{"id":8610,"date":"2015-10-07T17:29:08","date_gmt":"2015-10-07T22:29:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=8610"},"modified":"2015-10-07T17:29:08","modified_gmt":"2015-10-07T22:29:08","slug":"face-off-how-america-can-really-stop-chinas-navy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2015\/10\/07\/face-off-how-america-can-really-stop-chinas-navy\/","title":{"rendered":"Face Off: How America can Really STOP China&#8217;s Navy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/china1.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-8611\" src=\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2015\/10\/china1.jpg?w=620\" alt=\"china1\" width=\"620\" height=\"443\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s dangerous to live by the <a href=\"http:\/\/classics.mit.edu\/Plato\/apology.html\">unexamined assumption<\/a>. 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. \u201cSo what?\u201d <a href=\"http:\/\/warontherocks.com\/2015\/03\/chinas-menacing-sandcastles-in-the-south-china-sea\/\">says one Pentagon official<\/a> of Beijing\u2019s island-building project. \u201cIf China wants to build vulnerable airstrips on these rocks, let them\u2014they just constitute a bunch of easy targets that would be taken out within minutes of a real contingency.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>RAND, too, softpedals the islands\u2019 longevity in combat. In a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rand.org\/content\/dam\/rand\/pubs\/research_reports\/RR300\/RR392\/RAND_RR392.pdf\">generally estimable report<\/a> on the <a href=\"http:\/\/jpr.sagepub.com\/content\/17\/2\/151.abstract\">correlation of forces<\/a> between America and China, RAND researchers maintain that South China Sea outposts could host only \u201ca handful of <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Surface-to-air_missile\">SAMs<\/a> and fighter aircraft.\u201d It\u2019s doubtful, they say, that People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) forces forward-deployed to \u201creclaimed\u201d reefs or atolls would comprise \u201ca significant factor in high-intensity military operations beyond the first hours of a conflict.\u201d Nothing to see here, move along.<\/p>\n<p>The syllogism behind such wartime prognoses seems to go like this: Island fortresses can\u2019t stand against assault unless they\u2019re entirely self-sufficient. China\u2019s manmade islands aren\u2019t self-sufficient in terms of defenses or logistics. So why fret about them?<\/p>\n<p>Read the Remainder at<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/nationalinterest.org\/feature\/face-how-america-can-really-stop-chinas-navy-14014\"> National Interest<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It\u2019s 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. \u201cSo what?\u201d says one Pentagon official of Beijing\u2019s island-building project. \u201cIf China wants to build vulnerable airstrips on these rocks, let&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[2280,74,1286,1898],"tags":[2436,2437,2438,2439,2440],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}