War Preparation by US Against

Russia and China:Marines Seek  Anti Ship HIMARS

A renewed buildup of Russian troops near the Ukrainian border has raised concern among some officials in the United States and Europe who are tracking what they consider irregular movements of equipment and personnel on Russia’s western flank. At the same time USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the United States Sixth Fleet, is heading for the #BlackSea. Analysts say the deployment of the warship to show support for #Ukraine. See the full story in the video.

A Marine Corps HIMARS (High Mobility Artillery Rocket System)

For the first time since December 1941, when Wake Island’s shore gunners sank the invading destroyer Hayate, Marine Corps artillery wants to kill ships. That could be a big boost for the Navy, which confronts ever more powerful Russian and Chinese fleets.

Army artillery is also exploring anti-ship missiles, and the Marines may buy the same one. The difference is that it’s the Marines who work most closely with the Navy and who land in hostile territory to seize forward bases to support the fleet. That role makes Marines the first choice for the first wave, while the larger but slower Army provides backup.

Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Hayate, destroyed by Marine Corps shore batteries off Wake Island in 1941.

It also means the Marines need a highly mobile system that can come ashore with the grunts and keep moving to evade retaliatory fire while staying connected to Navy fire control networks. That’s a much more demanding mission than static coastal defense, the role of most anti-ship missile batteries around the world from Norway to Japan.

While the Marines haven’t committed to buying anything yet, they have requested information papers from industry, due on Nov. 30th, exploring a wide range of options. It might be the Army’s ATACMs, the Norwegian Naval Strike Missile, or something else. Based on interviews with four Marine officials, however, it’s clear they’d prefer a missile that can be fired from their existing HIMARS launcher, the truck-based High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System. Why? Because even if the Marines buy the minimum of new equipment for this new mission, it’s going to be “incredibly expensive” and tactically challenging.

For a small service like the Marine Corps, anti-ship missiles are “incredibly expensive,” said Kevin McConnell, deputy director of fires and maneuver on the Marine’s Combat Development & Integration staff. “Even if you consider (doing) a coordinated procurement with the Navy, it still becomes something far larger….than anything we’ve ever undertaken for ground (forces).”

Army ATACMS missile launch.

A missile meant to find and a hit moving target, like a ship, is much more costly than one that just has to strike static GPS coordinates. Prices depend on variant and production run, but reported costs for the standard Guided Multiple Launch Rocket System (GMLRS) missile, used by both the Marines and Army, range from about $100,000 to $200,000 a shot. The larger Army Tactical Missile System (ATACMS), fired from the same HIMARS and MLRS launchers, costs roughly $750,000 to $820,000. In contrast, McConnell told me, “your bottom-basement going rate on a Harpoon missile or a Naval Strike Missile is somewhere around $1.5 million.”

But buying the missile is just the start. You need to integrate it with a launcher, a fire control network and a supply chain. Don’t forget training and wargames and staff planning.

“This type of mission is well beyond anything Marine artillery currently does, so, in some regards, in my opinion, finding the right piece of ordnance is the easy part,” said Pete Dowsett, the senior analyst for HIMARS in the Fires program at Marine Corps Systems Command. “The more complicated part is the logistics tail… the training…how do those fire missions come from a sensor that we’re not normally linked to…. It’s a pretty complex problem.”

Above all, the Marines told me, their new anti-ship mission must work with and for the Navy. That requires “integration into the naval cooperative engagement network,” McConnell said. “I can’t fathom trying to locate and shoot at ships without the Navy running that show.”

A notional future naval battle (CSBA graphic)

Serving the Navy

For decades, the Navy has helped Marines land and fight ashore — as far inland as Afghanistan. Now the Marine Corps wants to return the favor by helping clear the seas.

Oshkosh Expects Lower Defense Revenue As JLTV Buying Slows

Even 10 years ago, the Navy didn’t need the help. Now it does. Regional powers like Iran threaten coastal waters with shore-based missiles and short-ranged but high-speed patrol boats. Near-peers like Russia and China boost their ocean-going battle fleets with submarines, destroyers, and even aircraft carriers.

“For the past 70 years, the US Navy has had undisputed sea control when it wanted. That’s no longer the case,” said Art Corbett, who works in the concepts division of the Marine Corps Warfighting Laboratory. For the Marines, he said, “the last time we fought for sea control with the Navy was the Solomons campaign” in 1942.

