[Published by the Center for a New American Security, or CNAS, the study comes as an increasing number of current and former Pentagon officials sound alarm bells about what they say China’s rising military might portend for a United States that has grown accustomed to unrivaled military superiority.]
By Paul Sonne
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The
People's Liberation Army flag flies onboard a Chinese naval ship after it
arrived
Monday
at Garden Island Naval Base in Sydney. (Bianca Demarchi/
EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
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The U.S. military may be close to falling
victim to a “deliberate, patient and robustly resourced” Chinese strategy to
blunt the technological advantages of the American armed forces, a new report
co-written by the Pentagon’s former No. 2 official warned.
The study — written by former deputy defense
secretary Robert O. Work and his former special assistant, Greg Grant — details
what the authors describe as a five-pronged Chinese strategy to end and
ultimately outstrip the American military’s technological superiority. The goal
in the short term is to make it too costly for Washington to intervene in the
Western Pacific, and to eventually become the world’s premier military force,
according to the study.
“The Chinese People’s Liberation Army has
been patiently stalking the U.S. military for two decades,” the report says.
“It has studied the preferred American way of war and devised a strategy to
exploit its weaknesses and offset its strengths — particularly its
military-technological strengths.”
China, the report adds, “appears increasingly
close to achieving technological parity with U.S. operational systems and has a
plan to achieve technological superiority.”
Published by the Center for a New American
Security, or CNAS, the study comes as an increasing number of current and
former Pentagon officials sound alarm bells about what they say China’s rising
military might portend for a United States that has grown accustomed to
unrivaled military superiority.
Gen. Paul J. Selva, vice chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, has warned that the Chinese military could reach
technological parity with the United States in the early 2020s and outpace the
Pentagon in the 2030s, if the U.S. military doesn’t respond to the
challenge.
A study late last year conducted by former
top Republican and Democratic officials at the behest of Congress concluded
that the United States had lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and
could lose a war against China in certain scenarios.
In early 2018, the Trump administration
rolled out a new National Defense Strategy. It called on the American military
to shift its emphasis away from counterterrorism, which has been the primary
focus since the Sept. 11 attacks, and instead concentrate on “great power
competition” with China and Russia.
The new national defense strategy built on
and added clarity to an initiative that Work spearheaded at the Pentagon
beginning in late 2014 known as the “Third Offset.” That strategy called upon
the United States to maintain its military edge by renewing a focus on
technological innovation, but it didn’t single out China or Russia as pacing
threats or competitors.
In the CNAS report, Work and Grant say that,
in retrospect, the Pentagon should have specified that the key aim of the Third
Offset was to upset China’s effort to undermine the American military’s
technological dominance.
“I would have said, ‘The Chinese are coming,
the Chinese are coming, the Chinese are coming,’ if I was able to do that,”
Work said. “And I would have tried to inject a more heightened sense of urgency
that we can’t afford to wait anymore. Every day we wait, we fall farther and
farther behind.”
Work, speaking in an interview with The
Washington Post, said the Obama administration wasn’t comfortable making such a
bold case against China in the strategy, because top officials didn’t want to
overhype the competition and bring about a new Cold War or a destabilizing arms
race.
In their report, Work and Grant detail five
lines of effort they say the Chinese government has pursued in recent decades
with the goal of blunting the American military’s technological edge.
According to the study, the Chinese have employed
industrial and technical espionage; developed concepts and capabilities to
exploit vulnerabilities in the U.S. battle network; amassed an arsenal of
long-range precision missiles; developed “black capabilities” to surprise the
United States in the event of a conflict; and undertaken efforts to become a
world leader in artificial intelligence and integrate the technology into their
military to secure an edge.
Of the lines of effort, Work says he is
particularly concerned at the moment about China’s development of technologies
and concepts to exploit vulnerabilities in the way the United States wages war.
He said China’s idea is to achieve victory against the United States in any
potential conflict by disabling the networks, communications and technologies
that allow the modern American military to operate.
“In other words, we don’t care how many ships
we sink. We don’t care how many planes we shoot down,” Work said. “All we care
about is if we can pry apart the digital network the U.S. uses to apply force,
and we will prevent the United States from achieving its campaign objectives.”
Work, a retired U.S. Marine Corps colonel who
served at the Pentagon in the Obama administration and at the beginning of the
Trump administration, said every connection the U.S. military relies on is
probably covered by a Chinese electronic warfare system designed to disable it
in the event of a conflict.
The former top Pentagon official said the
other line of effort that worries him is China’s emphasis on guided ballistic
missiles and hypersonic weapons, which are designed to outrange American
versions. Work said this challenges American service members, who have become
accustomed to having better technologies than adversaries.
The report notes that, as a result of China’s
advances, any objective assessment must consider the possibility that the U.S.
military “is close to becoming the victim of a deliberate, patient and robustly
resourced military-technical offset strategy.” It says the United States will
unlikely be able to spend its way out of the challenge and must “out-innovate”
the Chinese as a result.
“Military advantage is just 1.1 times better
than the adversary,” Grant said. “So, start there. And then start increasing
the advantage over time.”
