Air Power in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific

Understanding Regional Security Dynamics

Howard M. Hensel, Howard M. Hensel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000091779
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

This book examines the security dynamics of the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, concentrating upon an analysis and evaluation of the air power capabilities of the various powers active in the two regions.

The volume is designed to help improve understanding of the heritage and contemporary challenges confronting the global community in the Indian Ocean and the Western Pacific, as well as to illuminate the policies of the various powers involved in the affairs of these regions, and the military capabilities that are available in support of those policies. The 16 individual chapters examine both the traditional and the non-traditional threats that confront the various Indian Ocean and Western Pacific powers, and assess the roles played by land-based and naval, fixed-wing and rotary-wing, manned and unmanned aircraft, as well as by offensively and defensively capable ballistic and cruise missiles in addressing these challenges. In doing so, the various chapters analyze and evaluate the air power doctrine, capabilities, deployment patterns, and missions of the respective states. In addition, they assess the future issues, challenges, and responses involving air power as it, acting in concert with other military instruments, seeks to contribute to securing and promoting the interests of the state.

This book will be of much interest to students of air power, strategic studies, Asian and Middle Eastern politics, and International Relations.

Part I

The global powers

1 Russia

Alexey Muraviev and Alexandr Burilkov

Traditionally, air power has played a very important role in the security and defense of the Russian Far East. Since the mid-1930s, the Soviet Union has made systematic efforts in building up its tactical and strategic offensive and defensive air power capability. Combat and support aircraft played key roles in Soviet operations against imperialist Japan during a short border conflict near the lake Khasan in 1938; during an army level campaign in outer Mongolia in mid-1939; and during the Soviet strategic offensive in Manchuria in August–September 1945. Elements of the air force and naval aviation were pivotal in Soviet multidomain systematic deterrent operational activities throughout the Cold War. Units of the Long Range Aviation (LRA) based east of the Ural Mountains took part in aerial strategic deterrent operations.

In the twenty-first century, the Western Pacific faces a new wave of geopolitical and geostrategic competition caused by both accelerating rivalry between the world’s leading major military powers, the United States (US), Russia, and the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and regional powers, which are in the process of upgrading their already formidable military capabilities, also in support of their claims to play greater roles in regional and global affairs. Like in the past, the contest for air power dominance and denial of air supremacy to your geopolitical rivals forms one of the core factors of force modernization programs.

The chapter is structured as follows. It begins with an introduction to the origins and drivers of Russian air strategy since 2000, especially as relations soured with the established Western powers after 2014. The chapter then goes on to catalog the direct application of Russian airpower in the Indo-Pacific through an examination of the organizational structure, order of battle, ongoing modernization, and operational activities of the Voenno Kosmicheskie Sily Rossiiskoi Federatsii (Russian Federation Air Space Force or RFASF) in the Eastern Military District (MD). The chapter concludes with an examination of the indirect exercise of Russian airpower via the export and provision of air technology, especially advanced air defense (AD) systems that present a substantial deterrent to external intervention.

Russian air power and air power strategy

Russian grand strategy focuses on mitigating external influence in the post-Soviet space, especially that stemming from the existing liberal world order.¹ Russia is a regional and global power that is dissatisfied with the existing status quo in global affairs,² and conducts both foreign and defense policy aimed at mitigating Western influence, from direct military modernization to indirect policies such as arms exports, especially of systems that can credibly be used for conventional deterrence against the North Atlantic Treaty organisation (NATO)-type forces. Strategic documents identify NATO as the primary threat, though other issues, especially terrorism and the integrity of the sparsely populated spaces of the Far East, are a mounting and explicitly stated concern.³ Russian contemporary strategic thinking as well as operational and strategic planning is driven by the deteriorating relationship with the West, especially in the wake of the Ukrainian crisis and the associated annexation of Crimea, sanctions and counter-sanctions, as well as the Russian military campaign in Syria and elsewhere, though this trend is a constant in post-Soviet Russian strategy and has manifested already in instances such as the war in Georgia in August 2008.

Despite seemed preoccupation with security risks and threats to the country’s west and southwest Russia keeps a close eye on the geostrategic developments in East Asia. From the military-strategic perspective, the northeastern part of the Western Pacific represents a unique geostrategic configuration. Northeast Asia sees the geographical interaction of three leading military powers and major nuclear powers (Russia, the PRC, and the US by means of its presence in Japan and the Republic of Korea [RoK]), and one minor (undeclared) nuclear power with an aging but still considerable conventional military potential, the Democratic Republic of Korea (DPRK). This established configuration highlights highly complex and often controversial transformations of the regional geostrategic environment post-1991.

