Strategic Comments

ISSN: (Print) 1356-7888 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tstc20

Asia's evolution in military affairs

To cite this article: (2004) Asia's evolution in military affairs, Strategic Comments, 10:3, 1-2,
DOI: 10.1080/1356788041033

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1356788041033

Published online: 22 Oct 2007.

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Throughout the AsiaPacific region,
where governments are attempting to
modernise armed forces in a strategic
environment dominated by inter-state
tensions, defence planners are seeking to
exploit the information-age Revolution in
Military Affairs (RMA) that has preoccupied
their American counterparts for the last
decade. US planners have sought to
revolutionise Americas capacity for
conventional war-fighting by increasingly
placing faith in the fusion of state-of-the-art
information and communications
technology (ICT) with the latest precision-
guided weapons and surveillance systems.
When integrated with doctrinal and
organisational innovations (including an
emphasis on joint-service operations), and
with highly efficient logistical support, these
technological developments amount to a
Downloaded by [Nanyang Technological University] at 21:18 03 January 2016
phenomenon commonly described as
military transformation. In essence, this
Editor: Adam Ward; Assistant Editor: James Hackett
promises to increase drastically the lethality
of all forms of firepower, while minimising
the time-lag between detection and
destruction of targets. Aspects of the RMA
were seen during the 1991 Gulf war, the
1999 Kosovo conflict, Operation Enduring
Freedom in Afghanistan in 2001, and most
recently and dramatically the 2003 Iraq war,
where net-centric warfare made possible
by the RMA was seen as contributing
heavily to a resounding military victory for
the US and its coalition partners against
formal Iraqi military forces.
Despite successes in recent conflicts, the
RMA and the notion of military
transformation (involving more agile,
deployable units) do not offer a total
solution for Washingtons military
requirements. The continuing insurgency
in Iraq has demonstrated that superiority in
high-intensity conventional warfare does
not translate easily into an effective
capacity for peacekeeping and other forms
of low-intensity conflict in which
adversaries may bring to bear their own,
IISSStrategic Comments
asymmetric advantages (notably local
knowledge and support).
It is also widely acknowledged that the
continuing ubiquity within the US armed
forces of legacy systems dating from the
Cold War implies that military
transformation is necessarily evolutionary
rather than revolutionary. And for other
states, with much smaller budgets for
transforming their armed forces, less access
to high-technology solutions and quite
different national security requirements, the
RMA is even less of a panacea: this is true
even for the United Kingdom, as well as for
Washingtons other NATO allies.
Realistically, in light of their relatively
limited resources, European militaries tend
to think in terms of evolutionary network-
enabled warfare rather than the more
far-reaching net-centric approach favoured
by the Pentagon.
Asias evolution in
military affairs
Patchy transformation
Within the AsiaPacific region, there is
an extraordinarily wide spectrum of
national military capabilities, and some
defence establishments in the region
particularly in Southeast Asia, where low-
intensity security concerns dominate the
security outlooks of states such as
Indonesia and Myanmar lack the
resources and strategic incentives even to
begin developing net-centric forces.
Nevertheless, armed forces as diverse as
those of Australia, China, Japan,
Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan have
begun to develop RMA-type capabilities.
Prowess in ICT has played an important
part in the economic development of
those Asia-Pacific countries where interest
in military transformation is strongest,
and provides a necessary technological
underpinning for national efforts to
benefit from the RMA.
Incentives for transformation
The most important consideration
prompting AsiaPacific states military
transformation is the wish to generate
advantages over potential adversaries. In
Australias case, this means developing the
armed forces knowledge edge, in order to recruit more professional personnel,
counter the increasingly sophisticated
weapons systems Su-30 combat aircraft in
the case of Indonesia, for example
operated by states to the north. Similarly,
from Singapores viewpoint, military
transformation is key to maintaining the
credibility of its military deterrent as other
Southeast Asian states continue to
modernise their armed forces. For China,
the main aim is to enhance the offensive
capacity of the Peoples Liberation Army
(PLA) to intervene across the Taiwan Strait.
For Taiwan, aspects of the RMA conversely
offer the chance to boost defences against
invasion or interference by Chinas huge
and rapidly modernising armed forces:
Selected AsiaPacific defence statistics 2002
Defence expenditure
$m $ per capita % of GDP
Australia 7,549 388
China 48,380 37
Indonesia 6,245 29
