China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With ‘Assassin’s Mace’

wired/danger room

h/t Michael

China Looks to Undermine U.S. Power, With ‘Assassin’s Mace’
by David Hambling
July 2, 2009

Could China wipe out an American military advantage with a simple black box? Joshua Cooper Ramo’s thought-provoking book The Age of the Unthinkable challenges all kinds of conventional thinking about everything from venture capital to military strategy. One section caught my eye in particular, about how the Chinese might neutralize American air superiority, using a type of weapon known an “Assassin’s Mace.” The specific device in question is an unassuming little case; how worried should we be?

U.S. airpower depends on the ability to overcome surface-to-air missile (SAM) defenses, and one of the key weapons for this role is the AGM-88 High Speed Anti-radiation Missile (HARM), which homes in on radar emissions. (You can see them, under the F/A-18’s wings in the picture, above.) The defenders can either turn off their radar, thus blinding themselves, or have it destroyed. This is where the black box that Ramo found at a military trade show in Zhuhai in 2002 comes in:
“…packed inside were several thousand microtransmitters and when you plugged the device in and turned it on, it broadcast signals - 10,000 of them - on the frequency of a SAM site. From the perspective of an American pilot - or , more precisely, the perspective of his HARM missile looking for a ‘lock’ on a SAM radar signal - this meant an air-to-ground picture that looked like 10,001 SAM signals, only one of which was real…”

Ramo suggests that if defenders have these black boxes then the U.S. aircraft would be helpless against enemy SAMs, and air superiority would be lost at stroke.

This is just one example of Beijing’s “Assassin’s Mace” family of weaponry that’s been much discussed in both Chinese and American military circles. The Pentagon defines the Maces as technologies that might afford an inferior military an advantage in a conflict with a superior power. In this view, an Assassin’s Mace is anything which provides a cheap means of countering an expensive weapon. Other examples might include Chinese anti-satellite weapons, which might instantly knock out U.S. space assets, or a conventional ballistic missile, designed to take out a supercarrier and all its aircraft in one hit. It’s an interesting contrast to the perspective of the American arms industry, which can end up spending vast amounts countering low-tech, low-cost threats like mines and IEDs.

Why “Assassin’s Mace?” A club-type weapon sounds like a rather unsuitable weapon for an assassin. The actual Chinese term is Sha Shou Jian (literally “killing hand club”), which refers to a pair of short wooden or metal rods used as a martial arts weapon. “Jian” normally denotes a long Chinese sword but Sha Shou Jian are blunt and heavy. They could be concealed in the long sleeves of court robes and used to make surprise attacks — hence the association with assassins.

And although some Western commentators like the New Atlantis claim that the meaning of the assassin’s mace “remains elusive, ” it’s no mystery to Mandarin speakers. Sha Shou Jian a popular expression used by sports commentators, businessmen and even in romantic advice columns. Alastair Johnston of Harvard University criticizes the way Washington pundits want to make the Assassin’s Mace “mysterious and exotic”: it’s simply the decisive, winning quality. In sports, the Assassin’s Mace may be the key goal-scorer; in business, it’s any quality that puts you ahead of the competition; in love, it might be the subtle smile that wins over the object of your affections. Johnston suggests that a fairly idiomatic translation would be “silver bullet” and that the concept behind it is less fiendishly oriental than is often supposed.

Ramo (who speaks Mandarin) — is more concerned with the potential threat from these devices. But is the black box intended to stop HARM so dangerous? I was not so sure: Danger Room covered new HARM upgrades a few months back and the makers seemed relaxed about dealing with countermeasures. So I asked Ramo if he really thought the Chinese were ready to take on the Air Force.

“I have to say I did ask some people about U.S. HARM technology and the general answer was that they are pretty confident that the sort of ECM [electronic countermeasure] system on sale at Zhuhai they have now found a solution for – which the Chinese probably know and that’s why they were selling it,” said Ramo. “And I think frankly that the box I saw was probably an early attempt that has now been passed by not only by better anti-HARM spoofs but also by a much more sophisticated integrated air-denial operational plan that includes a wide variety of tactics where ECM is complemented by space weapons, cyber, and other system-level attacks. ”

So the box itself may not be a HARM-killer. However, Ramo sticks very much to his original thesis about the Chinese approach to warfare.

“The point I was trying to make with the box was the way in which asymmetric power does allow cheap things to undo expensive ones — to introduce both the idea of the “Assassin’s Mace”(which I think fits many asymmetric systems) and to lead into some of the technological oscillations behind Offense/Defense balance, which I get into later on…. the best Assassin’s Maces are still secretly guarded and definitely aren’t for sale — at least not yet.”

So the good news is that U.S. air power still rules — and that Iran can’t buy “Assassin’s Mace” technology from China to cancel it out. The bad news is that this situation might change at any time.

[Photo: U.S. Navy]