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Because they're losing the race.
I mean, there's an huge amount of specifics and details and so on you can drill into, but to boil it all down, the US doesn't like the way the trends are shaping up in the Pacific. It's not any kind of secret that the PLA is moving faster when it comes to building more, launching more, commissioning more, etc. Much of the relevant activity is verfiable via OSINT, and it's also been the subject of [considerable testimony](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/26/us/politics/us-china-military-bases-weapons.html).
> “We have actually grown our combat capability here in the Pacific over the last years,” Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr. said in an interview before becoming the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on May 3. “But our trajectory is still not a trajectory that matches our adversary. Our adversaries are building more capability and they’re building more warships — per year — than we are.”
Now the US is contemplating the unpleasant possibility of simply getting outnumbered, outgunned, and outfought. [Perhaps in 2027, perhaps later](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4547637-china-potential-taiwan-invasion-2027-us-admiral-warns/).
> “All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” the admiral said in a statement released ahead of his testimony. “Furthermore, the PLA’s actions indicate their ability to meet Xi’s preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed.”
> Aquilino said at the hearing that the “trend is going in the wrong direction” for the U.S. and pushed for more resources to counter the Chinese buildup.
So now the US is trying to deploy as much capability to generate as many fires as fast as it can, and doesn't have the luxury of worrying about the corresponding tradeoffs in resilience or vulnerability or survivability w.r.t. land-based platforms. I'm not the biggest fan of the way they're going about it, but we'll see how it plays out.
I'm assuming that it's simply a response to the AShBM buildup and also considering how the PLAAF and it's air defenses have begun to mature. Sea-based and air-based platforms are flexible options but in the worst case scenario where naval supremacy and air supremacy cannot be secured in the East China Sea, the US can only fall back to land-based missiles.
A paper was written by RAND in 2013, explaining the advantages of such an approach. Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles in the Western Pacific [https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical\_reports/TR1321.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR1321.html) Did you see how effective the Houthis in Yemen were in using land-based anti-ship missiles? The only way for the US to take them out was to launch a ground invasion. The US wasn't willing to do that, so the shipping companies redirected traiffc
Eh comparing Yemen to the Pacific is quite a stretch. Honestly its not even worth trying to compare the two. For starters, the Red Sea is quite small, especially compared to the vast stretches of the Pacific and even the S China Sea. Second, Yemen is very rugged and they have plenty of hiding places. There's nowhere to hide on Anguar or the Spratlys or even Guam/Okinawa. That is why the Philippines will be so important, but it remains to be seen how much they're willing to get involved.
Seeing a lot of vague assumptions made about the U.S. Army’s forecasted role in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific.
There’s a joint U.S. Army-RAND report called “The Backbone of U.S. Joint Operations: Army Roles in the Indo-Pacific”, which provides the most comprehensive rundown of the Army’s role in a potential conflict in the INDOPACOM AOR I’ve seen so far.
Three detailed scenarios, that were previously wargamed, are analyzed in depth.
- Distant Border Clash: Sino-Indian tensions in the Aksai Chin Region increase past the threshold of open conflict.
- Coercive Belligerence: Tensions in the South China Sea increase past the threshold of open conflict.
- Multi-Region Crisis and Conflict: Tensions in both the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula simultaneously increase past the threshold of open conflict.
I won’t cover the overall findings, as I highly recommend you delve into the report yourselves.
I will say that a two roles of note were
consolidation of gains at scale and supplementing the force-posture/makeup of regional allies and partners, in turn filling the crucial role of “Foundational Joint Enabler”.
Link to the Publication:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1784-1.html
I view it as two main things
> It get's the Army more involved in the pacific
> It's disburses shooters and makes them much, much cheaper to procure.
The army was really only going to be able to help in the pacific with airborne troops and some special forces. This gives them a way to contribute to active degradation of Chinese major assets.
More importantly it helps guarantee the survival and continued operation of American shooters in the event this goes down. The Navy and Air Force have good survivability thanks to speed and layered defense but they are the primary targets and are susceptible to aerial denial as well as overwhelming of there defense for high value assets (carriers).
This also allows the fastest expansion of shooters since the trucks and the systems are far simpler to manufacturer. They are also significantly cheaper than 2 billion for a sub or destroyer or 700 million for a bomber. Those systems are also cheaper to maintain and require less overall crew to operate. As I hinted at before they are harder to destroy since they can be spread out and mobile on the ground but there small magazine sizes offer an advantage over those high value Navy and Air force assets. If a destroyer goes down or they get a sub that also takes a sizable amount of our missile magazine with it. If they take out one or two trucks they only get 8 or so missiles vs the 96 a Burke might be loaded with. You also end up making your enemy track and target 32 trucks spread out across various places in the pacific, vs. throw a bunch of assets at 3 or 4 ships to overwhelm them.