US and Russian warships

The two services’ joint concept for Littoral Operations in a Contested Environment (LOCE, pronounced “Loki”) is reviving this concept of Marines supporting the fleet. “Any time Marines are going to be pointing missiles seaward, we’re going to be doing this, probably, at the direction of and in coordination with the Navy,” Corbett said. “This is… a naval, networked capability.”

Sharing targeting data with the fleet, Marine Corps anti-ship missiles would be in many ways an extension of the Navy’s Distributed Lethality concept. Distributed Lethality seeks to upgun every possible platform at sea — “if it floats, it fights” — including lightweight Littoral Combat Ships and even currently unarmed auxiliaries, to multiply both the Navy’s options and an enemy’s problems.

The Marines would provide additional “distributed” firepower from Expeditionary Advance Bases. Carved out of hostile territory by landing forces, kept small and camouflaged to avoid enemy fire, EABs would support F-35B jump jets, V-22 tiltrotors, and drones, as well as anti-ship missiles for the fleet. It’s a high-tech version of Henderson Field on Guadalcanal (part of the Solomons) in 1942. Like Henderson Field, the EABs would provide a permanent presence ashore, inside the contested zone, to support Navy ships as they move in and out to raid and withdraw. The forces ashore are the anvil; the fleet is the hammer.

Shore-based anti-ship missiles wouldn’t be as mobile as ones on ships. But they might be more survivable. Islands don’t sink, after all. Plus, especially in jungle, mountainous, or urban terrain, the land provides far more hiding spaces for a truck-sized HIMARS than the open sea provides for a 400-foot-long ship. Once you launch a rocket, however, the enemy can see your location on radar and infra-red, so the missile batteries must practice “shoot and scoot” tactics: move to a firing point, launch, and move again to a hiding place before enemy retaliation rains down.

Executing such operations in practice, however, requires specialized and costly technology.

Land-based missiles fired from Expeditionary Advance Bases (EABs) could form a virtual wall against Chinese aggression (CSBA graphic)

Technology & Its Limitations

The good news is that lots of friendly countries already have shore-based anti-ship missiles. The bad news is they may not fit with how the Marine Corps wants to operate: mobile, flexible, and aggressive.

The Marine Corps Request For Information asks for the state of the art because “we know many nations around the Pacific, many in Europe…have all had this kind of capability for decades,” McConnell said. “We would like to make sure it aligns with the Marine Corps concepts of being expeditionary, being able to move at will and being transportable by a variety of means. That was the subject of the RFI.”

“Several nations…. have created this standalone capability,” McConnell said (emphasis ours). “They command and control the missile, the radars, the sensors, in a unit that (only) does that kind of mission, that is permanently oriented on — to use an old term — coastal defense.”

“That kind of exquisite solution” — tailored for a single mission — is probably too expensive and too inflexible for the Marines, McConnell continued. Neither the Marines nor the Army can create a whole new type of unit for “a niche capability,” he said. Instead, the goal is to add anti-ship capability to existing rocket artillery without taking away any of its current capabilities to strike targets ashore.

There are two ways to do this, said Joe McPherson, deputy program manager for fires (i.e. artillery) at Marine Corps Systems Command: “One is modifying our existing missiles and the other would be trying to attempt to bring in missiles that already do this mission.”

The LCS Coronado test-fires a new anti-ship missile from Norway’s Kongsberg.

Preferably, any new missile would be able to fire from the existing Army and Marine Corps launchers, the wheeled HIMARS and tracked MLRS. “I wouldn’t at this point exclude something like Raytheon-Kongsberg Naval Strike Missile,” said McConnell. “There is a potential that it’s capable of being modified to fire from a HIMARS.”

The Kongsberg NSM is competing for the Navy’s Over-The Horizon (OTH) weapon, which will go on the Littoral Combat Ship and future frigates. The Marines are working closely with the Navy, McPherson told me, and the specifications they’ve set are sufficiently close to the Marine Corps’ needs that “whatever missile they pick” is worth considering for a joint buy, which would significantly reduce costs.

Another potential joint buy is with the Army. In the short term, the Army and the Pentagon’s Strategic Capabilities Office are upgrading the ATACMS, the biggest missile the HIMARS and MLRS can launch, with a range of roughly 187 miles. The long-term solution might be the Army’s Long-Range Precision Fires (LRPF) missile, supposed to be be half the size with 67 percent more range.

