A slew of worthwhile questions came up during the Q&A at last month’s Harvard-Diplomat panel in Cambridge, Massachusetts. We even got to banter with an old hippie who held forth on China’s virtues as an honest broker in the non-Western world, a stark contrast to supposedly predatory America. That reminded everyone we were at an epicenter of the Sixties.

Or, one graduate student asked about what China is doing to prepare itself for nonmilitary missions in the “far seas,” as Chinese officials and pundits call waters remote from East Asian shores. She voiced particular interest in the part China’s newly refitted Soviet aircraft carrier might play in ventures far from Chinese shores, like counterpiracy, counterproliferation, or humanitarian and disaster relief. And, in time-honored graduate student fashion, she sneaked in a second question, this one about the prospects for U.S.-China cooperation on the high seas.

These are worthy topics to explore. The former is mostly about hardware and thus less interesting (to me). The ex-Varyag will play no part in far-seas operations until engineers work the kinks out of the hull and its internals, and until the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has a working air wing for the ship. Those are no easy tasks. It could take years for aviators to develop the skills needed to operate from a pitching flight deck. Once the flattop is a working vessel, it will presumably be capable of doing many of the things U.S. carriers do at the margins of nonmilitary endeavors, though on a smaller scale because of its smaller size.

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China's military has multiple missile platforms beyond the "carrier killer'" DF-21D. Assistant Editor Harry Kazianis spoke with Roger Cliff, a senior political scientist at the RAND Corporation, about China's missile system developments, their origins and possible uses if conflict occurred

Much has been written on Chinese Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles (ASBMs) like the DF-21D. But China’s cruise missile technology capable of targeting valued land based assets hasn’t received as much coverage. One example is the DH-10 cruise missile, which has a vast range. Would you consider this an overall greater threat to China’s neighbors and U.S. forces if conflict occurred? Would “hardening” U.S. or allied facilities be a possible defensive strategy?

It’s hard to say which system is a greater threat as neithercan be considered in isolation. Both are only effective as part of a complex of systems. The DF-21D is primarily a threat to U.S. carrier air power, but is most effective when combined with attacks from submarines, surface ships, and aircraft. The DH-10 is primarily a threat to land-based air power as well as other fixed targets such as logistics and communications facilities, and is most effective when combined with ballistic missiles and aircraft.

When attacking an air base, for example, ballistic missiles can be used to damage the runway and destroy unprotected aircraft in the open, but to destroy aircraft parked in concrete shelters or other “point” targets (such as command posts, communications facilities, etc.) requires a more precise weapon with a high probability of directly hitting the target, such as a precision-guided munitions launched from an aircraft or a cruise missile. Land-attack cruise missiles have the advantage: they are generally longer-ranged than aircraft and can be sent into air defense environments that are too risky for manned aircraft. Both the DF-21D and land-attack cruise missiles, of course, are dependent on sensors to find, identify, and fix the locations of their targets; communication systems to transmit that information to a command post; computers and/or humans to integrate the data from different sensors and issue a command to attack the target; and more communications systems to transmit that command and targeting data to the missile launch battery.

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U.S. President Barack Obama’s trip to Afghanistan last week was widely dismissed for being driven solely by election year politics. This view is mistaken. Although there was a political element to the trip, its overriding purpose was to revive peace talks with the Taliban.

The belief that the trip was politically motivated is based on its coinciding with the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death, which the Obama campaign has been making a centerpiece of their reelection pitch. Obama undoubtedly realized that delivering a prime time speech from Bagram Air Base would feed into this narrative. At the same time, he was under no illusions that this would translate into many votes come November.

In fact, the president’s trip was more of a political liability. To begin with, whatever time a president spends abroad during an election year is time he doesn’t spend attending fundraisers or holding campaign rallies. Furthermore, Obama went to Afghanistan to reaffirm his commitment to a war that is now more unpopular among voters than the Iraq War was at its lowest point. Two-thirds of Americans say the war hasn’t been worth fighting. Of the 30 percent of Americans that still support the war, just one-fourth are Democrats, while nearly half are Republicans. To paraphrase former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, any political strategist who thinks this is a winning strategy for the president’s reelection ought to have their head examined.

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As the Chen Guangcheng saga drags on in Beijing, this week’s visit to Washington of Gen. Liang Guanglie, China’s defense minister, risks being overshadowed – or at least that’s the angle that much of the coverage of Liang’s trip seems to be taking. 

In fact, Liang is almost certainly more interested in the shadows cast by the round of defense diplomacy that took place in Washington immediately prior to his arrival: the so-called “2+2” summit between the Philippine defense and foreign secretaries and their American counterparts.

The visit of Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin and Secretary of Foreign Affairs Albert Del Rosario had been scheduled long before last month’s maritime confrontation between Chinese and Philippine ships at the disputed Scarborough Shoal (a dispute that continues to rumble on, with some ominous statements being made at the diplomatic level). But the latest spat certainly gave their mission – to secure more defense support from the U.S. – an added sense of urgency.

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It has been just over a year since U.S. President Barack Obama ordered the Special Operations team of U.S. Navy Seals to conduct a unilateral operation against Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan. But the operation, while a major victory for Obama in the so-called War on Terror, further complicated an already teetering relationship with Pakistan. True, the relationship was already in trouble. But a year on and it’s clear the bin Laden operation only added fuel to the fire.

