The Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments recently released its latest report: AirSea Battle: A Point-of-Departure Operational Concept, by Jan van Tol with Mark Gunzinger, Andrew Krepinevich and Jim Thomas.

It explores the possible progression of a major armed conflict between China and the US and its allies as a worst case scenario (short of nuclear weapons) of how to deal with the developing threat of Anti-Access and Area Denial weapons like conventionally armed Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBM) along with air and surface launched cruise missiles, mines, and submarines.

At almost 150 pages it is a bit of a slog, but interesting. It is a bit like WWII in the Pacific with modern weapons. The Chinese make a devastating surprise attack, then establishes a bastion in hopes of convincing the US and their allies that it is just too hard to reverse their aggression. The allies then have to begin disassembling and rolling back the bastion’s defences. This begins as each side makes a concerted attempt to blind the other’s intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems including space based systems.

The Coast Guard is not specifically mentioned, but if you look at the section on enforcing a distant blockade on China, page 76-78, it is a classic Maritime interdiction Operation (MIO) not unlike drug interdiction. They note, “However, many of the platforms most suited for this kind of operation, such as Littoral Combat Ships (LCS), patrol craft and small frigates, do not carry ordnance sufficiently heavy to stop larger ships determined not to halt and be boarded. Those Navy ships that do would be likely to have higher priority taskings, and thus would not generally be available to support MIO operations. However, Air Force bombers with their large payloads and long endurance could provide “on-call” maritime strike. These bombers could be assigned to support MIO operations and conduct strikes on PLA vessels or cargo ships as needed.”

This looks like make work for bombers that couldn’t survive China’s integrated air defense system to me. As we discussed in the post on the Korean sinking, There are cheaper and simpler ways of stopping recalcitrant merchant ships, but of course support of Maritime Patrol Aircraft for this type mission is almost always useful.