However, the Marine Corps RFI only asks for “ranges of 80 miles or greater,” which means they are at least considering lighter, cheaper missiles that a unit could carry more of, trading range for staying power. The Marines are also willing to consider a less sophisticated and therefore less expensive warhead: one good enough to destroy small craft, like missile boats, and damage larger vessels, but probably unable to penetrate the defenses of a full-size warship with sufficient precision to deliver a killing blow.

Bryan Clark

“That might be the capability we end up with,” McConnell told me. “That might be enough.” (Especially, I might add, if Army units fire longer-ranged ATACMS or LRPF missiles from further back).

Would an 80-mile missile be useful? Absolutely, said Bryan Clark, a retired Navy commander now with the Center for Strategic & Budgetary Assessments. “The 80 (nautical mile) minimum range could be relevant in scenarios in the Persian Gulf, Mediterranean, and possibly the South China Sea,” all relatively narrow waterways, he said. “That would be enough to threaten ships beyond realistic ranges for enemy helicopters and assault craft to attack the EAB (in retaliation).”

The downside is that even an 80-mile missile would need a relatively large launcher, like the HIMARS, and despite having “High Mobility” in its name, Clark is not sure the 12-ton truck is mobile enough for Expeditionary Advance Base operations. (The tracked MLRS is more mobile over rough terrain but weighs 22 tons). “I hope responses to the RFI will address mobility of the fires launcher,” he said.

“The main thing we’re looking for is really what’s in the realm of the possible, both near-term solutions and far-term,” McPherson said of the RFI. Once the data comes back in December, the Marine officials said, they’ll look at their options and start work on an official requirement.

The Key to Success in War with Russia and China Could Be Missiles

For the foreseeable future, the United States and China are locked in a security competition. 

Here's What You Need to Know: Land-based missile batteries can threaten ships dozens or even hundreds of miles away.

Is There A War Brewing In The South China Sea?

Tensions in the South China Sea have been percolating for years now. Even in relatively calm times when the battling claimants of the contested waters manage to stay out of the headlines, the reality out on the sea is rarely tranquil. In fact, a recent report from the South China Morning Post has revealed that Chinese boats have been harassing Civilian vessels in the Malaysian and Vietnamese portions of the South China Sea “on a daily basis” for years.

Extending from Singapore and the Strait of Malacca in the southwest to the Strait of Taiwan in the northeast, the South China Sea is a geopolitical hotspot as one of the most important trade routes in the world, not to mention the home of valuable oil and gas reserves as well as lucrative fishing grounds. The United States Energy Information Agency (EIA) estimates that the South China Sea “contains approximately 11 billion barrels of oil and 190 trillion cubic feet of natural gas in proved and probable reserves.”

Huge, overlapping sections of the Sea are currently subject to claims by Brunei, China, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam. China has staked the largest claims to the South China Sea (at more than 85% of the total area) and has been the most aggressive in defending these claims, with a huge show of military might and navy vessels patrolling the waters. Last year, during another flare-up of tensions, the Asia Times reported that China’s most recent rash of aggressions was a bid to shut down Vietnamese resource development projects “as Beijing aims to force all foreign oil companies out of the South China Sea, leaving itself as the only potential joint development partner for rival sea claimants.”

Vietnam is far from Beijing’s only victim, however. Indonesian drilling has also been targeted in the so-called “Tuna Block” in the Natuna Sea, in the same waters where these two nations have clashed in the past over fishing rights. And now, according to the recent reports from the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative, Malaysia has been bearing the brunt of Chinese bullying on a daily basis for the past two years. The Malaysian state-owned oil company Petronas has been developing several oil and gas fields in the Luconia Shoals, where Chinese vessels have been reportedly driving dangerously and erratically with the intention of dissuading civilians to take contracts in the area.

“Beijing’s competing claimants to territory in the South China Sea have long accused it of using a paramilitary maritime militia, consisting of hundreds of civilian fishing boats, to help enforce its claims,” The South China Morning Post reported this week. The Chinese government claims that these swaths of civilian fishing boats are not dispatched by the military, but that they join of their own accord, although many other governing bodies (including the United States) believe that the vessels are directly under the command of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

An all-out oil war in the South China Sea would be extremely costly for China, and ultimately may not be in the country’s best interest. Invading another nation is costly, and in this region, the battle could easily turn into another kind of ‘forever war.” And then there’s the fact that China risks destruction in the very waters that it wants to claim, imperiling valuable infrastructure. There are a lot of reasons why China should not and likely will not push its competing claimants hard enough to start a war, and many more reasons that much lesser military powers like Malaysia and Indonesia should just grin and bear the abuse, but Beijing’s behavior over the past few years has shown that China is more than willing to test those boundaries.

