Recently, the U.S. Naval Academy's official website published an article titled "Fighting for Control of China's Oceans Through Offensive Mines." The article makes a very bold point: Once the conflict in the Taiwan Strait intensifies, the United States can lay mines in the Yellow Sea and Pearl River Delta waters to block important shipping lanes and outlets to the Chinese mainland, and eventually "force the Chinese mainland back to the negotiating table." One of the advantages of this strategy is that it is extremely low cost, and if it can be successfully implemented, the United States is expected to achieve its strategic goal of subjugating without a fight.
The author of this strange article is Victor Duno, a 2005 graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, a pilot for the Seahawk helicopter, and has also been out with the "Roosevelt" aircraft carrier on deployment missions. During the last mission of his military career, Victor Duno assisted the U.S. Navy's 28th Helicopter Combat Squadron in establishing the Airborne Mine Countermeasures Division, so he is well known in the field of mine warfare.
Out-of-the-box views, coupled with a glamorous resume, made Victor Duno's essay a success in the American Mine Warfare Essay Contest and finally won the first prize.
To put it bluntly, from the perspective of an ordinary Chinese, Victor Duno won the first prize for this article, and I don't know how much praise and affirmation it means to him, but I think it should be a great sadness for the U.S. Navy.
Imagine that the US Navy, with 10 nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, more than 90 Aegis ships, 5 or 60 nuclear submarines, overseas bases all over the world, the size of the carrier-based aviation force alone, surpasses the air forces of most countries in the world. However, such a powerful navy in the world, when faced with a Chinese navy whose overall strength is far inferior to its own, one of the best countermeasures that some people can think of is to run to The Door of China' doorstep, lay mines on important waterways, and block the outlet. It is hoped that this "low-cost" asymmetrical tactic will be used to force China to make concessions in possible future maritime frictions.
Awarding the first prize to a scheme that looks like the most cost-effective, but is actually the least feasible, is hard to say whether it's smart or stupid. It's like a bunch of rats racking their brains to figure out how to hide from cats, studying for half a day and figuring out an idea for a cat to wear a bell, but ignoring the technical details of how to put a bell on a cat. So what's the point of this idea?
It is funny to say that the U.S. Navy really studied how to put bells on cats. The Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), one of the two major projects of the new millennium on which the U.S. Navy had high hopes, is a figurative representation of the mine warfare strategy proposed by Victor Duno today.
According to the U.S. Navy's vision, with the advantages of stealth, high speed, low cost and modular design, a large number of littoral combat ships can maintain a forward presence in high-risk seas, and even run directly to the belligerent's port to mine in wartime, and directly block the other side's ships in the harbor.
Unfortunately, the rapid development of the Chinese Navy has completely exceeded the expectations of the United States, and in just over a decade, various high-tech equipment has emerged in an endless stream, directly turning the coastal combat ship unit that has spent a lot of resources to build into a technical abandoned child with an outdated concept, and causing the latter to eventually become the biggest negative asset of the US Navy in the first 20 years of the 21st century.
With such a precedent, there is no reason why the U.S. Navy is unaware of the logical loopholes in mine warfare with China. But even so, Victor Duno's serious nonsense article still won the first prize and was on the U.S. Naval Academy News Network. Compared with the absurdity of the article itself, the problems exposed behind this should arouse our vigilance.
Frankly, Victor Dunault's high theory has little practical significance except to satisfy the spiritual triumphs of some Americans. But if the poisonous smell of this bad idea spreads, so that the commanders of the US Navy mistakenly believe that China is a very good and foolish opponent, we will inevitably be affected in the end. Therefore, we can easily despise the reality of such views tactically, but we should not strategically ignore their potential harmfulness.
Finally, as a military amateur, I would like to say a few digressions to victor Duno and the editors of the U.S. Naval Academy News Network: "Fighting for control of China's oceans through offensive mines" There are a lot of details and terminology in this article that I don't understand, but there is a low-level mistake that I think you should not make. It is already 2022, the People's Liberation Army's Rocket Force has long changed its name and surname, where is there any "Second Artillery Unit"? From the author to the judge to the editor, the U.S. Navy has so many talents to check, such an obvious flaw is not one person can see, on the quality of this article can also win the first prize, simply hot eyes.
I kind of know how the US military spent more than 700 billion yuan in that year, just such a defeat, even if the North American continent is full of gold mountains, I am afraid it is not enough for the Americans to dig up, right?