PROMPT GLOBAL STRIKE: CHINA AND THE SPEAR Lora Saalman Ph.D.

http://www.apcss.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/APCSS_Saalman_PGS_China_Apr2014.pdf

Independent Faculty Research
PROMPT GLOBAL STRIKE: CHINA AND THE SPEAR
Lora Saalman Ph.D.
Key Themes
• A close examination of Chinese scientific journals reveals emerging perspectives on prompt global strike (PGS). As Chinese official defense white papers have become shorter in length, technical journals provide a clearer window into threat perceptions and direction of Chinese military modernization. They reveal that technical and military institutes in China are conducting substantial research into both countering and developing hypersonic, precision-guidance, and boost-glide technologies. The amount of this research dwarfs that heretofore available on their ballistic missile defense (BMD)-related technologies. In contrast to BMD, Chinese PGS-oriented literature combines scientific and strategic details, reflecting a broader shift to integrate strategic departments into its technical institutes.
• Chinese analysts view PGS as part of a larger U.S. effort to achieve “absolute security,” with BMD as the shield and PGS as the sword, such that Washington is able to act preemptively. Given its lower threshold of taboo on use, Chinese analysts tend to view U.S. PGS as a threat to Beijing’s conventional and nuclear weapons systems, as well as its command and control centers. With the breadth of U.S. platforms defined as PGS-related systems in China, its analysts have not ruled out their delivery of nuclear weapons. Despite its criticism of the United States, China’s BMD tests in 2008 and 2010, as well as its own test moving towards PGS in 2014, show that it is seeking similar systems. If the same ideas on preemption are applied to China’s own PGS, then its nuclear posture may change, whether declared or not.
• The concept of U.S. PGS in China is wide and amorphous. It includes not only boost-glide systems and terminally guided ballistic missiles that make up the U.S. PGS program, but also reusable unmanned spacecraft and unmanned scramjets. Defunct or cancelled U.S. programs are featured in Chinese technical journals, on the grounds that U.S. military programs never truly end. Even in the face of Washington’s economic setbacks, Chinese analysts argue that U.S. PGS-related testing is already underway, particularly with hypersonic spacecraft. While Chinese authors tend to place PGS in the category of space weapons, they do not view it in isolation. Instead, they discuss its cyberspace and maritime application and vulnerabilities, as part of expanding cross-domain warfare research.
• Chinese strategic and technical experts are exploring a variety of countermeasures against U.S. PGS from detection technologies to interceptors, as well as C4ISR disabling electronic warfare measures. China is also developing its own hypersonic, precision-guided, boost-glide systems, with the hypersonic, boost-glide DF-21D and WU-14 as examples. With the integration of strategic analysis and planning into technical research, China’s pursuit of hypersonic and high-precision weaponry promises to be faster and more focused than that associated with its previous anti-satellite (ASAT) and BMD-related research and programs. Given how intensely Chinese analyses and programs focus on threats from the United States, it promises to be not only the driver of development, but also a primary target.