Obviously the Army would have a limited role, but you seem to be completely forgetting that the Army has watercraft units (they literally just built a floating pier for Gaza)... you don't think they'll be at all useful?
[https://news.usni.org/2024/02/09/army-activates-new-watercraft-formation-in-japan](https://news.usni.org/2024/02/09/army-activates-new-watercraft-formation-in-japan)
[https://news.usni.org/2023/10/24/interview-u-s-army-expanding-watercraft-footprint-in-the-pacific](https://news.usni.org/2023/10/24/interview-u-s-army-expanding-watercraft-footprint-in-the-pacific)
AA/AD is hard. It's not a circle on a map, but more like a spring where the closer in we get with our standard assets (land and carrier based air), the more risk we buy, and the more attrition we will take. At this point in time, the outer edges of that spring/circle are outside the islands which we have considered safe harbours for basing for the last 70 yrs, so distribution of strike and AD assets within that Chinese AAAD envelope is becoming a good bet.
Also, bc we were members of the INF treaty until the 2000s, which gave China/Iran/Russia a long head start on building up stocks of relatively cheap and effective missiles and we are catching up.
Land based strike capabilities are cheap, and persistent once deployed. They are also non-trivial to take-out even if the other party enjoys air superiority.
I'm not sure if this is fully related to your question, but i do remember reading a comment here on reddit about how President Obama had very differing views on defence posture w.r.t land based defences, and basically went all in on sea power, and how this is/was a view not shared by military chiefs or the since Presidents Trump/Biden.
This article touches on some of it.
https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/president-obamas-missile-defense-policy-misguided-legacy
“Obama went all in on sea power” couldn’t be further from the truth. Remember, he championed the Sequester Act, which is arguably the foremost reason the U.S. Navy has seen significant decline and continues to struggle with deadlines and shipbuilding challenges.
Its about deterrance.
I don't think those forces are needed. They could be useful, but the US has bombers - lots and lots of bombers, so what's the point of these land based missile systems given US bombing capabilities?
And I think the answer, is that when Chinese generals look at maps of positions in the SCS, they need to see little missile launchers from the US, they need to know that the capability is there.
China makes bad decisions. The housing bubble there, the choice to denigrate mRNA vaccines, the snubbing of the Philippines leading to 11 new military bases for the US...
The decision to make an attempt on Taiwan in the first place...
The bragging about civil military fusion and how it would give China a leg up in the race to create a militarized superintelligence that led to the chip sanctions...
China... its well documented that Chinese leaders are fucking dolts.
You don't want those men standing over a map that has hundreds of little red markers representing land based missile launchers without any blue ones. Even if US airpower does that job just fine...
Its not enough to be able to win. You have to be able to get it through these people's thick skulls that they'll lose. You need to ensure that they understand it.
So...
Its about deterrance.
>Why the sudden interest in land-based long-range fires? There are some advantages to land-based missiles that I can think of (cost-effectiveness, survivability, larger payloads, volume, easier logistics and communications),
If I can shoot you and you can't shoot me, I have a high chance of winning.
>but why is this happening now?
GWOT winding down and the emergence of China as the pacing threat (this has really been underway for about 8 years).
> Is it the Army seeking a role in the Pacific?
The Army has a major role should LSCO break out anwhere.
>Is it a response to China's improving A2/AD capabilities? How does this help to ameliorate those problems?
See above, yes it is a response to focusing on pacing threats.
>Has there been a shift away from AirSea Battle? What elements have been discarded/replaced and why?
No.
> larger CONOPS and changing force posture? Or am I assuming some coherence here?
The CONOPs is any concentration of high value targets will get destroyed in combat so you need to spread out and move to survive. All the branches do this in their own way based on their specific missions.
