China is upping its game in the Pacific. How are US forces preparing?

Hello and welcome to another episode of Weapons and Warfare

For Straight Arrow News, I'm your host, Ryan Robertson. Just ahead this week, from rifles to tiltrotors, the army goes on a designation spree

We've got the details. Plus, the mortar gets a glow-up. We check out the Scorpion Light mobile mortar system in our Weapon of the Week

And Fairbanks-Morse Defense is bringing the pit stop to the fleet. In our comps check, see how this innovative idea is keeping American ships on the job and out of the docks

But we're going to dive into our main story first, preparing for conflict in the Pacific

It's a subject we've been following almost from the beginning here at Weapons in Warfare

As China continues to grow its military strength and make bold moves in the South China Sea

the Department of Defense is working to keep China's influence in check

and ensure everyone can operate freely in the waters of the world's largest ocean

Over the course of the past few months, we've traveled to Aurora, Colorado

Washington, D.C. several times, and Tampa, Florida, each time hearing from different branches of the U.S. military about the issues they're facing

While many of those issues are unique to those individual services, some, like China, are universal

There a recognition among senior leadership like Lieutenant General Steven Skalenka that their troops will likely be tested in a way they have not been before None of us wearing a uniform today have ever experienced a time when you had to operate where you were challenged in the strategic domains and in the operational domains

We've always had unfettered access in the global commons. That's not going to be the case in the Indo-Pacific, and that's a significant piece

That's what really drives a lot of the priorities that we're having, not just in the Marine Corps, but I think within the joint force

The threat presented by China in the Pacific is more than a talking point for American military leadership

In a very short period, China's People's Liberation Army Navy has grown in size and stature

While exact numbers are hard to pin down, China's Navy is estimated to have a fleet of approximately 370 surface ships and submarines with a total personnel strength of 384,000

For the Deputy Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, Vice Admiral Blake Converse, those numbers line up with what he's seeing in the Pacific Theater

When I was a young officer driving submarines across the Pacific almost 30 years ago, you could drive across the Pacific through the South China Sea, through the Andaman Sea and into the Indian Ocean

And it was very unlikely that you would see a Chinese warship, Chinese aircraft or Chinese submarine during the entire transit

today on any given day on our common operating picture there will be over a hundred chinese

warships submarines and auxiliaries operating in the indo-pacific waters one of the reasons

why the pacific theater presents such a unique challenge is the size of it all something vice Admiral Andrew Tiongson acknowledged at Sea Airspace 2025 I think you talked about the AOR that I responsible for right now and it is vast

It's about 74 million square miles. It's got over 70 nations that are in it

I always talk about it from polar bears to penguins, from Hollywood to Bollywood, and a little bit more to the east coast of Africa

So it's pretty wide. Perhaps surprisingly, one place where the joint forces are looking for possible solutions is the Middle East

where the U.S. is fending off threats by the Iranian-backed Houthis with troops stationed at sea and on land

something General Kevin Schneider, Commander of Pacific Air Forces, spoke about at this year's AFA Warfare Symposium

We're continuing to find ways of taking those lessons from base defense

to be able to go, all right, what do each of the components bring to the fight

and recognize, at least in the Indo-Pacific, the Air Force and the Army are probably going to power project from land

We're probably going to power project from similar locations. So are there capabilities that they have in their formations

are there capabilities we have in our formations that we can build on this

and that's incumbent upon having a command and control system that allows systems and capabilities to plug into that that quickly

That inter-service capability is something now retired Army General and former commander of the U.S. Army Pacific, Charles Flynn

talked about last October at AUSA. We concede no domain in the Pacific We can lose in any one of them So the strength that we have to apply not just in the air domain not just in the maritime domain not just in the space and cyber domain

There is also strength that's required in the land domain to integrate all of these things

And the interdependencies of the joint force, they're reliant upon land forces bringing these things together

While the number does vary, according to recent estimates, the U.S. military has approximately 350,000 personnel stationed in the Pacific region

The largest concentration of troops are in Japan and South Korea, with significant numbers also stationed in Guam and Hawaii

And the one thing they all depend on to stay mission ready is space, a factor not lost on Brigadier General Anthony Mostelaire, commander of U.S. Space Force's Indo-Pacific

We need to establish space superiority first. And the reason why that's a challenge for us in the Indo-Pacific is exactly because China is racing toward parity in those other domains

So the other components, the air domain, the maritime domain, the land domain

depend on the Space Force more than ever to provide that protection

again, protecting the joint force from space-enabled attack. As China continues building up its navy

its impact on stability in the Pacific region is becoming increasingly important

It's one of the many reasons why American military leadership says it's crucial for the United States and its allies to come together and respond effectively

to maintain peace in the Pacific