美國為應付來自支那的挑戰與威脅, 各傳統與新建軍種與兵種都在進行新一代的建軍備戰
david chou
美國為應付來自支那的挑戰與威脅, 各傳統與新建軍種與兵種都在進行新一代的建軍備戰(I)
===========================
Appendix I
National Security Strategy of the United States of America
DECEMBER 2017
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/NSS-Final-12-18-2017-0905.pdf
China and Russia challenge American power, influence, and interests, attempting to erode American security and prosperity. They are determined to make economies less free and less fair, to grow their militaries, and to control information and data to repress their societies and expand their influence.
A central continuity in history is the contest for power. The present time period is no different. Three main sets of challengers—the revisionist powers of China and Russia, the rogue states of Iran and North Korea, and transnational threat organizations, particularly jihadist terrorist groups—are actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners.
China and Russia want to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values and interests. China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.
For decades, U.S. policy was rooted in the belief that support for China’s rise and for its integration into the post-war international order would liberalize China. Contrary to our hopes, China expanded its power at the expense of the sovereignty of others. China gathers and exploits data on an unrivaled scale and spreads features of its authoritarian system, including corruption and the use of surveillance. It is building the most capable and well-funded military in the world, after our own. Its nuclear arsenal is growing and diversifing. Part of China’s military modernization and economic expansion is due to its access to the U.S. innovation economy, including America’s world-class universities.
In addition, after being dismissed as a phenomenon of an earlier century, great power competition returned. China and Russia began to reassert their influence regionally and globally. Today, they are fielding military capabilities designed to deny America access in times of crisis and to contest our ability to operate freely in critical commercial zones during peacetime. In short, they are contesting our geopolitical advantages and trying to change the international order in their favor.
We must convince adversaries that we can and will defeat them—not just punish them if they attack the United States. We must ensure the ability to deter potential enemies by denial, convincing them that they cannot accomplish objectives through the use of force or other forms of aggression. We need our allies to do the same—to modernize, acquire necessary capabilities, improve readiness, expand the size of their forces, and affirm the political will to win.
Although the United States seeks to continue to cooperate with China, China is using economic inducements and penalties, influence operations, and implied military threats to persuade other states to heed its political and security agenda. China’s infrastructure investments and trade strategies reinforce its geopolitical aspirations. Its efforts to build and militarize outposts in the South China Sea endanger the free fl ow of trade, threaten the sovereignty of other nations, and undermine regional stability. China has mounted a rapid military modernization campaign designed to limit U.S. access to the region and provide China a freer hand there. China presents its ambitions as mutually beneficial, but Chinese dominance risks diminishing the sovereignty of many states in the IndoPacific. States throughout the region are calling for sustained U.S. leadership in a collective response that upholds a regional order respectful of sovereignty and independence.
We will maintain our strong ties with Taiwan in accordance with our “One China” policy, including our commitments under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide for Taiwan’s legitimate defense needs and deter coercion.
Appendix II
NATIONAL SECURITY STRATEGY
OCTOBER 2022
Russia and the PRC pose different challenges. Russia poses an immediate threat to the free and open international system, recklessly flouting the basic laws of the international order today, as its brutal war of aggression against Ukraine has shown. The PRC, by contrast, is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to advance that objective.
Third, this strategy recognizes that the PRC presents America’s most consequential geopolitical challenge. Although the Indo-Pacific is where its outcomes will be most acutely shaped, there are significant global dimensions to this challenge. Russia poses an immediate and ongoing threat to the regional security order in Europe and it is a source of disruption and instability globally but it lacks the across the spectrum capabilities of the PRC.
The PRC is the only competitor with both the intent to reshape the international order and, increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it. Beijing has ambitions to create an enhanced sphere of influence in the Indo-Pacific and to become the world’s leading power. It is using its technological capacity and increasing influence over international institutions to create more permissive conditions for its own authoritarian model, and to mold global technology use and norms to privilege its interests and values. Beijing frequently uses its economic power to coerce countries. It benefits from the openness of the international economy while limiting access to its domestic market, and it seeks to make the world more dependent on the PRC while reducing its own dependence on the world. The PRC is also investing in a military that is rapidly modernizing, increasingly capable in the Indo-Pacific, and growing in strength and reach globally – all while seeking to erode U.S. alliances in the region and around the world.
