, the Republic of the Philippines, and globally, in the air and on the sea. The authors herein treat only the campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the largest U.S. efforts. It is intended for future senior officers, their advisors, and other national security decisionmakers. By derivation, it is also a book for students in joint professional military education courses, which will qualify them to work in the field of strategy. While the book tends to focus on strategic decisions and developments of land wars among the people, it acknowledges that the status of the United States as a great power and the strength of its ground forces depend in large measure on the dominance of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force in their respective domains.

Lessons Encountered: Learning From The Long War

Collins, Joseph J.

Hooker, Richard D.

Reference

The probability of conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan has diminished in recent years.  The chief potential flashpoint for war, a Taiwanese declaration of independence, has become less likely as Taiwan’s independence movement has waned and economic ties with the mainland have strengthened.  Should the independence movement in Taiwan regain political momentum, however, the potential for U.S. military intervention in the Taiwan Strait would increase.  Further, the perception of U.S. vulnerability in the region could invite assertiveness.  So, despite the fact that armed conflict between the United States and China is in no one’s interest, China’s burgeoning power requires that critical factor sin U.S. plans for the defense of Taiwan be examined.  This collection of essays offers just such an examination.  It looks at China’s growing strength, the strategies underlying U.S. plans for military intervention in the Strait, U.S. vulnerabilities, and options for how these vulnerabilities might be overcome through the development of new technologies and strategies.  The U.S. defense commitment to Taiwan, thought tacit and conditional, has been a long-standing strategic constant.  America’s ability to prevent the invasion or coercion of Taiwan, however, is more variable.  As the Defense Department’s most recent report to Congress on Chinese military power indicates, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) has embarked on a concerted effort to modernize, with the goal of being able to conduct (and counter) the sort of rapid, precise, information-intensive operations of which the U.S. military is now capable.  Of particular concern in a Taiwan scenario is China’s growing ability to track, target, and destroy U.S. carrier strike groups (CSGs), which are the fulcrum of American military strategy in the region.  The Defense Department reports that the PLA is focused on targeting surface ships at long ranges, perhaps as far as the “second island chain,” east of Japan and as far south as Guam.  China is amassing the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (SR) and strike assets needed to conduct long-range precision attacks.  These growing capabilities are coupled with PLA doctrine that emphasizes preemption and surprise attack; the potential significance of this turn of thought was underscored by China’s January 2007 demonstration of antisatellite weapon.  China’s growing capabilities demand that the United States carefully review the evolving military balance in the western Pacific and consider the implications for further strategy.  Each essay addresses a key part of the Taiwan intervention puzzle.  The compilation moves from an overview of U.S. strength and China’s growing military abilities (Gompert); to two pieces on China’s present and future military technology (Cheung) and personnel (Lo) resources; to an examination of a particular threat to U.S. regional power, China’s improving ISR capabilities (Mulvenon); to a review of U.S. maritime (McDevitt) and aerial (Shlapak) strengths and vulnerabilities; to a piece on how some aerial vulnerabilities could be allayed with UAVs (Libicki); to an analysis of U.S. options to better deter Chinese aggression (Gompert and Long); to a forward-looking article on how a new U.S. fleet architecture could change the balance of power in a Taiwan Strait conflict (Johnson).

Coping with the Dragon: Essays on PLA Transformation and the U.S. Military

Politics & Social Sciences

Politics & Government

CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform

The urge to maintain military superiority over potential adversaries has long been a driver of technological advancement. This interplay between defense strength and technology, so evident in the nature of America’s military power, has for decades prompted U.S. defense planners to engage in technology forecasting. Analysis of emerging technologies was, and is, vital to making wise defense investments. While it is important to assess the needs and challenges of the future, understanding past military technological successes can be equally important to Army S&amp;T investment and management. By studying past technology development for weapons systems, one can see what factors were important for success and apply these lessons to the management of S&amp;T1 for future systems. This is an especially valuable exercise now, because in recent years there has been mounting pressure to transfer much of the execution of technical work away from the military’s inhouse S&amp;T laboratories to the private sector. Whatever the merits of such a move, it represents a significant change from past practices. It would be unwise to undertake any fundamental shifts without first understanding just what was successful about the way the Army S&amp;T program has done business in past years. This book draws on a series of studies known as Project Hindsight Revisited conducted by the authors at the National Defense University (NDU) from 2004–2006. The Project Hindsight Revisited studies examined, in three reports, the development of four current weapons systems of the U.S. Army: the Abrams main battle tank,2 the Apache attack helicopter,3 the Stinger anti-aircraft missile,4 and the Javelin anti-tank missile. In exploring how these weapons systems were taken from conceptual design to full scale production, the studies brought to light crucial factors in their successful development. This book will pursue significant implications of the studies’ findings. In exploring these findings, we hope to make a contribution to answering a question that is of the utmost importance to the Army leadership: how are S&amp;T resources best used to advance the state-of-the-art capabilities of U.S. Army weapons systems?

