Just prior to the Secretary of Defense Gates' recent trip Beijing, the Commander of U.S. Pacific Forces, Admiral Willard, noted that China will soon field an antiship ballistic missile capable of targeting U.S. aircraft carriers up to a thousand miles off of China's coast. A few days later, while Secretary Gates was in Beijing, the Chinese military flight tested its first stealth fighter, allowing news of the test to "leak" out to the internet.
These developments, along with others the Commission has described in recent years, appear to be manifestations of a concerted effort to develop capabilities that directly counter the U.S. military. Frequently referred to in the United States as an "anti-access strategy" intended to keep U.S. forces at bay, this strategy is being operationalized across all domains of war—land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace. More importantly, the PLA is attempting to integrate and synergize its capacities in these various domains in order to maximize its capabilities, similar in effect to how the U.S. military conducts joint operations.
The PLA is not simply developing and integrating traditional military capabilities, but is also experimenting with less traditional, but very effective, means. Methods such as offensive cyber operations and counterspace operations act as force multipliers for the PLA's growing anti-access capabilities. U.S. military operations in the Western Pacific are heavily dependent upon the flow of information, be it through space-based, aerial, or terrestrial systems. We should all take note of Secretary Gates' comments regarding China's advances in cyber- and anti-satellite warfare, when he noted that those advances pose a "potential challenge to the ability of [U.S.] forces to operate and communicate in this part of the Pacific."
