Check out this long-delayed report now finally released...and being buried by our MSM.
Is it interesting to recall in contrast the cheery prognostications of uber-liberal Thomas PM Barnett, over at the USN War College (before finally getting fired this last December when he openly supported John Kerry), and ex-Freeper Poohbah, all through the last decade that such a war "will never happen."
China-U.S. Sea Showdown Predicted
By CHRISTOPHER P. CAVAS And ANDREW SCUTRO
DEFENSE NEWS, July 25, 2005
On July 19, the Pentagon finally released its annual assessment of
China’s military strength. It was expected months earlier but was reportedly held up because of its extreme sensitivity.
The 45-page, congressionally mandated report for 2005 finds that the People’s Republic has continued modernizing its armed forces to close a “perceived technology gap between modern Western forces and its own,” while refining its doctrine to include asymmetric and unconventional means.
The report estimates China’s 2005 defense budget to be $90 billion, behind only the U.S. and Russia, “the largest in Asia” and just a fraction of the U.S.’s roughly half-trillion-dollar defense budget.
The report — vetted by other agencies and departments — includes inventories of China’s intercontinental ballistic missile force, which can hit all of the United States except southern Florida. Its expanding naval and air forces as well as geopolitical considerations, like the demand for oil to fuel its economy, are highlighted.
Of particular interest to the U.S. Navy is China’s acquisition of eight quiet Russian-built, Kilo-class submarines and four Sovremenny-class destroyers. Any Chinese aspirations to create a global navy seem to be remote with the absence of aircraft carriers or significant replenishment assets.
Also of concern has been China’s possible development of over-the- horizon sensors and guided ballistic missiles for use against ships, although few details are given in the report.
China’s naval buildup is a natural consequence of its strategic position, an Asian affairs analyst told a Washington audience June 20.
“From a Beijing point of view,” retired U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Michael McDevitt said at an American Enterprise Institute seminar on future U.S. Navy strategy, “the vast majority of their outstanding, unresolved sovereignty or strategic issues are maritime in nature.”
As a result, McDevitt said, “control of the western Pacific by the U.S. Navy is certainly the greatest potential spoiler” of China’s ability to deal with those issues.
McDevitt, an East Asia expert with the Center for Naval Analyses’ Center for Strategic Studies, Washington, said the greatest combat threat the Chinese pose to the United States is a “tremendous capability to turn out a lot of conventionally tipped ballistic missiles.” Should the Chinese develop an ability to maneuver those missiles — rather than have them simply fall from a ballistic target track — “that would be a significant denial capability,” he said.
Bob Work, an analyst with the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said concern about Chinese military expansion does not automatically translate into conflict. He said the U.S. Navy logically would take the measure of any rising and potentially competitive military power.
The Navy wants to maintain a “hedge against a disruptive maritime competition in China.” But, he added, such a hedge “doesn’t mean you have to fight them.”
McDevitt recommended several courses for the Navy to counter China’s rise in maritime power:
• Maintain air superiority in the Taiwan Strait as a barrier to Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
• Prepare to disrupt the targeting system China would use to control ballistic missiles, and develop a capability to destroy the missiles in flight.
• Improve its anti-submarine capabilities.
• Move more nuclear attack subs from Atlantic to Pacific.
The model for Chinese naval development seems to be “the Soviet Union sea-denial strategy, updated with Chinese characteristics,” McDevitt said, noting such a force would feature land-based aircraft carrying cruise missiles. The strategy includes using subs offensively, similar to what the Soviets did, and creating a “modest” amphibious capability “to deal with the Taiwan problem.”
The primary difference with the Chinese, McDevitt said, is a developing effort to create maneuverable ballistic missiles, something the Soviets never did. The threat, he said, is “the thing I think has most people in the U.S. Navy concerned.” But the missile’s targeting network “would be highly vulnerable to disruption.”