Note: I was originally planning on publishing a series of articles this week on the large-deck aircraft carrier's doctrinal roles, but I'm shifting that to next week as I need a little more time to make final edits. As a result, I'm moving up my series analyzing the DF-21 arsenal. Both series touch on my theme for the first part of this month: the implications of guided munitions inventory management and producibility.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) Medium Range Ballistic Missile (MRBM) arsenal’s traditional primary role is supporting theater nuclear deterrence. China’s first generation DF-3 series (NATO Designation CSS-2) MRBMs were tasked with holding Indian and Russian targets, as well as major U.S. military forward deployed force concentrations within East Asia, at nuclear risk. As such, they were neither produced in great numbers nor required the terminal accuracy necessary for conventional long-range strike tasks.[ii]

 

Although some DF-3s remain in service, roughly twenty years ago the PLA began replacing them with the DF-21 (NATO Designation CSS-5) missile series. Unlike its liquid-fueled predecessor, the solid-fueled DF-21 series can be rapidly readied for launch and are therefore harder to interdict when deployed in the field on their Transporter Erector Launchers (TEL).  More significantly, while the ‘original’ DF-21 (CSS-5 MOD 1) and its longer-range DF-21A (CSS-5 MOD 2) variant assumed the historical theater nuclear deterrence role, the more recent DF-21C (CSS-5 MOD 3) and DF-21D (CSS-5 MOD 5) variants were designed specifically to deliver conventional munitions against point targets on land and large ships at sea respectively.[iii]

There are two hypothesized roles for conventionally-armed DF-21s. First, there is a general scholarly consensus that PLA doctrine allows for if not embraces the use of conventionally-armed theater-range ballistic missiles in war-opening/escalating strikes aimed at decisively neutralizing a superior adversary’s forward forces and military infrastructure. This doctrinal tenet is almost certainly independent of the military strategy, doctrine, or force structure and posture options the U.S. might employ for defending its East Asian allies and interests. Beijing’s paramount declared military-strategic objective—the prevention of effective American military intervention on the behalf of an embattled ally in a major East Asian contingency—simply cannot be accomplished with a high degree of confidence absent a PLA first strike. It is resultantly noteworthy (and generally overlooked) that the PLAdoctrinal works and professional journal articles advocating conventional first strikes predated the U.S. Air-Sea Battle operational concept’s 2010 introduction.[iv]

Within this context, the conventionally-armed DF-21C’s and -21D’s advantages in range, speed, field-deployed survivability, and defense penetration capabilities relative to PLAstrike aircraft make them ideal for maximizing the damage that can be inflicted upon an opponent’s in-theater Command and Control (C²) nodes, military bases’ critical infrastructure and logistical stores, and highest campaign-valueforces while minimizing tactical warning of attack.[v] Further, these missiles’ abilities to distract, suppress, or damage the opponent’s most important theater air and missile defense nodes could help support other elements of a PLA first strike, as well as bash down the door for follow-on strikes by PLA assets that would otherwise be quite vulnerable to those defenses. If it is solely configured to perform these war-opening/escalating missions, the peacetime conventional-capable DF-21 inventory only needs to be as large as what would be necessary to create a high probability of successfully neutralizing the relatively small set of high-priority targets assigned to a first strike’s opening waves. This sizing would be possible because surviving and lower-priority targets would likely be assigned to other combat arms for follow-on attacks. DF-21C and 21D inventory sizing along these lines would be consistent with the PLA’s apparent sizing of its SRBM inventories for Taiwan contingencies.[vi]Additional margin might be built into the inventory to provide backup rounds in case some missiles were unavailable for maintenance reasons when a crisis erupted, failed to launch when ordered, or failed to successfully strike the highest priority targets. The operative force-sizing question would be whether the inventory would be earmarked specifically for Sino-American/Japanese contingencies, or whether Sino-Indian or Sino-Russian contingencies would also need to be covered.

The second possible conventionally-armed DF-21 role is performing long range strikes throughout a protracted conflict. These could include preemptive or suppressive strikes against major force groupings as they assemble for an operation, opportunistic strikes against fleeting high campaign-value targets, or direct/indirect fires—including possible feint attacks—in support of PLA Joint combined arms operations. It has been suggested, in fact, that the DF-21D might be used in war for land-based ‘artillery support’ of PLA maritime operations.[vii]  Much like shore-based heavy artillery prior to the mid-20^th Century, this kind of fire support would be exceptionally difficult for an opposing Navy to counter directly. Whereas coastal guns could only cover localized waters, however, the DF-21D possesses a theater-wide coverage area that not only includes China’s immediate periphery but also the maritime approaches to East Asia—and U.S. treaty allies’ homelands.

A conventional-capable DF-21 inventory sized for the campaign-waging role would need to be rather large given the modern historical evidence advanced ordnance expenditure rates would be quite high in a conflict.[viii] This would be accentuated if Chinese leaders believed any notional conventional war would be intense but short, and resultantly opted not to take the extremely cost-inefficient and expensive step of structuring the DF-21C and -21D industrial production and test infrastructures such that they could readily replenish the PLA’s arsenal under combat conditions. Additionally, the more effective the defender’s surviving active and passive missile defenses might be in combat—especially after the first strike’s shock and surprise fades—the more missiles the attacker must launch per salvo to achieve a desired probability of target neutralization. Not only would this probabilistic effect push the PLA’s peacetime inventory size requirements even further upward, but it would also influence PLA combined arms campaign-level contingency planning enormously.[ix]

Tomorrow, unpacking the DF-21 inventory.

