November 14, 2021
Is the U.S. Navy Ready to Sink China's Navy?
Prolonged, uneasy deterrence is not a strategy to relish—just better than the alternatives.
by James Holmes
Here's What You Need to Remember: Yes, this is an age of precision weaponry—but more than one combatant fields a precision-strike complex in Asia. And it’s the home team, boasting all the advantages defending your own turf confers. Take it from a one-time denizen of the fire-support and precision-strike worlds: don’t discount the island-building enterprise in Southeast Asia so blithely.
It’s dangerous to live by the unexamined assumption. Exhibit A: the oft-heard claim that U.S. sea and air forces sporting precision-guided arms will make short work of military facilities on South China Sea islets. “So what?” says one Pentagon official of Beijing’s island-building project. “If China wants to build vulnerable airstrips on these rocks, let them—they just constitute a bunch of easy targets that would be taken out within minutes of a real contingency.”
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/reboot/us-navy-ready-sink-chinas-navy-196262
