China steadily is
building up the forces it could deploy
in an attempted invasion of taiwan. The chinese navy is acquiring aircraft
carriers and amphibious assault ships
while the chinese army and marine corps
add modern fighting vehicles and the air
force trains for intensive air-to-air
combat. But in crossing the taiwan strait a
chinese invasion fleet would face not
only taiwanese forces but probably
americans forces as well. The united states is obligated by law to
assist in taiwan's defense, a u.s air force wing commander in august
2019 revealed one form u.s intervention
could take.
The commandant of the air force's
weapons school part of the 57th wing at Nellis air force base in Nevada back in
2019 visited barksdale air force base in Louisiana, home to the second bomb wing
the u.s air arms biggest bomber unit
with nearly 30 B-52Hs on its rolls.
"I told him to go eat some fried
alligator," 57th wing Commander Brigadier General Robert Novotny wrote on facebook.
Instead he went dropping c mines out of
a B-52 stratofortress. Novotny posted several photos depicting
one of the 1960s vintage B-52s hauling a
whopping 15 quick strike air dropped c
mines, six externally and nine internally, these
are converted from MK-80 series high explosive bombs and
feature a fusing system that detonates
the weapon when it detects an
appropriate acoustic, seismic or pressure
signatures from a passing vessel.
A fourth type MK-65 is another 2,000 pound class quick
strike mine but is based on an actual
purpose-built mine casing rather than an
existing bomb. As the pentagon pivots back to great
power conflict the mines are enjoying a
renaissance of sorts
and upgrades trevi thick detailed the
efforts. For more than four years now the
navy has been pursuing two related
upgrade programs known as quick strike J and quick strike er for the MK-80 series members of the quick strike
family.
The first of these simply combines the
mine with a GPS guided joint direct
attack munition guidance package while
the latter adds a pop-out wing kit. These are game-changing upgrades that
allow aircraft to precisely employ the
mines from any altitude and in the case
of the er types, loft them at targets up
to 40 miles away. This speeds up the process of laying the
minefields overall and dramatically
reduces the vulnerability to the
aircraft carrying the weapons which
would otherwise have to fly low and slow
to perform the mission.
The air force operates more than 70 B-52s and in the event of war could
deploy dozens of the huge planes to the
asia-pacific region or fly them from the
united states for missions over the
pacific war zone. It's not hard to imagine formations of B-52s quickly laying hundreds or even
thousands of mines.
Of course the bombers if forward
deployed themselves would be targets. China could target america's main
pacific outposts. In particular the
bomber base at Guam with ballistic and
cruise missiles. A sudden chinese attack quickly could
wipe out u.s forces in the asia-pacific
region and block the united states from
intervening in a regional war. That's the startling conclusion of an
august 2019 report from the united
states study center at the university of Sydney.
America's defense strategy in the
indo-pacific is in the throes of an
unprecedented crisis. The study's authors Ashley Townsend, Brendan Thomas and Matilda Stewart warned America no longer enjoys military
primacy in the indo-pacific and its
capacity to uphold a favorable balance
of power is increasingly uncertain. Dispersing B-52s across a wider area
could help to protect them from attack. It's not for no reason that the air
force in recent years has begun sending B-52s to the australian airbase in Darwin.
