Guardian: Syria flexes military muscles

News today, reported in The Guardian and several other outlets, that Syria has turned to a good old-fashioned display of its armed forces in action (this time, not against its own people....). The Syrian regime seems to be relying on classic deterrence in making this show of its military capabilities.

Syria's embattled government has flexed its muscles with live-fire exercises involving long-range missiles, armoured units and helicopters at a time of rising regional tensions over the repression of its uprising.

Official Syrian state media reported on Monday that the combined exercises were held on Sunday to test "the capabilities and readiness of missile systems to respond to any possible aggression".

Analysts suggested the timing may have been chosen to underline Syria's strategic capabilities to Israel, which is concerned about Syria's relationship with Iran and Hezbollah in Lebanon. The Syrian president, Bashar al-Assad, warned in October that the Middle East would "burn" if the west intervened – and threatened to turn the region into "tens of Afghanistans". Syria insisted the exercises were planned. The publicity could also be intended to signal that the armed forces remain loyal, despite some defections largely from the lower ranks.

In Damascus, meanwhile, the foreign ministry announced that Syria was now prepared to accept a delegation of observers from the Arab League, after the pan-Arab body announced unprecedented sanctions because of its refusal to comply earlier. The league has expressed concern about the need to protect civilians as the Assad regime has cracked down on protests.

A spokesman, Jihad Makdissi, said the foreign minister, Walid al-Moallem, had "responded positively" to the league's demand and sent a letter to the organisation's chief, Nabil Elaraby. But Syria did not appear yet to have signed the diplomatic protocol agreeing terms for the mission.

Recent similar moves by Damascus have come to nothing while its critics complain Syria is simply seeking to buy time and exploit divisions in Arab ranks while repression continues unchecked. According to the UN some 4,000 people have been killed since March. Syria says it is facing "armed terrorist gangs" backed by a conspiracy of its Arab and western enemies, not unarmed popular protests.

Opposition activists reported that 40 people had been killed on Sunday, including five defectors from the armed forces. The local co-ordination committees, which report on protests, said that 22 people, including two children, had been killed on Saturday. They claimed 848 people had been killed in November, including 59 children, making it the deadliest month since the uprising began. Restrictions on access for foreign press make it difficult to independently verify activists' reports.

In a related development, meanwhile, an Israeli newspaper quoted unnamed Palestinian sources as saying that Iran was pressuring the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas not to abandon its headquarters in Damascus. Haaretz said the Hamas activists were those responsible for the activities and funding of the organisation's military wing, as well as some members of the political leadership. Most have left with their families to Gaza, Sudan, Qatar and Lebanon.

But the claim was denied by a member of Hamas's political bureau, Salah al-Arouri. "The organisation's top officials are here in Damascus; our relations with the state and Syrian people are excellent," he said. "We respect all Syrians whoever they are. We have no intention of interfering in Syria's internal affairs."

China’s Plan to Beat USA: Missiles, Missiles and More Missiles

Wired's Danger Room series carried an interesting article yesterday, revealing the weaknesses not-so-immediately apparent in China's developing military strength—as well as the Chinese attempts to 'plug the gaps':

China is militarily weaker than many people think, especially compared to the United States. This, despite lots of showy jet prototypes and plenty of other factory-fresh equipment.

But Beijing has a brutally simple — if risky — plan to compensate for this relative weakness: buy missiles. And then, buy more of them. All kinds of missiles: short-range and long-range; land-based, air-launched and sea-launched; ballistic and cruise; guided and “dumb.”

Those are the two striking themes that emerge from Chinese Aerospace Power, a new collection of essays edited by Andrew Erickson, an influential China analyst with the U.S. Naval War College.

Today, the PLA possesses as many as 2,000 non-nuclear ballistic and cruise missiles, according to Chinese Aerospace Power. This “growing arsenal of increasingly accurate and lethal conventional ballistic and land-attack cruise missiles has rapidly emerged as a cornerstone of PLA warfighting capability,” Mark Stokes and Ian Easton wrote. For every category of weaponry where the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) lags behind the Pentagon, there’s a Chinese missile to help make up the difference.


