Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

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Chapter 1 Undersea Deterrence and Strategic Competition in the Indo-Pacific | Rory MedcalfThe role of China’s immature SSBN fleet in such a situation isunclear, but a few credible possibilities exist. It seems highly unlikelythat China would threaten nuclear attack on Taiwan: it claims,after all, to be liberating its misguided compatriots. Nonetheless,wanting to reserve the right to retaliate to a future US nuclearattack, and thus seeking to discourage US conventional militaryintervention as well, Beijing could well choose to take precautionsto protect its nuclear forces at an early stage. In the case of theSSBN fleet, this could involve putting boats to sea as soon aspossible rather than keeping them inside their hardened ‘dens’on Hainan. Nonetheless, such activity would be indistinguishablefrom commencing deterrent patrols – in other words, positioningin the maritime bastion for potential nuclear conflict further on.By the same token, the United States has a strategic imperativeto curtail China’s escalation options from the start, including byplacing Chinese SSBNs at risk, or at least sowing meaningful doubtalong those lines in the minds of Chinese military planners. Thishelps explain the long-standing activity of American submarinedetectionassets in the South China Sea, and of what may betermed Chinese anti-anti-submarine warfare efforts (going backat least to the 2009 Impeccable incident, when Chinese fishing,militia, and naval vessels together harassed a US survey ship).The SSBN and ASW dimensions of hypothetical US–Chinaconfrontations over Taiwan were analysed in a series of strategicsimulation activities conducted as part of the present researchproject. One of these activities concerned the capability investmentchoices facing governments over the next few decades, includingwhether to invest more heavily in existing capabilities (both SSBNsand established ASW) or take a bet on disruptive technologybreakthroughs, or to attempt both (with espionage and dualusecivilian research convenient ways to gamble on the gamechangers).Our simulation activity proved a useful way to map thecomplexities and difficulties in assuming that new technologieswill fundamentally change the strategic picture. Other forthcomingresearch in this project will complement these conclusions withan alternative view, with a team led by Roger Bradbury assessingthe probability that a convergence of scientific breakthroughswill make the oceans transparent (or at least relatively moretransparent), even if converting such advances to useable ASWcapabilities may remain a more distant prospect.4
The Future of the Undersea Deterrent: A Global SurveyChapter 2Maritime and Naval Power in the Indo-PacificJames GoldrickThe maritime strategic balance in the Indo-Pacific is changingrapidly. The United States is facing a serious challenge to its militarydomination of the region for the first time since the collapseof the Soviet Union. Russia is attempting to revive its military capabilitiesin the Pacific, while China seeks, on the one hand, tocreate a defensive perimeter in its adjacent seas effective enoughto prevent any potential opponent from striking at the mainlandor blocking its ports, and on the other to develop sea controland power projection capabilities sufficient to dominate maritimeSoutheast Asia and the Indian Ocean. India must manage thecontinuing stand-off with Pakistan at the same time as it competeswith China for predominance in the northern Indian Ocean. Japanand Australia are both faced with the need to strengthen theirmaritime capabilities as well as to make hard decisions abouthow their commitment to their alliances with the United Statesshould affect their operational posture – and the extent to whichthey should cooperate with other middle powers to balance a risingChina. Smaller powers, particularly those adjoining the SouthChina Sea, are facing similar dilemmas, uncertain as to how farChina will attempt to push its maritime claims and dominate localsea areas to the exclusion of others.The future of undersea nuclear deterrent forces has strategic,operational, and force structure aspects for all the major powersin the Indo-Pacific. Its nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine(SSBN) force is central to the United States’ nuclear arsenal.While the US Navy (USN) cannot be complacent about threatsto the survivability of its submarines, until there are revolutionarydevelopments in sensor technology the combination of geography,oceanography, and platform and missile capabilities meansthat its at-sea deterrent will remain the most secure element ofAmerica’s nuclear force and thus receive high priority in funding.The problem for the USN is that the current Ohio-class must beginbeing replaced within the next decade, but the cost of twelvenew Columbia-class submarines will severely limit its ability toregenerate all the other force elements that will be required tomeet the combined challenges of China and Russia.It is more than a quarter of a century since the end of the SovietUnion and the disappearance of a serious threat to Americandominance at sea, but the USN is suffering the consequences ofmany years of high operational tempo combined with inadequatefunding and some poor acquisition decisions. The existing fleetneeds more funds and more time to catch up on maintenance andtraining. To meet the new challenge of near-peer competition atsea, the USN will also have to spend much more effort on tacticaldevelopment and innovation, raising its readiness for high-intensityoperations. These demands are behind the changes in theUSN approach to forward presence that had been implementedin recent times. The USN intends that its units spend more timein home waters, allowing a greater priority to training for complexscenarios. The Americans have made a virtue of necessityby emphasising the new unpredictability of their deployments,which are already being conducted with much greater emphasison covert operations than in the recent past. The problem,as tensions in the Strait of Hormuz in mid-2019 demonstrated,is that the need to manage emerging crises may force the USNback into prioritising forward deployments ahead of training forpossible contingencies. See Chapters Five and Six.The USN’s efforts represent just one part of a strategy to pushthe United States’ competitors off balance and regain the strategicinitiative. An important maritime element is likely to be theundermining of Chinese efforts to create an underwater bastion.Here the Americans must weigh the benefits of actively threateningthe security of the Chinese SSBN force against the resourcecommitments that such efforts would involve, as well as thecomplications that it could represent for alliance arrangements,notably with Japan and Australia. Nevertheless, an anti-bastioneffort was a key element of the successful “Maritime Strategy” ofthe 1980s, which saw the United States progressively force theSoviet Navy back into its home waters with the combination ofan anti-SSBN campaign and the threat of direct strikes againstthe Soviet homeland. As the USN seeks to undermine China’s“anti-access, area denial” capabilities, playing on any Chineseperceptions of their own vulnerabilities to force the People’s LiberationArmy Navy (PLAN) into a defensive posture and restrictits ability to deploy forces into the central Pacific must be anextremely attractive proposition.In seeking to become the predominant maritime power in thewestern Pacific, China has its own problems of resources andtechnology. However attractive the concept of an at-sea deterrentforce within its nuclear inventory, China must first extend the rangeof its submarine-launched missiles and considerably improvethe stealth qualities of its missile submarines if it is to create acapability adequate of being a credible threat to the continentalUnited States. This program must be balanced against the effortto dominate China’s near seas within the first and second islandchains, as well as to develop longer-ranged sea control and powerprojection forces in the form of carrier battle groups and amphibiousunits. If the missile problem can be solved, China’s recentefforts to dominate the South China Sea and its development of anetwork of artificial islands in the Spratlys and Paracels will helpmake a local bastion in the South China Sea’s deep waters anattractive concept, with the technological gap being compensated5
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Future of the Undersea Deterrent feb2020

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