Pentagon rattled by Chinese military push on multiple fronts

China’s growing military muscle and its drive to end America predominance in the Asia-Pacific is rattling the U.S. defense establishment. American officials see trouble quickly accumulating on multiple fronts — Beijing’s expanding nuclear arsenal, its advances in space, cyber and missile technologies, and threats to Taiwan.

“The pace at which China is moving is stunning,” says Gen. John Hyten, the No. 2-ranking U.S. military officer, who previously commanded U.S. nuclear forces and oversaw Air Force space operations.

At stake is a potential shift in the global balance of power that has favored the United States for decades. A realignment more favorable to China does not pose a direct threat to the United States but could complicate U.S. alliances in Asia. New signs of how the Pentagon intends to deal with the China challenge may emerge in coming weeks from Biden administration policy reviews on nuclear weapons, global troop basing and overall defense strategy.

For now, officials marvel at how Beijing is marshaling the resources, technology and political will to make rapid gains — so rapid that the Biden administration is attempting to reorient all aspects of U.S. foreign and defense policy.

The latest example of surprising speed was China’s test of a hypersonic weapon capable of partially orbiting Earth before reentering the atmosphere and gliding on a maneuverable path to its target. The weapon system’s design is meant to evade U.S. missile defenses, and although Beijing insisted it was testing a reusable space vehicle, not a missile, the test appeared to have startled U.S. officials.

What war with China could look like

Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the test was “very close” to being a Sputnik moment, akin to the 1957 launching by the Soviet Union of the world’s first space satellite, which caught the world by surprise and fed fears the United States had fallen behind technologically. What followed was a nuclear arms and space race that ultimately bankrupted the Soviet Union.

Milley and other U.S. officials have declined to discuss details of the Chinese test, saying they are secret. He called it “very concerning” for the United States but added that problems posed by China’s military modernization run far deeper.

“That’s just one weapon system,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview. “The Chinese military capabilities are much greater than that. They’re expanding rapidly in space, in cyber and then in the traditional domains of land, sea and air.”

On the nuclear front, private satellite imagery in recent months has revealed large additions of launch silos that suggest the possibility that China plans to increase its fleet of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs.

Hans Kristensen, a nuclear weapons expert at the Federation of American Scientists, says China appears to have about 250 ICBM silos under construction, which he says is more than 10 times the number in operation today. The U.S. military, by comparison, has 400 active ICBM silos and 50 in reserve.

Pentagon officials and defense hawks on Capitol Hill point to China’s modernization as a key justification for rebuilding the U.S. nuclear arsenal, a project expected to cost more than $1 billion over 30 years, including sustainment costs.

Fiona Cunningham, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a specialist in Chinese military strategy, says a key driver of Beijing’s nuclear push is its concerns about U.S. intentions.

“I don’t think China’s nuclear modernization is giving it a capability to pre-emptively strike the U.S. nuclear arsenal, and that was a really important generator of competition during the Cold War,” Cunningham said in an online forum sponsored by Georgetown University. “But what it does do is to limit the effectiveness of U.S. attempts to pre-emptively strike the Chinese arsenal.”

Some analysts fear Washington will worry its way into an arms race with Beijing, frustrated at being unable to draw the Chinese into security talks. Congress also is increasingly focused on China and supports a spending boost for space and cyber operations and hypersonic technologies. There is a push, for example, to put money in the next defense budget to arm guided-missile submarines with hypersonic weapons, a plan initiated by the Trump administration.

For decades, the United States tracked China’s increased defense investment and worried that Beijing was aiming to become a global power. But for at least the last 20 years, Washington was focused more on countering al-Qaida and other terrorist threats in Iraq and Afghanistan. That began to change during the Trump administration, which in 2018 formally elevated China to the top of the list of defense priorities, along with Russia, replacing terrorism as the No. 1 threat.