The need is clear. Despite introducing a wide range of new hardware in recent years, including jet fighters, helicopters, destroyers, submarines and a refurbished Russian aircraft carrier, China still lacks many of the basic systems, organizations and procedures necessary to defeat a determined, well-equipped foe.

Take, for example, aerial refueling. To deploy large numbers of effective aerial tankers requires the ability to build and support large jet engines — something China cannot yet do. In-air refueling also demands planning and coordination beyond anything the PLA has ever pulled off. As a result, “tanker aircraft are in short supply” in the PLA, Wayne Ulman explained.

That’s putting it lightly. According to Chinese Aerospace Power, the entire PLA operates just 14 H-6U tankers, each carrying 17,000 kilograms of off-loadable fuel. (The U.S. Air Force alone possesses more than 500 tankers, each off-loading around 100,000 kilograms of fuel.) So while the PLA in theory boasts more than 1,500 jet fighters, in reality it can refuel only 50 or 60 at a time, assuming all the H-6 tankers are working perfectly.

In an air war over Taiwan, hundreds of miles from most Chinese bases, only those 50 fighters would be able to spend more than a few minutes’ flight time over the battlefield. Factoring in tankers, China’s 4–1 advantage in jet fighters compared to Taiwan actually shrinks to a roughly 7&ndash1 disadvantage. The gap only grows when you add U.S. fighters to the mix.

The PLA’s solution? Missiles, of course. Up to a thousand ballistic and cruise missiles, most of them fired by land-based launchers, “would likely comprise the initial strike” against Taiwan or U.S. Pacific bases, Ulman wrote. The goal would be to take out as many of an opponent’s aircraft as possible before the dogfighting even begins.

The PLA could take a similar approach to leveling its current disadvantage at sea. Submarines have always been the most potent ship-killers in any nation’s inventory, but China’s subs are too few, too noisy and their crews too inexperienced to take on the U.S. Navy. Once the shooting started, the “Chinese submarine force would be highly vulnerable,” Jeff Hagen predicted.

And forget using jet fighters armed with short-range weapons to attack the American navy. One Chinese analyst referenced in Chinese Aerospace Power estimated it would take between 150 and 200 Su-27-class fighters to destroy one U.S. Ticonderoga-class cruiser. The entire PLA operates only around 300 Su-27s and derivatives. The U.S. Navy has 22 Ticonderoga cruisers.

Again, missiles would compensate. A “supersaturation” attack by scores or hundreds of ballistic missiles has the potential of “instantly rendering the Ticonderoga’s air defenses useless,” Toshi Yoshihara wrote. Close to shore, China could use the older, less-precise, shorter-range missiles it already possesses in abundance. For longer-range strikes, the PLA is developing the DF-21D “carrier-killer” missile that uses satellites and aerial drones for precision targeting.

The downside to China’s missile-centric strategy is that it could represent a “single point of failure.” Over-relying on one weapon could render the PLA highly vulnerable to one kind of countermeasure. In this case, that’s the Pentagon’s anti-ballistic-missile systems, including warships carrying SM-3 missiles and land-based U.S. Army Patriot and Terminal High-Altitude Air-Defense batteries.

Plus, missiles are one-shot weapons. You don’t get to reuse them the way you would a jet fighter or a destroyer. That means, in wartime, China has to win fast — or lose. “China’s entire inventory of conventional ballistic missiles, for example, could deliver about a thousand tons of high explosives on their targets,” Roger Cliff explained. “The U.S. Air Force’s aircraft, by comparison, could deliver several times that amount of high explosives every day for an indefinite period.”

Economist Daily Chart: Biggest Military Spenders (2010)

The Economist's Daily Chart series provides an update to global military spending:

On June 8th China's top military brass confirmed that the country's first aircraft carrier, a refurbishment of an old Russian carrier, will be ready shortly. Only a handful of nations operate carriers, which are costly to build and maintain. Indeed, Britain has recently decommissioned its sole carrier because of budget pressures. China's defence spending has risen by nearly 200% since 2001 to reach an estimated $119 billion in 2010—though it has remained fairly constant in terms of its share of GDP. America's own budget crisis is prompting tough discussions about its defence spending, which, at nearly $700 billion, is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined.

Useful statistics for any discussion of hard power and emerging / maintaining superpower status.