【英文】哈佛大学肯尼迪学院报告：21世纪大国军事竞争：中国vs美国（40页）

The PLA Rocket Force’s vast stocks of conventional guided munitions  underwrite what U.S. strategists have called a “projectile-centric  strategy.”35 Projectiles are cheaper than air forces, easier to mass in a  salvo exchange than airborne-based strikes, and harder to hunt than  fxed airbases. In a confict, they can penetrate U.S. forward defenses  and cripple key nodes in U.S. battle networks, while outranging  reinforcements surging to the theater.36 As leading RAND analyst  Jim Dobbins and other RAND researchers have explained, “the range  and capabilities of Chinese air and sea defenses have continued to  grow, making U.S. forward-basing more vulnerable and the direct  defense of U.S. interests in the region potentially more costly.”

The U.S. has recognized this reality in sizing its own missile defense  systems. As the Obama Administration’s 2010 Ballistic Missile Defense  Review Report determined, “Russia and China have the capabilities  to conduct a large-scale ballistic missile attack on the territory of  the United States[…] While the [Ground-based Midcourse Defense]  system would be employed to defend the United States against limited  missile launches from any source, it does not have the capacity to cope  with large scale Russian or Chinese missile attacks.”41 Tus, if Ronald  Reagan was right when he declared that “a nuclear war cannot be won  and must never be fought,” then between these nuclear superpowers  (i.e., nations with robust, reliable second-strike capabilities), the  menu of viable military options cannot include nuclear attack.