Four Countries Are Massing Ships And Troops To Practice Retaking An Island From The C

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Four Countries Are Massing Ships And Troops To Practice Retaking An Island From The Chinese
By: David Axe - Forbes News Staff - 05-14-21
Re: https://www.forbes.com/sites/davidax...h=592900a12328

A four-country amphibious force has assembled off of southern Japan to practice recapturing an island following an invasion by a simulated enemy force.

None of the participating navies will say it out loud, but the enemy in this scenario is China. And the battleground probably is the Senkakus, an island group that both China and Japan claim but which Japan administers.

There aren’t a lot of islands that Tokyo definitely would go to war over. The Senkakus are among those few.

The ships, planes and troops involved in exercise Jeanne D’Arc ‘21—“ARC21,” for short—give us some sense of the force it might take to retake an island after Chinese troops have seized it.

In short—two helicopter carriers, a dock ship and a tank landing ship along with three destroyers, three frigates, two patrol boats and a submarine as escorts.

It’s possible some of the vessels, in particular the patrol boats and submarine, will simulate enemy forces during ARC21’s pretend battle. In any event, the amphibious ships add up to enough shipping to transport a couple battalions of soldiers and marines—maybe a thousand in all—plus the aircraft to get them ashore.

There are supporting forces. Special operations troops to reconnoiter the beach. A maritime patrol plane. Fighter jets for top cover and close air support. Liaison troops to spot targets for the destroyers and aircraft to bombard.

Taken together, the amphibious group and its supporting forces tell a story about allied plans in the event Beijing seizes one of the Senkakus or some other island it claims in the disputed waters of the East and South China Seas.

There’s another side to the story. One about the scale of violence that’s possible, even likely, if the territorial disputes in the western Pacific ever escalate to open warfare.

Officially ARC21’s planners are focused on training allied troops for a wide range of possible missions. The exercise “aims to strengthen defense cooperation toward the realization of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” the Japanese defense ministry stated.

But Rear Adm. Jean-Mathieu Rey, head of French forces in the Pacific, said the quiet part out loud when he stressed the exercise’s focus on “retak[ing] an island.”

The roster for ARC21 is an impressive one. From the Japanese navy: the helicopter carrier Ise, the tank landing ship Osumi, three destroyers, two patrol boats and a submarine. From the French navy: the assault ship and helicopter carrier Tonnerre plus a frigate.

The U.S. Navy sent the dock landing ship USS New Orleans. The Australian navy deployed a frigate.

Ground forces gathering in and around Kyushu include a battalion of French marines, elements of a Japanese army brigade and special forces group plus a small contingent of U.S. Marine raiders and fire-support liaison troops.

U.S. Marine Corps V-22 tiltrotors and Japanese army CH-47 transport helicopters—escorted by Japanese army AH-64 attack helicopters—will haul the assault force. A squadron of Japanese air force F-2 fighters will provide air cover while an American P-8 patrol plane surveils the area.

The exercise schedule illuminates the likely timeline for an actual amphibious counterattack. After ARC21 kicked off on Tuesday, French, Japanese and American officers met at the U.S. Navy base in Sasebo, Japan, to plan a “ship-to-shore amphibious air assault” that should take place near the end of the six-day event.

First, U.S. reconnaissance Marines and Japanese commandos will infiltrate the enemy-held island—actually, Japan’s Kirishima Maneuver Area simulating an island—and “surveil the objective in preparation for follow-on forces,” according to the U.S. Defense Department.

USMC V-22s—New Orleans can support two of the tiltrotors—will lead the landing. Hopping across to Tonnerre, they will load up French infantry and coordinate their arrival at the beachhead with Japanese CH-47s transporting Japanese soldiers and U.S. Marine gunfire-coordinators.

Those American liaison troops will “provide fire support for the multilateral raid force as it assaults the simulated urban objective,” the Pentagon explained. The fire support could include barrages from the amphibious group’s cannon-armed destroyers and frigates as well as guns, rockets, missiles and bombs from the AH-64 gunships and F-2 fighters.

Whether this maneuver and firepower would, in a real battle, be adequate to pry loose Chinese occupiers is an open question that no one can answer. It’s telling that one of the preparatory training events before the mock assault is a medical-evacuation drill.

The substantial forces Japan, France, the United States and Australia have assembled for ARC21 speak to the substantial reserves of military power these countries possess as they aim to deter Chinese aggression in the China Seas.

But those forces also underscore how many people, ships and aircraft it could take to recapture just one island. And how many people might get hurt or die in the process.

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About this writer: David Axe is a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina