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What is Air-Sea Battle?
China has invested heavily during the past decade in precision missile systems and sophisticated radar designed to keep U.S. ships and fighter jets beyond the inner island chain shown below. Air-Sea Battle is the U.S. military’s concept for disabling those systems using long-range bombers and submarines. The concept is designed not so much to fight a war as to convince the Chinese that any conflict with U.S. forces would be long and costly. Pentagon officials say Air-Sea Battle is not solely focused on China, which they describe as the “pacing” threat. The following approaches are the basis for the concept. Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment. | Greg Jaffe, Gene Thorp, Bill Webster/The Washington Post.
What is Air-Sea Battle?
China has invested heavily during the past decade in precision missile systems and sophisticated radar designed to keep U.S. ships and fighter jets beyond the inner island chain shown below. Air-Sea Battle is the U.S. military’s concept for disabling those systems using long-range bombers and submarines. The concept is designed not so much to fight a war as to convince the Chinese that any conflict with U.S. forces would be long and costly. Pentagon officials say Air-Sea Battle is not solely focused on China, which they describe as the “pacing” threat. The following approaches are the basis for the concept. Source: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessment. | Greg Jaffe, Gene Thorp, Bill Webster/The Washington Post.
U.S. Model For A Future War Fans Tensions With China And Inside Pentagon -- Washington Post
When President Obama called on the U.S. military to shift its focus to Asia earlier this year, Andrew Marshall, a 91-year-old futurist, had a vision of what to do.
Marshall’s small office in the Pentagon has spent the past two decades planning for a war against an angry, aggressive and heavily armed China.
No one had any idea how the war would start. But the American response, laid out in a concept that one of Marshall’s longtime proteges dubbed “Air-Sea Battle,” was clear.
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My Comment: There is a lot of red meat in this story. What's my take .... the Chinese have already developed war strategies and plans to fight their neighbors, seize Taiwan, and wage war against U.S. forces. But that is all that it is .... a hypothetical war plan with no massive resources behind it .... so U.S. concerns are moot.
The Americans also have the same thing .... a great Air-Sea Battle Plan plan to wage war against China .... but with no serious money or resources behind it ... China's concerns are also moot.
So we are at an impasse .... which when you consider the alternative .... is probably preferable.