Enhancing Army S&T: Lessons from Project Hindsight Revisited

Engineering & Transportation

Long, Duncan

Lyons, John

Chait, Richard

Sciarretta, Albert

Engineering

The national security system has an authority problem. The problem is highlighted by the debate over czars, Presidential appointees who oversee a particular issue area, often without Senate confirmation. The practice of appointing czars is controversial for the wrong reasons. Commentators worry that czars create confusion and circumvent congressional oversight. What deserves greater attention is why Presidents appoint czars in the first place and what, if anything, should be done about it. When the interagency process fails to produce the cooperation among departments and agencies necessary to solve a national security (or other) problem, Presidents often designate a lead individual—or czar—to do the job because they do not have enough time to do it themselves. It is widely recognized that the chief executive needs help integrating the diverse departments and agencies, but past attempts to improve interagency cooperation have generally failed because they paid insufficient attention to the difficult problem of authority. New positions or organizations are often created with great fanfare and directed to ensure a coordinated response to some particular national security issue—intelligence, warfighting, reconstruction, or counterterrorism— only to fail because they lack sufficient authority. Ultimately, the departments and agencies in the national security system see little reason to follow their lead. At the heart of the problem is the inability to reconcile a desire for a clear chain of command from the President down through the heads of the departments and agencies with the need to empower new mechanisms (individuals or organizational constructs) with sufficient authority to integrate efforts across the departments and agencies in pursuit of specified national missions. “Unity of command” from the President on down through the functional departments and agencies seems to preclude “unity of effort” for missions that are intrinsically interagency in nature and cut across those same chains of command. In this paper, we argue that solving the interagency integration problem requires an expanded Chief of Mission (COM) authority. COM authority is granted to Ambassadors to oversee and direct the activities of employees from diverse government organizations working in a foreign country, but it could also serve as a model for empowering other leaders in the national security system to solve problems requiring interagency cooperation. As we explain, the Chief of Mission model requires expansion to work well beyond the bilateral setting of a U.S. Embassy in a foreign country, including more legal authority, process adjustments, and wider application. However, the model does point a way forward to escape the dilemma that the current system imposes on Presidents who want unity of effort without sacrificing unified command.

Chief of Mission Authority as a Model for National Security Integration: Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspectives, No. 2

Marks, Edward

Lamb, Christopher J.

Secret Weapon: High-value Target Teams as an Organizational Innovation: Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspectives, No. 4

Munsing, Evan

Joint Interagency Task Force-South: The Best Known, Least Understood Interagency Success: Institute for National Strategic Studies, Strategic Perspectives, No. 5

Since January 2004, a Malay-Muslim-based insurgency has engulfed the three southernmost provinces in Thailand. More than 4,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded, making it the most lethal conflict in Southeast Asia. Now in its 8th year, the insurgency has settled into a low-level stalemate. Violence is down significantly from its mid-2007 peak, but it has been steadily climbing since 2008. On average, 32 people are being killed and 58 wounded every month. Most casualties are from drive-by shootings, but there are also about 12 improvised explosive device (IED) attacks a month. The insurgency is now characterized by less indiscriminate violence and more retaliatory attacks. Insurgents continue to target security forces, government officials, and Muslim moderates who seek accommodation with the Thai state as part of efforts to make the region ungovernable by limiting provision of social services and driving Buddhists from the south. The overall level of violence may be influenced more by insurgent calculations about the optimum amount of violence needed to advance their political goals than by improved capabilities of the security forces. Despite better coordination, Thai counterinsurgency operations are still hampered by bureaucratic infighting and a lack of professionalism. Human rights abuses by security services with blanket immunity under the Emergency Decree continue to instill mistrust among the local population. Moreover, as long as violence is contained in the deep south, the insurgency will remain a low priority for the new Thai government, which is focused on national political disputes and is reluctant to take on the military by pursuing more conciliatory policies toward the south. Indeed, even under the 30-month tenure of the Democrat Party with an electoral base in the south, the insurgency was a very low priority and its few policy initiatives were insufficient to quell the violence. The new Pheu Thai government under Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra, the younger sister of Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a September 2006 coup, will have its hands tied in the south. Its election victory and focus on national reconciliation have already engendered mistrust of the Thai military. The new government will be reluctant to criticize the military's handling of the insurgency, take on the culture of impunity, or push for any form of political autonomy. This will make any devolution of political authority unlikely, limiting chances for a negotiated solution. As a result, low level violence is likely to continue indefinitely. The most important immediate U.S. objective in Thailand is political stability at the national level and deepening bilateral economic ties. Absent a cohesive Thai government with the political will to overcome military resistance to policies that might address underlying causes of the insurgency, U.S. pressure to do more is likely to be ineffective or even counterproductive. Accordingly, the United States should maintain quiet diplomatic pressure on the government to broaden its counterinsurgency efforts and offer any requested intelligence and law enforcement assistance, while being cognizant of Thai sensitivity over its sovereignty.