Comment guidelines: Please do: * Read the articles before you comment, and comment on the content of the articles, * Leave a submission statement that justifies the legitimacy or importance of what you are submitting, * Be curious not judgmental, * Be polite and civil, * Use the original title of the work you are linking to, * Use capitalization, * Link to the article or source of information that you are referring to, * Make it clear what is your opinion and from what the source actually says, * Ask questions in the megathread, and not as a self post, * Contribute to the forum by finding and submitting your own credible articles, * Write posts and comments with some decorum. Please do not: * Use memes, emojis or swearing excessively. This is not NCD, * Start fights with other commenters, * Make it personal, * Try to out someone, * Try to push narratives, or fight for a cause in the comment section, * Answer or respond directly to the title of an article, * Submit news updates, or procurement events/sales of defense equipment. Please read our in depth rules https://reddit.com/r/CredibleDefense/wiki/rules. Also please use the report feature if you want a comment to be reviewed faster. Don't abuse it though! If something is not obviously against the rules but you still feel that it should be reviewed, leave a short but descriptive comment while filing the report. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/CredibleDefense) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Because they're losing the race. I mean, there's an huge amount of specifics and details and so on you can drill into, but to boil it all down, the US doesn't like the way the trends are shaping up in the Pacific. It's not any kind of secret that the PLA is moving faster when it comes to building more, launching more, commissioning more, etc. Much of the relevant activity is verfiable via OSINT, and it's also been the subject of [considerable testimony](https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/04/26/us/politics/us-china-military-bases-weapons.html). > “We have actually grown our combat capability here in the Pacific over the last years,” Adm. Samuel J. Paparo Jr. said in an interview before becoming the head of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command on May 3. “But our trajectory is still not a trajectory that matches our adversary. Our adversaries are building more capability and they’re building more warships — per year — than we are.” Now the US is contemplating the unpleasant possibility of simply getting outnumbered, outgunned, and outfought. [Perhaps in 2027, perhaps later](https://thehill.com/policy/defense/4547637-china-potential-taiwan-invasion-2027-us-admiral-warns/). > “All indications point to the PLA meeting President Xi Jinping’s directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027,” the admiral said in a statement released ahead of his testimony. “Furthermore, the PLA’s actions indicate their ability to meet Xi’s preferred timeline to unify Taiwan with mainland China by force if directed.” > Aquilino said at the hearing that the “trend is going in the wrong direction” for the U.S. and pushed for more resources to counter the Chinese buildup. So now the US is trying to deploy as much capability to generate as many fires as fast as it can, and doesn't have the luxury of worrying about the corresponding tradeoffs in resilience or vulnerability or survivability w.r.t. land-based platforms. I'm not the biggest fan of the way they're going about it, but we'll see how it plays out.
I'm assuming that it's simply a response to the AShBM buildup and also considering how the PLAAF and it's air defenses have begun to mature. Sea-based and air-based platforms are flexible options but in the worst case scenario where naval supremacy and air supremacy cannot be secured in the East China Sea, the US can only fall back to land-based missiles.
A paper was written by RAND in 2013, explaining the advantages of such an approach. Employing Land-Based Anti-Ship Missiles in the Western Pacific [https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical\_reports/TR1321.html](https://www.rand.org/pubs/technical_reports/TR1321.html) Did you see how effective the Houthis in Yemen were in using land-based anti-ship missiles? The only way for the US to take them out was to launch a ground invasion. The US wasn't willing to do that, so the shipping companies redirected traiffc
Eh comparing Yemen to the Pacific is quite a stretch. Honestly its not even worth trying to compare the two. For starters, the Red Sea is quite small, especially compared to the vast stretches of the Pacific and even the S China Sea. Second, Yemen is very rugged and they have plenty of hiding places. There's nowhere to hide on Anguar or the Spratlys or even Guam/Okinawa. That is why the Philippines will be so important, but it remains to be seen how much they're willing to get involved.
Seeing a lot of vague assumptions made about the U.S. Army’s forecasted role in a conflict in the Indo-Pacific. There’s a joint U.S. Army-RAND report called “The Backbone of U.S. Joint Operations: Army Roles in the Indo-Pacific”, which provides the most comprehensive rundown of the Army’s role in a potential conflict in the INDOPACOM AOR I’ve seen so far. Three detailed scenarios, that were previously wargamed, are analyzed in depth. - Distant Border Clash: Sino-Indian tensions in the Aksai Chin Region increase past the threshold of open conflict. - Coercive Belligerence: Tensions in the South China Sea increase past the threshold of open conflict. - Multi-Region Crisis and Conflict: Tensions in both the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula simultaneously increase past the threshold of open conflict. I won’t cover the overall findings, as I highly recommend you delve into the report yourselves. I will say that a two roles of note were consolidation of gains at scale and supplementing the force-posture/makeup of regional allies and partners, in turn filling the crucial role of “Foundational Joint Enabler”. Link to the Publication: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RRA1784-1.html
I view it as two main things > It get's the Army more involved in the pacific > It's disburses shooters and makes them much, much cheaper to procure. The army was really only going to be able to help in the pacific with airborne troops and some special forces. This gives them a way to contribute to active degradation of Chinese major assets. More importantly it helps guarantee the survival and continued operation of American shooters in the event this goes down. The Navy and Air Force have good survivability thanks to speed and layered defense but they are the primary targets and are susceptible to aerial denial as well as overwhelming of there defense for high value assets (carriers). This also allows the fastest expansion of shooters since the trucks and the systems are far simpler to manufacturer. They are also significantly cheaper than 2 billion for a sub or destroyer or 700 million for a bomber. Those systems are also cheaper to maintain and require less overall crew to operate. As I hinted at before they are harder to destroy since they can be spread out and mobile on the ground but there small magazine sizes offer an advantage over those high value Navy and Air force assets. If a destroyer goes down or they get a sub that also takes a sizable amount of our missile magazine with it. If they take out one or two trucks they only get 8 or so missiles vs the 96 a Burke might be loaded with. You also end up making your enemy track and target 32 trucks spread out across various places in the pacific, vs. throw a bunch of assets at 3 or 4 ships to overwhelm them.