In the first half of the twenty-first century the PRC’s rapid rise as the economic superpower combined with its growing global ambitions are causing strategic concern in the US, Asia, and Europe. The rapid build-up of its military capability, Beijing’s power projection capacity across the Western Pacific and beyond, confrontational behavior in the the South China Sea (SCS), and its aggressive push into the South Pacific are all forcing the international community to formulate a new strategic approach towards Beijing, driven more by an intent to contain and deter China’s ambitions than embrace and accept them.

The age of unipolarity, which has effectively replaced the Cold War bipolar strategic system, is gradually giving way to a new global geopolitical configuration. China and Russia (the BIG TWO) have emerged as alternative centers of global geopolitical, geo-economic (China), and military influence (Russia). Both Moscow and Beijing openly contest the international rules-based order, which is the foundation of strategic modus operandi of western nations and other like-minded states.

There are growing concerns that the current geopolitical instability and intensifying great power rivalry may trigger a major war involving leading military powers in the Western Pacific, notably the US, the PRC, and Russia. In the case of the latter, an open confrontation with the US-led coalition may engage either the PRC or Russia, or even a sporadic alliance of the BIG TWO, should both Beijing and Moscow find fighting together compelling from the point of each country’s survival as sovereign nations.

There are various scenarios that identify potential causes of a war in the Western Pacific. For example, the Russian General Staff identified a number of escalator points – conflict triggers. Besides the SCS disputes, the Taiwan dilemma, and the crisis in the Korean peninsula noted above, the following points are worth noting:

• Significant military presence and force modernization of the US and its key regional allies (Japan, RoK, Australia) aimed at containing militarily Russia and the PRC;

• High levels of operational and exercise activity within the Asia-Pacific strategic theater, involving strategic assets (carrier battle groups and strategic bomber force); and

• Deployment of anti-ballistic missile (ABM)/ballistic missile defence (BMD) elements.⁴

It is likely that these views are being shared by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) operational and strategic planners, also because of close consultation and coordination between the militaries of the BIG TWO.

Complex evolving geopolitical realities of the Western Pacific reinforced by the strategic fluidity and a strong degree of uncertainty noted earlier, and continuous risks of an open confrontation push regional players to build up their conventional deterrent and power projection capabilities, with air power capability representing a viable option. The strategic value of modern air power is well understood by major regional countries as being both one of the principal determinants of national sovereign capability to respond to any external pressures and an effective power projection option. There is a continuous strategic interest by major regional powers to develop and maintain integrated, expeditionary capable air forces comprising all major elements of modern air power: tactical and long-range air superiority aircraft; tactical and long-range strike capability, including assets responsible for strategic strike, tactical and strategic airlift, and mid-air refueling capabilities; patrol, surveillance, reconnaissance, and targeting capabilities.

Russian strategic and defense thinkers estimate that military conflicts in Northeast Asia are likely to draw on considerable military forces, particularly naval battle groups supported by the massive use of modern air power. For example, Russian defense analysts, whilst modeling a large-scale conflict with the US and its allies in the northwestern Pacific, estimate that the US-led coalition is likely to launch the so-called vozdushnaya nastupatel’naya operatsiya (aerial assault operation, AAO) as part of its offensive campaign. The first core objective of a strategic AAO would be to gain and maintain continuous dominance in the aerospace, and by that undermine adversaries’ ability to engage in consolidated defensive campaigns. The follow on aim of a strategic AAO would be incapacitating the enemy’s fighting, industrial, and mobilization potential to continue resistance; cripple its will to fight; and support of other multidomain operations until the strategic end (military and political victory) is achieved.

According to their assessments, a potential large-scale conflict between Russia and the US led coalition is likely to have the latter assemble a combined force of some 2,000 to 2,500 various purpose aircraft (including 1,100 to 1,300 combat fixed wing), 1,200 to 1,500 rotary aircraft, some 500 to 600 unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and 1,500 to 2,000 cruise missiles. The strategic AAO could comprise a sequence of smaller scale AAOs depending on the level of the adversary’s effective resistance, and could run from two to three weeks to up to two months.⁵

As in the past, the Russian military consider formidable multirole air power and a comprehensive layered AD essential to its peacetime activities, including conventional and strategic deterrent operations. In times of crisis and war both arms are regarded as pivotal for both success of ground and naval operations as well as the country’s survival as a sovereign nation. Organizationally, the RFASF comprises the following elements:

• Air force;

• AD and ABM/BMD;

• Space troops;

• Special purpose (electronic countermeasures, communications);

• Logistical support;

• Education and R&D.

These elements are responsible for the following tasks:

Table 1.1 RFASF elements and missions

Element responsible	Tasks/missions
AD and ABM/BMD	Defense of centers of gravity (command and control centers, strategic command, major groupings of forces, key population centers, and major elements of physical infrastructure
	Intercepting incom...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Introduction
• PART I: The global powers
• PART II: The Western Pacific
• PART III: The Eastern Indian Ocean and the Indian sub-continent
• PART IV: The Western Indian Ocean
• Conclusion
• Index