Peking isn’t Persia
And it would be a grave mistake to conflate the two
The United States and Israel comprehensively defeated Iran on the battlefield. Whether they also won the peace that followed is… debatable, and I leave that question to the reader. But to the reasonable observer, the military phase (though as of now, it seems to have reignited) of Operation Epic Fury demonstrated a remarkable domination of Iran’s military by the coalition. Laying a beating of this caliber unto the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will be far, far more challenging.
Some have remarked that Chinese equipment in Iranian hands performed poorly, and that this bodes well for the looming showdown in the Pacific. Others have stated that America will be able to reuse all the tools they employed to such devastating effect in Iran against China. Not only are these assumptions off the mark; they’re dangerous, for the simple reason that China is nothing like Iran.
We shall begin with the MQ-9 Reaper. The Reaper – the B model in particular – is a sophisticated MALE (medium altitude, long endurance) ISTAR (intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, reconnaissance) drone in the US arsenal. It proved itself in Iran, with some military sources even claiming it was the “MVP”, or most valuable player, during Operation Epic Fury where its persistent and advanced surveillance capabilities allowed for continued observation and destruction of mobile Iranian targets – chiefly their ballistic missile TELs (transporter erector launchers). This is true. MQ-9s did in fact play a key role in hunting down Iranian missile launchers as well as other important targets.
They were also shot down in eye-watering numbers. Somewhere between 20 and 30 MQ-9s were lost to Iranian ground fire during the war. Even so, every single one more than made up for its death in the value it created (or rather, destroyed). While these assets are considered expendable by planners, there were fewer than 200 in the US inventory to begin with. More can be built, in time, but that is hardly the point. The Reaper is a slow, non-stealthy drone. It is not rated to go up against fighter aircraft of any kind, nor is it survivable against even medium-range air defenses.
Let’s look at what the US faces in China. First of all, the Chinese actually have an air force – unlike the Iranians, whose air force is pathetically small, obsolete, and played a negligible role in either of these 2 most recent wars. Not only that, but China’s is an increasingly large and sophisticated air force.
It is not unreasonable to estimate that by decade’s end they will have approximately 1000 advanced, twin-engine J-20 stealth fighters in service in addition to many other kinds of dangerous aircraft. They will be armed with powerful radar, long-range missiles like the PL-15 (others will carry the longer-ranged PL-17 and PL-21, which the J-20 cannot carry internally), and be quarterbacked by cutting-edge AEW&C (airborne early warning & control) aircraft, which the Chinese are cranking out like hotcakes. Their newest model, the KJ-3000, surpasses the aging American E-3G Sentry in capability and may well be on par with the newer E-7 Wedgetail – which the US has yet to induct into the Air Force in any capacity!
They will also be backed up by a growing constellation of advanced radar satellites, electronic warfare (EW) aircraft and less sophisticated (but still modern and very deadly) fighters such as the various Flanker derivatives and J-10Bs the Chinese operate. I was already surprised that the sluggish MQ-9 was able to operate relatively unimpeded over Iran, whose air defenses had been massively degraded in the opening stages of Epic Fury. To suggest that they will be able to approach, let alone enter and loiter inside Chinese airspace for hours on end, is wishful thinking. Losing one after it causes the destruction of multiple high value targets on the ground is more than worthwhile. Losing one without it even entering the battlespace is a total waste.
So, the long-legged patient hunter that the US relied upon to destroy Iranian missile launchers is off the table, at least for the first few months of the conflict (and I doubt it lasts more than that). This is made worse by the fact that China has far more mobile launchers than Iran does, in addition to other targets that will need to be destroyed. Having a far larger military than Iran means that far more munitions that could be used on TELs will need to be used on warships, factories, air defense radars, and lots more.
China is also significantly larger geographically and economically than Iran. They have more people, materiel, and money to throw at their problems. They have more places to hide their assets. Destroying a TEL with a $30 million hypersonic missile from 3000km away is not going to be worthwhile. Destroying it with an AGM-114 Hellfire, is. The trouble is that the Reaper isn’t going to get anywhere near the TEL before it meets a PL-15 missile head-on.
