Posted on 01/19/2009 7:16:06 PM PST by neverdem
About a decade ago the foreign policy establishment was busy dismissing China's efforts to build a powerful, modern military. Writing in the Washington Post in 1997, Michael Swaine, a China specialist then at the RAND corporation, declared that the "enduring deficiencies in China's military logistics system call into question its ability to operate [naval and aviation] weapons over a sustained period, particularly outside China's borders." Well, right now, Chinese naval vessels are deploying in the Gulf of Aden to assist in the international anti-piracy mission. It's 4,000 miles from China to the Gulf of Aden.
Swaine further predicted that China "will remain at least a full generation behind the world's leading military powers." In January 2007, Beijing used a ground-based medium range ballistic missile to destroy one of its own aging weather satellites--an impressive technological accomplishment that only two other nations, the United States and the Soviet Union, have ever achieved.
In 1999, the Brookings scholars Bates Gill and Michael O'Hanlon concluded in an article--"Power Plays . . . While There's Less to the Chinese Threat than Meets the Eye," also in the Washington Post--that China's "ballistic missiles will be hard-pressed to defeat Taiwan's military or sink nearby U.S. ships." Yet the Defense Department's 2008 assessment of China's military noted that "PLA planners are focused on targeting surface ships at long ranges from China's shores. . . . One area of investment involves combining conventionally-armed ASBMs [anti-ship ballistic missiles] based on . . . C4ISR [DoD-speak for command, control, communication, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance] for geo-location and tracking of targets, and onboard guidance systems for terminal homing to strike surface ships or their onshore support infrastructure." China's effort to threaten U.S. ships at sea is taken seriously today, as is shown by the debate over whether the Navy's next generation of carrier-based aircraft has sufficient range to accomplish their missions without forcing U.S. carriers to sail within areas of the Pacific to which China seeks to deny access.
A 1998 Foreign Policy Research Institute article written by Avery Goldstein asserted that Beijing was so far behind other advanced industrial states that "successful modernization will leave China with forces by the second or third decade of the next century most of which would have been state of the art in the 1990s." This observation retains some validity, but there is nothing primitive about China's effort to deny the U.S. Navy access to large strategic swaths of the Western Pacific. Indeed, the last few weeks have produced the prospect of another particularly important advance in the Chinese military's steady transformation into a modern, serious, powerful force.
On the last day of 2008, the Asahi Shimbun reported that China is planning to begin construction of two medium-sized aircraft carriers--a contemporary navy's most flexible instrument of power projection--in its Shanghai yards this year. They are scheduled for launch in 2015. The article also repeated widely circulated information that the shipyards in the Yellow Sea port of Dalian are putting the finishing touches on a refurbishment of the 55,000 ton Soviet-built Kuznetsov-class carrier, the Varyag, a vessel that a Chinese company with connections to the People's Liberation Army purchased in 1998 and then towed to China from the Black Sea in 2002.
The Soviet carrier was a good platform to learn--in established Chinese tradition--the architecture, design, and gross characteristics of the aircraft carrier. As a training platform, the Varyag will provide indispensable experience for future carrier pilots and support personnel in the demanding business of naval carrier aviation. China should have three operational aircraft carriers to add to its submarine and surface fleets around the midpoint of the next decade.
All this tracks with the Pentagon's 2008 evaluation of Chinese military power, which noted: "China has an active aircraft carrier research and design program," and "if the leadership were to so choose, the PRC shipbuilding industry could start construction of an indigenous platform by the end of this decade." In November, the director of the foreign affairs office of China's defense ministry, Major General Qian Lihua, told the Financial Times that "the question is not whether you have an aircraft carrier, but what you do with your aircraft carrier." The following month China's defense ministry spokesman, Huang Xueping, offered similar public comments, observing that the protection of national interests required China to undertake carrier aviation.
Aircraft carriers are not only important as a symbol of a great or growing military power. They are useful and tremendously adaptable instruments of force. We are still only witnessing the beginning of China's naval build-up, but the carriers will have a profound impact on her ability to project military force as disputes with its neighbors, including Japan, over potentially energy-rich sea beds and islands in the South and East China Seas fester. The carriers will also give China greater control over the passage of oil from the Middle East and increase Beijing's military influence in Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. They will support possible future Chinese claims to Asian hegemony. They will force Japan to consider construction of similar instruments of naval force. The successful operation of the midsize carriers China envisions would lay the operational, logistic, command and control, and tactical foundation for building vessels with the--much greater--striking power and range of the U.S. Navy's Nimitz-class carriers.
