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Abstract
This article views China's development of anti-access capabilities against the backdrop of the theory and history of military innovation. It begins with a discussion of the process of military innovation, as well as the indicators that may appear at different stages of that process. It then discusses the barriers to recognizing new ways of war and applies that framework to China's development of advanced ballistic missiles, to include precision-guided conventional ballistic missiles and anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs). It concludes with several suggestions for how to improve the ability to recognize and understand foreign military innovation.
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Notes
1Emily O. Goldman and Thomas G. Mahnken (eds), The Information Revolution in Military Affairs in Asia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2004); Jacqueline Newmyer, ‘The Revolution in Military Affairs with Chinese Characteristics’, Journal of Strategic Studies 33/4 (Aug. 2010), 481–504.
2John Pomfret, ‘Defense Secretary Gates: US Underestimated Parts of China's Military Buildup’, Washington Post, 9 Jan. 2011, <www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/01/09/AR2011010901068.html>.
3Anna Mulrine, ‘We Underestimated China, US Official Says after Reports of J-20 Stealth Fighter,’ Christian Science Monitor, 6 Jan. 2011.
5Tai Ming Cheung, ‘The Chinese Defense Economy's Long March from Imitation to Innovation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 34/3 (June 2011), 325–54. See also Tai Ming Cheung, ‘Dragon on the Horizon: China's Defense Industrial Renaissance,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 32/1 (Feb. 2009), 29–66.
6 Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington DC: DOD Feb. 2010), 31.
7Andrew L. Ross, ‘On Military Innovation: Toward an Analytical Framework’, paper presented at the Conference on China's Defense and Dual-Use Science, Technology, and Industrial Base, University of California, San Diego, 1–2 July, 2010, 14.
8See Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union Develop New Military Technologies (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1988); Barry R. Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1984); Stephen Peter Rosen, ‘New Ways of War: Understanding Military Innovation’, International Security 13/1 (Summer 1988); Stephen Peter Rosen, Winning the Next War: Innovation and the Modern Military (Ithaca: Cornell UP 1991); Kimberly Marten Zisk, Engaging the Enemy: Organizational Theory and Soviet Military Innovation, 1955–1991 (Princeton UP 1993).
9Adam Grissom, ‘The Future of Military Innovation Studies’, Journal of Strategic Studies 29/5 (Oct. 2006), 905–34.
10See, for example, the cases in Williamson Murray and Allan R. Millett (eds), Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (New York: Cambridge UP 1996).
11Much of the argument that follows is drawn from Thomas G. Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War: US Military Intelligence and Foreign Military Innovation, 1918–1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 2002) and Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘Uncovering Foreign Military Innovation’, Journal of Strategic Studies 22/4 (Dec. 1999), 26–54.
12James S. Corum, The Roots of Blitzkrieg: Hans von Seeckt and German Military Reform (Lawrence: Univ. of Kansas Press 1992), 37–8.
13John T. Hendrix, ‘The Interwar Army and Mechanization: The American Approach,’ Journal of Strategic Studies 16/1 (March 1993), 78–82; Timothy K. Nenninger, ‘The Experimental Mechanized Forces,’ Armor 78/3 (May–June 1969), 33–9.
14On the development of armored warfare during the interwar period, see Capt. Jonathan M. House, US Army, Toward Combined Arms Warfare: A Survey of 20th-Century Tactics, Doctrine, and Organization, Combat Studies Institute Research Survey No. 2 (Fort Leavenworth, KS: US Army Command and General Staff College 1984); Richard M. Ogorkiewicz, Armor: A History of Mechanized Forces (New York: Frederick A. Praeger 1960).
15Rosen, Winning the Next War, 69.
16Allan R. Millett and Peter Maslowski, For the Common Defense: A Military History of the United States of America (New York: The Free Press 1984), 376.
17Capt. B.H. Liddell Hart, The Tanks: The History of the Royal Tank Regiment and its Predecessors Heavy Branch Machine-Gun Corps, Tanks Corps, and Royal Tank Corps, 1914–1945, Vol. I, 1914–1939 (London: Cassell 1959), 292–4.
18Allan R. Millett, ‘Assault from the Sea: The Development of Amphibious Warfare Between the Wars – the American, British, and Japanese Experiences’, in Murray and Millett, Military Innovation in the Interwar Period (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1996), 76–7.
19David C. Evans and Mark R. Peattie, Kaigun: Strategy, Tactics, and Technology in the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1887–1941 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press 1997), 347–52.
20Col. Masanobu Tsuji, Japan's Greatest Victory, Britain's Worst Defeat, ed. H.V. Howe, trans. Margaret E. Lake (New York: Sarpedon Books 1993), 1–18.
21John Keegan, ‘The Changing Face of War,’ Wall Street Journal Europe, 26 Nov. 2001.
22Thomas G. Mahnken, ‘Gazing at the Sun: The Office of Naval Intelligence and Japanese Naval Innovation, 1918–1941’, Intelligence and National Security 11/3 (July 1996), 424–41.
