Wargaming the South China Sea

[Dayuhan]

Looking back at the originally cited article, this part of the hypothetical scenario stands out:

But U.S. credibility was low, and China was in ascent. China’s narrative shaped global media and public opinion: the incident was unfortunate and simply demonstrated to Japan and to the world the volatility and danger of U.S. nuclear-powered warships. The explosion was an accident and it would not have happened if the carrier had not been trying to intimidate China. In South America and the Middle East, and even in Europe, the feeling was strong that the ship was an instrument of imperialist power projection, operating in an area where it did not belong. Most Asians were inclined to think the United States should have been minding its own business.

Granting that the scenario is set in 2015, but at this point the prediction above couldn't be more wrong: China's narrative is not shaping anyone's perception, and in East Asia at least China is generally seen as completely untrustworthy. From today's vantage point it seems hard to believe that the projected Chinese dominance of the perception war is even remotely likely.

[AdamG]

The Rand Corporation, one of the Defense Department’s most trusted and longest running contractors, was hired by the Pentagon to carry out a computerized and simulated war between China and the US. The results were so horrifying, they were deemed classified, but were leaked to the press. What the computer models showed was that in the most likely scenario for a US-China war, the United States was soundly defeated by the Chinese military.

Most Americans will immediately and arrogantly close their ears to any suggestion that the US could lose a war to anyone. So, it’s a good thing that war correspondent David Axe and War Is Boring published the step-by-step actions each military takes to show readers exactly how and why America loses. The account, leaked to the media and published by Medium.com, shows how the blame lies squarely on one thing - the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter’s abysmal failure in combat.

http://americanoutrage.us/index.php/...war-with-china

[AdamG]

I know it's HuffPo, but an interesting article from Artyom Lukin (Professor Far Eastern Federal University, Vladivostok, Russia).

Imagining World War III -- In 2034

VLADIVOSTOCK -- If the next world war is to happen, it will most likely be in Asia and feature a clash between the incumbent hegemon, the United States, and the principal challenger, China. The good news is China does not want war now and in the foreseeable future, primarily because Beijing knows too well that the odds are not on its side. But if we look ahead 20 years from now, in 2034, the circumstances will have shifted significantly.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/artyom...usaolp00000592

[carl]

http://americanoutrage.us/index.php/...war-with-china

I fear people, even here, don't realize the deeply dangerous straits the ongoing failure that is the F-35 is getting us into. People here are mostly ground guys who know about war but I think maybe many have the same blithe attitude toward having air supremacy the general public has. We have had it all our own way since 1943 but it can change. It really can. It is not like the sun coming up in the east.

Air fighting is fighting with machines. If your machine is inferior to his machine, you lose. Pilot quality (boy we love to talk about how great our pilots are, but great depends on flying so check out how much our guys fly nowadays) and better tactics will help only so much if the other guys machine is better. That is even more so nowadays. We don't have tens of thousands P-51s and Hellcats contesting tens of thousands of FW-190s and Zeros. We have handfuls of machines contesting the sky. When there are only few machines their quality is that much more important.

We have a very big, potentially fatal problem.

[slapout9]

I fear people, even here, don't realize the deeply dangerous straits the ongoing failure that is the F-35 is getting us into. People here are mostly ground guys who know about war but I think maybe many have the same blithe attitude toward having air supremacy the general public has. We have had it all our own way since 1943 but it can change. It really can. It is not like the sun coming up in the east.

Air fighting is fighting with machines. If your machine is inferior to his machine, you lose. Pilot quality (boy we love to talk about how great our pilots are, but great depends on flying so check out how much our guys fly nowadays) and better tactics will help only so much if the other guys machine is better. That is even more so nowadays. We don't have tens of thousands P-51s and Hellcats contesting tens of thousands of FW-190s and Zeros. We have handfuls of machines contesting the sky. When there are only few machines their quality is that much more important.

We have a very big, potentially fatal problem.

Since the end of WW2 the Air Force has always won, people seem to forget that point. They also forget that it is our land forces that keep loosing!!!!!and cannot even face that fact..... but we keep hammering the Air Force as being unable to Win.
We have had complete Air Dominance for so long we just assume we will have it. We will have a big shock one day if we don't wake up.

In general the Air Force is way to small!

[Bill Moore]

Since the end of WW2 the Air Force has always won, people seem to forget that point. They also forget that it is our land forces that keep loosing!!!!!and cannot even face that fact..... but we keep hammering the Air Force as being unable to Win.
We have had complete Air Dominance for so long we just assume we will have it. We will have a big shock one day if we don't wake up.

In general the Air Force is way to small!

We either win or lose as a nation, so it is impossible for one service to win and the other to lose.

[carl]

We either win or lose as a nation, so it is impossible for one service to win and the other to lose.

In absolute terms yes. But in this case if control of the air is lost by our air forces everybody else will be defeated in turn but their defeat will result from the air forces losing. And our air forces are all betting on one airplane design and one engine type. That bet isn't looking so good.

[Bill Moore]

In absolute terms yes. But in this case if control of the air is lost by our air forces everybody else will be defeated in turn but their defeat will result from the air forces losing. And our air forces are all betting on one airplane design and one engine type. That bet isn't looking so good.

Carl,

If you take a conventional view of war, the way the U.S. prefers to fight, then a more accurate way to put it is we can't win with acceptable casualty levels. Of course that is speculation, there are a lot factors that will influence our national will to endure or fail to endure high casualties.

North Vietnam defeated us even though we owned the air (we greatly over estimated the effect of air power on a nation's will, just as Germany did, and just as we did when we started our strategic bombing of Germany). The Taliban continues to challenge us in the land domain with no air power whatsoever.

Air superiority is no guarantee that we'll win or lose, but failure to maintain it will certainly result in a need for new doctrine and approaches to warfare. Based on your comment that we can't assume we'll always have it, maybe we should be working on that doctrine now? We have no idea what disruptive technology will emerge in the future, to include technology that could greatly reduce the effectiveness of our air power. On a smaller scale we saw the impact that Stingers had on the USSR in Afghanistan.