Alright, then the obstacle to get to that point is the Chinese air force and their air defense network in order to open the way for the Reapers. We’ve already established that some of their radars were easily destroyed in Epic Fury, so this should be easy, right? Wrong. It is far more complex than that. One should not think of weapons in isolation. An F-16V is one of the most capable fighter aircraft flying today. However, if it lacks AIM-120D missiles, an AEW&C aircraft as its quarterback, offboard jamming support, and a satellite network to relay communications, it’s going to be significantly less effective.
The US is powerful not because they have advanced weapons, but because all their advanced weapons work in near-perfect concert with one another and every serviceman and woman is properly trained to execute their task to the best of their ability. No one weapon system will solve a military’s woes. Modern weapons do not operate well in isolation, especially when their operators are unmotivated and untrained. The Chinese do have a networked system of warfare that links fighters with AEW, satellites, and EW aircraft – a threat the US takes very seriously. We should not make the mistake of thinking that just because Chinese systems failed in isolation, that they will fail when employed in a networked capacity while operated by trained, motivated personnel.
Additionally, the Chinese are not simply going to sit there and take it. The best method of destroying the enemy’s air force is mostly off limits. That is, flattening them while still on the ground. China has far too many aircraft, far too many bases (many of which are located in China’s interior and therefore hard to access due to range constraints), and far too many hardened shelters. It won’t be possible to “base strike” them with a handful of cluster MRBMs (medium-range ballistic missiles) and knock out entire fighter squadrons at once. You are going to have to dedicate at least a missile armed with a penetrating warhead to each and every hardened shelter just to be sure. Not every missile will get through, and not every shelter will be housing an aircraft. This means you’ll have to expend more missiles, and there is a financial as well as opportunity cost to this. Every missile launched is money spent and a different, potentially more valuable target left unserviced.
The US will instead try to take entire bases offline by rendering them inoperable. They will crater runways, hit fuel/weapons depots, strike command-and-control (C2) nodes, and bomb facilities linked to aircraft/munitions production. This will be effective, but in the short and medium term they will still need to contend with thousands of powerful Chinese fighters that will outnumber US aircraft in the region and be playing on home turf, giving them staying power (less fuel will need to be consumed to reach the battlespace).
To ground the PLAAF (Chinese air force), I expect the US will need to force and win a decisive air battle against them, possibly more than once. This is achievable, but neither easy nor guaranteed. The Chinese aren’t stupid; they will learn from their mistakes, adapt, and come back, as they have the numbers to absorb losses and sufficient disdain for human life to take absurd, lopsided risks. If they are comprehensively defeated in the air, they will likely cease attempting large-scale aerial actions and stick to using small groups of aircraft in harassment operations.
Next, the coalition’s ability to control large swathes of Iranian airspace was unquestionably a game-changing advantage. Unfortunately, to assume that even America’s stealthy tactical aircraft will be able to fly tens of thousands of sorties (relatively) freely over Chinese airspace is, I think, optimistic. Fuel constraints will be an issue; the nearest bases such as Kadena Air Force Base on Okinawa are close enough such that they will be getting hosed down by Chinese SRBMs – to the point where I expect these locations to be inoperable for most of the war.
This means American aircraft will need to sortie from further afield: carriers, or bases in Japan and the Philippines. It’s likely these locations too will come under attack, but fewer PLARF missiles can reach them, and so the risk here is disruption, not denial. Even with tanker support, this does not offer much loiter time over China, where the threat of interdiction by stealthy PLAAF J-20s and J-35s is an ever-present risk.
Getting close would be possible with stealth aircraft – the F-35 in particular (a taller order for the shorter-legged F-22 unless we assume its stealthy drop tanks will barely degrade its low-observable profile), but tankers and AEW aircraft would likely be unable to support them beyond a certain point. As an aside, this is why the US is investing so much into orbital architecture. These non-stealthy aircraft will be alluring targets, and the express purpose of the J-20 and is to go after such platforms. Their support cannot be taken as granted as it has been in past wars.
This in turn severely limits the depth at which US aircraft will be able to maraud into China, and the targets they will be able to strike. Even if it is topped off by a tanker aircraft over Japanese airspace (where I expect the risk of being hit by even the longer-range PL-17 missile is relatively low), an F-35 would not be able to venture too deep into China, let alone remain there for a long time, especially since this opens it up to attack from aspects other than the frontal one where its stealth shaping is most effective.