Despite Islamabad’s persistent denials that bin Laden was in the country, he was found in a house in a garrison town. For Washington, the next puzzle to solve was the nature of Pakistan’s military “understanding” with bin Laden. Either the military was complicit in harboring the world’s most wanted terrorist, or it was somehow so incompetent that it couldn’t find him in the neighborhood of its training academy. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ruled out complicity of top-level Pakistani military or government officials. But the raid also highlighted a sense of insecurity. According to a June 2011 Pew Research poll, 73 percent of Pakistanis had an unfavorable view of the United States, while a mere 14 percent favored bin Laden’s killing. One Pakistani army officer, Brig. Ali Khan, was later arrested for “subverting the government” by stating what he thought of Pakistan’s complicity and failure to resist the United States.

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China is reportedly developing a reusable space vehicle that could launch atop a rocket and land like an airplane. If true – and if the development produces an operational vehicle – China will join the U.S. in the exclusive club of nations with so-called “space planes.”

Reusable space vehicles offer big advantages over other spacecraft. Able to maneuver in orbit carrying a deployable payload, they combine the qualities of a rocket and a satellite. Being re-usable, they can be cheaper than “throw away” vehicles. And landing like an airplane, they can gently return delicate equipment to Earth.

The U.S. Space Shuttle, recently retired, was the first operational space plane. The Soviet Union developed its own version of the Shuttle, but never placed it into service. As a partial replacement for the manned Shuttle, the U.S. Air Force introduced two copies of the Boeing-made X-37B robotic space plane that’s barely a quarter the length of the Shuttle but cheaper.

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This year has been a rough one thus far for the bilateral U.S.-Afghanistan strategic partnership as scandal after scandal has weakened the chains that have connected both countries together for the past decade. 

The first major incident occurred inside the Bagram Air Base, where U.S. forces accidently disposed of Qurans, triggering widespread protests across the country. Only a few weeks later, a single U.S. soldier turned himself in after mowing down 17 Afghan civilians (many of whom happened to be women and children) in the middle of the night.  In the latest embarrassment, The Los Angeles Times released a series of graphic photographs (two years in the making) in which U.S. and Afghan soldiers were seen posing next to the bodies of dead insurgents – a scandal that prompted a quick rebuke from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and NATO commander Gen. John Allan.

Yet even amid the explosive political repercussions that occurred as a consequence of all of these incidents, Washington and the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai were still able to work out a draft text on a strategic partnership into the next decade, with President Barack Obama making a surprise visit to Kabul to sign the deal.  For two governments that have often been at opposite ends of many disputes, the hard-fought agreement has the potential to provide both countries with a clean slate after the United States and NATO withdraw most of their troops in 2014. 

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The Diplomat asks Project 2049 Institute Executive Director Mark Stokes for his take on renewed talk of the U.S. selling F-16 fighters to Taiwan.

In what ways would an F-16 C/D purchase be an upgrade over Taiwan's current F-5s or F-16 A/Bs?

Compared to F-5s and F-16 A/Bs, F-16 Block 50/52s (e.g. F-16 C/Ds) offer greater time in the air and more lethality on the ground.  Additional F-16C/Ds in the inventory of a regional security partner provides policymakers on Taiwan and in the United States with a wider range of political and military options in the event of Chinese use of force in the region.

Does upgrading Taiwan's current F-16 A/Bs still make sense in terms of defense dollars if they get the C/Ds?

If there are unlimited resources, then both upgrading Taiwan’s existing F-16s as well as procuring additional fighters would be great.  If there were an either/or situation, I’d take the new fighters.  This would be the Ma administration’s decision though. If they pursue both, then maybe the upgrade program schedule could be stretched out to accommodate the new ones in the annual defense budget. The United States should keep a wide open door for Taiwan in terms of available defense articles and services. If the U.S. makes a system available, it should be left up to taxpayers on Taiwan and their democratically elected leaders to decide whether or not to invest the resources. But they first need to know whether or not a system is available before they make a decision.

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Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, famously wrote, “to be secure on land we must be supreme at sea.” April 2012 will go down in Indian history as that moment in time when endeavors to keep the country secure from adversaries really came to fruition.

Last month saw the induction of Akula class submarine INS Chakra, the commencement of sea trials of nuclear powered submarine INS Arihant,  the successful launch of the Agni-V missile and the RISAT1 surveillance satellite and the commissioning of the BrahMos cruise missile-armed armed frigate INS Teg. The successful launch and recovery of a Navy Light Combat Aircraft (LCA) from Bengaluru airport last week was the icing on the cake. The much maligned Defense Research and Development Organization fully deserves the credit being offered from all quarters. Years of effort under hostile operating conditions have finally come to a close as India has acquired the necessary expertise and engineering skills to achieve its goals.

The LCA (Navy) NP-1 is a trainer version of the carrier capable aircraft, is fitted with FBW avionic systems and is indigenously developed. An offshoot of the very successful Air Force variant now in limited series production, this aircraft will be further tested on land and at sea, as its capabilities have been enhanced to meet stringent naval requirements.

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The Republican-led U.S. House of Representatives is trying to reverse cuts announced by President Barack Obama earlier this year. The House’s proposed defense bill would reverse some of Obama’s planned cuts to ships, drones and warplanes. “The proposal is designed to put real combat power behind the President’s proposed pivot to Asia,” the House Armed Services Committee stated.

As part of the 2013-2017 five-year defense plan, the Navy intends to decommission early seven Ticonderoga-class cruisers optimized for air- and missile-defense. As a cost-cutting measure, four would bow out in 2013 and three in 2014, a full decade earlier than originally planned. The House has proposed to keep three of the four ships slated to go next year, letting go of just one vessel that ran aground and was heavily damaged. The Republican plan didn’t address the cruisers scheduled to decommission in 2014.

The House plan would also reverse the Air Force’s decision to retire 18 brand-new Global Hawk spy drones. The flying branch had decided that the venerable U-2 manned spy plane, originally introduced in the 1950s, was cheaper to operate than the robotic Global Hawk and had adequate airframe life for another several decades of service.

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