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Russian AK-101 assault rifles in service with Indonesian police
(thelemmy.club)
a bunch of math stuff in this article that goes over my head, and the article format with all the footnotes and graphs isn't very suitable for translating to a hexbear comment, so I'll skip to the conclusion bits, any game-theoretic modeling nerds feel free to check out the actual article https://archive.ph/l1njb
An Equilibrium Model of Counter-Base War in the Western Pacific
The bitter experience of the 2026 conflict highlights the problem of base vulnerability. It is fair to say that, from a purely military perspective, base vulnerability is the principal challenge facing the US. The diffusion of precision-strike capabilities means that US bases located near the great missile powers face a considerable risk of attrition. Above all, it calls into question the US ability to fight China in Asia. For if China can destroy US bases in the region, the US will not be able to fight China, much less defeat it.
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During the 2026 war, Iran was able to more or less destroy all US bases on the Gulf littoral using cheap and plentiful short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs) and drones, forcing the evacuation of most US military personnel and aircraft. CNN reported recently that sixteen bases have been destroyed. The US air force was forced to operate from rear area bases in central and western Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Israel. Even these bases came under heavy attack from Iranian MRBMs and long-range drones, with the US losing two E-3 Sentry airborne command posts and multiple aerial refueling tankers at Prince Sultan Airbase. More than a dozen expensive and difficult-to-replace radars across the region were also destroyed. These developments were clearly not anticipated by the US military, since evacuation orders were not issued until after the counter-base attacks.
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The Counter-Base War Game
Given the arsenal, magazines and force posture, each side is allowed to choose a tactical doctrine. For the US, a tactical doctrine is an interceptor expenditure policy given by the number of interceptors it fire at each inbound ballistic missile or cruise missile. For China, a tactical doctrine is given by three parameters. First, what proportion of strikes are directed at suppression instead of aircraft in the park. Second, what proportion of suppression strikes are aimed at HAS. Third, a front-loading parameter that controls how much China front-loads the suppression strikes. A Nash equilibrium is defined as a situation where neither side can gain any advantage by deviating from its tactical doctrine, given the enemy’s tactical doctrine. We identify the equilibrium by iterated best response and then verify it through perturbation checks. The equilibrium tells us what the two sides can be expected to do during the war and the expected outcome.
Results
We consider a number of scenarios given by different force posture and strategic investments.
- Until recently, the US concentrated its aircraft at just six bases. In this scenario, China allocates only 22% to suppression strikes; 27% of which are directed at HAS. The front loading is modest. The US fires both types of interceptors at the maximum allowed rate of 5 per inbound weapon. The expected aircraft losses are a crippling 392 of 450.
- In our baseline scenario, we assume that the US has dispersed its aircraft to all 24 bases. In equilibrium, China allocates 41% to suppression strikes; 75% of which are directed at HAS. The front loading is very modest. The US again fires both types of interceptors at the maximum allowed rate of 5 per inbound weapon. The US loses 336 aircraft by the end of the week.
- The civilian defense analysts are unanimous in their recommendation for building HAS [Hardened Aircraft Shelters]. Our model replicates their main result. In this US hardens scenario, we assume that the US has added 300 HAS. In equilibrium, China has to allocate 70% of its missiles to suppression; 83% of which are directed at HAS. This is because China must expend a lot of missiles to “crack the eggs open to expose the birds” before it can hit them. Expected aircraft losses come in at 204, compared to 336 in the reference case. HAS thus works as a “missile absorber.”
- Anderson and Press (2025) assume that electronic countermeasures are so effective that they increase the CEP of all Chinese missiles to 45m. This seems highly improbable to your analyst. (Another highly implausible assumption in Anderson and Press (2025) is that the campaign will last for 30 days. This is because they do not allow China to front-load suppression strikes. We find that, once China is allowed to choose to font-load suppression, the counter-base war lasts under a week.) China has already fielded cruise missiles that are immune to guidance jamming. We explore a jamming scenario in which Chinese ballistic missiles CEPs rise to 45m but jamming does not work against air-breathing missiles. In addition, we assume that the US has built 300 HAS. In this effective jamming scenario, we find that China does not bother with suppression at all, which is no longer possible given the assumed CEPs, and instead directs all attacks to the apron. The number of aircraft lost comes in at 88. We emphasize that this is still a highly implausible scenario in which the Chinese have found no countermeasures for guidance jamming. This is certainly not the lesson to be drawn from the conflict in Ukraine. But what the scenario does show is the dramatically rising importance of electronic warfare.
- Finally, we consider a precision-mass scenario where China counters HAS and guidance jamming by fielding 3,000 cheap long-range drones that are jamming-resistant (drones are just slower cruise missiles with a greater wingspan). This is arguably the central scenario for war in the near future given that Russia has already deployed variants of the Shahed drone with precisely this capability. In this precision-mass scenario, China allocates 72% of all strikes to suppression; 73% of which are allocated to HAS targets. The US is forced to conserve interceptor inventories, allocating 2.54 and 2.36 per inbound missile and drone respectively. The US loses 301 aircraft.
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To add insult to injury, Western estimates of Chinese missile inventories may be off by as much as an order of magnitude. For if Western estimates are Chinese inventories are correct, then Iran has already fired as many SRBMs and MRBMs as are estimated me to be in China’s missile order of battle. At any rate, if the US can invest in HAS, China can invest in missile stockpiles. China’s defense-industrial base is as large as that of America and Europe combined. The US is the strategic defender in Asia meaning that China gets to choose when to attack. It can simply choose to time the attack at the peak of its war-preparedness, including stockpiling a large number of missiles and drones. All of this means that the US will find it very hard to win an arms race against China. In addition, the balance of resolve is favorable to China because the US will be fighting for an extended deterrence commitment while China will be fighting for what they see as national reunification. The unfavorable balance of resolve rules out any hope that the US could prevail in a nuclear crisis by threatening nuclear escalation. Given these observations and our results, deterrence in Asia is no longer a feasible foreign policy objective for the United States.
" could also have easily gone "training for flying with transponders off? when would that be necessary?". The scale of tanker operations may not have been foreseen - with the Iranians striking American bases and forcing them to fly from further away, more refueling is needed, more tankers are brought in, and the airspace gets more congested.
https://xcancel.com/MenchOsint/status/2051895603924246941