and support groups.20 PLA doctrine em- phasizes overwhelming firepower in the initial assaults, accompanied by a simul- taneous heavily equipped reconnaissance capable of developing the situation and securing the terrain beyond the beach- head.21 The Pacific adversary is not the nascent ill-equipped armored force of the Japanese in 1942. The PLA is a prepared force with a well-developed armor doc- trine for the Pacific.
Enemy antiarmor capabilities have ex- panded, too. The PLA plans to fight using a Target-Centric Warfare (TCW) concept that places priority on attacking critical points in the adversary’s system to achieve decisive effects.23 This concept prioritizes information-sharing, subordinate decision making, and adaptable units that deliver effects across a system-of-systems. The PLA no longer recognizes war as a simple clash between enemy forces, but as a clash of systems. Therefore, the PLA in- tends to disrupt, paralyze, or destroy the operational capability of an enemy system through kinetic and nonkinetic means.24 While the PLA will certainly fight vigor- ously in the land domain, TCW means that the operational threat to armor forces will first emerge from a degradation of the transport, C2, sustainment, and informa- tion systems that enable such armor forces to project power.
The Pacific Campaign of WWII was pri- marily an air and naval-led fight. The operational approach featured many air and naval battles to contest control of those domains, while gains were consoli- dated and operational reach was extended by support and basing on land. This natur- ally led to the island-hopping approach, which recognized the advantage of ex- ploiting control of the sea to establish control on land.25 Allied forces attacked from the air and land domains within a supportable limit of their operational reach, establish a point of control from the land domain, extend their operational reach in land and sea from that point, and repeat the process.
Future warfare in the Pacific may not be constrained by this particular logic. Armored forces should develop opera- tional approaches that prioritize creating windows of opportunity from the land domain for air and sea to rapidly exploit.
Fall 2024 CAVALRY & ARMOR JOURNAL
A key point of China’s military strategy in the Pacific is to preclude WWII-style ma- neuver by establishing a robust Anti-Ac- cess/Area Denial (A2/AD) canopy that contests air and naval dominance. Rather than risking forces in a head-on fight against this system to achieve broader air or naval superiority, US forces can balance combat power and space by limiting the scale of the domain control, such as controlling only limited areas or for only a limited time.26 In this construct, pulsed airpower may only need to create a limited window in which to insert force on land.27 For this to work, these land forces must be highly maneuverable, protect- ed, and possess sufficient firepower to disintegrate the enemy’s systems from the land domain. As maneuver, protec- tion, and firepower are key strengths of armored forces, the armor corps should anticipate and prepare for this task.
Further challenges remain, however. The M1A2 Abrams, weighing 70 tons and created for massed tank battle in Europe, is hardly the ideal platform for close infantry -armor coordination on a Pacific Island. The new M10 Booker is more easily air- transportable and sustainable, and there- fore draws comparisons to the lauded M4 Sherman Medium Tank of WWII. But unlike the Sherman, the M10 Booker was solely designed as an infantry support platform, only about 500 are in production, and the Army insists it is not a tank.28 This only precludes discussion of the M10 as part of armored warfare and how this highly transportable platform might be used at scale in the Pacific theater. Mean- while, an armor gap has opened between the Marine Corps and the Army. The former recently divested its tanks and stated it would rely on the Army to provide armored capability.29 While the USMC continues
PLA Amphibious Landing Operation Example, ATP 7-100.3.22 9
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