That's not all, though. The initial focus of China's carriers is likely to be to the south and west, but the vast Pacific lies immediately beyond the chain of islands and land formations that extend south from Japan through the Philippines. The wide but penetrable moat between these islands and the Chinese mainland offers bastions for her growing force of nuclear-propelled, intercontinental ballistic missile-carrying submarines, as the islands themselves shield China from the open ocean. But the eventual passage of her carriers eastward, beyond the moat, re-establishes the potential for naval competition in the Pacific that disappeared with the defeat of the Imperial Japanese navy in 1945.
This challenge did not appear suddenly like a dragon from the mists of China's famous stone forests. The Chinese have been working towards a naval aviation capability for many years. A summer 2008 Congressional Research Service report noted an Indian naval analyst's observation that the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has been planning for large naval combatants like carriers and amphibious vessels for a quarter of a century.
A safe and effective naval aviation capability requires mastery of a host of design, operational, logistic, training, and command skills. China has been addressing these deliberately and methodically. Courses for future carrier and amphibious ship commanding officers began at the Guangzhou Naval Academy in 1985. Two years later, the same academy, in sensible imitation of the U.S. Navy's tradition of selecting qualified pilots to command aircraft carriers, initiated a program for young PLAN pilots to prepare them to command ships. These officers are reaching the correct seniority, level of experience, and age to become the PLAN's first carrier commanders. Negotiations with European companies for construction of large amphibious ships took place in the late 1990s. A little over two years ago, the Russian press reported that China was negotiating to purchase as many as 48 SU-33 fighter aircraft, which are built to be launched and recovered by aircraft carriers and can be refueled in flight. In September 2008, an article in Jane's Defence Weekly reported that 50 students had begun a course of study at the Dalian Naval Academy intended to prepare them to become the PLAN's first fixed-wing aircraft carrier pilots.
The Chinese carriers will build on one of the PLAN's most significant accomplishments: the creation of a fleet of attack and ballistic missile submarines. This began, as the carrier program did with the Varyag, with the purchase of Russian subs in the 1990s, specifically the Kilo-class conventional-powered attack submarine of which China now possesses 12 (the Chinese have also acquired powerful surface combatants from Russia). The PLAN's submarine force continues to experience significant growth, in both size and capability, as several new classes of nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines armed with rockets of increasing range are being added to its force.
If we assume the year 2020 as a reasonable target for China's gaining genuine competency at naval aviation--particularly the joint operation of carriers with the rest of a fleet--it will have taken just 35 years for China to transform its navy from a large collection of aging World War II landing ships, patrol boats, shore-based aircraft, and submarines with very limited range into a modern naval force with an offensive ballistic missile capability. It will be able to project power and will offer the U.S. Navy a serious challenge in the Pacific. The span is about the same amount of time that it took Japan to turn its coastal defense navy into the battle fleet that destroyed a Russian rival at the Battle of Tsushima Strait in May 1905.
There are numerous similarities between China's and Japan's rise as naval powers. Mao Zedong's Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward isolated and impoverished China--leaving it with a technologically backward military--as two centuries of Tokugawa rule had isolated and impoverished Japan. Both countries looked abroad for help. China depended initially on Russian naval technology. Japan looked to Holland, France, and especially England to acquire large modern ships as a precursor to developing their own naval industrial base. Both countries depend heavily on the seaborne delivery of critical natural resources. China and Japan--at different times, of course, and at significantly different degrees of national assertiveness--looked to naval forces as the symbol and instrument of broader regional and international ambitions. Japan built a world-class navy in three and a half decades with large strategic consequences for America and the world. China is well on its way toward a similar accomplishment, with the potential for similar consequences.
The U.S. Navy's response to the PLAN's deliberate and steady progress has been diffident. Dismissive of increasing Chinese naval capabilities at first, U.S. naval commentators have lately adopted a more harmonious position as the gulf between the PLAN's reach and grasp has narrowed. Admiral Dennis Blair, former commander of the U.S. Pacific Command and now in line to become the new administration's director of national intelligence, wrote in 2007 that "China is on a positive trajectory" and argued that "the U.S. should offer to involve China in bilateral and multilateral military operations for the common good." Thomas Barnett, a researcher and a professor at the Naval War College until 2004, urged in a 2005 article ("The Chinese Are Our Friends") in Esquire that the president stop the "rising tide of Pentagon propaganda on the Chinese 'threat' and tell Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld . . . that our trigger pullers on the ground today deserve everything they need to conduct counterinsurgency operations."
Whether or not it shares these views of Chinese benignity, the Navy has drifted in recent years. At about 280 combatants, fleet size today is less than half its level during the Reagan administration. The Navy says it needs an additional 33 ships to carry out its various global missions, but the needed increase eludes its leadership. The costs of shipbuilding have increased without effective restraint, and one new class of large surface combatants--the Zumwalt class of destroyers--was cancelled. Another--the Littoral Combat ship--saw overruns double the cost of the first ship and the number to be purchased fall by nearly a fifth. (The price remains stratospheric for a vessel whose most immediate mission would be to chase speedboat-borne pirates.) The programs to replace aircraft carriers as they reach the end of their useful service lives are in irons as a result of a clash between previous DoD decisions that restrict the size of the next carrier and the expansive requirements of the critical systems planned for the next generation of carriers.
