Tue Sep 17 05:37:04 UTC 2024: ## US Building Up Arsenal of Cheap Anti-Ship Weapons to Deter China in Indo-Pacific
**Tokyo, Japan** – The United States is rapidly expanding its arsenal of anti-ship weapons, focusing on inexpensive and readily available options as part of its strategy to deter China’s growing naval power in the Indo-Pacific region.
This shift in strategy, dubbed “affordable mass,” stems from lessons learned from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US is now prioritizing the production of readily available, relatively cheap weapons to counter China’s vast fleet of ships and conventional ballistic missiles.
One key weapon in this strategy is the QUICKSINK bomb, a low-cost, GPS-guided weapon designed to track moving targets. The US Air Force recently successfully tested QUICKSINK, which can be used with hundreds of thousands of existing Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) tail kits to convert standard bombs into guided weapons.
The Pentagon aims to produce thousands of QUICKSINK bombs, a move that could significantly impact China’s naval power. While China holds a numerical advantage in anti-ship missiles, the US hopes to overwhelm Chinese ship defenses by unleashing a massive barrage of affordable weapons.
This strategy also includes deploying existing weapons like the SM-6 and Tomahawk missiles, as well as new mobile missile batteries like the Typhon, which can launch these missiles against sea targets.
Experts believe this strategy could help the US and its allies, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia, close the gap in the Indo-Pacific missile race. The increased availability of anti-ship weapons could potentially deter China’s aggressive actions in the South China Sea, where it has been increasingly assertive in recent years.
The US military’s focus on affordable weapons reflects a shift in strategy, emphasizing quantity over high-tech weaponry. This move could have significant ramifications for the security balance in the Indo-Pacific region.
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