abundant, mobile, deadly By Reuters

By Gerry Doyle and Mike Stone

SINGAPORE (Reuters) – The United States is amassing an arsenal of abundant and easy-to-manufacture anti-ship weapons as part of U.S. efforts to deter China in the Indo-Pacific region and train U.S. forces there.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has pushed U.S. thinking toward a new philosophy — “affordable mass,” as one missile industry CEO put it, speaking on condition of anonymity, referring to a wealth of relatively cheap weapons at hand.

“It’s a natural counter to what China has done,” said Euan Graham, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute think tank, referring to China’s arsenal of ships and conventional ballistic missiles, including those designed to attack ships .

The Pentagon and China’s Defense Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The United States has stepped up testing of the QUICKSINK weapon, a cheap and potentially abundant bomb equipped with a cheap GPS guidance kit and a seeker that can track moving objects. The US Air Force used a B-2 stealth bomber during a test last month in the Gulf of Mexico to strike a target ship with QUICKSINK.

According to experts, China will still have a big advantage in terms of the large number of anti-ship missiles and can base them on its home territory. But increased US production of QUICKSINK would close that gap, putting China’s 370 warships at greater risk during any future conflict than they have faced since Beijing moved to modernize its military in the 1990s.

QUICKSINK, still in development, is made by Boeing (NYSE: ), with a seeker from BAE Systems (LON: ). QUICKSINK can be used with hundreds of thousands of Joint-Direct Attack Munition tail kits – systems that can be dropped from US or allied warplanes and can cheaply turn 2,000-pound (900 kg) “dumb” bombs into guided weapons .

The US military’s Indo-Pacific Command wants thousands of QUICKSINK weapons — and has for years — according to an industry executive, who declined to disclose the exact figure because it is classified.

With enough “affordable mass” weapons pointed at them, the Chinese ship’s defenses would be overwhelmed, according to this executive, speaking on condition of anonymity.

In such a scenario, the US military would use long-range anti-ship missiles (LRASM) or SM-6 missiles to damage a Chinese warship and its radars, then bombard the ship with cheaper weapons such as it would be QUICKSINK.

A VARIETY OF WEAPONS

The United States has amassed a variety of anti-ship weapons in Asia. In April, the US military deployed to the Philippines the new mobile Typhon missile batteries, which were developed cheaply from existing components and can fire SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles against maritime targets during an exercise.

Such weapons are relatively easy to produce — relying on large stockpiles and designs that have been around for a decade or more — and could help the United States and its allies catch up quickly in an Indo-Pacific missile race in which China has a big lead. .

Although the US military declined to say how many would be deployed to the Indo-Pacific region, more than 800 SM-6 missiles are to be bought over the next five years, according to government documents outlining military purchases. Several thousand Tomahawks and hundreds of thousands of JDAMs are already in US inventories, the documents show.

“China’s game is to restrict the movement of US naval assets in the Western Pacific and the first island chain,” Graham said, referring to the nearest major archipelagos off the coast of East Asia. “This is kind of a similar response to making life difficult for the PLAN.” PLAN is short for the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the branch of China’s maritime service.

Placing anti-ship weapons in locations like the Philippines would put them within reach of much of the South China Sea. China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea as sovereign territory, but is opposed by five Southeast Asian states and Taiwan.

Collin Koh, a scholar at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, said: “In a way it’s like leveling the playing field.”

Koh cited the example of Iran-aligned Houthi forces using low-tech anti-ship weapons against civilian traffic in the Red Sea, which has forced the United States and others to deploy expensive weapons to defend against them.

“If you look at the Red Sea case, clearly the cost equation (of anti-ship missiles) does not fall on the side of the defender,” Koh said. “Even if you have a smaller arsenal of such offensive missile systems, you can still project some deterrence.”