Last August, when then-speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, China retaliated, kicking off days of military drills featuring the launch of multiple long-range rockets into the waters surrounding the country. The episode highlighted a critical gap between Chinese militaries and those of the U.S.: Washington fields no long-range rockets in the Indo-Pacific.
This year’s iteration of the National Defense Authorization Act is poised to address that gap by prompting the Pentagon to take action.
Senator Joni Ernst (R., Iowa) and Representative Mike Gallagher (R., Wisc.), the lawmakers behind the provision, called the Rings of Fire Act, say that it’s key to building a deterrent against Chinese aggression.
“As China’s rocket force has taken the lead in the Indo-Pacific, the shocking gap in America’s missile capabilities calls deterrence into question. I’m working to close this gap by building ‘rings of fire’ around our pacing threat and reduce China’s home-field advantage,” Ernst told National Review.
The idea behind the bill is that U.S missile capabilities would stretch Chinese forces and military resources thin during a conflict, forcing the People’s Liberation Army to react to unpredictable strikes.
The alarming disparity in missile numbers came up during a recent Senate hearing, when Admiral John Aquilino, the top U.S. commander in the Indo-Pacific, testified that the U.S. has no ground-launched ballistic missiles in the area that he covers, while the Chinese military’s missiles provide it a distinct military advantage.
He added that having those weapons would expand “our ability to provide multiple dilemmas,” and that U.S. “forces are preparing [for] when that capability is delivered.”
According to Gallagher, having that capability is an important response to the ongoing development of the Chinese military’s rocket capabilities.
“The Chinese Communist Party has spent years building a rocket force that can push American ships out of a fight and target American forces further out across the Indo-Pacific — reaching our own borders,” Gallagher said. “It’s time we use this logic against them and build an anti-Navy and an advanced, theater-range missile force of our own.”
The Rings of Fire Act would kick off a policy review by the Defense Department, mandating that it develop a strategy to place long-range rockets around the Pacific — and to help U.S. allies do that on their own.
This strategy would include a list of potential locations to place missile systems, the designation of a specific commander tasked with overseeing the effort, and a list of allies with which Washington could build out a strategy to field these missiles.
Some possibilities considered by Ernst include short-range missiles hosted by Japan and the Philippines, with longer-range systems in northern Australia, the Pacific Islands, and Alaska.
“Through coordination with key allies, we can develop and deploy the missiles we need throughout the Indo-Pacific and force China’s military onto its back foot, so Xi Jinping thinks twice before taking Taiwan by force,” she said.