After decades of war in the Middle East, the joint force is retooling to pierce the bubble of China’s formidable anti-access, area-denial defenses. The national defense strategy calls China the pacing challenge and Defense Department officials have called a cross-strait Chinese invasion of Taiwan the pacing scenario. The most stressing part of this scenario would be the fight to sink the invasion fleet as it approaches Taiwan’s shores. The joint force would need to find and strike Chinese naval assets while protecting bases and aircraft carriers from China’s arsenal of long-range missiles.
The Air Force, Army, Marines, and Navy are each proposing new operational concepts to funnel combat power into China’s backyard. The Air Force faces a particular challenge because it relies heavily on short-range aircraft and bases within striking distance of Chinese missile raids. To overcome this dependence and maintain relevance, the Air Force should call upon a combination of Cold War tactics and advanced missile technology. At the core of this approach is the “conventional deterrence patrol.” This is an operational concept for an alert model that makes the joint force’s most advanced anti-ship munitions available for employment at a moment’s notice during a crisis. Conventional deterrence patrols would provide significant, flexible combat power for the joint force by keeping strike aircraft airborne within range of the battlespace but at the edges of China’s reach.
Agile Combat Employment
The Air Force currently operates short-range aircraft out of bases in the first and second island chains of the western Pacific. From Okinawa to Guam though, these bases are threatened by China’s extensive arsenal of long-range missiles like the DF-21 and DF-26. In the opening hours and minutes of a conflict, they would likely come under withering attack, with many aircraft lost on the ground before they can join the fight.
The Air Force has elected to tackle this problem by implementing an operational concept called Agile Combat Employment. This calls for dispersing aircraft across a constellation of small bases throughout the western Pacific to keep Chinese strike planners guessing. By pre-positioning supplies like fuel, munitions, and runway repair equipment, and employing active missile defenses and passive base hardening, the Air Force intends to continue operating in the contested environment of China’s near abroad. Regardless of the amount of dispersal, however, an operational base has a signature, and that signature can be detected and attacked. It remains to be seen, therefore, whether Agile Combat Employment can outlast China’s deep magazine of missiles.
If the Air Force cannot protect its short-range aircraft and the bases they operate from, it will need to look elsewhere if it is to apply combat power to the problem of sinking ships in the Taiwan Strait. With this in mind, the Air Force might be better off concentrating its resources in long-range aircraft that can reach into the theater from bases outside the range of China’s missiles.
Cold War Tactics
During the Cold War, the Air Force faced a similar problem of vulnerable bases and aircraft. In the 1960s, B-52 bombers, the air leg of the U.S. nuclear triad, operated out of bases within range of the Soviet Union’s intercontinental ballistic missiles. At the time, the United States had not yet completed construction of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System that could alert bomber and tanker bases to impending attack, allowing crews to scramble their planes into the air and away from the blast zone of incoming nuclear weapons. Furthermore, as the Minuteman had not yet been fully deployed, the United States lacked a 24/7/365-alert ground-based ballistic missile.
Until a missile warning system and the Minuteman fleet were fully procured, the Air Force implemented a near-term stopgap measure called Operation Chrome Dome. From 1960 to 1968, at any given time, twelve B-52s known as a “Daily Dozen” were airborne somewhere over a route that extended from the continental United States to positions near the North Pole. The job of these aircraft was deterring a Soviet surprise first strike. Should the United States and its bomber bases come under attack, these aircraft were ready to conduct retaliatory strikes against the Soviet Union.
In the event of a crisis over Taiwan, the Air Force should carry out a modern version of Operation Chrome Dome. It should be prepared to fly a handful of aircraft loaded with anti-ship weapons on “conventional deterrence patrols” at the edge of the western Pacific theater on a 24/7 basis for the duration of the crisis. In addition to bombers like B-52s and B-1s, these patrols should bolster their available aircraft by including C-17 and C-130 cargo aircraft. Called up from logistics duties to swing into a strike role, each cargo aircraft would carry palletized magazines that could release anti-ship cruise missiles through its rear cargo ramp. The cargo aircraft would introduce a particularly complex shell game, hiding among the regional logistics traffic servicing coalition bases and preparing for possible combat operations. All told, this approach would make 788 aircraft available to participate in conventional deterrence patrols, a complement large enough to sustain continuous 24/7 operations for a handful of aircraft.
Conventional deterrence patrol aircraft would cycle in and out of the theater from bases as far away as Australia, Hawaii, Alaska, and the continental United States. Operating in the immense volume of western Pacific airspace, they would pose a difficult search problem for China’s air force. Lacking base infrastructure to reach out eastward over long distances, China would be forced to extend its range by relying heavily on its small, underdeveloped fleet of air-to-air refueling tankers. Conventional deterrence patrols could further exacerbate this problem by using a diverse family of standoff missiles that allow for operation at the furthest edges of China’s surveillance range.
Old Tactics, New Missiles
The Air Force can best exploit the availability of conventional deterrence patrols by equipping them with missiles that employ the best anti-ship capabilities currently available to the joint force. This effort would involve not only using missiles already deployable on bombers but expanding that arsenal with missiles whose speed and range would impose a complex missile defense problem on Chinese forces. All of the necessary munitions are available today and the only cost to the Air Force would be for integration onto the full set of conventional deterrence platforms.
