Compass Points - Message to Taiwan
China encircles Taiwan
Compass Points - Message to Taiwan
China encircles Taiwan
October 14, 2024
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It happened this week.
As long feared, warships of China's People's Liberation Army Navy steamed across the Taiwan Strait and encircled Taiwan.
China was sending a message to Taiwan and in the process also sent a wakeup call to the US Marine Corps and to the US Congress.
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China deployed planes and ships to encircle Taiwan on Monday, in drills Beijing said were aimed at sending a "stern warning" to "separatist" forces on the self-ruled island.
Beijing has not ruled out using force to bring Taiwan under its control and Monday's drills represent its fourth round of large-scale war games in the past two years.
. . . The drills, dubbed Joint Sword-2024B, "test the joint operations capabilities of the theater command's troops", Beijing said.
They are taking place in "areas to the north, south and east of Taiwan Island," said Captain Li Xi, spokesman for the Chinese military's Eastern Theater Command.
The drills are "focusing on subjects of sea-air combat-readiness patrol, blockade on key ports and areas", Li said.
They also practised an "assault on maritime and ground targets" and "joint seizure of comprehensive superiority".
-- France24
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Beginning back in the summer of 2019 the US Marine Corps began to change their focus away from global crisis response to a new focus on placing small units of missile Marines on islands in the Pacific. The theory was that if China's fleet attempted to threaten Taiwan and other nations in the Pacific, the Marine missile units would be a deterrent. This week when China's fleet sailed out and encircled Taiwan, did China stop to consider the Marine missile units?
The answer is China did not spend a moment worrying about the Marine missile units because even after five years, there are zero Marine missile units in place on islands in the Pacific.
That is not to say there are no US missiles China needs to worry about. China must concern itself with missiles onboard US Navy ships and on US Air Force aircraft. And there are also some US missiles on the northern tip of the Philippines.
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The U.S army flew the Typhon, which can launch missiles including SM-6 missiles and Tomahawks with a range exceeding 1,600 km (994 miles), to the Philippines in April in what it called a "historic first" and a "significant step in our partnership with the Philippines".
A satellite image taken on Wednesday by Planet Labs, a commercial satellite firm, and reviewed by Reuters showed the Typhon at the Laoag International Airport, in Ilocos Norte province.
The senior government official who spoke to Reuters said there were no immediate plans to withdraw it.
"If ever it will be pulled out, it is because the objective has been achieved and it may be brought (back) in after all the repairs or the construction would have been done," the official said, adding that there was strategic value for the Philippines in keeping the system to deter China.
"We want to give them sleepless nights."
-- Reuters
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The Army is building what they call Multi Domain Task Forces which will provide long range fires including SM-6s, Tomahawks, and hypersonic missiles. Some of the MDTFs and their missiles are fully operational in the Pacific today.
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General Charles Flynn, the commanding general of the U.S. Army Pacific, said the Indo-Pacific is the most consequential theater for the country's enduring security and prosperity, where the Chinese military and its associated militias are "a threat that we must confront." . . . the general argued that his units could threaten China's critical capabilities by positioning a network of land-based fires on key terrains within the first island chain in the Western Pacific Ocean.
The island chain, which extends southward from Japan's mainland and its southwestern archipelago to Taiwan and the Philippines, is a U.S. defense concept that seeks to leverage allied or friendly territories to contain the Chinese navy in the region during a conflict.
-- Newsweek
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When China sent out its ships this week and encircled Taiwan, it was a graphic warning to Taiwan and to the US. China is a powerful and dangerous foe. But for the United States the world is filled with growing threats. Besides deterring China in the Pacific, the US must maintain an ability for global crisis response. America always must have a rapid and reliable 9-1-1 force. For decades that force has been the Marine Corps.
Over the last several years, unfortunately, the Marine Corps has unwisely taken its focus away from global crisis response and put its focus on small, theoretical Marine missile units in the Pacific. In the Pacific today the US has missiles on Navy ships, on Air Force aircraft, and now as part of Army missile units in the Pacific.
The Marine Corps can never provide the long-range missile capability that is already operational in the Navy, Air Force, and Army. On the other hand, none of those services can provide the Nation with the expandable Marine Air Ground Task Force. The MAGTF is forward deployed and can arrive quickly off any trouble shore ready to deter, assist, and fight.
