Ballistic and Cruise Missiles in East Asia-West Pacific Theater

Hi KQN

Following the latest article - looks like we're keeping this dialogue to ourselves, knowing that other potential commenters in the blogosphere don't want to be woken up during their Christmas snooze...:)

Re your January 14, 2019 comment "Ground launched MRBM and IRBM are of limited value to the US given the westernmost US territory is Guam, unless one counts some of the smaller islands. I do not see South Koreans nor Japanese ever agreeing to deployments on their soils."

1980s US/USSR/Euopean/UK MRBMs and IRBMs INF Treaty

The INF Treaty on short and intermediate range missiles was very much a Reagan US - Gorbachev USSR signed agreement, concentrating on ground launched missiles in Europe not Asia. This was within a huge political-public-strategic debate in NATO countries, on such missiles endangering citizens at nuclear blast ground zero in the USSR-European satellite countries-out to Britain. 

I experienced this debate as a university student living in London in 1981. "No Cruise" "Better Red than Dead" and Campaign for [Unilateral British] Nuclear Disarmament (CND) were the slogans of most thinking, humanist, UK students. 

For the more gullible UK students a quiet 1980s Russian agent of influence operation (eg) that Britain should Unilaterally Nuclear Disarm would be followed by a Russian moral realisation of niceness, ie: not to take advantage of the West's net weakening. 

I had a pretty good argument against the assumption Russia would be nice to the disarmed, but that is a future article. 

I unfortunately had to debate against nice students often, undercutting their arguments. Fellow students from India and Pakistan were very helpful as they were big supporters of nuclear weapons development to defend their own countries. Once the US won the Cold War in 1991 the students "Better Red Than Dead" slogan was proven misguided.

East Asia-Western Pacific MRBMs and IRBMs 2010s

So the 1980s INF was long before the 2010s development of mature Chinese MRBMs and IRBMs in East Asia and Western Pacific becoming an issue. In the 1980s (in the Indian and western Pacific Oceans) only the USSR and US had fully protected, mature IRBMs-ICBMs mainly mounted on SSBNs .

In the 2010s the US development of submarine launched missiles and B1, B2, F-22 and B-52s nuclear bombers means that ground launching from Guam or elsewhere is not a high priority for the US. Ground launching has all the public-host government shortcomings of whose ground?

I don't know the status of US and South Korea nuclear capable ATACM SRBMs in South Korea - see Reuters 2017?

September 2017 South Korea ballistic missile exercise - simulating attack on North Korea.
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For the time being the deterrent against Chinese and North Korean nuclear missiles is all US including, of course, Trident II SLBMs, but also the chances of again nuclear armed Tomahawk SLCMs. 

The advantage of US submarine mounted Tomahawk MRCMs (1,000-3,000 km) are that instead of the US having to build longer range cruise missiles and mounting them on land (eg. Guam) US SSNs and SSGNs can move in close just east of China's first island chain (or within it for firing) to hit Chinese and North Korean targets.

I see South Korea's Jang Bogo class 3,000 tonne submarines KSS-IIIs as only justifying their ballistic missile carrying main mission if the SRBM-MRBM missiles have nuclear warheads (also see). This is in the next 10 years or so. 

Meanwhile Japan is restricted by its pacifism and Australia to no-nuclear-apathy - just hoping Trump will sacrifice America for their countries in any standoff edging toward, major war, risking nuclear war.

Pete