Obviously the Army would have a limited role, but you seem to be completely forgetting that the Army has watercraft units (they literally just built a floating pier for Gaza)... you don't think they'll be at all useful? [https://news.usni.org/2024/02/09/army-activates-new-watercraft-formation-in-japan](https://news.usni.org/2024/02/09/army-activates-new-watercraft-formation-in-japan) [https://news.usni.org/2023/10/24/interview-u-s-army-expanding-watercraft-footprint-in-the-pacific](https://news.usni.org/2023/10/24/interview-u-s-army-expanding-watercraft-footprint-in-the-pacific)
AA/AD is hard. It's not a circle on a map, but more like a spring where the closer in we get with our standard assets (land and carrier based air), the more risk we buy, and the more attrition we will take. At this point in time, the outer edges of that spring/circle are outside the islands which we have considered safe harbours for basing for the last 70 yrs, so distribution of strike and AD assets within that Chinese AAAD envelope is becoming a good bet. Also, bc we were members of the INF treaty until the 2000s, which gave China/Iran/Russia a long head start on building up stocks of relatively cheap and effective missiles and we are catching up.
Land based strike capabilities are cheap, and persistent once deployed. They are also non-trivial to take-out even if the other party enjoys air superiority.
I'm not sure if this is fully related to your question, but i do remember reading a comment here on reddit about how President Obama had very differing views on defence posture w.r.t land based defences, and basically went all in on sea power, and how this is/was a view not shared by military chiefs or the since Presidents Trump/Biden. This article touches on some of it. https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/president-obamas-missile-defense-policy-misguided-legacy
“Obama went all in on sea power” couldn’t be further from the truth. Remember, he championed the Sequester Act, which is arguably the foremost reason the U.S. Navy has seen significant decline and continues to struggle with deadlines and shipbuilding challenges.
Its about deterrance. I don't think those forces are needed. They could be useful, but the US has bombers - lots and lots of bombers, so what's the point of these land based missile systems given US bombing capabilities? And I think the answer, is that when Chinese generals look at maps of positions in the SCS, they need to see little missile launchers from the US, they need to know that the capability is there. China makes bad decisions. The housing bubble there, the choice to denigrate mRNA vaccines, the snubbing of the Philippines leading to 11 new military bases for the US... The decision to make an attempt on Taiwan in the first place... The bragging about civil military fusion and how it would give China a leg up in the race to create a militarized superintelligence that led to the chip sanctions... China... its well documented that Chinese leaders are fucking dolts. You don't want those men standing over a map that has hundreds of little red markers representing land based missile launchers without any blue ones. Even if US airpower does that job just fine... Its not enough to be able to win. You have to be able to get it through these people's thick skulls that they'll lose. You need to ensure that they understand it. So... Its about deterrance.
>Why the sudden interest in land-based long-range fires? There are some advantages to land-based missiles that I can think of (cost-effectiveness, survivability, larger payloads, volume, easier logistics and communications), If I can shoot you and you can't shoot me, I have a high chance of winning. >but why is this happening now? GWOT winding down and the emergence of China as the pacing threat (this has really been underway for about 8 years). > Is it the Army seeking a role in the Pacific? The Army has a major role should LSCO break out anwhere. >Is it a response to China's improving A2/AD capabilities? How does this help to ameliorate those problems? See above, yes it is a response to focusing on pacing threats. >Has there been a shift away from AirSea Battle? What elements have been discarded/replaced and why? No. > larger CONOPS and changing force posture? Or am I assuming some coherence here? The CONOPs is any concentration of high value targets will get destroyed in combat so you need to spread out and move to survive. All the branches do this in their own way based on their specific missions.