Posted on 05/19/2018 4:13:49 PM PDT by Steve Schulin
... China’s programme to build a Navy and formulate its doctrine was initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1979. The pace of construction of warships and submarines picked up in the past decade. By 2000, China had a Navy of 19 large surface combatants and 63 small surface combatants like frigates and corvettes. Construction was accelerated and in 2016 alone the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) commissioned 18 warships, including destroyers, corvettes and guided missile frigates. The PLAN plans to have a total of 60 “light missile frigates” in its inventory, with one missile frigate to be launched every three weeks.
(Excerpt) Read more at sundayguardianlive.com ...
The article ends with "It is clear that despite temporary recalibration of foreign policy to present a “softer” face, China will continue to advance issues it feels are important to its sovereignty and recovery of so-called ‘lost’ territories."
Yeah but how good is their ASW? Otherwise it’s all targets.
An excellent background on Beijing’s true motives can be obtained by reading the testimony of retired naval captain James Farnell’s Thursday testimony before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. An excerpt, with link at the end:
...If one has not read Xi Jinping’s words and realized the supremacist nature of the “China Dream” and carefully watched the nature of China’s “rise”, then one might innocently ask the obvious question: “Why does it matter that the PRC seeks regional, or even global hegemony?”
That is, why can’t the world simply abide a “rising China”, a seemingly benign term so often employed by Beijing’s propaganda organs and PRC supporters worldwide.
After all, fewer would be concerned if, say, a “rising Brazil” or a “rising India” sought regional hegemony and proclaimed a desire to “lead the world into the 21st Century”.The answer goes to the heart of the nature of China’s leadership, and what it does.
Under the CCP, the PRC is an expansionist, coercive, hyper
-nationalistic, military and economically powerful, brutally repressive, totalitarian state.
The world has seen what happens when expansionist totalitarian regimes such as this are left unchallenged and unchecked. In a world of this type of hegemon, people
are subjects—simply property—of the state, and ideals such as democracy, inalienable rights, limited government, and rule of law have no place.
Clear empirical indicators directly contradict the oft
-quoted pledge by China’s leaders of their commitment to pursue a “peaceful rise”, one in “harmony” with the rest of
Asia and the world. By its expansionist actions and words, China has challenged the post-WW II norms of international behavior and, most importantly, the peace and stability the Indo-Pacific region has enjoyed over the past 70 years.
For instance, in spite of having a GDP per capita on a par with the Dominican Republic, China’s leadership has invested staggering amounts of national treasure in a world-leading complex of ballistic missiles, satellites, and fiber
-linked command centers with little utility but to destroy U.S. aircraft carriers on demand. With China’s children kept indoors because of hazardous levels of pollution, a health care system in crisis, toxic rivers, a demographic time bomb caused by government-directed population expansion and then forced contraction, and only one third the GDP per capita of the United States, Beijing chooses to spend its precious resources on better ways to kill Americans and her allies.
Much of that investment has gone into the PLA Navy. The momentum created by the PLA Navy’s rapid advances in the maritime domain threatens to do for the rest of the
world what the Communist Party has done for China and the neighbors it has conquered, like Xinjiang and Tibet, or politically and economically dominates like Cambodia or Laos, as the PRC pursues what President Xi calls his“China Dream”.
The PLA Navy is China’s point of the spear in its quest for global hegemony. As I speak to you today, the PLA Navy consists of over 330 surface ships and 66 submarines, nearly 400 combatants. As of 4 May 2018, the U.S. Navy consists of 283 battle force ships: 211 surface ships and 72 submarines
By 2030, it is estimated the PLA Navy will consist of some 550 ships: 450 surface ships and 99
submarines.
As currently debated in the halls of the Congress and Pentagon, it remains unclear if the U.S. Navy of 2030 will even reach a total of 355 ships and submarines. Numbers matter. In the past, it was fair to say that numbers of hulls, or even tonnage, wasn’t a complete measure of force-on-force capabilities, and that American technology would outweigh the PLAN’s numbers.Today, it is no longer
credible to make that argument. From a technological standpoint, the PRC has quickly achieved parity with U.S. Navy standards and capacities for warship and
submarine production. PLA Navy ships and submarines do not have to match U.S. naval capabilities precisely: they just have to be good enough to be able to achieve
more hits to win any given battle.
Link: https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/james_e._fanell_hpsci_testimony_-_final_-_17may18.pdf
Of that vaunted Chinese fleet, most ships are for coastal defense not force projection. China cannot long sustain the pace as its economy is falling among other financial woes.
” Otherwise it’s all targets.”
Let me know when they are able to put a carrier battle group on station off the US west coast and sustain it for 90 days.
Otherwise this is little more than hand-wringing for cowards and fools.
Hell, they can’t even do that off the coast of JAPAN!.
China does not have a blue water navy, no matter how much they pretend.
“From a technological standpoint, the PRC has quickly achieved parity with U.S. Navy standards and capacities for warship and
submarine production. PLA Navy ships and submarines do not have to match U.S. naval capabilities precisely: they just have to be good enough to be able to achieve
more hits to win any given battle.”
Only a fool hoping to sell books would write that, and only a plain ‘ol fool would believe it.
They have 31 Destroyers, 20 of which could be called modern. 50 Frigates, 25 of which are modern.
Of their 73 submarines, only 25 of nuclear and you can hear them from 100 miles away...even when not listening for them.
The Japanese Navy could defeat them.
The US Pacific Fleet could Easily SINK EVERYTHING THEY HAVE. Likely in a week.
Thanks, Ghost. I hope that excerpt and the linked pdf are read by multitudes. I was tickled by the way Capt. Farnell described how he closely observed Chinese actions for decades, and based his predictions on those observations — as opposed to trying to interpret what Chinese leaders said. He likened his approach to how Jane Goodall studied apes.
Their new Type 95 SSN’s are very quiet. They’re building very modern new destroyers and frigates.
They are building a heavy carrier that no longer uses the jump ramp.
They’re building and they’re learning. Fast.
The 50 IQ chi-comm apes don’t have a clue how to anneal a bolt. Why would anyone think the commie apes know how to float a boat?
Do you happen to know how much of that 42.8% reflects mandatory “It’s ok to be gay” training and similar social indoctrination spending? I’m very concerned that US policy is heavily shaped by folks who don’t share what I’ve come to call “America’s Principles”, including those “self evident Truths” presented in the Declaration of Independence. I agree that we have a similar type of problem with war mongers, but I don’t think that continuing to build up China’s capability and influence is a course that serves our goal of securing the Blessings of Liberty for our Posterity.
“Their new Type 95 SSN’s are very quiet.”
The rough equivalent of the US LA Class at 95db. A Virginia Class could cruise along side it and not be detected.
And they have precisely one of them.
While their new Frigates and Destroyers copy the US ships in form, none of their radars or weapons are nearly as good. And this is the NEW stuff they are developing and building, while ours are at sea...in number.
Wake me up when they put a Carrier Battle Group off the coast of Japan and sustain it for 90 days. I reckon that’s at least 20 years out.
IF their economy can sustain this pace.
Thanks expat - what brought me here tonight was a similar story out of the Philippines about the Chinese bomber airplanes that arrived at one of the South China Sea artificial islands this week. But it didn’t add enough news to what had previously been posted here to warrant a new thread. The news that caught my eye in the Philippines story was that the new base gave China the capability, for the first time, to send bombers to any location in the Philippines.
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