Competition with the PRC is most pronounced in the Indo-Pacific, but it is also increasingly global. Around the world, the contest to write the rules of the road and shape the relationships that govern global affairs is playing out in every region and across economics, technology, diplomacy, development, security, and global governance.
david chou
美國為應付來自支那的挑戰與威脅, 各傳統與新建軍種與兵種都在進行新一代的建軍備戰(II)
Former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have outlined vastly different approaches to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Their approaches to turmoil in the Middle East are also expected to be at least rhetorically different.
But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.
Beijing has made clear that it will seek to expand its power in Asia, from militarizing uninhabited rocks in the Pacific to claiming sovereignty over international waters. And all of that starts with Taiwan, which President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to be ready to invade by 2027.
While Taiwan has its own defenses, military experts say it is difficult to see how the island would repel a Chinese invasion without U.S. help. Such a move would be a decision for whoever is president at the time, but American policymakers worry that staying out of it may not be an option if the United States wants to maintain its dominance.
“My sense is that a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would send massive ripples throughout the region,” said Seth Jones, a senior vice president with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China would likely emerge as the dominant military power in the region, not the United States, and it would trigger a range of second- and third-order effects.”
For instance, America’s Pacific allies could lose faith in U.S. deterrence and try to make security deals with China. Japan and South Korea — both treaty allies of the United States — could join the nuclear club as a way to defend themselves against China.
“Is it quite the fall of the Roman Empire?” Mr. Jones said. “I don’t know, but that’s the right kind of question to ask.”
===========================
Appendix II
New Vehicles, Face Paint and a 1,200-Foot Fall: The U.S. Army Prepares for War With China
The big and cumbersome Army is trying to transform itself to deploy quickly to Asia, if needed. It is an inherently dangerous business.
Photographs and Video by Kenny Holston
Reporting from Mauna Loa, Hawaii
Oct. 29, 2024
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/29/us/politics/us-military-army-china.html
Early one morning this month, 864 Army paratroopers bundled into C-17 transport planes at a base in Alaska and took off for a Great Power War exercise between three volcanic mountains on Hawaii’s Big Island.
Only 492 made it. Some of the C-17s had trouble with their doors, while others were forced to land early. A few of the parachutists who did make it sprained ankles or suffered head trauma. And one — a 19-year-old private — began to fall quickly when his chute did not open.
Across the field, shouts of “pull your reserve” could be heard before the young private hit the ground and medics ran to treat him. The horrifying scene and its aftermath encapsulate every jumper’s worst nightmare.
But Pvt. Second Class Erik Partida’s 1,200-foot fall was also a stark reality check as the U.S. Army transforms itself, and its hundreds of thousands of young men and women, for yet another war, this one a potential conflict with China.
The Pentagon calls it a Great Power War, and it would be exponentially more dangerous. It would put the world’s two strongest militaries — both of them nuclear superpowers — in direct conflict, possibly drawing in other nuclear adversaries, including North Korea and Russia. U.S. troops would be killed, in numbers that could possibly go beyond the toll from America’s deadliest conflicts.
Such a war would be fought on the ground, at sea, in the air and in space. So the Army is practicing for exactly that.
Forget the Marines, who can get anywhere quickly, because they travel light. Or the Navy, which practically lives in the Pacific. Those services, which featured heavily in the Pacific during World War II, have the planning for a conflict in Asia baked into their DNA.
But now, as the chances of war with China increase, the big and cumbersome Army is trying to transform itself after two decades of fighting terrorism in Afghanistan and the Middle East. Unlike the Taliban or other insurgents, China will have satellites that can see troop formations from the sky. The Army must, in essence, learn how to fly under the radar.
To stress-test the Army’s ability to deploy quickly and fight on Pacific island chains, soldiers with the 25th Infantry Division, along with Japanese, Australian, Indonesian and other partner troops, rappelled into jungle ravines and then made the humid climbs up, laden with gear.
Some 28 miles away at Pearl Harbor, Army transport ship crews ironed out various ways to discharge the military equipment and the troops they will need in the event of war in the Pacific.
And not far from the North Shore of Oahu, soldiers worked to disguise a multivehicle command and control unit, complete with big-screen computer stations, so that it was almost indistinguishable from the deep green forest.
A so-called Great Power War with China would be fought on the ground, at sea, in the air and in space. So the U.S. Army is practicing for exactly that.
Former President Donald J. Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have outlined vastly different approaches to Russia’s war in Ukraine. Their approaches to turmoil in the Middle East are also expected to be at least rhetorically different.
