Layered Warfare

Unlike the Noble Pundit, I'm not dismissive of China's newest tank design. If it pans out, it will be a serious piece of weaponry, which demands a bit of battlefield respect. While larger gun calibers are of somewhat limited utility in anti-tank terms, having a 152mm gun does give the tank better capability against infantry and hardened positions than the Abrams has. It will be interesting to seei f this design includes the armored internal bulkheads and other features designed to maximize crew survivability in modern Western designs. Most importantly, this weapons system will be a threat to Taiwan, equipped with older tanks, should China ever develop a credible amphibious capability before Taiwan can acquire more modern weapons.

In order to successfully beat the US on the battlefield, a country will need to field a broad range of capabilities: a heavy tank capable of defeating US missiles and tanks; either a formidable air force or a powerful mobile high-speed high-altitude air defense; some naval, air or missile force to compel the US Navy to stand far offshore; and a professional NCO corps in an Army organized for independent small-unit action and large-scale coordinated combined arms. This combination of capabilities would make an enemy competitive with us. I believe that this tank might well fulfill the first requirement for the Chinese. The Chinese could easily develop the submarine capability to make the USN nervous. It would be a huge and risky undertaking to get the Chinese air force up to standards, and I'm not convinced that China can do this in the next ten to fifteen years. (They have size, but not quality or doctrine.) They may be able to develop a mobile air-defense capability, though, to put a bubble of airspace denial around their maneuver units, sometime in the next ten years or so.

Where the Chinese will really fall down, though, is in the last element. No Communist society devolves the necessary authority far enough downwards. That requires a level of trust not present in such a society. As a result, it is almost certainly the case that, even should China achieve a weapons parity, they would not have the battlefield flexibility to beat the US. They might be able to slow us down, though, and in that case we might be in trouble. If the Chinese could draw us into a war on their territory, we probably could not compete in a war of attrition, because the Chinese could turn out a lot more soldiers than we could. Even so, the conditions for the Chinese to defeat us basically are: war in China, with the Chinese vastly improved and the US standing still.

Overall, I still don't see a short- or medium-term threat, to us or to Taiwan.