CO12158 | Decoding the Air-Sea Battle Concept: Operational Consequences and Allied Concerns

Instead, the DOD has tried to convey the broader strategic rationale behind the ASB in the context of restoring and sustaining a stable military balance in the Western Pacific by strengthening deterrence vis-à-vis China, and providing U.S. Allies security assurances.

Assessing the ASB at the operational level, however, reveals that the concept does not explicitly focus on defending and relying on proximate U.S. Allied bases in East Asia. U.S. regional allies and partners are thus concerned whether the ASB provides strategic reassurance or abandonment? Moreover, the key question for U.S. allies is to what degree does the ASB actually assume active allied participation and contribution in the envisioned “deep strike-missions” on the Chinese mainland?

Conceptual Alternatives and Inter-Service Debates

Furthermore, with the prevailing emphasis on decoding the ASB in the media, think-tanks, and ultimately military services, there has been a lack of awareness of the existence of contending schools of thought and evolving alternative strategies and concepts that are shaping debates in the U.S military. Opponents of the ASB point to high escalatory dynamics and subsequent risks in the possible deep strikes on China. Implementing the ASB would also require substantial investment in new long-range stealth platforms, cutting-edge weapons technologies and capabilities, which the U.S. military may not afford.

Accordingly, there are conceptual alternatives to the ASB that propel internal debates in the U.S. military such as the Mutually Denied Battlespace Strategy currently emerging within the Naval Postgraduate School and the U.S. Naval War College. The “Mutual A2/AD Concept” refrains from initiating deep strikes on the Chinese mainland in order to gain access to the battlefield. Instead, it reverses the ASB concept by relying on the U.S. maritime-superiority to deny access for the Chinese warships in their waters and commercial shipping in the surrounding oceans. The office of Chief of Naval Operations is also considering an ASB-alternative that envisions using less stealth, but higher sortie rates from existing proximate Allied bases.

Policy Implications

Given its operational uncertainties, the ASB concept will be hotly debated, tested, and calibrated with continuously changing strategic realities and operational experiences of the U.S. forces. Its future course, however, will have significant policy implications, defense management ramifications, and operational consequences for U.S. allies in East Asia.

U.S. allies and partners in the Asia-Pacific such as South Korea, Japan, Australia and others have been relatively quiet on the implications of the ASB, largely because they do not share the full extent of planned operational details. In this context, what’s missing in the ASB debate is Allied participation. The operational uncertainty of the ASB may thus undermine future alliance credibility, and increase the incentives for allies to devise alternative defense strategies.

At the strategic level, the U.S. therefore needs to clarify the ASB concept in terms of its relevance to the new “rebalancing strategy” in the Asia-Pacific, while at the operational level, the U.S. military needs to articulate particular aspects of the ASB in terms of future Allied interoperability requirements and involvement. Perhaps most importantly, both the U.S. and China need to enhance their military-to-military cooperation in order to mitigate increasing strategic distrusts. It is only thenthat the ASB will not become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

About the Author

Michael Raska is a Research Fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, a constituent unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.