But no matter who wins in November, the United States will continue to prepare for war with China.
Beijing has made clear that it will seek to expand its power in Asia, from militarizing uninhabited rocks in the Pacific to claiming sovereignty over international waters. And all of that starts with Taiwan, which President Xi Jinping has ordered the Chinese military to be ready to invade by 2027.
While Taiwan has its own defenses, military experts say it is difficult to see how the island would repel a Chinese invasion without U.S. help. Such a move would be a decision for whoever is president at the time, but American policymakers worry that staying out of it may not be an option if the United States wants to maintain its dominance.
“My sense is that a successful Chinese invasion of Taiwan would send massive ripples throughout the region,” said Seth Jones, a senior vice president with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “China would likely emerge as the dominant military power in the region, not the United States, and it would trigger a range of second- and third-order effects.”
For instance, America’s Pacific allies could lose faith in U.S. deterrence and try to make security deals with China. Japan and South Korea — both treaty allies of the United States — could join the nuclear club as a way to defend themselves against China.
“Is it quite the fall of the Roman Empire?” Mr. Jones said. “I don’t know, but that’s the right kind of question to ask.”
‘Tyranny of Distance’
The U.S. Army knows how hard it would be to invade Taiwan.
During World War II, when the island was called Formosa and was occupied by Japan, the Joint Chiefs of Staff came up with Operation Causeway, an invasion plan that would give the United States a base closer to Japan from which to attack. Gen. Douglas MacArthur opposed invading Taiwan as too risky; it meant crossing a contested sea to fight on complex terrain against a well-defended army. Military planners said an amphibious assault on the island would have been far harder than the D-Day landings at Normandy.
Few Army planners think the Chinese military is ready to undertake an amphibious assault of Taiwan.
“The first thing you have to do is you have to generate an invasion force, which would be a pretty large force, to go onto an island which has a prepared defense,” Maj. Gen. Jeffrey A. VanAntwerp, the director of operations for the Army’s Pacific Command, said in an interview. “There’s 100 miles of Taiwan Straits that you have to get across, and you’re doing that in large transport vessels that are very vulnerable during that crossing.”
China would most likely use light amphibious vessels to try to secure a beachhead in Taiwan, military planners say, but those vessels would have to plow through heavily mined waters. And while air assault forces would probably try to target infrastructure, in the end there is no viable way to seize an island as large as Taiwan, with its own defenses and 23 million people, without putting a force on the ground — troops who would have to come by sea.
“You can’t do it without pushing a large landing force across the straits on ships,” General VanAntwerp said. “There’s no other way.”
So China is working on it. Chinese military planners have repurposed civilian ferries to transport troops and equipment across the strait and are working to construct floating piers, American officials say.
The Pentagon would not go into detail about how American trainers are helping Taiwan build defenses. But making clear to the Chinese that an amphibious assault would be fraught is part of the U.S. military’s deterrence plan.
Army officials also say they hope joint exercises with Pacific partners will show Chinese military officials all the capabilities that the United States has and can bring to bear.
The officials point out that more than a quarter of the service’s 450,000 active-duty troops are already tasked to the Pacific. But they define that region liberally, to encompass troops not only in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines but also in Alaska, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon and California. Taiwan is more than 6,000 miles from Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, Wash., a separation the Army refers to as “the tyranny of distance.”
Docked in Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army vessel Maj. Gen. Robert Smalls will be critical to getting all the apparatuses of the Army into the Pacific theater. The 300-foot-long ship, which recently arrived from Norfolk, Va., via the Panama Canal for the exercises, can beach itself, discharging 900 tons of vehicles and cargo — and, if necessary, troops — onto islands.
Capt. Ander Thompson, the commander of the Seventh Engineer Dive Detachment out of Pearl Harbor, was part of a detachment that spent several weeks this past summer with Filipino military divers clearing debris from a strategic port in the northern Philippine island of Batan, about 120 miles south of Taiwan.
The operation, which also deepened the harbor, will give Army and Navy ships better access to the port should conflict break out. Batan is near the Bashi Channel, a potential transit point for American forces headed to the Taiwan Strait.
The American Air Force cannot establish air superiority over the entire Pacific Ocean, but it can open up corridors, what the Army calls “interior lines” for unfettered movement, between, say, the Philippines and other islands. The United States has some troops already in place — about 54,000 in Japan, 25,000 in South Korea and a far smaller number in the Philippines.
