Scarcity of Japanese military infrastructure in the Senkaku islands makes China war more likely—A2/AD impedes US assistance
Heginbotham & Samuels 18 (Eric, Principal Research Scientist at the Center for International Studies at MIT, and Richard, Principal Research Scientist at the Center for International Studies at MIT, Foreign Affairs Magazine, “A New Military Strategy for Japan,” published July 16th, 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/asia/2018-07-16/new-military-strategy-japan, accessed 7/17/19, JME.)
Over the past 20 years, China’s military modernization has increased the magnitude and nature of Beijing’s strategic challenge to Tokyo. China’s military budget has grown in step with the country’s economic expansion, increasing by an inflation-adjusted 665 percent from 1996 to 2017 and now totaling some $153 billion. Japan’s defense budget, in contrast, grew by only 22 percent during the same period. At $47 billion, it is now less than one-third the size of China’s. The development of China’s “anti-access/area-denial” (A2/AD) capabilities, designed to impede the flow of U.S. forces into the region and limit their operational freedom once in the theater, poses particular challenges. These capabilities include roughly 40 modern submarines, antisatellite systems, and, most important, a large and sophisticated arsenal of conventionally armed missiles. Of China’s roughly 1,300 conventionally armed ballistic missiles, some 150 to 500 have the range to strike targets in Japan, as do hundreds of its ground- and air-launched cruise missiles. These highly accurate missile systems could destroy key nodes in Japan’s defense infrastructure, including air bases, air defenses, communications hubs, and military ports, crippling Tokyo’s ability to resist follow-on attacks by Chinese air and/or naval forces. More recently, China has also developed a formidable array of maneuver forces. It has doubled its modern fighter aircraft inventory over the last seven years, and its air forces now outnumber the combined total of Japanese and local U.S. air forces (including U.S. aircraft forward-deployed to Japan and Guam) by a margin of two to one. Given current build rates, China’s advantage in modern fighter aircraft is likely to rise to three to one by 2025. China has greatly accelerated destroyer production, and by 2025 it will operate as many destroyers as the United States and Japan do in the western Pacific—and far more frigates. The Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is also moving rapidly to address its remaining weaknesses in areas such as antisubmarine warfare, replenishment of ships at sea, and cargo and tanker aircraft. The overall quality of Chinese systems and training is not up to U.S. standards, though China has narrowed the gap across the board. In the event of an attack on any of Japan’s four main islands, Japanese and U.S. forces would enjoy inherent defensive advantages and could almost certainly repel a Chinese assault. However, in the context of Beijing’s aspirations for greater control in the East China and South China Seas, Tokyo has cause for concern about the security of its offshore islands, where China is in a position to mount a serious military challenge. While a deliberate Chinese attack or invasion of these islands is unlikely, a clash there could escalate quickly. Japan’s Ryukyu Islands chain stretches some 600 miles from Japan’s southern island of Kyushu, and the disputed Senkaku Islands (known in China as the Diaoyu Islands), as well as the Yaeyama Islands group at the end of the Ryukyu chain, are twice as far from Kyushu as they are from China’s continental bases. There are some 29 PLA air force and naval air bases within fighter range of the Senkaku Islands but only four U.S. and Japanese bases within the same distance.U.S. and Japanese tankers could support aircraft flying from more distant bases, but only at reduced sortie rates and with greater stress on pilots and aircraft. The comparative scarcity of nearby Japanese and U.S. military infrastructure and the proximity to mainland bases magnify the threat of a Chinese combined air and missile attack, possibly supported by submarines and surface ships.