Let’s continue with the F-35. Taking off from Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni in Japan, it’s just over 1000km to Shanghai. The F-35A’s unrefueled combat radius is in the region of 1200km (yes, we can assume the Air Force will be using Marine bases). Assuming they’re topped off right at the edge of the Home Islands on the northwestern tip of Kyushu, that adds around 200km of radius, meaning it can venture about 400km into China if it’s bombs away at the furthest point without too much lingering. Combining the new low-cost, long-range weapons that’ll soon be accessible to the US (such as JDAM-LR), this allows for affordable and sustainable strike options reaching up to 900km into China. This is me being cautiously optimistic. Escorting F-35s will be carrying lighter air-to-air weapons and thus keeping up won’t be an issue.
This sounds great, and it is. However, the problem is that such an operation is nearly exclusive to stealth aircraft, which means that a significant portion of the mass the US would ordinarily bring to bear is off the table. Think of the F-15E fighter-bombers used in Iran, whose payload capacity exceeds that of the WWII-era B-17 Flying Fortress. A single F-15E, as the famous brochure says, can pack enough GBU-39 Small Diameter Bombs to knock out an entire airfield. Unfortunately, the GBU-39 isn’t a standoff weapon, so the strike aircraft will need to approach to within several dozen kilometers – at least.
It is highly unlikely that something like an F-15E will be able to saunter through Chinese airspace to do that as they could in Iran, even with serious escort jamming and degraded enemy air defenses. Fewer airframes that can reach into China means more time necessary to strike all the required targets and more wear and tear on the airframes that can. Doubly so when those airframes that can penetrate carry less payload (internally) than their non-stealthy cousins.
All the while, the PLARF (Chinese rocket forces) will be able to conduct operations and fire ballistic missiles, often without disruption, against Taiwanese and US forces in the region. The role of missile defense, as I explained in a previous article, is to buy time such that the enemy’s missile launch capability can be degraded. It is likely the US will need to play defense (nonetheless while conducting offensive operations, just not against missile launchers at scale) for far longer than they did against Iran. Against China, I expect they will be firing off significant numbers of interceptors for the duration of the war.
This is not meant to alarm the reader. To be clear, if the US plays its cards right, I am confident they will still win a war against the Chinese. The advantage the B-2 and upcoming, increasingly numerous B-21 stealth bombers afford the US in their ability to carry stealthy, standoff anti-ship weapons is hard to overstate. Remember – the victory condition for the United States is to deny and render impossible a Chinese amphibious landing. This, in theory (and I cannot stress this enough), does not require deep strikes in the Chinese mainland. It may even be that American airpower is not the defining attribute that wins the war; as I described in my latest article, a Chinese amphibious invasion can be staved off sans (extensive use of) airpower.
Know that even entertaining such a quasi-heretical thought is distasteful to me; I am someone who believes modern airpower to be the key to winning just about any conflict. I could also be wrong, and the prospects for non-stealthy aircraft may not be as bleak as I’m suggesting. Red Flag exercises have shown the F-35 to be a remarkable aircraft that has kept strike packages full of 4th generation aircraft alive in the face of sophisticated air defenses. The US is training for this exact scenario of facing powerful air defenses and 5th generation threats in battle, and the F-35 is as effective a stealthy Red Team Aggressor aircraft as it gets. After a while, it may well be that the airspace on parts of the Chinese coast becomes permissible for more the more survivable 4th generation fighters.
Furthermore, the experience gathered in conducting sustained, large-scale combat operations far from home during Epic Fury is invaluable and on its own makes that entire conflict worthwhile (in my opinion). It is an excellent dress rehearsal in staging and conducting such operations and yes, this was a dress rehearsal for the Pacific. There are also several encouraging signs and developments that I intend to write about in the future. However, to think that that the US could simply replicate this whole operation against the Chinese is delusional at best, and dangerous at worst. Expectations need to be tempered, and expecting persistent American air superiority over Beijing will (likely) lead to disillusionment. Thankfully, we can be glad the Pentagon is taking the threat of the PLA far more seriously than some of the pundits online.