The Hawaii exercises, which ended in mid-October, were devised to replicate the conditions that troops can expect in a war with China. Gone were the desert-sand-colored fatigues that became de rigueur during the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The troops in Hawaii wore jungle fatigues and face paint.
Troops worked on new maneuvers patched together from watching Ukraine fight Russia. They dismantled and moved large and cumbersome command and control operations in 20 to 30 minutes, and communicated with one another without using Army satellites, so that an adversary would not be able to pick up their conversations.
Learning how to advance in small teams that can attack and then dissipate into thin air was key. The Army sent to the troops 96 new rainforest-green infantry squad vehicles that can quickly move up to nine soldiers each through jungle terrain.
“It is so powerful to be able to send a company’s worth of personnel, which is about 130 people, on those vehicles, along multiple routes, and then at a point bring them together to attack the enemy, and then disappear in different directions,” said Maj. Gen. Marcus Evans, the 25th Infantry Division’s commander.
‘Pull Your Reserve’
The first of the 864 Army parachuters who took off from Alaska began appearing in the skies above the three volcanic mountains just after sunrise on Oct. 7.
From the ground, the sight could easily pass for an Army airborne commercial, as waves of jumpers shot out of the side of the C-17s and floated to earth, their chutes billowing. All of the soldiers were supposed to be equipped with two chutes, including a reserve if their primary chute did not deploy within four seconds after they jumped out of the plane.
Around 7:35 a.m., Lt. Col. Tim Alvarado, the commander of the garrison at the Pohakuloa Training Area, peered into the sun as the next C-17 approached.
“The paratroopers should be standing at this point; they would have gotten the 10-minute warning,” he said, narrating the jump for me. “The jump master is looking out, making sure there are no obstructions as the parachuters are getting ready to jump out.”
The C-17 roared overhead, and the jumpers started appearing like closed umbrellas that whooshed open in the sky as their chutes expanded. “Some of them get twisted up so they have to unwind their ropes so they don’t land awkwardly,” Colonel Alvarado continued.
Then, surveying the scene, he said, “That’s not right.”
Before us, what looked like a cigarette in the sky was falling in the midst of the canopy of ballooned parachutes. Above the jumper, Private Partida, air moved through his chute, creating a wiggly line. But the air did not inflate the chute.
“Pull your reserve,” Colonel Alvarado said quietly.
The reserve never deployed. Private Partida disappeared from view beneath a berm as he hit the ground.
Capt. Kaleigh Mullen, an Army doctor, started running. Medics stationed throughout the drop zone were doing the same.
Image
All of the soldiers were supposed to be equipped with two chutes, including a reserve if their primary chute did not deploy within four seconds after they jumped out of the plane.
Image
A Black Hawk medical helicopter carrying the soldier who fell to the ground without his parachute.
A medical Humvee was on site for minor injuries.
Members of Private Partida’s unit got to him first. He was calm and conscious, but his spine was damaged. Captain Mullen arrived, panting from her seven-minute sprint. She and Maj. Mitch Marks, an Army physician assistant, propped up his neck and spine to make sure he did not suffer any additional damage.
“OK, so he was very talkative, and he was able to say that he didn’t have any pain,” Captain Mullen told me later. She took his first set of vitals at 7:45 a.m., and by 8:20 the Black Hawk medevac helicopter was in flight, on its way to the hospital.
A statement released a day later provided few details. “An 11th Airborne Division soldier was injured in a training incident in Hawaii today,” it said. The release made no mention of the unopened chute or the reserve.
Nor did it mention that doctors later fused Private Partida’s vertebrae in multiple surgeries. Whether he will be able to walk again is not known.
Instead, the statement ended with a description of the purpose of the exercises, which included preparing paratroopers for “decisive action operations in the U.S. Army Pacific area of responsibility.”
American troops would not just get hurt in a Great Power War, they would be killed, in numbers that could possibly go beyond the toll from America’s deadliest conflicts.
Helene Cooper is a Pentagon correspondent. She was previously an editor, diplomatic correspondent and White House correspondent. More about Helene Cooper
Kenny Holston is a Times photographer based in Washington, primarily covering Congress, the military and the White House. More about Kenny Holston
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 31, 2024, Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: New Vehicles. Face Paint. A 1,200-Foot Fall.
david chou
美國為應付來自支那的挑戰與威脅, 各傳統與新建軍種與兵種都在進行新一代的建軍備戰(III)
Elite commando team makes plans to help island nation in event Beijing launches war
Demetri Sevastopulo in Washington
The Finncial Times
SEPTEMBER 12 2024
https://www.ft.com/content/0a535bbd-767e-406a-8624-1af9cb7246f7
Seal Team 6, the clandestine US Navy commando unit that killed Osama bin Laden in 2011, has been training for missions to help Taiwan if it is invaded by China, according to people familiar with the preparations.
