How a War With China Should Go

Recent news reports indicate that the Chinese amphibious exercises have been ramped up, causing increased concern that the invasion of Taiwan might happen in the near future. If the Red Chinese decide to invade, and if the United States responds — and both are dependent on U.S. will to fight — this article describes how a successful campaign to thwart Beijing’s aggression in the South China Sea (SCS) should go. There have been many war games analyzing what might happen, and I have used the results to try to predict what should occur if lessons from these games are implemented.

China would likely attempt a lightning surprise attack with missiles, drones, and aircraft supporting an amphibious blitzkrieg by assault troops. The build-up would likely be disguised as one of their annual practice invasion exercises. That might have worked for Germany prior to its 1941 invasion of the former Soviet Union and for the Arabs in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, but if U.S. and allied intelligence agencies use proper overhead sensor and human intelligence assets, they would have sufficient warning. This would allow us to reinforce Taiwan with the 18th Airborne Corps and III Marine Expeditionary Force (MEF) by a combination of Maritime Prepositioned Ships (MPS) and aerial reinforcement. These would help the Taiwanese hold out until further reinforcements could arrive.

At sea, the People’s Liberation Army Navy would concentrate on covering the amphibious invasion force while the Air Force, Navy, and Marine Corps aircraft, along with land-based Army long-range hypersonic anti-ship missile forces, disrupt that landing. Meanwhile, U.S. surface combatant ships would operate inside the South China Sea, attempting to degrade the Chinese land-based anti-navy reconnaissance-strike complex. Many of these fires would come from converted oil tankers and container ships intermingled with normal commercial ships. They would launch missiles and drones from a “rocket in a box” configuration.

That part of the operation would go smoother if we could suppress their mobile anti-ship missile launchers with a grid of small or micro sensors that could track and target the mobile launchers once a missile is fired. Dropped by drones loitering overhead, these sensors would be seeded into the area soon after a missile is fired. It would then be detected and targeted while on the move. In 1999, the Marine Corps Warfighting Lab successfully tracked and targeted a mock-up SCUD launcher from Warrenton, Virginia, to Quantico. We used surrogates to simulate the sensors because the technology to build the real thing was nascent. But that technology is now mature. The Germans are actively experimenting with such micro-sensors and are planning to field them to their operational forces. We could piggyback off their program relatively quickly.