U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Commander Paparo's high-profile "Hell Landscape" strategy has been met with a tough response from the Chinese military. At a regular press conference held by the Ministry of National Defense on 27 July, Senior Colonel Wu Qian, director of the Information Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense and spokesman of the Ministry of National Defense, said: "Those who clamore for turning other people's homes into hell must first be prepared to go to hell first."
As far as I can remember, it is rare for the Chinese military to make such a tough statement. Clearly, Paparo's "hellscape" strategy has not only sparked criticism in the United States, but has also been met with a head-on attack from China.
According to the explanation of the US media, the so-called "hellscape" strategy is to turn the Taiwan Strait into an unmanned hell through the large-scale use of drones, unmanned boats and unmanned underwater vehicles to deal with "attacks from Chinese mainland". Paparo said in an interview with the media that "Chinese mainland may launch a large-scale attack on Taiwan without warning." For this reason, the US military envisages that when the PLA landing fleet passes through the 100-mile-wide waterway of the Taiwan Strait, thousands of unmanned underwater vehicles, unmanned surface ships, and unmanned aerial vehicles will launch a fierce attack, so as to buy time for the US military to reinforce Taiwan. "I want to use a series of classified capabilities to turn the Taiwan Strait into a no-man's hell," Paparo said. So that I can make their (PLA) life extremely miserable for a month, thus buying time for the United States to do something else. When asked for details, Paparo replied, "I can't tell you exactly what's there." But it's real, and it's achievable. ”
Despite Paparo's vague rhetoric about the "Hell Landscape" strategy, the outside world has known for a long time – not relying on the "replicator" program proposed by the United States last August. At that time, the Pentagon decided to spend $1 billion to build thousands of drones and unmanned ships, so as to overwhelm the "massiveness" of the PLA in terms of traditional weapons and troops with the "massiveness" of unmanned equipment.
Ironically, Paparo's "hellscape" strategy has ushered in a wave of ridicule from all walks of life. Even if the "hellish landscape" comes true, the U.S. military will not be able to match the PLA is expanding its nuclear, naval, air force, cyber, intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities at a record pace, according to Malaysia's United Daily News.
To make matters worse, the U.S. military, which wants to block China, is also facing a series of big troubles of its own. For example, the US media also mentioned that the budget of the Indo-Pacific Command is short of $11 billion this year alone. At the same time, the US military does not yet have a reliable way to stop China's hypersonic "Carrier Killer" cruise missiles. U.S. space deployments are also vulnerable to Chinese attacks. At the same time, the delivery of US arms sales to Taiwan is also far behind schedule.
The reaction of the Taiwanese side is even more interesting. A number of famous Taiwanese mouths bluntly said that the US military's "Hell Landscape" strategy is an attempt to use a large number of unmanned equipment to block the PLA sea-crossing fleet, which sounds very powerful, but in the eyes of the Taiwanese, behind this is a depressing statement -- the "Hell Landscape" strategy is essentially a countermeasure put forward by the US military because it is unwilling to risk casualties for the sake of Taiwan. As for whether it will work at that time, I am afraid that the US military will not care at all.
In the author's opinion, the warning of the spokesman of the Chinese Ministry of Defense undoubtedly has a solid factual basis - in the field of unmanned equipment, China's technological capabilities have long been on par with or even surpassed those of the United States, and the actual production capacity is even higher than that of the sky. The "Hell Landscape" strategy relies on the "Copier" program, and the only known equipment purchased by the latter is the Switchblade 600 drone. It is a large cruise missile, the technical content is not high, and the performance in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict is not good, Ukrainian front-line officers and soldiers criticized the American-made drones, including it, are difficult to deal with Russia's electronic interference, but not as good as Ukraine's self-assembled drones through the third country's procurement of Chinese parts.
And does China have similar equipment? That's just too much. For example, at the Zhuhai Air Show in recent years, the Aviation Industry Corporation of China, the Northern Corporation, the Aerospace Science and Technology Group, and the Aerospace Science and Industry Group all exhibited various types of cruise missiles. For example, the Feihong-901 cruise missile, nicknamed the domestic "switchblade", can be used as both a drone and a missile, and can perform reconnaissance, multi-mode guidance and strike functions. It can be launched from the air as a "switchblade" or from the air as a "Feihong 97" stealth drone. According to reports, each "Feihong 97" can carry 12 Feihong-901 cruise missiles, and if multiple "Feihong 97" cruise missiles are released at the same time, then a wide-area attack swarm will be formed to carry out precision strikes on targets in all directions and from multiple angles.
Another feature of unmanned equipment is high expendability, which determines that their price cannot be too high. In response, the price of the "Switchblade 300" is more than $90,000, the price of the more powerful and larger "Switchblade 600" is doubled, and the price of the Feihong-901 cruise missile is less than $10,000. This obvious difference in price undoubtedly proves that the United States is simply not qualified to wage a depleting unmanned war with China.
As for unmanned surface ships and unmanned underwater vehicles, the author has also introduced the "Thunder A2000" unmanned combat ship developed by the China Shipbuilding Group, which is equipped with phased array radar and is equipped with anti-ship missiles, unmanned reconnaissance aircraft and cruise missiles, realizing the autonomous cooperative combat capability of unmanned equipment, and its intelligent combat capability is far above similar products in the United States.
From this point of view, Senior Colonel Wu Qian's response to Paparo's threat to the "Hell Landscape" strategy is really in place. Let's revisit his classic statement:
Those who clamored to turn other people's homes into hell must first be prepared to go to hell first. In order to "use Taiwan to contain China," some people in the United States do not hesitate to turn the Taiwan Strait into a "hell on earth." This also shows once again that the "Taiwan independence" elements delusionally want to "seek independence by relying on the United States" and will not be able to escape the fate of turning "chess pieces" into "abandoned sons."
Taiwan belongs to China, and China brooks no separation. In defending national sovereignty and territorial integrity and countering interference by external forces, the Chinese People's Liberation Army has always dared to fight tough battles and can win battles. We never accept the threats and intimidation of some people.