On the afternoon of 27 June, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, director of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense and spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense, presided over a regular press conference. At the meeting, a reporter asked that the commander of the US Marine Corps announced in an interview on the 21st that the US Marine Corps will deploy a small-scale and rapid response capability "Littoral Combat Group" on Guam "in the next few years" to "counter attacks from China" and protect allies such as Japan and the Philippines. Do you have any comment?
In this regard, Wu Qian said that the US side continues to promote forward military deployment in the Asia-Pacific region under the pretext of unfounded threats, inciting confrontation and escalating tensions, which we firmly oppose. Chinese people do not cause trouble but are not afraid of it, and they have always said, "If people do not offend me, I will not offend others, and if people offend me, I will offend others."
In fact, U.S. Marine Corps Commander Eric Smith's remarks in media interviews were even more arrogant than those asked by reporters. When asked whether the deployment of the "Littoral Combat Group" could "stop China," he threatened that if China did not want its warships to be sunk, then China should control itself and "stop foreign aggression," otherwise the PLA would experience a "miserable day."
Therefore, the Ministry of Defense came up with the idea that "if people don't offend me, I won't offend people; If anyone sins against me, I will offend him" in response. So what is the sacredness of the "littoral combat group" of the US military? Is it really capable of inflicting the darkest hour on the PLA?
The term "littoral combat group" is somewhat misleading, and it is easy to think that it is similar to the coastal defense force of the mainland navy, or the coastal defense unit of the army. In fact, the full English name of the "Littoral Regiment" is "Marine Littoral Regiment". Marine means marine, regiment means regiment, and the key is Littoral, which means coast in the general context, but there is a special meaning in the United States Marine Corps: island hopping and island capture operations at sea.
Therefore, this unit is not a coastal defense force, but has to toss and turn at sea, firing a shot to change places, although it is a part of the US Marine Corps, but more often on the actual battlefield, it should follow the US Navy to fight at sea and fight "maritime guerrilla warfare."
It is not difficult to understand that in the "littoral combat regiment" structure, there are regimental headquarters, littoral combat units, marine battalions, air defense battalions, and logistics battalions, and so on, and their functions can be said to be quite comprehensive. In addition to the traditional UAVs, radars and amphibious combat vehicles of the US military, there is also a new LCU-1700 amphibious ship with a displacement of only 400 tons, which is only enough to transport 4 Humvees and a small number of personnel for small-scale force projection and amphibious landing. On the whole, the US military should want to create a force similar to our army's composite brigade in naval warfare, which is omnipotent and self-sufficient.
However, the problem is that Guam's "Littoral Combat Group" with rapid response capability has a total strength of about 2,000 people. If it is used to support both Japan and the Philippines, it will be 1,000 people on one side. Remember that the last one who thought that only 1,000 troops could stop the movement of our army should be the Gambia!
The starting point of the US military's formation of the "Littoral Combat Group" should be "small but fine", but this is too small! In the face of the PLA, the U.S. military has a big battle that neither of the two aircraft carrier battle groups can withstand, but it really can't figure out what 2,000 people can do?
Looking at the use of weapons, the "Littoral Combat Group" reconnaissance relied on the "Reaper" drone, which was poured oil into the Black Sea by the Russian army, and was shot down by the Houthis every once in a while in the Middle East; The anti-ship relied on the "Seahorse" rocket artillery, the one that missed the target with 6 consecutive shots fired by the United States and the Philippines last year; The air defense relies on the "Stinger", and I don't know if it is serious to use individual equipment to form an air defense network; The landing transfer depends on the light amphibious ships mentioned above, and by the way, it is still in the stage of drawing a big pie.
Therefore, in general, after gaining an in-depth understanding of the "Littoral Combat Group", it is still quite difficult to understand where the commander of the US Marine Corps got his confident and cruel words. In other words, in the war of words, the officers and men of our army are still too subtle.