Combined Russian and Chinese military power will approach, but not exceed US: report

For now, Russia remains a bigger strategic threat to the United States because its nuclear arsenal far outnumbers China’s. But Milley and others say Beijing is a bigger long-term worry because its economic strength far exceeds that of Russia, and it is rapidly pouring resources into military modernization.

At the current pace of China’s military investment and achievement, Beijing “will surpass Russia and the United States” in overall military power in coming years “if we don’t do something to change it,” said Hyten, who is retiring in November after two years as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. “It will happen.”

The Biden administration says it is determined to compete effectively with China, banking on a network of allies in Asia and beyond that are a potential source of strength that Beijing cannot match. That was central to the reasoning behind a Biden decision to share highly sensitive nuclear propulsion technologies with Australia, enabling it to acquire a fleet of conventionally armed submarines to counter China. Although this was a boost for Australia, it was a devastating blow to Washington’s oldest ally, France, which saw its $66 billion submarine sale to Australia scuttled in the process.

Taiwan is another big worry. Senior U.S. military officers have been warning this year that China is probably accelerating its timetable for capturing control of Taiwan, the island democracy widely seen as the most likely trigger for a potentially catastrophic U.S.-China war.

The United States has long pledged to help Taiwan defend itself, but it has deliberately left unclear how far it would go in response to a Chinese attack. President Joe Biden appeared to abandon that ambiguity when he said Oct. 21 that America would come to Taiwan’s defense if it were attacked by China.

“We have a commitment to do that,” Biden said. The White House later said he was not changing U.S. policy, which does not support Taiwanese independence but is committed to providing defensive arms.

China's 'Stealth Ships' Aren’t So Stealthy After All

China's Type-022 missile boats have long been seen as stealthy.

The boats feature sharp angular lines and hidden missile launchers.

In reality, the boats show up in commercially available radar scans of the Chinese coastline.

China's largest class of warships—once thought to be wholly resistant to radar detection—are actually quite visible to radar scans after all.

The Houbei-class fast-attack boats, which bristle with anti-ship missiles, are easily seen in Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) that remote sensing companies use, according to naval authority H.I. Sutton, author of the Covert Shores blog. He has uncovered convincing evidence that the Type-022's radar-evading design is a myth. This calls into serious question whether other forms of radar can detect the boats, too, and whether or not their stealthy lines are actually just for show.

In the mid-2000s, China built a fleet of 82 Type-022 fast-attack craft. Known as the Houbei-class, the tiny boats are just 141 feet long and displace 250 tons. A catamaran design, each can sail at a top speed of 36 knots and support a crew of 14. Each is equipped with an AK-630 30-millimeter Gatling gun and eight YJ-83 anti-ship missiles, giving them the firepower of a destroyer. China likely built the large fleet of ships, useful for coastal defense, as a response to the aircraft carrier USS Nimitz's transit of the Taiwan Strait in 1995. At the time, the People's Liberation Army Navy was powerless to stop the carrier from passing through the waterway separating Taiwan from mainland China.

The Type-022 boats have long been seen as stealthy. The boats have a low profile in the water, flat surfaces, and sharp, angular lines. The eight anti-ship missiles are carried above deck, but in sloped box launchers that are part of the hull (rather than in individual missile canisters like Harpoon missiles on the deck of an Arleigh Burke-class destroyer).

Sutton agrees that the Houbei-class boats certainly look stealthy: "Everything is carefully angled and even the window frames have saw-tooth edges," he notes in a piece for USNI News. Even Combat Fleets of the World, the authoritative guide to navies worldwide, describes the Type-022 class as including "numerous signature reduction and stealth features."

Well, maybe not.

Sutton worked with San Francisco, California-based Capella Space to show that space-based Synthetic Aperture Radar can easily detect the boats. Various features of the boats are visible in the radar images he acquired, including the bow and missile box launchers.

Radar covers a large band of frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum, and the bands, typically named with a Roman letter, often have unique capabilities. Synthetic Aperture Radar, for example, can penetrate clouds, rain, and even tree canopy cover to survey the ground below. This makes it particularly suitable for remote Earth-sensing duties, including tracking forests, ice, and even different types of agricultural crops. Capella satellites use X-band radar in the 9.4 to 9.9 Gigahertz range.

So, is the Type-022's detectability by Synthetic Aperture Radars a problem for the Chinese fleet? It's quite possible. The AN/APG-81 radar mounted on the nose of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter also operates in the X-band. Ticonderoga and Arleigh Burke-class cruisers and destroyers use the SPY-1 radar system (which operates in the S-band), which is also used to an extent in Synthetic Aperture Radar. Other military surveillance assets, including satellites and aircraft, also use dedicated SAR radar to track everything from tank columns to the periscopes of submarines.