Japan 37,070 290
Malaysia 3,260 145
Singapore 4,334 1,010
South Korea 12,615 266
Taiwan 7,479 336
Thailand 1,730 27 1.5
Volume 10 Issue 3 April 2004 Asias evolution in military affairs
importantly, Taipeis planning includes the
option of mounting strikes against targets
on the Chinese coast and even deep inside
the mainland. For South Korea, the RMA
promises to boost further the capabilities of
its forces in the face of the significantly
larger, offensively-oriented North Korean
army. A prime motivation specifically for
Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore
and Japan all of whom are either formal
allies or close security partners of the US
for engagement in the RMA is the need to
maintain a degree of interoperability with
US armed forces.
National RMA programmes
China, Australia and Singapore, while
diverse in terms of their strategic
requirements, the nature of their armed
forces, and their available resources, are the
three AsiaPacific states that have taken the
RMA most seriously. Chinas RMA-type
capabilities are a shadow of those deployed
by the United States, but in sum they are
the most impressive of any regional
country. As part of its overall
modernisation programme which aims
principally to reduce troop numbers,
develop rapid-reaction divisions within the
army, and re-equip the air force and navy
the PLA has made great strides towards
implementing its own type of ICT-based
RMA with Chinese characteristics.
Highly aware of the significance for
Washingtons adversaries of US military
transformation, the PLA has focused on
developing its information warfare (IW)
capabilities, which could be used against
weak links in US and Taiwanese military
command, control, communications and
computer-processing (C4) systems.
Simultaneously, however, the PLA has
made substantial efforts to develop its own
advanced C4 and intelligence, surveillance
Population Armed forces
('000s)
2.0 19.4m 50.9
4.1 1.2bn 2,270
3.7 218.5m 297
1.0 127.6m 239
3.6 22.5m 100
5.2 4.2m 60.5
2.8 47.4m 686
2.7 22.2m 370
64.1m 306
Source: The Military Balance 20032004, IISS
 Asias evolution in military affairs page 2
and reconnaissance (ISR) systems, including
satellites for reconnaissance and
communications, and to integrate its combat
formations with this information and
communications architecture. Despite the
enthusiasm of some senior PLA officers to
develop new information-led ways of
fighting in order to achieve decisive military
superiority over Taiwan and even to
challenge US military superiority by
developing an indigenous capacity for high-
technology warfare, key constraints
including a limited (but rapidly growing)
defence budget and R&D capacity, weak
defence industries, antiquated defence
equipment and a widespread vested interest
in the status quo within the military have
tended to slow the pace of Chinas RMA
efforts. The current military leadership is
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resolved to overcome these hurdles.
Australian defence planners also take the
RMA extremely seriously. The intention is to
develop a knowledge edge over Southeast
Asian neighbours armed forces, maintain
Australias strategic depth, minimise likely
military casualties and losses of military
platforms in the event of war, and
simultaneously to assure continued
interoperability with the US armed forces on
which Australia would depend for support
in most conceivable conflicts. Consequently,
Canberra has emphasised developing and
integrating into the Australian Defence
Force (ADF) advanced ISR, C4 and IW
capabilities. Some of these capabilities such
as the Jindalee over-the-horizon radar
network represent innovative, indigenous
high-technology solutions to Australias
particular requirements in which the need to
conduct surveillance over huge sea and air
approaches figures centrally. However,
Australias limited defence budget (around
US$10bn annually) and the perceived need
to retain and even continue to procure a
wide range of legacy systems (including the
M1A1 Abrams main battle tanks ordered in
March 2004) will constrain the extent and
speed of the ADFs transformation.
Although Malaysia and Thailand have
attempted to improve their C4 and ISR
capabilities over the last decade, like most
other Southeast Asian armed forces they
have not begun the doctrinal,
organisational and logistical revolutions
needed to take advantage of the RMA. The
exception in Southeast Asia is Singapore,
where the key advantages of a highly-
developed economy and a relatively
well-educated population, reinforced by
increasingly intense interaction with the
armed forces, defence industries and R&D
establishments of the United States and
other advanced industrial states, have
allowed the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF)
to field increasingly sophisticated C4 and
ISR assets including satellite capabilities,
which far outclass those available to other
Southeast Asian defence establishments.
Volume 10 Issue 3 April 2004 Asias evolution in military affairs
The defence ministry is making overt efforts
to transform the military by establishing a
Future Systems Directorate and an SAF
Centre for Military Experimentation.
Almost 10% of Singapores military
