On Point: 2030 Scenario: US Navy Robots, Carriers and Mines Counterattack China

[Valin]

Strategy Page

Austin Bay
May 20, 2020

For at least two decades, U.S. military strategists and planners have pondered this complex question: how to lower the physical risks to ships and crews a U.S. Navy carrier battle group and other surface forces face as they approach a hostile Chinese coast.

In 1996, as Beijing threatened Taiwan with a rain of missiles, a Navy nuclear carrier battle group sailed toward the island -- with impunity.

However, communist China's military modernization program has developed and deployed weapon systems that increase the peril U.S. and allied fleets confront. Some Chinese air and missile systems may be able to successfully attack U.S. surface vessels 1,200 miles away. The threat to allied submarines has also increased.

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Unfortunately, major media tend to portray these simulations as either frightening "models" predicting eventual American defeat or dismiss them as Pentagon bang-bang fantasies whose goal is a bigger budget for weapons that don't work.

But back to the recent reports. The scenario was set in 2030. Communist China possessed modernized naval, air and missile forces that threatened every U.S. naval surface task force and base in the Pacific and eastern Indian Oceans. According to a report that appeared in The Australian, Guam was "totally at risk."

Time for some old news circa 2017: North Korea already threatens Guam. That's why the Pentagon deployed a THAAD anti-missile battery to the island.

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Here's another scenario: The Navy's robot pawns sacrifice themselves so Navy carriers -- the power projectors on the Pacific chess board -- can deliver a devastating counterpunch.

[Valin]

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