In 2010 the United States adopted the Air-Sea Battle Doctrine to assure victory in any war against either the People's Republic of China or Iran.
Air-Sea Battle integrates the forces of the US Navy and Air Force to standoff distant from the coast of the PRChina to bombard it by air and sea to penetrate deep into the mainland to destroy the CCP's ability to wage war. The Air-Sea Battle Doctrine utilizes naval and air weapons platforms of primarily missiles, stealth aircraft, aircraft carrier strike groups, nuclear armed boomer submarines and independent strike submarines, supported by cyberwarfare and satellites in space.
The new Air-Sea Battle Doctrine was created and developed as the specific response to the CCP's successful Anti-Access, Area Denial weapons platforms technologies, (A2/AD) recently developed or acquired, which have as their core purpose the destruction of a naval force located in the Western Pacific Ocean. Uncontestable U.S. naval vulnerabilities to the CCP's A2/AD new weapons technologies already had made vulnerable United States naval forces at the First Strategic Island Chain, which arcs southward from the Japanese home islands through the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan, the Philippine archipelago across to Vietnam. Hence the need of the Pentagon to incorporate a standoff position of battle.
The Second Strategic Island Chain, a series of island groups that runs north to south from the Japanese archipelago to the Bonin and Marshall islands and Guam, remains out of reach but is coveted by the CCP to be someday soon, perhaps by 2020, within range of its A2/AD missile technologies. The third of the Pentagon's three strategic island chains of the Western Pacific, from Alaska to Hawaii to Australia and New Zealand remains far out of Beijing's reach or its realistic reach. Concerning the continental United States, even Beijing's best intercontinental ballistic missiles would not reach the Mississippi River.
Key allies of the U.S. in northeast Asia, including Japan and South Korea, also play central roles against China. Not only does each have a strong military force of their own, but Seoul and Tokyo also provide air, naval, logistic and supply bases to the US.
The Second Strategic Island Chain includes Guam, the U.S.'s main air and naval base in the Western Pacific, which remains beyond the A2/AD weapons platforms of even the PLA's newest technologies. Moreover, with Japan in undisputed control of the Miyako Strait in the Ryukyu Islands, the PLA Navy is denied a direct access route to the Western Pacific.
The Pentagon's Air-Sea Battle Doctrine is its war plan to win any war with the PRChina and/or Iran.
Air-Sea Battle 2.0: A Global A2/AD Response | The Diplomat
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