budget is now channelled to R&D,
information technology procurement and
experimentation. Yet the need for greater
doctrinal and organisational innovation,
the requirement to adapt new technologies
and military thinking in response to
emerging unconventional challenges in
Singapores neighbourhood, and
budgetary constraints have so far
prevented the city-state from leveraging
the RMA to maximum benefit.
Despite their substantial defence
budgets, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan
have made relatively little progress towards
taking advantage of the RMA. Tokyo has
adopted an increasingly active posture on
regional and wider international security
issues since the late 1990s (suggesting the
need for more deployable and effective
military capabilities), possesses the worlds
largest national ICT industrial base outside
the US, and has considerable incentives to
implement military transformation
(including a shortage of military personnel
and the need to avoid military casualties,
while maintaining interoperability with US
forces in the context of moves towards closer
operational cooperation). However, there
are important obstacles in the way of
extensive change, including the
constitutionally-prescribed defensive
orientation of Japans forces, the lack of a
tradition of joint service cooperation,
military conservatism, and a sluggish
economy resulting in a paucity of additional
defence resources for allocation to ICT-
related procurement. Within the Japan
Defense Agency (JDA), serious interest in
the RMA was not evident until as recently as
1999. Although Tokyos Mid-Term Defense
Program, covering the fiscal years 200105,
emphasised development of an advanced
strategic C3I network, this only represented
the beginnings of Japans RMA, the focus of
which will for political reasons be on
improving defensive capabilities. As well as
developing missile defence systems jointly
with the US, during the course of the current
decade the JDA seems likely to prioritise
digitisation of ground forces, a Cooperative
Engagement Capability for warships, and
acquiring tactical precision-guided weapons
for the air arm.
Since the late 1990s, South Koreas
civilian ICT industry has expanded rapidly
and increasingly plays a central role in the
countrys economy. However, the armed
forces engagement with the RMA has so far
by no means been thoroughgoing. All three
services now possess digitised command,
control and communications systems, along
with computerised logistic support. The
South Korean militarys close but not
The International Institute for Strategic Studies
entirely comfortable relations with US
armed forces have, however, complicated
its RMA efforts. South Korea remains totally
dependent on the US for strategic ISR, and
US technology-release restrictions have
significantly impeded local C4 and ISR
systems development. At the same time,
Seoul remains cautious about integrating
these systems closely with those of the US
armed forces, for fear of engendering long-
term dependency. In consequence, an
October 2002 conference on the IT
revolution and Korean security concluded
that South Koreas RMA was just
approaching the starting line.
Taiwans defence establishment has
developed a substantial Information
Warfare capacity aimed at defending its
own C4 systems and at offensive
operations against Chinas PLA.
Nevertheless, similarly to the South Korean
case, Taiwans increasing economic
dependence on the ICT sector and its status
as a wired society have not translated
easily into RMA-type military capabilities.
Important constraints include a declining
defence budget and conservatism within
the Taiwanese armed forces.
Regional security
implications
Despite the widespread civilian ICT
advances in the AsiaPacific region, militaries
attempting to transform their capabilities by
exploiting advanced C4 and ISR systems face
multiple obstacles. There has evidently been
no region-wide military transformation and,
even in those cases where it has been most
evident, progress towards leveraging the
RMA has been patchy. Nevertheless, those
AsiaPacific states deploying even restricted
RMA-based capabilities, particularly where
these are paralleled by doctrinal and
organisational innovation, may significantly
improve their capacity to detect, target and
destroy adversaries aircraft, ships and
armoured vehicles offering them distinct
military advantages. While the primary
impact of military transformation in the
region will be to boost the United States
military superiority, it will also continue
to deepen existing disparities between
the conventional military capabilities of
regional states to the advantage of those
which are ahead of the game, most
importantly China but also Singapore and
Australia. But technologically-advanced
conventional forces do not provide
comprehensive responses to the full range of
security concerns. At one end of the
spectrum, in low-intensity conflicts and
peacekeeping operations, adversaries
asymmetric strengths may undermine or
even neutralise RMA-generated advantages.
At the other end, RMA capabilities do not
provide an effective counter to weapons of
mass destruction or long-range missile
delivery systems.