A Congressionally-commissioned study of a future fleet and operational concepts for the Navy by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments released this year described how similar anti-ship capabilities could be used not just to defend against, but to contain an adversary. In the study’s example, expeditionary ground units (this case used U.S. Marines, but could just as plausibly be ASCM-equipped U.S. Army units) equipped with coastal defense ASCMs and air defenses positioned on Japan’s Southwest islands (which include the Ryukyus and Senkakus) could “contain an adversary’s power projection capabilities.” The relatively close proximity of the Southwestern islands to each other means that batteries of land-based ASCMs, especially in concert with naval and aviation support, could effectively keep China’s North Sea and East Sea fleets bottled up inside the first island chain, unable to break out into the wider Western Pacific.
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