America Urgently Needs More Hard Assets for Credible Deterrence in the Western Pacific

Nuclear Submarines and Mass Drones Need to be Top Priorities

As I tour Asia from Singapore to Japan, it is clear that China increasingly defines its goal as survival in a world without order. America has no strategy to seek order, protect its brand of dynamic stability, and strengthen economic and national security.

As a first step, America needs to put more muscle behind the Pentagon’s mantra that: “The United States will fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as we now do around the world.”

I’m not the only one who worries that we don’t have the hard assets in place to achieve this objective in the Western Pacific given China’s rapid buildout of its maritime forces and aggressive actions from Japan through the West Philippine Sea to Australia. More resources, not less, are urgently required.

In an essay in the Claremont Review of Books entitled “Speaking Louder While Carrying a Smaller Stick”, Mark Helprin lamented the complacency of America’s leaders and society in our age of intense US-China rivalry.

Helprin stated that “China is building, we are cutting back on our Navy and Air Force, as our enemies build up.”

Helprin aptly describes the Middle Kingdom’s defense buildup in another article; “China is a steam locomotive with a blinding light, coming at us at 100 mph”.

And don’t think for a moment that China’s current economic doldrums are slowing down its military buildup.

While China has shifted the balance of power in Asia, Washington seems to be in charge of an American train with its axles creaking and its couplings straining.

And for all the tough talk by Washington’s China hawks, and who isn’t a China hawk these days, they are not taking the the tough steps necessary to balance and deter China. Nor are they taking action to reign in America’s soaring debt and deep divisions to renew America’s brand as the most dynamic and stable country in the world.

More than top-line defense spending matters in this discussion, even though, with a determined power rival like China, a lack of new hard military assets in Asia over time can’t help but be a sign of weakness.

The United States must prioritize selling to its Asian partners defensive weapon systems such as anti-air and anti-ship missiles to effectively raise the costs of Chinese aggression. It must also make funding for the U.S. Navy and Air Force a priority, since air and naval power will likely be at the forefront of any future conflict in the Pacific.

Helprin demonstrates at length how China is surpassing us in numbers and pressing us in terms of technology.

The “Chinese navy is bigger than ours and will soon be twice the size of ours. They can surge production. Their shipyards are more abundant than ours.” And “What if we lose control of the seas? We have six shipyards; they have one hundred. At what point do the Chinese in such conditions take control of the Pacific, Indian, and Atlantic Oceans? We would then be in a similar position to the Chinese in the nineteenth century, and we would surrender to China’s control of shipping.”

China now effectively owns the South China Sea, Helprin concludes, and the reasons should be evident. Helprin recalls pointing this out nearly 10 years ago to Robert Work, Undersecretary of Defense in the Obama Administration, in a meeting of the American International Project at the American Enterprise Institute. “I told him, ‘The South China Sea is gone.’” Work replies, “No, it’s not gone.”

Helprin says that he detailed for Work the below basic facts of Chinese power in the region:

They can put nuclear submarines at the capes and spike the Panama Canal, cutting the Navy in half from the beginning of a conflict. Then, the force that would go through the Pacific would face chokepoints in the Pacific Archipelago where China would station conventional subs, surface vessels, and airpower, to prevent us from even getting into the South China Sea. The tyranny of distance would also be invoked, cutting off our supplies. Then, once we’re in the South China Sea, the surviving force would face intense fire in the Pacific, and then meet the biggest aircraft carrier in the world: mainland China. Chinese airpower, submarines, and their surface vessels would wipe us out in the South China Sea.

Helprin notes, “That was true then, it’s worse now. We don’t see things clearly.”

Even as China’s economy struggles to regain its growth path, it announced last year that it would hold joint naval and air force exercises with the Russian military in the Sea of Japan. And Mr. Xi is urging the military to “break new ground” in war preparedness, warning that “China’s security situation is facing rising instability and uncertainty,” according to the official Xinhua news agency.

To buttress American credibility to deter and balance China, our first step should be to double or triple the production of attack submarines because they are the crown jewels of U.S. military power. Undersea warfare an area in which we retain a clear competitive advantage over the China.

The U.S. Navy’s military requirement is 66 nuclear attack submarines. Today, there are only 49 in the fleet. And the Navy projects its inventory will decline to 46 by 2030 as older nuclear submarines retire faster than then new ones can be built.

Even worse, as I have previously written about, our submarine maintenance and repair capabilities are stretched to a breaking point. Almost 40% of U.S. attack submarines cannot be deployed because of maintenance delays. For example, the USS Connecticut had an accident in the South China Sea in 2021, won’t be operational until 2026. We need private-public partnerships to sharply improve and expand maintenance-repair-overhaul (MRO) facilities in Asia such as in the Philippines.

The U.S. submarine industrial base is only capable of producing an average of 1.2 Virginia-class attack submarines a year. The U.S. submarine force’s inadequate supply chain is the result of decades of political and institutional neglect.

This goal needs to double or triple if we want to balance and deter China and maintain freedom of navigation and stability in the region.

America needs less talk and “dialogue” and more hard military assets in Asia now to deter and balance China.

First, attack submarines must be a clear budget priority.

Second, move fast on former Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hick’s plan to create thousands of autonomous unmanned drone systems over the next two years to compete with China. Called “Replicator,” the program will “galvanize progress in the too-slow shift of US military innovation to leverage platforms that are small, smart, cheap and many,” said Hicks.

The concept is simple, practical, and cost effective. Given that China is building ships, aircraft, sensors, and missiles faster than America - mass swarms of small, unmanned vehicles can be swiftly assembled and deployed.

Finally, recent joint Russian Chinese naval maneuvers near the Aleutian Islands (territory under jurisdiction of both US and Russia) and the US coast requires establishing a new Navy base in Nome, Alaska. It could be an excellent deep water port close to both our Arctic and Pacific interests.

Carl Timothy Delfeld is the co-founder of the Independent Republican and Hay Seward Initiative, and author of Domino: Seven Trends Will Break China, and most recently, Power Rivals: America and China’s Superpower Struggle.