War Is Boring

As Harry Kazianis noted yesterday, the Pentagon’s Congressionally-mandated annual survey of Chinese military capabilities is out. The highlights.

The just ended standoff between China and the Philippines over a disputed shoal in the South China Sea is a painful reminder of Manila’s maritime weakness.

by CRAIG SCANLAN Kim Jong Un’s turn as nostalgic replacement for his late grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, wasn’t the only bit of “history made new again” to come out of North Korea this week. North Korea has acquired U.S.-made MQM-107 Streaker target drones from the Middle East and is seeking to use them as a basis [...]

by CRAIG SCANLAN Writing about the Republic of Korea’s rapid advancement in military prowess generally points towards the positive, the country having accomplished great leaps in a short span of time, but when this topic veers to that of ROK Air superiority, the current South Korean state of affairs can be lumped in with what [...]

by KYLE MIZOKAMI Japan’s answer to NASA — JAXA — is slated to add defense and intelligence tasks to its traditionally civilian role. Kyodo explains: A government panel on space program strategy plans to revise a law to allow the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to step outside its current commitment to peaceful projects and become [...]

The military’s latest secret assessment of China’s rapidly modernizing submarines has good news and bad news for the U.S. Navy. On one hand, the roughly 60 submarines in the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) fleet are spending more and more time on combat-ready patrols — signaling China’s increasing naval competence and growing seriousness about influencing the western Pacific Ocean.

At a meeting in Beijing in December, Chinese president Hu Jintao had a powerful message for officials from the People’s Liberation Army Navy. “Prepare for war,” Hu said, using a Mandarin term — junshi douzheng — that means “conflict in general.”

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has a new maritime patrol plane apparently optimized for finding and destroying submarines. But whose submarines? And how effective will it be?

The U.S. Department of Defense has announced it will begin stationing Marines in northern Australia, at existing Australian facilities in the city of Darwin. The roughly 1,000 Marines will complement the larger U.S. Marine force permanently stationed in Japan as part of the Pentagon’s 300,000-strong Pacific Command.

For years, U.S. defense planners have fretted over the prospect of an expanded Chinese military presence in the Western Pacific Ocean. Beijing’s so-called “string-of-pearls” strategy supposedly envisioned an array of bases and long-range naval forces capable of exerting Chinese influence into the mid-Pacific and through the Strait of Malacca (between Indonesia and Malaysia) into the Indian Ocean.

The U.S. Navy has quietly added a capability to its future carrier-launched unmanned warplane that has the potential to tilt the Pacific balance of power. On November 2, the Navy announced it would add equipment and software for aerial refueling to one of its two in-development X-47B armed drones built by Northrop Grumman.

Andrew Erickson, an associate professor at the U.S. Naval War College, is known for his views on Chinese aerospace and naval capabilities. His latest edited volume is entitled: Chinese Aerospace Power: Evolving Maritime Roles.