Even without the likelihood that China's next large step in developing its navy is the addition of aircraft carriers, the United States needed to increase its combatant fleet. Continued missteps that result in a diminishing U.S. Navy at the same time that China's naval force grows are an invitation to change the balance of power in Asia, the Pacific, and the world.
The Obama administration should use part of its proposed economic stimulus package to begin a naval restoration program that will increase the combatant fleet by at least 15 percent before 2016, and the program should not be relegated to future budget years, which are as changeable as the weather. A Naval Recovery Act should include an immediate advance in the schedule for constructing a new carrier, thus eliminating the undesirable possibility that the Navy will be short one for several years. Similar efforts should aim at drawing Japan closer, developing our connections with the Indian navy, reestablishing a naval base in the Philippines, and building a relationship with Vietnam that could eventually support a U.S. naval presence. Offsetting China's efforts to deny the United States access to our Western Pacific friends and allies requires thoughtful statecraft as well as effective naval forces.
Allowing the current U.S. naval slippage to continue will result in a combat fleet of a size we haven't seen since 1911. Combined with the parallel growth in the Chinese navy and the certainty that Beijing's leadership will use it to fill the vacuums created by a diminishing U.S. naval presence, this would be more damaging and strategically far-reaching than any of the Bush administration's mistakes. The PLAN's likely entry into carrier aviation is interesting for what it says about China's long-term strategy and objectives. How we respond is far more important.
Seth Cropsey is a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. He served as deputy undersecretary of the Navy in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, as well as in the U.S. Navy.
I plead guilty to targeting wallmart. I have not crossed their threshold in several years, and I am not a cost co member, and I buy American when I can. I would have mentioned every other chain store in what is left of the USA, but I tend to keep my posts short. The idea sending my dollars to the baby killing Communists in China just to save a couple of bucks while hiding behind the excuse that I am hurting the unions is beyond even my conscience. Privately owned company’s that operate in China are required to sell stock to the communist party. The party gets a share of the profits that are generated, and are using that money to support their military goals. Every worker in China is a Union Member, but the party keeps the pay low and so they make more money to continue to build their military, and keep the party leaders rich. As for the scrap, “Sent” may be an inaccurate description, but in view of their aims at becoming a world power I believe I used it as hyperbole to point out how complicit we are with these goals.
Our navy is larger than the next several largest navies combined... and China's is not among the top ten... and China's navy is not tooling up for a fight against US ships in open waters.
I think we might avoid obeying short-sighted headline-logic before committing billions unnecessarily.
Where have you been for the last 8 years?
I refuse to believe, without some actual substantiating citations, that China is approaching our quality and quantity in any significant areas. Since you've been tracking this since 2000, I'm hoping you can back up this statement. Please tell us what areas of China's naval forces actually rival ours. Our fleet is, by far, the largest and and most advanced. Heck, I'll doubt that China can yet rival France or the Brits in a straight-up head-to-head naval fight. (Now the future may hold a different story, but for 2009, I won't fear China's navy without specifics.)
China is building a navy for just ONE reason.
A fast dash across the Taiwan Straits and overwhelming the Taiwanese Navy and any US/Japanese ships in the western Pacific,, with enough subs and aircraft to hold up any large response just long enough for “World Opinion” to force a U.N. cease-fire, with China in control of Taiwan, under the threat of a global nuclear war.
Most of those ships will be cannon fodder, but if they meet thier goals, then they have served thier purpose.
They are fielding their own VLS missile systems on their Frigates and their destoryers now controlled by very modern and sophisticated target acquisition and radars. The have developed and deployed PARS on their newer destroyers.
We have denuded and defanged our Perry class frigates to the point thet they are now good for only ASW operations, limited fire support with a single 76mm gun, and drug interdiction. The new Chinese Frigates are very competitive in all areas in that regard, and exceed our frigates in missile and aircraft defense significantly now.
Our destroyer fleet is better than theirs by far in numbers...but their newer ones are coming much closer in capabiity...and they are now capable in their ship building of building more and faster than we are.
The Chinese have developed and deployed aerial refuleing and AWACS capabilities that rival our own in terms of their basic function...meaning our absolute advantage and force multipliers in those areas have been significantly erroded...particularly if we have to operate close to their airspace.