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In this article, a MRBM is defined as possessing a range between 1000-3000km. This conforms to the range niche presently filled by the DF-21 series within the PLA’s arsenal. PLA theater ballistic missiles roles beyond 3000km are filled by Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles, and those beneath 1000km are performed by Short Range Ballistic Missiles.

[ii] “DongFeng 3 (CSS-2) Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile.†Sinodefense.com, 27 February 2009, accessed 8/21/14,  http://web.archive.org/web/20131029184838/http://www.sinodefence.com/strategic/missile/df3.asp

[iii]See 1. “Ballistic and Cruise Missile Threat.†(National Air and Space Intelligence Center, 2013), 14, 17; 2. Mark Stokes. “China’s Evolving Conventional Strategic Strike Capability.†(Washington, D.C.: Project 2049 Institute, September 2009); 3. “DongFeng 21 (CSS-5) Medium-Range Ballistic Missile.†Sinodefense.com, 04 June 2010, accessed 8/21/14, http://web.archive.org/web/20131209000115/http://sinodefence.com/strategic/missile/df21.asp  4. “DongFeng 21C (CSS-5 Mod-3) Medium-Range Ballistic Missile.†Sinodefense.com, 03 October 2009, accessed 8/21/14, http://web.archive.org/web/20131029225158/http://www.sinodefence.com/strategic/missile/df21c.asp.

Of note, authoritative publicly-released reports, Congressional testimony, and the like from the U.S. Department of Defense as well as the U.S. Intelligence Community do not call out a CSS-5 MOD 4 variant. This contrasts with the bulk of English-language open source materials on the DF-21 series, which associate DF-21D with CSS-5 MOD 4. This essay will defer to the authoritative U.S. Government products in associating DF-21D with CSS-5 MOD 5. That said, Western observers of the Chinese ballistic missile arsenal should take note of the apparent U.S. Government reporting jump from MOD 3 to a MOD 5 in terms of operational deployments of DF-21 variants.

[iv]For detailed explanations of publicly-available PLA doctrine’s apparent advocacy of first strikes, see 1. Dean Cheng. “Chinese Views on Deterrence.†Joint Forces Quarterly, No. 60 (1st Quarter 2011), 92-101; 2. Ron Christman. “Conventional Missions for China’s Second Artillery Corps.†Comparative Strategy, Vol. 30, No. 3, 198-228; 3. Roger Cliff, et al. Entering the Dragon’s Lair: Chinese Antiaccess Strategies and Their Implications for the United States. (Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2007), 13-15, 23, 28-43, 47-50; 4. James C. Mulvenon, et. al. “Chinese Responses to U.S. Military Transformation and Implications for the Department of Defense.†(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2006), 46-47; and 5. Larry Wortzel. China’s Nuclear Forces: Operations, Training, Doctrine, Command, Control, and Campaign Planning. (Carlisle, PA: U.S. Army Strategic Studies Institute, May 2007), 8-14, 36. For a compelling description of reasons why Chinese leaders might be willing to accept the escalatory risks inherent in unleashing conventional first strikes against core U.S. bases in Japan and Guam, see 1. David Shlapak. “Projecting Power in a China-Taiwan Contingency: Implications for USAF and USN Collaboration.†in “Coping with the Dragon: Essays on PLA Transformation and the U.S. Military.†(Washington D.C.: Center for Technology and National Security Policy, National Defense University, December 2007), 91-92; 2. Toshi Yoshihara. “Chinese Missile Strategy and the U.S. Naval Presence in Japan: The Operational View from Beijing.†Naval War College Review 63, No. 3 (Summer 2010): 52-57.

[v]The term “campaign-value†is defined in Jonathan F. Solomon. “Maritime Deception and Concealment: Concepts for Defeating Wide-Area Oceanic Surveillance-Reconnaissance-Strike Networks.†Naval War College Review 66, No. 4 (Autumn 2013): 109.

[vi] David A. Shlapak, et al. “A Question of Balance: Political Context and Military Aspects of the China-Taiwan Dispute.†(Santa Monica, CA: RAND Corporation, 2009), 127-128.

[vii] See James R. Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara. “Mao’s Active Defense is Turning Offensive.† U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings 137, No. 4 (April 2011): 24-29.

[viii]See for example 1. “Lessons of the Falklands.†(Washington, D.C.: Office of Program Appraisal, Department of the Navy, February 1983), 3, 11, 34, 36; 2. Barry Watts. “The Evolution of Precision Strike.†(Washington, D.C.: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2013), 14-17, 20-23. Note Watts’s observation of the dramatic tradeoff between a precision-guided munition’s combat range and procurement affordability, with obvious implications for inventory sizes.

[ix]Solomon, “Maritime Deception and Concealment,†94-95.

 

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