The first step is expanding the magazine of available subsonic missiles. The Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile is currently deployable only on the B-1. The Air Force should take on the task of integrating it on the B-52 as well as the cargo pallet magazines of C-130s and C-17s. While the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile is the most capable air-launched anti-ship missile available, its 250-mile range limits the flexibility of conventional deterrence patrols and places aircraft at risk of interception. With this in mind, the Air Force should take steps to implement software commonality updates that would give the missile’s twin, the Joint Air-to-Surface Standoff Missile, the capability to take out ship targets. The latter missile has a longer range, affording launch aircraft the ability to engage targets from as far as 1,000 miles away. Finally, the Air Force should work with the Navy to integrate the Maritime Strike Tomahawk onto airborne platforms. Launching this 1,000-mile-range missile from the air instead of the surface would keep expensive Navy cruisers and destroyers outside the reach of Chinese anti-ship missiles.
The Air Force should call upon an additional missile in the Navy’s arsenal, the SM-6, which currently deploys from the vertical launch tubes of Navy cruisers and destroyers. The Block IB version averages a speed of Mach 5 out to ranges in excess of 600 miles. The Air Force should integrate an allotment of SM-6s for deployment from the wing pylons and bomb bays of B-52 and B-1 bombers. There is precedent for deploying the SM-6 from the air, as shown by the Navy’s flight tests aboard the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. The hypersonic SM-6 could play a specialized role in the conventional deterrence arsenal, serving as a munition specifically deployed against high-value, time-sensitive targets.
Implementing Conventional Deterrence
Implementing conventional deterrence patrols would require the Air Force to take a few key steps. First, the Air Force should demonstrate its capability and capacity for conventional deterrence. It should make publicly known its plans to conduct conventional deterrence patrols in the event of a crisis. At least once a year, it should conduct a week-long exercise to demonstrate its ability to make patrol aircraft available on a 24/7 basis. To avoid exacerbating tensions in the western Pacific, the Air Force could leverage its global footprint to conduct this exercise in other locations, perhaps over the U.S. west coast.
Second, the Air Force should also make public its weapons integration plans. While maintaining classification at the highest levels, it could still exploit the deterrent effect of announcing a latent capability to strike from a variety of ranges over a variety of speeds. Notably, the Air Force has been plagued by high-profile failures of the Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon, its planned boost-glide hypersonic munition. With the cancellation of this program, the Air Force lacks a hypersonic weapon in the near term. Integrating the SM-6 would give the service the capability to strike critical targets on short timelines — a capability that could then be publicly advertised.
Third, the Air Force will need to be realistic about the challenges that will be imposed on its resources. Weapons integration and flight testing will take time. Deploying weapons from cargo holds, a new and unusual approach, has been in testing since at least 2020. This goes for air-deploying naval munitions normally fired from vertical launch tubes as well. The assignment of cargo aircraft to strike missions will need to be modeled in the context of the enormous logistical burden the Air Force would be supporting in a crisis scenario. Indeed, it remains to be seen whether the Air Force would have sufficient spare capacity to support conventional deterrence patrols with cargo aircraft.
Finally, the Air Force will need to overcome institutional challenges. Anti-surface warfare is not a traditional Air Force mission. The joint force’s premier anti-ship cruise missile, the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile is certified for carriage aboard only the B-1 bomber. Agile Combat Employment, the service’s western Pacific concept of operations, focuses on smaller tactical aircraft. Given these headwinds, advocates will have to make the case for conventional deterrence patrols by illustrating the strategic utility of the concept. Cross-strait shipping is the linchpin of any Chinese attempt to overtake Taiwan. Operationally, bombers are uniquely positioned to take on this challenge, offering an asymmetric threat to Chinese naval power that’s far cheaper to operate than naval cruisers or destroyers. They are long-range assets, they have deep magazines, and they are highly mobile, with the ability to respond to a crisis in hours rather than days. Politically, they offer the joint force more flexibility because, unlike the land-based missile batteries being pursued by the Army and Marine Corps, they do not necessarily need the permission of partners and allies to deploy. Taking on anti-ship missions would keep the Air Force relevant in the most important part of the joint force’s pacing scenario.
Buying Time
Preparing to implement conventional deterrence patrols would enable the Air Force to buy time for itself and the joint force. All the services face significant waits for new Taiwan-relevant systems and operational concepts to come online. The Air Force also has a series of large bills to pay, including the cost of over 1,700 F-35s and new inter-continental ballistic missiles. Furthermore, it has a long wait before its new hypersonic missiles and next-generation penetrating bomber, the B-21 Raider, become available for combat use. In the interim, the Air Force should be taking relatively cheap steps that will generate increased combat power without requiring new airframes or new production lines. By looking at history and taking advantage of the joint force’s diverse arsenal of anti-ship missiles, the Air Force can maintain relevance in the Pacific theater and help to deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
David Zikusoka is a non-resident senior fellow at New America. He has previously served in positions at the White House and the Department of Defense.
Image: U.S. Air Force photo by Tech Sgt Richard P. Ebensberger
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