Photo credit: Getty Images

Fortunately, there are real stealth ships.

The Arleigh Burke-class destroyers were the first surface combatants in the U.S. Navy built with radar reduction in mind. Although the Burke-class ships are covered from bow to stern with guns, antennas, missile launchers, and even hand railings, they are thought to incorporate some level of radar efficiency reduction. (That's a good thing for wartime, not so good for peacetime, when navigating around commercial ships that rely on radar for situational awareness.)

The kings of stealth at sea are the U.S. Navy's three Zumwalt-class stealth destroyers. The Zumwalt, Michael Monsoor, and Lyndon B. Johnson appear in some ways similar to the Type-022, but the U.S. military's long experience with stealth means their covertness is unquestionable. Each of the destroyers is 600 feet long, yet reportedly appears the same size on radar as a small fishing boat.

China's goal is domination, not cooperation. It's playing Biden and America for fools.

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China has a well-deserved reputation for deceit.

That’s what makes a recent statement from China’s Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng so remarkable: It is honest. He said it’s “not realistic” to expect China to make a new pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

There’s every reason to believe him, but the Biden administration is ignoring reality.


President Joe Biden’s Special Envoy for Climate, John Kerry, has embarked on a quixotic diplomatic quest to get China to cooperate with the United States and do something meaningful to combat climate change.

China might say there’s a climate crisis in a non-binding joint statement with the United States, but its real goal is to become the world’s dominant power — a dangerous prospect for the United States and China’s neighbors.

One reason China gets away with this is because it has made the most of its “developing” country status in the United Nation’s Framework Convention on Climate Change. Under this treaty, developing countries have far fewer responsibilities.
China is far from a 'developing' nation

The Framework Convention was signed in 1992, a time when China really was a developing country. Since then, its economy has grown more than 1,000% and its emissions more than 250%. It’s now the world’s second largest economy and largest emitter — twice as large as the United States.

Despite this, in an April 16 video meeting with Mr. Kerry, Chinese Vice Premier Han Zheng argued that as the largest developing and developed countries, China and the United States should observe their “common but differentiated responsibilities.” A polite way of saying, “You first.”

The Paris Agreement Mr. Kerry negotiated in 2015 did nothing to get rid of this developed-developing country divide. It perpetuated it instead. China could volunteer to be included among the developed nations, but that would mean giving up its strategic advantage. It won’t do that, so instead we have a commitment from China that allows it to emit with abandon until at least 2030.

Chinese Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs Le Yucheng on April 16, 2021, in Beijing.

This Photo Sums Up America’s Advantage Over China in the Indo-Pacific

The U.S., U.K., Australia, and Japan recently participated in a giant naval exercise.

The Maritime Partnership Exercise 2021 included three aircraft carriers from three different countries.

Russia and China mirrored the exercise one day later off the coast of Japan.

Navies from four of the largest democracies in the world conducted a huge naval exercise in the Indian Ocean earlier this month—one that involved not one, but three aircraft carriers.

Between October 15 and 18, the United States, United Kingdom, Japan, and Australia took part in the Maritime Partnership Exercise (MPX) 2021 in the Bay of Bengal in the Indian Ocean. The exercise was designed to increase interoperability between the four sea services. A day later, Chinese and Russian navies conducted a similar exercise.

The U.S. Navy sent the California-based aircraft carrier USS Carl Vinson, as well as her escorts, the guided-missile cruiser USS Lake Champlain, destroyer USS Stockdale, and the replenishment oiler USNS Yukon.

Photo credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Russell Lindsey

The Royal Navy's Carrier Strike Group 21—which includes the aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth (above)—also participated. Queen Elizabeth is on her maiden voyage, one that saw her and her battle group sail across the Indo-Pacific as far east as Guam. "Big Lizzie's" escorts included the destroyers HMS Defender, USS The Sullivans, frigates HMS Kent and HMS Richmond, and fleet auxiliary RFA Fort Victoria.

Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force sent the ships JS Kaga and JS Murasame. Kaga, originally a "helicopter destroyer," is set to become a full-fledged aircraft carrier (along with her sister ship Izumo), embarking F-35B fighter jets. Rounding out the international task force was the Royal Australian Navy's frigate HMAS Ballarat and refueling tanker HMAS Sirius.