23Rosen, Winning the Next War, Ch. 3.
24Anchoring occurs when the mind uses a natural starting point as a first approximation to a judgment. It modifies this starting point as it receives additional information. Typically, however, the starting point serves as an anchor that reduces the amount of adjustment, so that the final estimate remains closer to the starting point than it ought to be. Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman, ‘Anchoring and Calibration in the Assessment of Uncertain Quantities’, Oregon Research Institute Research Bulletin, No. 12 (1972).
25John A. Lynn, ‘The Evolution of Army Style in the Modern West, 800–2000’, International History Review 13/3 (Aug. 1996), 509–10.
26See, for example, Aaron L. Friedberg, The Weary Titan: Britain and the Experience of Relative Decline, 1895–1905 (Princeton UP 1988), passim.
27These charges, together with rebuttals, are contained in Bruce D. Berkowitz and Jeffrey T. Richelson, ‘The CIA Vindicated: The Soviet Collapse Was Predicted,’ The National Interest no. 41 (Fall 1995); Douglas MacEachin, CIA Assessments of the Soviet Union: The Record Versus the Charges, Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence Monograph 96-001 (May 1996).
28On intelligence on Japanese air power in particular, see Greg Kennedy, ‘Anglo-American Strategic Relations and Intelligence Assessments of Japanese Air Power, 1934–1941’, Journal of Military History 74/3 (July 2010), 737–73.
29David Kahn, ‘The United States Views Germany and Japan in 1941’ in Ernest R. May (ed.), Knowing One's Enemies: Intelligence Assessment Before the Two World Wars (Princeton UP 1984), 476
30Evans and Peattie, Kaigun, 18.
31Carl Boyd, ‘Japanese Military Effectiveness: The Interwar Period’, in Allan R. Millett and Williamson Murray (eds), Military Effectiveness, Vol. II, The Interwar Years (Boston: Unwin Hyman 1988), 143.
32Richard J. Samuels, ‘Rich Nation, Strong Army’: National Security and the Technological Transformation of Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell UP 1994), 97.
33See Robert C. Mikesh and Shorzoe Abe, Japanese Aircraft: 1910–1941 (Annapolis: US Naval Institute Press 1990).
34Mahnken, Uncovering Ways of War, 4.
35 Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People's Republic of China (Washington DC: Department of Defense 2008), 21–3.
36Ibid., 22–3.
37Ibid., 2.
38David A. Shlapak et al., A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute (Santa Monica, CA: RAND 2009), 126, 139, 131.
39 Military Power of the People's Republic of China, 23.
40 Seapower Questions on the Chinese Submarine Force (Suitland, MD: Office of Naval Intelligence 2006).
41 The People's Liberation Army Navy: A Modern Navy with Chinese Characteristics (Suitland, MD: Office of Naval Intelligence 2009), 26.
42Eric Hagt and Matthew Durnin, ‘China's Antiship Ballistic Missile: Developments and Missing Links’, Naval War College Review 62/4 (Autumn 2009), 87–8.
43Quoted in Andrew S. Erickson, ‘Ballistic Trajectory: China Develops New Anti-Ship Missile’, Jane's Intelligence Review (Feb. 2010), 2.
44See, for example, Jason E. Bruzdzinski, ‘Demystifying Shashoujian: China's ‘Assassin's Mace’ Concept,’ in Andrew Scobell and Larry Wortzel (eds), Civil-Military Change in China: Elites, Institutes, and Ideas after the 16th Party Congress (Carlisle, PA: Strategic Studies Institute 2004).
45Andrew S. Erickson and David D. Yang, ‘Using the Land to Control the Sea: Chinese Analysts Consider the Antiship Ballistic Missile’, Naval War College Review 62/4 (Autumn 2009), 55.
46Ibid.
47Cited in Erickson and Yang, ‘Using the Land to Control the Sea’, 56.
48Hagt and Durnin, ‘China's Antiship Ballistic Missile: Developments and Missing Links’, 93.
49Cited in Erickson and Yang, ‘Using the Land to Control the Sea’, 60.
50Ibid.
51Ibid.
52Toshi Yoshihara, ‘Chinese Missile Strategy and the US Naval Presence in Japan: The Operational View from Beijing’, Naval War College Review 63/3 (Summer 2010), 49.
53Erickson and Yang, ‘Using the Land to Control the Sea’, 60–1.
54Ibid., 61–2.
55Ibid., 58.
56Statement of Adm. Robert F. Willard, USN, Commander, US Pacific Command, before the House Armed Services Committee on US Pacific Command Posture, 23 March 2010, 14, <http://armedservices.house.gov/pdfs/FC032510/Willard_Testimony032510.pdf>.
57Erickson and Yang, ‘Using the Land to Control the Sea’, 63–4.
58Hagt and Durnin, ‘China's Antiship Ballistic Missile: Developments and Missing Links’, 105.
59To date, the only such document to appear in English is Peng Guangqian and Yao Youzhi (eds), The Science of Military Strategy (Beijing: Military Science Publishing House 2005).
