Posted on 07/25/2013 2:53:01 PM PDT by sukhoi-30mki
US expert issues warning over new missile submarines
Taiwan should be “very concerned” by reports that China’s navy will soon begin the first sea patrols of a new class of strategic missile submarines, a US military expert said on Tuesday.
“While these missiles may not be aimed at Taiwan per se, they are aimed at America’s capacity to resist Chinese aggression against Taiwan,” International Assessment and Strategy Center senior fellow Richard Fisher said.
He was responding to questions from the Taipei Times following publication by the Washington Times this week of a report that US defense officials believe Beijing will begin the first sea patrols of three new Type 094 missile submarines next year.
The subs will carry the new JL-2 ballistic missile, which is thought to be equipped with multiple warheads capable of hitting the US.
Pentagon sources say the JL-2 poses a “potential first strike” nuclear missile threat to the US.
“Even with their initial deployment of three nuclear missile submarines, if patrols can be maintained off the eastern coast of North Korea, then China would have the option of launching a first strike that could reach America’s main nuclear missile submarine base at Kitsap Naval Base near Seattle,” Fisher said.
He added the emergence of China’s nuclear missile submarine fleet would make the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) far more desirous of conquering Taiwan.
According to Fisher, Taiwan’s eastern coast has immediate access to some of the deepest waters of the Pacific and would present the most ideal patrol areas for China to defend its submarines, compared with bases in the South China Sea.
“Should it ever fall to Chinese control, I would expect that Taiwan would become a major PLA nuclear forces base — for nuclear missile submarines, bombers and for land-based missiles,” said Fisher, an expert on Chinese military affairs.
He said this would be done not just to take advantage of Taiwan’s key geostrategic position in Asia, but also to ensure that the “problem” of Taiwan’s politically “unreliable” population becomes “solved” by potential nuclear retaliation against PLA nuclear forces in Taiwan.
The Washington Times quoted a US defense official familiar with recent intelligence assessments as saying that the US was anticipating combat patrols of Chinese submarines carrying the new JL-2 missile to begin next year.
The patrols will be the first time China conducts submarine operations involving nuclear-tipped missiles far from its shores, despite having had a small missile submarine force since the late 1980s, the Washington Times said.
Fisher said that all of this points to the necessity for Taiwan to build a “far more robust” capability to independently deter Chinese attack.
“It will also require that Taiwan have far better defense relationships with its neighbors Japan and the Philippines, in order to develop the means for overlapping and redundant early warning and surveillance,” Fisher said.
“This alone has tremendous potential to increase deterrence in the Taiwan Strait,” he said.
Fisher said that if the PLA knows that it will have to attack Japan and the Philippines in order to deny Taiwan the information it needs to defend itself, then China “is much less likely to attack Taiwan in the first place.”
Quick, write them a stern letter, Obama. Oh wait, you don’t even do that much.
The negative aspects of our trade with China, are only beginning to be revealed.
China would be twenty to thirty years behind us right now, if we had used our heads.
Now we’ll shortly be under a first strike threat.
At first it won’t be complete, but over the next five to ten years, we’re going to be hung out to dry.
Our leaders made this happen.
Obama and the trayvonists will push to make ours smaller! No Justice only peace!
There are several countries threatened by the Chinese navy that could take unilateral actions against their submarine fleet, resulting in Chinese submarines lost with “plausible deniability” of any hostile action.
The first indication would be when they hit crush depth.
Such incidents have happened before, such as right before its collapse, the Soviet Union lost 4 submarines in 2 months, all victims to a systemic maintenance problem. But all the devil to figure out, because there were no boats left to examine.
While these are indeed acts of war, the Chinese encouraged the North Koreans to sink the Cheonan, so they are not blameless, nor have they been dissuaded from committing such acts again.
your supposition that the Chinese nuclear threat will be defeated by covert destruction of these subs, is a fantasy.
They are building a huge first strike capability which includes mobile icbm’s in thousands of miles of tunnels.
Note also the current need to place these subs off N Korea means the Chinese will let nothing happen to N Korea.
ping
Eh, the way the author uses “First strike capability” is not the way professionals in the field use the term.
ANY nuclear weapon is technically a “first strike capability” in the way Fisher uses it.
The couple dozen ICBMs that China first fielded during the Reagan administration were a “first strike capability” because they could reach the US, and if they wanted to they could ready them and launch them, and take out several US cities, and there’s nothing we could do to stop them (and not much we could do now to stop them).
Of course, we could still annihilate Chinese civilization in a second strike response.
What pros USUALLY mean by “first strike” capability is an ability to almost completely disarm an opponent preventing a second strike...meaning it might MAKE SENSE for a non-crazy leader to launch a first strike.
Even when all the Jins and JL-2s and tunnel-based ICBMs are fielded by the Chinese, they still have ZERO capability to disarm the US.
The hundreds of warheads on undectable US SSBNs at sea would still end Chinese civilization in a second strike.
I said nothing about their nuclear capability. That is a very different equation. It is also unlikely they would use a nuclear strike against their neighbors, with the possible exception of Japan, who could very rapidly assemble its own nukes.
To date, the Chinese effort has been to extend their territorial waters to the coasts of all their neighbors, declaring ownership of all the islands and resources within. But the purpose of doing this is to conform to international standards of resource exploitation, weirdly enough.
Their methods have been aggressive, but gradually aggressive, shouldering out their competition instead of getting too blatant about it. And this seems to be their historical pattern.
If you look at their submarine fleet, much of it is coastal, brown water type. They can only substantially use their more advance submarines to be troublesome to their neighbors. And the US navy in the western Pacific.
http://www.strategypage.com/fyeo/howtomakewar/databases/submarine_database/submarines.asp
Send a thank-you note to the “free trade” advocates.
You are correct but also assume any president would destroy Chinese civilization when China possesses a second strike which can do the same to us.
It goes something like this. Once they are strong enough they move to take what they want in the Pacific. If we cant win there, can we afford to escalate? If they escalate and take out our bases, can we afford to retaliate?
Keep in mind Obama is degrading our conventional and nuclear forces, leaving us with increasingly unattractive options.
Just saying the Chinese build up and our disarmament are not good. Nor do I trust the Chinese to be rational and to resist using their shiny new toys forever.
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