December 30 ------ The notable thing was the timing. In back-to-back strikes on Russian air power from 18 to 20 December, the Ukrainian state security agency, the vaunted SBU, launched long-range attack drones at Russian warplanes at Belbek air base in occupied Crimea, 240 km from the front line. 

  

Imagery from the nighttime or early morning attacks indicates that the drones hit a Mikoyan MiG-31 interceptor and two Sukhoi Su-27 fighters. The drone strikes on Russian warplanes were, from a certain point of view, unremarkable: Ukrainian drones have hit 14 Russian aircraft on the ground in Crimea since August. What was remarkable was when the drones struck. The MiG-31 and one of the Su-27s were fully armed and fueled and their crews were in the cockpits at the moment the drones barreled in. It’s rare for a Ukrainian drone to hit a Russian warplane when it’s fully loaded and most vulnerable to catastrophic secondary explosions. That the Ukrainians did it twice in three days indicates it wasn’t an accident. 

  

It’s apparent the SBU knew the aircraft were getting ready to launch and timed the drone strikes accordingly. How the SBU knew isn’t hard to guess—and it sheds light on a critical Western capability—and vulnerability. It’s one that could win a war in the western Pacific or, by way of its absence, lose the same war. 

  

Fast, fine-grain intelligence makes all the difference between a successful deep strike and a failed one. Even more than Ukraine, the US-led alliance that may come to Taiwan’s defense in the event of a Chinese attack on the island democracy utterly depends on deep strikes for victory. To that end, the United States, Japan, Australia and Taiwan are rapidly expanding arsenals of air- and ground-launched land-attack and anti-ship missiles and one-way attack drones that, aimed at a Chinese invasion fleet, its supporting air and naval forces and Chinese logistical infrastructure and headquarters, could defeat the fleet or at least delay it long enough for allied naval forces to counterattack. 

  

The roughly 4,000 long-range cruise missiles that arm US Air Force bomber squadrons alone could, with the right guidance capabilities, make US counter invasion strategy ‘an almost uncomplicated exercise’, the Center for Strategic and International Studies concluded in a 2023 study. But the weaponeers would have to know where to aim the missiles. 

  

Ukrainian agencies may have human intelligence sources on the ground in Crimea, and Kyiv is developing its own space surveillance capability, initially by leveraging commercial capabilities. Finnish satellite firm Iceye devotes one of its imaging satellites solely to the Ukrainian war effort. But it’s no secret the Ukrainians also greatly benefit from allied ground-based, aerial and space surveillance. Just look at the publicly available flight tracks for US and allied surveillance aircraft flying daily sorties over the Black Sea within sensor range of Crimea. There’s a reason why the Trump administration’s frequent threats to suspend intelligence-sharing with Ukraine carry such weight. 

  

The overlapping surveillance capabilities US and allied forces deploy in the western Pacific is much more impressive than those on display in Ukraine. Surveillance systems watching China are extensive: Australian, US and Japanese over-the-horizon radars and radio listening posts, the new team-up between Australian and American Boeing P-8 Poseidon crewed maritime patrollers and Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton uncrewed ones, the Americans’ secretive Northrop Grumman RQ-180 stealth drones and the hundreds of military and commercial signals, radar and imaging satellites operated by, or on behalf of, US and allied forces. In the absence of effective Chinese countermeasures, all this should be able to detect a Chinese build-up for war, track individual planes, ships and regiments and quickly generate coordinates for precision strikes on moving targets. 

  

The problem, of course, is that the Chinese are deploying countermeasures in abundance. Friends of a free Taiwan need to harden their intelligence systems against these countermeasures—and fast. Chinese forces have conceivable ways of defeating every allied intelligence system. Fixed radars and listening posts are subject to attack and jamming. Patrol planes and drones can be shot down. Satellites can be lasered blind or attacked in orbit. 

  

It’s not for no reason that the Chinese navy is building up a land-attack cruise missile arsenal to rival the US Navy’s, while the Chinese air force arms its hundreds of stealth fighters with very-long-range air-to-air missiles and Chinese space forces experiment with so-called inspection satellites that can maneuver close to, and tamper with, other countries’ satellites. The US and its allies deploy a ‘three-dimensional’ surveillance system in space, in the air, on the surface, below the surface in the form of undersea sensors and in cyberspace, to borrow phrasing from Senior Captain Zhang Ning, a faculty member at China’s Naval University of Engineering, and his team. 

  

In a November 2023 journal article translated by Ryan Martinson, a professor at the US Naval War College, Zhang and coauthors specifically addressed vulnerabilities in the US Navy’s undersea surveillance. But they noted allied weaknesses in other surveillance domains, too. ‘In recent years, they explain, it has become increasingly difficult for US manned platforms to conduct reconnaissance close to the Chinese coast,’ Martinson noted. ‘Indeed,’ he added, the ‘survival space’ for US drones inside the First Island Chain from Japan to The Philippines ‘has been shrinking,’ Martinson wrote in his summary of Zhang’s article. 

  

Chinese ships, planes and shore batteries are nudging US and allied air and surface forces farther back, outside the First Island Chain. Meanwhile, bad weather could interrupt the allies’ space surveillance, blinding it even in the absence of any direct attacks on satellites—and lending Chinese forces freedom of movement in critical moments. 

  

There’s no single solution for US and allied forces trying to preserve their surveillance advantage in a possible clash with Chinese forces. Shifting resources from one domain to another would simply invite the Chinese to shift their own countermeasures in the same direction. So, it’s not enough merely to deploy more satellites with self-defense systems, add stealthy drones to the aerial surveillance layer or install more over-the-horizon radars and listening posts and prepare to defend them from attack. 

  

No, the allies need to do all of the above—and with haste—if they expect to strike Chinese warplanes (and other targets) the way the Ukrainians strike Russian warplanes: when their destruction matters the most. 

  

Source: maritime-executive.com 

  

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