Compass Points - Re-thinking the Pacific
No more 'one-trick pony'
Compass Points - Re-thinking the Pacific
No more 'one-trick pony'
April 5, 2024
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Several news stories about the Pacific detail how things are heating up. For example, Reuters reports that Philippine leaders are determined not to let China push them out of the Spratly's and other offshore atolls.
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MANILA - The Philippines is prepared to respond to China's attempts to disrupt its supply missions in the South China Sea and protect its troops stationed in the waterway, a top security official said on Wednesday. Jonathan Malaya, the spokesperson of the National Security Council, said the Philippines is committed to maintaining its position at the Second Thomas Shoal and there will be no letup in re-supply missions to Filipino soldiers on a grounded warship there.
-- Reuters
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In addition, Nikkei Asia reports that the first US - Japan - Philippines Trilateral will seek to build even stronger ties among the three allies to counter China's continual aggression in the South China Sea.
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Meanwhile, USNI News reports that Japan is standing up an amphibious rapid deployment brigade and electronic warfare unit to better defend its southwest islands.
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The Japan Ground Self-Defense Force last week formally activated the 3rd Regiment of its Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, a key element of Japan’s plan to defend its southwest region and the outlying islands there. Last month Japan also stood up a JGSDF electronic warfare unit on Yonaguni Island and a surface-to surface-missile unit on Okinawa – the first time this type of unit has deployed on Okinawa.
-- USNI News
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Pacific nations are not only beefing up their own military forces, they are also recalculating their own China strategies. It is time for the US and the Marine Corps to do some new thinking also. Writing in their article for The Hill, "A new strategic concept could be useful in the US military’s defense of Taiwan" Mike Pompeo and Bryan Clark advocate the US rethink its approach to China in the Pacific by establishing a new "hedge force."
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. . . Taking advantage of widely available aerial, naval and undersea drones, “hedge forces” could deny access to an aggressor. Ukraine used this approach to sink half Russia’s Black Sea Fleet and restore its maritime trade while Houthi drones under and above the water have upended worldwide shipping traffic with their attacks across the Red Sea. The U.S. military should exploit these same technologies to disrupt or slow a Chinese invasion. Tangled up in a hedge force’s drones, China’s troop transports and their escorts would also be easier targets for U.S. missiles.
The Defense Department is already pursuing elements of what could be a future hedge force for Taiwan through initiatives by the Defense Innovation Unit and the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Expanding these efforts that tap today’s unmanned system and software technologies could allow the Pentagon to field a hedge force within a year, rather than waiting a decade or more for the next generation of missiles, submarines or bombers to arrive.
More important, a hedge force could help defense leaders arrest the continued morphing of the U.S. military into a “one-trick pony” optimized to fight a short invasion adjacent to a peer opponent’s homeland but without the capacity for other scenarios or crisis response elsewhere.
-- Mike Pompeo and Bryan Clark, The Hill
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China is an ongoing threat in the Pacific and elsewhere. Compass Points salutes Mike Pompeo and Bryan Clark for their article at The Hill that brings new thinking to the challenge of deterring China in the Pacific. If an Air Force, Army, and Navy robotic hedge force can deter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, that would free the Marines Corps to stop over-emphasizing defensive positions along the Maginot island chain and get back to focusing on worldwide crisis response. The Marine Corps best serves the Nation, not as a narrow "one-trick pony" force on defense on islands in the Pacific, but rather as a robust, combined arms, maneuver force always on global patrol.
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Reuters - 04/03/2024
Philippines prepared to respond to China's attempts to interfere with re-supply missions
By Karen Lema
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USNI News - 04/01/2024
Japan Stands Up Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, Electronic Warfare Unit For Defense Of Southwest Islands
By Dzirhan Mahadzir
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The Hill - 04/02/2024
A new strategic concept could be useful in the US military’s defense of Taiwan
By Mike Pompeo and Bryan Clark
Here's to the brave Philippine Marines manning station on the BRP Sierra Madre. An unpleasant but necessary mission to offset Chinese operations and expansion after the seizure of Mischief Reef; they are what SIF looks like in practice in the grey zone of conflict. This isn't expeditionary, this is Homeland Defense for the PI.
If the Marine Corps was again a true naval expeditionary force, like it was prior to FD2030, and armed with a drone capability, it would be a strong offensive force. The hedge force capabilities could be used in the maritime choke points, and the traditional expeditionary force could be used to threaten Chinese (or whoever's) worldwide holdings. The original Advance Base Force of the 1920s, if I'm not mistaken had an expeditionary component as well as a defensive component. I believe we can do both and not be a "one trick pony."