It will take Congressional leadership for the Marine Corps to stop focusing on missile units that would be duplicative if they existed at all -- which they do not -- and get back to focusing on the enhanced and upgraded, combined arms, global 9-1-1 force.
Congress needs to probe into the Marine Corps’ five-year effort to produce missile units on islands in the Pacific.
Congress might begin by asking Marine Corps leaders,
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-- Where are these Marine missile units?
-- What is their T/O and T/E?
-- What foreign islands are they deployed to today?
-- How are they logistically supported?
-- How many missiles do they have on hand now?
-- What nations are they deterring today?
-- Why has the Marine Corps reduced its global combined arms capabilities? and
-- What has this focus on missile units done to the Marine Corps ability to provide crisis response in Africa, the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, and elsewhere?
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When China sailed out and encircled Taiwan, it was sending a message to Taiwan. China's actions are also a wakeup call for the US Marine Corps and the US Congress. After five years, the Congress can no longer afford for the Marine Corps to lavish time and resources on Marine missiles units in the Pacific. Marine missile units do not exist and even if they did, would be less capable than existing Navy, Air Force, and Army missiles.
The emergence of China as a global threat to US interests does not mean that other threats evaporate. To the contrary, as the US maintains a resolute opposition to China’s expansion in the Pacific and elsewhere, the US must also be ready to deal with other challenges from other opponents around the world.
The US can no longer allow its Marine Corps to be redesigned into small missile units and confined to isolated Pacific islands. More than ever, what the US needs from the Marine Corps is a fully capable, combined arms, global crisis response force. With the help of Congress, the Marine Corps must rebuild and restore its crisis response capabilities. so that when the next global crisis erupts, the Nation can say with confidence, "Send in the Marines!"
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France24 - 10/14/2024
China encircles Taiwan with planes and ships in 'stern warning' to separatists
https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20241014-china-taiwan
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Newsweek - 10/11/2024
US Army Learns to Fight Pacific Island Warfare Again
By Ryan Chan
https://www.newsweek.com/us-news-army-fight-pacific-island-warfare-again-china-1966805
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Reuters - 09/20/2024
Exclusive: US keeps missile system in Philippines as China tensions rise
By Karen Lema and Poppy Mcpherson
Currently the US Army has two missile-equipped Multi-Domain Task Forces in the Indo-Pacific theater and plans to add a third by FY 2028. Army leaders are in the process of consolidating the MDTF’s Mid-Range Capability (MRC)—built from elements of the SM-6 and Tomahawk naval missiles—and Long-Range Hypersonic batteries into a Long-Range Fires Battalion with Precision Strike Missiles (PrSM).
According to FY 2025 budget documents, the first procurement-funded Navy Marine Expeditionary Ship Interdiction System (NMESIS) Naval Strike Missile launcher will be delivered in January 2026, and the first Remotely Operated Ground Unit for Expeditionary fires (ROGUE) carrier for the launcher will be delivered in September 2025. One report shows the NMESIS delayed until April 2026 and the ROGUE until November 2025.
Bottom line, the US Army has more capable anti-ship missiles deployed today than the Marine Corps will begin to deploy a year and half from now! In my view, Marine senior leaders could rightly be accused of professional malpractice as they waste taxpayer money creating a duplicative and less capable missile system years after the Army fielded better ones. Moreover, in their attempts to do this these leaders gutted the Corps’ means of conducting combined arms operations and, despite claims otherwise, walked away from a maneuver warfare philosophy.
Missile Systems Range
Army Precision Strike Missile. 310-621 Miles
Army SM-6 230-290 Miles (Reported)
Army Tomahawk 1,500 Miles
Army Hypersonic 1,725 (Reported)
Marine Corps Naval Strike Missile 115 Miles
Each of the Navy's 4 Ohio class SSGN submarines are armed with 154 Tomahawks. These boats are built for stealth and endurance. Future Virginia class submarines (Block 5) will carry 40 TLAMs or some number of the Navy's new submarine launched hypersonic missile. The SIF is less than irrelevant compared to these capabilities.