nuclear weapon in outer space above the mid Pacific Ocean, three things would happen. Instantly, all unshielded electronic circuitry, even if turned off, would be fried by a gigantic electromagnetic pulse in a “pancake” footprint below the explosion, a thousand or more miles across; unless meticulously and constantly maintained, which is a matter open to question upon the high seas in dirty weather, even the best milspec shields would be penetrated. Only submerged submarines, whether nuclear powered or diesel, would be safe.  Next, all radio communications in the pancake zone would be blanked out for some 8 to 24 hours. Then, satellites would be bathed in extremely damaging radiation that would persist for many months in an Earth-enveloping and rather wide orbital band.  Military satellites might survive, but only if they shut down into a dormant safe-mode for a lengthy period, rendering them operationally useless.

Launching an ICBM and detonating its warhead in outer space, as a “non-lethal” EMP generator above the Pacific, would be awfully risky because the launch signature could be mistaken for a first strike against the U.S. homeland, inviting massive nuclear retaliation. More shrewd would be to smuggle a nuclear weapon into space disguised as one of the PRC’s frequent launches of satellites(that this violates international treaties doesn’t mean Beijing wouldn’t do it).  The nuke could then be set off at the appropriate place and time, as part of the dreaded “Pearl Harbor in space” that could open outright conflict for hegemony.  It would be problematic for the U.S. to launch any sort of retaliatory nuclear strike against China after such a surprise info-warfare attack -- discussion board fans of the macho “glassing China” approach left aside. With neither Beijing nor Washington being run by madmen, or so we hope, a conventional war could be fought beneath an unused umbrella of thermonuclear mutually assured destruction. And us having to fight a big war is already a form of defeat: We got dragged into World War II because our conventional deterrence failed, and that victory cost 400,000+ American lives. 

An EMP over the Pacific would cripple coordinated action by U.S. surface and airborne forces. Old-fashioned ionosphere bounce radio would be the emergency fallback, iffy due to prolonged atmospheric disruption, and subject to direction finding, triangulating of source transmitter, and attack. The only energy still fully useable for stealthy theater weapons targeting would be undersea noise propogation -- sonar. Out in blue water, big surface ships can be detected by submerged submarines, immune to the EMP, via deep sound channel effects at ranges of a hundred-plus miles. One does have to wonder if this is one motivation for China building such a sub-heavy New Fleet.

The FAS/NRDC report’s conclusion that China’s military buildup is being forced by a corresponding American buildup, making it seem as if it’s somehow all our fault, is reasoning founded on quicksand. America’s sub fleet and its supporting industrial base are being allowed to dwindle to irrecoverably inadequate size through overly stingy Congressional budgets.  There’s a de facto freeze on fresh approaches to nuclear weaponry R&D, too, and the existing inventory of warheads is gradually being drawn down.

Cash-rich China, using homegrown expertise and engineering help from Russia, meanwhile is hell-bent on acquiring a submarine force intended to be able to overwhelm ours around 2030ish. Here again the FAS and NRDC stumble, by arbitarily truncating the report’s timeframe at 2015 -- before PRC build rates will ramp up, before Los Angeles-class SSNs start retiring in droves due to age, and when the build rate of the new Virginias will rise to two a year if we’re lucky. The report writers additionally appear to be unaware of for-the-record comments made by active duty admirals at the Naval War College’s June 2005 Current Strategy Forum, predating Wall Street Journal and Heritage Foundation articles from early ’06 that the FAS/NRDC report unwarrantedly attacks.

The impending PLAN force of some 180 submarines (on a horizon when our in commission subs will have declined toward barely 40) is much too big to be dismissed as a mere fleet-in-being, or white elephant trophy of global prestige. Common sense should be enough to make anyone grasp that those undersea warships are meant to be used, as soft power or as hard power, depending on which way volatile politics and geopolitics evolve.  If China feels she has no choice, she’ll definitely fight, but China would prefer not to fight to achieve her eventual aim as preeminent superpower. To instead surround us from every dimension and side, make a cold war or hot war unwinnable by a shrunken American military, foment the China Myth in order to weaken our strength and resolve, and let the War on Terror wear us down and divide us by proxy, each fits neatly with directives of that classical genius Sun Tsu.

While suggesting mutual disarmament talks is noble, and trying to seek a defense partnership is wise, lack of transparency is a deep seated cultural imperative of China’s self governance. That’s a given which America has to somehow cope with, like it or not. It behooves us to debunk the China Myth of guaranteed PRC benign aspirations. Today’s Navy boot camp recruits and ensigns will be tomorrow’s master chiefs and flag officers, who’ll have to sustain world order and peace; the same thing goes for the other, “purple,” joint branches of America’s armed services. We should fund stronger conventional forces, not because some imagined Beltway Bandits and so-called hypsters want us to, but because all of us mustn’t deny the tools that the next generation of combat leaders will need to do their duty protecting us, our children, and our children’s children.