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| Land-based missiles could form a virtual wall against Chinese aggression (CSBA graphic - Click Image to Enlarge) |
By SYDNEY J. FREEDBERG JR.
UPDATED with Brig. Gen. Turner remarks on the report WASHINGTON: Marines are famously aggressive, but a new battle plan from a leading thinktank makes Iwo Jima look low-risk. The Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments’ proposed concept of operations is imaginative, exciting and more than a little scary:
In a future war, rather than say far out at sea until long-range strikes whittle down massed Russian or Chinese missile batteries, the Marine Corps should push ahead into the teeth of the defenses and establish outposts within enemy missile range. Trusting in camouflage, dispersal, and short-range missile defenses to survive, these Expeditionary Advance Bases would refuel raiding F-35B fighters and launch land-based missiles to take the adversary’s Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) zone down from the inside.
CSBA’s idea is in line with the military’s increasing desire to blitzkrieg through weak points in A2/AD defenses, rather than laboriously bombard them from long range while our allies are overrun. (The Army calls this Multi-Domain Battle). But it’s far more aggressive and risky than any other such concept I’ve seen, because it calls for setting up static outposts inside the danger zone, rather than infiltrating mobile forces that stay constantly on the move. As Army Chief of Staff Mark Milley, never one to mince words, puts it: “On the future battlefield, if you stay in one place longer than two or three hours, you will be dead.”
So how does a stationary Expeditionary Advance Base survive not for hours but days?
Read the full story at Breaking Defense