Why Will the Navy Sail in Harm's Way?
There better be a good reason for risking a fleet that can't be rebuilt
What is the Navy's mission in a war against China? I don't want a War Plan Orange 2.0 that sends the fleet into a catastrophic People’s Liberation Army turkey shoot.
How do we fight through the thousands of conventional short, medium, and intermediate ballistic missiles the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Forces (PLARF) have covering the approaches to her shores and still have enough defensive weapons to close the enemy. Once we get there, were we so heavily weighted with defensive weaponry in our finite number of VLS cells that whatever offensive weapons we had available were worth the sacrifice to get them within range?
I've certainly worried that loading up on needed defensive missiles will leave too few offensive weapons. Yet a sinking ship that goes down with all of its too-few defensive missiles expended and a bunch of offensive missiles still in the cells is a bad decision, too.
And I appreciate this warning:
Should we find ourselves in a Great Pacific War with the PRC, as our fleet heads west across the International Date Line, we should expect in the first 90-180 days to lose somewhere in the neighborhood of 8-10,000 Sailors and Marines...at sea alone.
Too often, people speak of using the Navy rather than the Army as if the former is "clean" and only the latter is casualty intensive. Lose a carrier strike group with no way to rescue the crews and we'd lose in an afternoon as much as America lost in the long ground wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Recall War Plan Orange from pre-Pearl Harbor days:
Nothing was said in WPO-3 about what was to happen after the defenses on Bataan crumbled. Presumably by that time, estimated at six months, the U.S. Pacific Fleet would have fought its way across the Pacific, won a victory over the Combined Fleet, and made secure the line of communications. The men and supplies collected on the west coast during that time would then begin to reach the Philippines in a steady stream. The Philippine garrison, thus reinforced, could then counter- attack and drive the enemy into the sea.
Actually, no one in a position of authority at that time (April 1941) believed that anything like this would happen. Informed naval opinion estimated that it would require at least two years for the Pacific Fleet to fight its way across the Pacific. There was no plan to concentrate on the west coast and no schedule for the movement of men and supplies to the Philippines. Army planners in early 1941 believed that at the end of six months, if not sooner, supplies would be exhausted and the garrison would go down in defeat. WPO-3 did not say this; instead it said nothing at all. And everyone hoped that when the time came something could be done, some plan improvised to relieve or rescue the men stranded 7,000 miles across the Pacific.
Despite the plan, everyone knew the plan wasn't going to happen. Is this what we are doing now in regard to fighting China in the western Pacific? Hoping that somewhow the Navy will charge into the western Pacific to defeat the PLAN but not knowing how that is possible?
And knowing there is no way we’d actually order that mission?
Before the Navy challenges that gauntlet of missiles (and ships, subs, and aircraft), it must to shift the missile-exchange odds by addressing all of the kill chain links that China must establish to sink the Navy ships.
What can Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and the Philippines in particular do to make sure they are still fighting until the Navy can reach them? What can those allies do to accelerate the Navy timetable by reducing China's advantage in the western Pacific?
But before we even think about all of this in terms of missile loads, reloading, offensive versus defensive missiles, and missile exchange calculations, I want to know one thing.
Why is the Navy advancing through the "dead zone" within China's missile range to get close to China? Before Pearl Harbor, America at least had the real need to do something to rescue the American personnel in the Philippines.
The objective for sailing through China's anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) arsenal must be really important to risk getting slaughtered approaching China. Surely, the Navy wouldn't go through that ... oh, let's call it a Hellscape ... simply to flaunt its ability to sail around off China's coast with impunity, right?
I'm just saying maybe the Navy should delay its advance into the South China Sea and East China Sea until the odds are better. And when there is a useful mission. Maybe assaulting and capturing Hainan Island, to throw off just one mission ashore among many potential objectives off the top of my head.
NOTE: Map from The Daily Mail, via Commander Salamander.