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The US Air Force’s Pacific Air Forces Commander, General Kenneth Wilsbach, has warned that the United States and its allies will need to step up their game in order to defendTaiwan, with air superiority and ship-killing weapons to be at the forefront of any defensive measures.
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With bated breath, much of the world waits to see if the confrontation that the world and the Indo-Pacific, in particular, hopes never happens — a direct and open conflict between the United States and its allies and China over the small, island nation of Taiwan in the far-flung Western Pacific — comes to pass.
Beijing’s growing antagonism and sabre-rattling as it seeks to solve its “Taiwan problem” has been reinforced by growing speculation from leading US defence leaders like former Commander, US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson who testified to the Senate Armed Services Committee: “Taiwan is clearly one of their [Beijing’s] ambitions before then. And I think the threat is manifest during this decade, in fact in the next six years.”
These issues have only been further compounded by the recent meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, and their recent announcement of a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” as the formation of a new and rapidly growing, counter-balancing economic, political and strategic bloc.
Adding yet more fuel to the fire is the growing shift away from the US dollar as the preferred trading currency for many nations, including traditional allies like France, Saudi Arabia, and partners like India is the Chinese yuan, or their own domestic currency when trading petrochemicals and other key industrial inputs, further undermining the strength of the already incredibly fragile US economy.
Speaking to the Air & Space Forces Association’s The Mitchell Institute’s Aerospace Nation forum, the US Air Force’s Pacific Air Forces Commander, General Kenneth Wilsbach, has warned that air superiority will play a critical role in the defence of Taiwan.
“One thing that people often don’t think about, with respect to air superiority, is weapons to be able to kill ships," GEN Wilsbach said.
Air superiority prevents unnecessary losses
This emphasis on air superiority seems rather counterintuitive given the heavily maritime domain of the Western Pacific, and the vast distances land-based combat aircraft based in Japan, the Philippines or even Australia would be required to cover, nevertheless, GEN Wilsbach believes this is central to ensuring an allied victory in the event of any attempted occupation of Taiwan.
This emphasis on air superiority was echoed by GEN Wilsbach’s European-based counterpart, General James Hecker, who used the Russia-Ukraine conflict as the most poignant example, stated: “To put it in perspective, after 20 years in Afghanistan, we had slightly less than 2,400. Now, one is too many, but 140,000 (Russian and Ukrainian losses) is ridiculous. So, we can’t afford that. So how do we fix that? We need to make sure that we’re able to get air superiority. And as was mentioned yesterday by Secretary Kendall, one of the operational imperatives with the NGAD is it meant exactly for that.
“One of the six fights that General Brown talked about is the fight for air superiority ... So we got to make it happen. We need to be able to do it at a large scale. In order to do it at a large scale, we need our allies and partners to have the capabilities and the policies and the information so that they can help us so we can do it at a large scale,” GEN Hecker added.
Expanding on these points, GEN Wilsbach explained, “And the one thing that I’ll say in the Indo-Pacific, especially if you focus in on China and you think about what’s their dilemma, they would love it to be China versus the United States, but in reality, it’s China versus the United States plus, and then I’ll have to spend about 30 minutes listing the rest of the countries that would probably line up with us, who also have the objective of free and open Indo-Pacific.”
This aggregation of capabilities also stems from the growing proliferation and commonality of platforms across the Indo-Pacific, namely the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter fleets operated by the United States, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Singapore, combined with the planned US acquisition of the E-7 Wedgetail currently in service with the Korean and Australian Air Forces, will play an important role in adding mass to the allied response.
Speaking of the importance of this, GEN Wilsbach said, “It starts with the E-7. [The reason] why we need the E-7 so badly is because our current fleet of E-3s are challenged remarkably, just getting them in the air ... Even when they’re perfectly in order and they get airborne, they don’t necessarily see what they need to see in the 21st century modern warfare. The E-7 does ... and so the E-7 is absolutely critical.”
Air superiority key to killing enemy ships
One of the often-overlooked facets of contemporary conflict is the truly multi-domain nature of the systems and capabilities that will be employed, with air superiority aircraft typically only reserved for air superiority roles, however, the conflict of Taiwan will necessitate a major rethink in the tactics and strategies for capability implementation.
GEN Wilsbach explains this, saying, “One thing that people often don’t think about, with respect to air superiority, is weapons to be able to kill ships. They’re [the Chinese] going to put ships out probably to the east of Taiwan,” effectively expanding and enforcing Beijing’s already formidable anti-access, area-denial capabilities impacting the combat radius and capability of the forward deployed air superiority focused platforms, that is unless, as GEN Wilsbach explains, “and when they take away that airspace, it takes away our ability to have freedom of manoeuvre, and to create effects via airpower — until you can attrite those ships.”
This adds greater emphasis on greater capability aggregation and development between the United States and its allies, particularly Japan, South Korea, and Australia to coordinate the manufacture, design, development, and repurposing of existing and future ordnance to ensure that traditionally air superiority focused platforms are capable of effectively and efficiently engaging enemy surface combatants as effectively as they would air or ground targets.
Lessons for Australia’s future strategic planning
There is no doubt that Australia’s position and responsibilities in the Indo-Pacific region will depend on the nation’s ability to sustain itself economically, strategically and politically in the face of rising regional and global competition.
Despite the nation’s virtually unrivalled wealth of natural resources, agricultural and industrial potential, there is a lack of a cohesive national security strategy integrating the development of individual, yet complementary public policy strategies to support a more robust Australian role in the region.
While contemporary Australia has been far removed from the harsh realities of conflict, with many generations never enduring the reality of rationing for food, energy, medical supplies or luxury goods, and even fewer within modern Australia understanding the socio-political and economic impact such rationing would have on the now world-leading Australian standard of living.
Enhancing Australia’s capacity to act as an independent power, incorporating great power-style strategic economic, diplomatic and military capability serves as a powerful symbol of Australia’s sovereignty and evolving responsibilities in supporting and enhancing the security and prosperity of Indo-Pacific Asia, this is particularly well explained by Peter Zeihan, who explains:
"A deglobalised world doesn’t simply have a different economic geography, it has thousands of different and separate geographies. Economically speaking, the whole was stronger for the inclusion of all its parts. It is where we have gotten our wealth and pace of improvement and speed. Now the parts will be weaker for their separation."
Accordingly, shifting the public discussion and debate away from the default Australian position of "it is all a little too difficult, so let’s not bother" will provide unprecedented economic, diplomatic, political and strategic opportunities for the nation.
As events continue to unfold throughout the region and China continues to throw its economic, political and strategic weight around, can Australia afford to remain a secondary power, or does it need to embrace a larger, more independent role in an era of increasing great power competition?
Get involved with the discussion and let us know your thoughts on Australia’s future role and position in the Indo-Pacific region and what you would like to see from Australia’s political leaders in terms of partisan and bipartisan agenda setting in the comments section below, or get in touch
Stephen Kuper
Steve has an extensive career across government, defence industry and advocacy, having previously worked for cabinet ministers at both Federal and State levels.