The four-power exercise (and others like it) is meant to push back against China's growing naval power in the Indo-Pacific, demonstrating solidarity and the ability to work together against a powerful adversary. Military alliances across the region mean that the U.S. Navy has access to the bases of allies closer to where the potential action is, and can bolster its own naval forces with local forces. For locals like Japan and Australia, it means the ability to call on the 500-pound gorilla of naval warfare if regional tensions rise or if war became imminent.

Photo credit: Japan Ministry of Defense

One day after the exercise, a Sino-Russian joint task force set out to prove the same capabilities. Ten warships from the Russian Navy and the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) sailed through the Tsugaru Strait into the North Pacific. The Tsugaru Strait separates the Japanese northern island of Hokkaido from the main island of Honshu. Japanese air and naval forces first observed the flotilla, which provided the photos above to the Japanese Ministry of Defense.

The five Chinese ships included one brand-new Renhai-class guided-missile cruiser; Nanchang, the largest surface combatant in the PLAN; the guided-missile destroyer Kunming; and the frigates Binzhou and Liuzhou. Rounding out the Chinese complement was a Type 903 fuel and ammunition replenishment ship.

Photo credit: Japan Ministry of Defense

Russia's contribution consisted of ships from Moscow's Pacific Fleet, including two Udaloy-class frigates, two Steregushchy-class corvettes, and the Marshal Krylov space-tracking ship. The two frigates were constructed before the Cold War and were originally destroyers before an upgrade, after which they were downgraded to frigates.

The Indo-Pacific region is coalescing into two power blocs, as these two parallel exercises make abundantly clear. On one side are the navies of the world's major democracies, including regional democracies. On the other side are the authoritarian countries Russia and China. While this doesn't mean the world is any closer to war, it does show that, when it comes to geopolitics, birds of a feather flock together. Whether or not they'll fight together is something the world is better off not finding out.

Meanwhile, China is perfectly willing to exploit Western climate change concerns for its own ends. Fueled by subsidies, the Chinese solar industry has cornered the global market. They have stifled innovation and caused many cutting-edge companies in America and Europe to call it quits. China now supplies more than two-thirds of all solar modules. Chinese companies also make up seven of the top 10 wind turbine manufacturers.

Unrealistic expectations: Joe Biden is right to be blunt with Russia and China, but wrong on what to do next

Key parts of Chinese solar panels are manufactured in Xinjiang province, where the Muslim Uyghur minority is used as forced labor. Though the Chinese government denies this, it has not permitted independent inspectors access to the manufacturing facilities. A big red flag for an entire green industry.

Where it can’t innovate advanced energy technologies, China isn’t above stealing them. The recent Annual Threat Assessment from the Director of National Intelligence warned that the Chinese are specifically targeting the American defense, energy, and finance sectors. It reports the Chinese have no qualms with using espionage and theft as means to steal American technologies.
Don't surrender US energy advantage

We’re seeing almost weekly news stories detailing how researchers connected to China’s military and intelligence services have penetrated our universities and research institutions. They are exploiting the free exchange of ideas to pilfer intellectual property. We need to wake up to the threat.

China is also making an effort to control the critical materials used in many defense and energy technologies. It’s positioned itself as a critical cog in the mining and processing of copper, lithium, nickel, cobalt, and rare earths. It’s also heavily involved in the sectors that use these materials, like battery, solar panel, and wind turbine production.

None of this is an accident. It’s a conscious geopolitical and commercial strategy.

Beijing's oppression: Why is Chinese leader Xi Jinping so afraid of Hong Kong and Jimmy Lai?

After achieving energy self-reliance, it would be a mistake to surrender America’s energy advantage. We should not turn our energy dominance over to the whims of foreign powers like China that are actively seeking America’s decline. Undermining America’s energy security will not solve climate change.

Mr. Kerry’s pursuit of international cooperation with China on climate change is sadly predictable, but China is not in the cooperation business. It’s in the global domination business.

China pretends it’s a developing country, steals technology, uses forced labor, and manipulates markets to its advantage.

During his speech to Congress, President Biden said he wants to make “sure every nation plays by the same rules in the global economy, including China.” Yet his administration seems determined to fall for China’s grand deception. China is playing the United States for the fool.