The Ongoing Insurgency in Southern Thailand: Trends in Violence, Counterinsurgency Operations, and the Impact of National Politics: Institute for ... Studies, Strategic Perspectives, No. 6

Abuza, Zachary

NATO expansion is a key issue both within NATO and in the context of alternative future security alignments in Europe involving NATO, the European Union (EU) and Western European Union (WEU), the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). States in Central and Eastern Europe are seeking membership in NATO. NATO has responded with outreach programs, most recently the Partnership for Peach (FPF) Program. NATO leaders have said they expect and welcome NATO expansion as an evolutionary process in which FPF will play an important role. In the public debate, officials and scholars have made many arguments in favor of expansion, against it, and to defer it. There appears to be general support in Congress, the American and European publics, and the executive branches in NATO states for inviting Central and Eastern European states, particularly the four Visegrad states of the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia, to join NATO, but no decisions have been made nor dates established. Russian officials have been ambivalent but often object to expansion of NATO to include Central and Eastern European states but not Russia. NATO is conducting a study to address how NATO might expand and what the implications would be. Among the issues that may be raised are: whether additional criteria for membership should be specified, which states should be invited, when and possibly in what sequence, if any, they should be invited, how to avoid dividing lines in Europe, the impact of enlargement on NATO effectiveness continuation of outreach programs with states not invited, and the relationship between NATO and Russia. Of six illustrative alternative future security alignments in Europe (three involving NATO expansion and three not), the first-NATO expansion to include Central and Eastern European states, adding from 1-11 new members, while continuing outreach programs with non-members and establishing a unique relationship with Russia and perhaps Ukraine may be the most supportable.

NATO Expansion and Alternative Future Security Alignments: Institute for National Strategic Studies McNair Paper 40

Morrison, James W.

On December 7, 1993, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin announced that the United States was adding a military dimension to its fight to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The new program, called the Counter-Proliferation Initiative (CPI), provides funding to prepare for combating foes with nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC) and missile weapons on future battlefields, improves monitoring for locating rival NBC/missile programs, improves theater defenses, and develops weapons capable of penetrating and destroying underground facilities. US efforts will include a diplomatic offensive to persuade US allies to take similar counter-proliferation steps. The central thrust of the CPI is to prepare US and allied forces for dealing with future enemies on the battlefield who are armed with weapons of mass destruction. An important secondary thrust of the CPI is to provide the Commander-in-Chief with the tools to disarm an adversary unilaterally if necessary, before the adversary can initiate the use of WMD in situations where we are on a collision course with such an enemy and no alternative course seems feasible. Numerous preemptive counter-proliferation strikes have taken place since 1940. Allied air forces and special operations forces destroyed German nuclear facilities and heavy water supplies that were an integral part of the Nazi A-bomb research effort. US bombers also destroyed the most important Japanese nuclear research laboratory in Tokyo at the end of WWII. Other raids include: Iran versus Iraq in 1980, Israel versus Iraq in 1981, Iraq versus Iran with seven raids from 1984 to 9188, and the US-led coalition versus Iraq in 1991. When deciding whether or not to use military action to remove a WMD capacity from a rival state, it is important that decision makers address a number of key questions, and ensure that answers to each are positive, before making PCP decisions: is the enemy undeterrable, violent, and a risk taker? Is the enemy on the WMD threshold or beyond it? Are vital US interest threatened? Are key enemy targets precisely located and vulnerable? Is surprise achievable? Does the US have a first strike capability? Is the US homeland safe from enemy WMD? Would the US and its allies be safe from retaliation from the WMD of third parties? Have all non-military options been exhausted before considering preemption? Does the US have clear objectives achievable by appropriate means? Is the US committing enough resources and is it taking all necessary steps to insure victory? Finally, a note of caution, PCP strikes against states armed with WMD had better work completely or they could spell disaster for the initiator.

Radical Responses to Radical Regimes: Evaluating Preemptive Counter-Proliferation: Institute for National Strategic Studies McNair Paper 41

Schneider, Barry R.

Military

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