The elite Navy special forces team, which is tasked with some of the military’s most sensitive and difficult missions, has been planning and training for a Taiwan conflict for more than a year at Dam Neck, its headquarters at Virginia Beach about 250km south-east of Washington.
The secret training underlines the increased US focus on deterring China from attacking Taiwan, while stepping up preparations for such an event.
The preparations have only grown since Phil Davidson, the US Indo-Pacific commander at the time, warned in 2021 that China could attack Taiwan within six years.
While US officials stress that conflict with China is “neither imminent nor inevitable”, the US military has accelerated contingency preparations as the People’s Liberation Army rapidly modernises to meet President Xi Jinping’s order that it have the capability to take Taiwan by force by 2027.
Seal Team 6 is a “tier one” force — the most elite in the US military — alongside the Army’s storied Delta Force. It reports to Joint Special Operations Command, which is part of Special Operations Command.
The unit rescued Richard Phillips, the captain of the Maersk Alabama container ship that was taken hostage by Somali pirates in 2009, in another mission that has helped cement its place in military history.
The Pentagon has in recent years sent more regular special forces to Taiwan for missions that include providing training for the Taiwanese military.
The Seal Team 6 activities are far more sensitive because its covert missions are highly classified. The people familiar with the team’s planning did not provide details about the missions.
Special Operations Command, which rarely discusses Seal Team 6, referred questions about its Taiwan planning to the Pentagon, which did not comment on specific details. A spokesperson said the defence department and its forces “prepare and train for a wide range of contingencies”.
As the threat from terror groups has receded, special operations forces have joined the rest of the US military and the intelligence community in intensifying their focus on China.
CIA director Bill Burns told the Financial Times last week that 20 per cent of his budget was devoted to China, a 200 per cent rise over three years.
“That Seal Team 6 is planning for possible Taiwan-related missions should come as no surprise,” said Sean Naylor, author of Relentless Strike, a book on Joint Special Operations Command, who runs an online national security publication, The High Side.
“With the Pentagon’s reorientation over the past few years to focus on great power competition, it was inevitable that even the nation’s most elite counterterrorism units would seek out roles in that arena, for that path leads to relevance, missions and money,” Naylor added.
Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in US-China relations, and tensions over the island have been a critical part of backchannel discussions between US national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Wang Yi, China’s top foreign policy official, over the past year, according to US and Chinese officials who described the talks to the FT.
China says it remains committed to peaceful “reunification” with Taiwan but has not ruled out the use of force. Xi last year told a European official that he believed Washington was trying to goad China into war.
Washington is obliged to help Taiwan provide for its own defence under the Taiwan Relations Act. The US has long had a policy of “strategic ambiguity” in which it does not say if it would come to Taiwan’s defence. But President Joe Biden has on several occasions said US forces would defend Taiwan in the face of an unprovoked attack from China.
Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, recently warned that the US military would turn the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan from China, into an “unmanned hellscape” if Beijing were about to attack. He said doing so would involve unmanned submarines, ships and drones to make it much harder for the PLA to launch an invasion.
The Pentagon said the US was committed to the “one China policy” under which it recognises Beijing as the sole government of China while acknowledging — without accepting — the Chinese position that Taiwan is part of China.
The Chinese embassy in Washington said Taiwan was “the very core of China’s core interests and the first red line that must not be crossed in the China-US relationship”.
david chou
美國為應付來自支那的挑戰與威脅, 各傳統與新建軍種與兵種都在進行新一代的建軍備戰(IV)
//Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti released her Navigation Plan (NAVPLAN) for America’s Warfighting Navy at the Naval War College, Sept. 18.//
//NAVPLAN 2024 follows the CNO’s release of America’s Warfighting Navy in January, and serves as an update to the 2022 NAVPLAN.//
//“The Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy is my overarching strategic guidance to make our Navy more ready, prioritizing raising our level of readiness for potential conflict with the People’s Republic of China by 2027 while also enhancing the Navy’s long-term warfighting advantage,” said Franchetti.-----------//
(Chief of Naval Operations releases Navigation Plan for America’s Warfighting Navy
18 September 2024