By PAUL MCLEARY
WASHINGTON: The head of the Indo-Pacific command believes China might try to annex Taiwan “in this decade, in fact within the next six years,” as part of its massive military buildup in the region.
Adm. Phil Davidson told the Senate Armed Services Committee that China is “accelerating their ambitions to supplant the United States and our leadership role in the rules-based international order,” which they’ve long said that they want to do by 2050. “I’m worried about them moving that target closer. Taiwan is clearly one of their ambitions before that, and I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in the next six years.”
One way to support Taiwan is through “persistent arms sales,” which were accelerated by the Trump administration, and could continue under the Biden team given its public comments on the need to contend with the Chinese buildup and incendiary rhetoric when it comes to the independent island.
Davidson, who will retire later this year, was likely making his last appearance before the committee and used the time to push for funding his Pacific Deterrence Initiative, which would run the DoD $4.6 billion in 2022, as part of a five-year, $27 billion effort. The proposal received $2.2 billion last year from the Trump administration.
“Guam is a target today,” he said. “It needs to be defended, and it needs to be prepared for the threats that will come in the future.” Davidson pointed to a propaganda video released by China showing their H-6 bombers attacking Andersen Air Force Base on Guam.
The island’s current THAAD system “is not capable of meeting the current trajectory of threats from China,” Davidson warned.
“It’s clear to me that Guam is not just a place that we believe that we could fight from, as we have for many decades,” he said. “We are going to have to fight for it, in order to be able to do that,”
Putting US forces at potential risk on Guam and elsewhere is the massive buildup of modern aircraft. ships, and long-range missiles that Beijing has financed over the past decade-plus, aimed at solidifying territorial claims and reaching at least parity with the US.
Estimates are that China will have three aircraft carriers deployed to the Pacific by 2025, compared to the single American carrier home ported in Japan, along with dozens of new ships and submarines.
Last August, China conducted a new round of tests of its DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile in the South China Sea to send an “unmistakable message” that “these mid-range, anti-ship ballistic missiles are capable of attacking aircraft carriers in the western Pacific,” Davidson said.
The US has also been working on its own anti-ship missiles that it’s been rushing into the fleet.
After a 25-year absence, the Navy will start packing Harpoon ship-killer missiles on its attack submarines as the Pentagon looks to deploy more offensive punch at longer ranges, a clear recognition of the growing ability of China and Russia to keep American and allied forces at a distance in any potential confrontation.
The Navy has also deployed its over-the-horizon Naval Strike Missile, with a range of about 100 miles, aboard the Littoral Combat Ship USS Gabrielle Giffords, and has plans to make the weapon a mainstay aboard its forthcoming Constellation-class frigates along with the entire fleet of more than 30 Littoral Combat Ships.
The Navy and Marine Corps are also looking to get the NSM fitted aboard its amphibious ships, a move that advances the emerging plan to find ways for the Corps to provide more support for ships at sea from dispersed locations aboard ships or on land.
The Army is also eager to prove its relevance in the long-range fight in the Pacific, and has been experimenting with precision long-range fires, and held a live-fire experiment this month that used artificial intelligence to share targeting data amongst Marine F-35s, Air Force A-10s, ground-based HIMARS rocket launchers, and commercial satellites.
Davidson threw his full support behind the Marine Corps and the Army to provide that kind of firepower from land-based missiles, saying the “US fights as a joint force. And long range precision fires delivered to the ground force I think are critically important. It’s going to enhance the maneuver and positional advantage of us forces in the theater.”
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