They are adding very many new and capable SU-30 and SU-35 type aircraft, the newer ones licensed built there with their own newer electronics. Again, in the airspace close to their shores, they will be a very tough not to crack if a confrontation and crisis over Taiwan were to develop. For us, it would be better for it to come sooner rather than later with their growth trends. <> They are fielding advanced diesel-electric AIP submarines aorund their coasts and out to the 1st and 2nd island chains which are very dangerous to our own vessels and submarines in those waters. We have no such vessels, but clearly mantain a much higher quality and qauntity in nuclear attrack subs.
As a measure of how dangerous such SS subs are, and how seriously we take them, we ourselves (the US Navy) leased a Swedish sub and its crew for almost two years to try and fine tune our own acquisition adn targeting of such subs. They are very dangerous and offer the Chinese a relatively cheap defense (when compared to fielding dozens of nuclear subs) in the littoral and close-in waters we can expect to confront them in.
They are rapidly building new as well SSNs which have a LA or ADCAP LA class capainbility...not as good as Sea Wolf or Virginia...but a threat just the same, particularly if concentrated in any numbers...and particularly in scenarios where a operation could set several of their SS subs and one of their SSNs against one or two of our SSNs.
They have now produced 2-3 new SSBNs (and are building more rapidly) that are quite impressive when you look at where they have come from, Thir SLBM technology is now making them threats to potentiaally all of mainland America...if they can get into the ocean...and the entire west coast from where they sit in protected areas on or near their coasts. This is a huge balance shifter in the area, because they also threaten our allies from these moving ICBM bases that we would have a tough time getting at.
Now, do not get me wrong. Our technology and our maintenance and quantities in many areas still exceed theirs...but we are losing ground steadily and there are areas wher, as I say, they are nearing parity.
They are also focused in the WestPac, and so our overall numbers will not be brought to bear against them in one theater because we have too many other responsibilites and they know it.
Viewing the extensive infromation I have put together on that site is sobering when you consider the trends. We have signifiacntly downsized in the last ten years while they have been going forward like gangbusters. We need to recognize it and respond accordingly. That is the whole point.
You can lay a lot of that at the feet of Environmentalists, too. The most environmentally friendly steel mill ever built in the US was only used as a movie set before being dismantled and shipped to China. The regs had changed yet again as it was completed, and it never got into full scale production. It was sold to recoup losses.
ping
Thanks. See my posts 35, 40, and 46.
Well, during WWII, the US built roughly 25 Essex class carriers, thereabouts and about 50 or so light carriers. Are you suggesting we go into that same mode today? Except to build up the fleet of another 25 or so Nimitz class carriers? Not to mention the 5000 or so airplanes for them (F-18?). And their supporting ships and the wages for the crews.
Well, it'd be good for the economy.
No need for a World War production output at this point...just recognizing that if we stay strong and maintain, say a 600 ship Navy, that we might avoid having to do such a thing.
Sooner or later, we are going to bump into the Red Chinese. They are acting like they are preparing for it.
Well, you almost have your wish, the US navy has 11 carriers, of which 10 are Nimitz class. So, another 3 and you’d be there. I don’t know how many MEU’s there are in the US navy. Three according to wikipedia. Of course, building another 11 MEU’s would probably be cheaper than the 3 additional Nimitz class carriers.
Now we have 11, 10 Nimitz and the Enterprise. When the Gerald Ford comes on board, the Enterprise will be retired.
In terms of Amphibious operations, we have 11 total large deck Amphib Assault ships (Wasp and Tarawa) that make up the heart of large MEU Phibrons, with enough other vessels to put 11 at sea if necessary....except with maintenance, refit, and overhaul, you really are going to have only 5-6 completely available at any one time outside of a serious issue requiring a surge, in which case you may get 7-8 then.
14 of each would be better in terms of being prepared in the evnetuality of any serious challenge in one area of the world, while maintaining a strong posture elsewhere to ensure that nobody tries to coordinate and suck our forces dry in one area so that can come at us or our allies in another.
With 14, we could keep 7-8 deployed, or ready to deploy at all times while the others went through maintenance, refit, or overhaul...and we could surge 9-12 when necessary.
Well, yes, I suppose a 600 ship navy would send would be aggressors a message. But the US military is stretched rather thin. Maintaining so many bases does take away from new equipment. Also, many operations are funded by the US military that go into the local economy of where they are operating. Just the cost of the Iraq war alone would have been enough money to restore the navy to the Reagan era fleet.
To really address America's military needs, Americans do need to address the overall outlay of social benefits. About half of America's $3 trillion federal budget goes to paying out pensions, social security, etc. The other half is where the military budget of $600 billion comes from. And of course, much of that $600 billion goes into the local economies of where the US is operating.
Unlike China, they neither have operations overseas or provide a social safety net to their citizens (though that part will be changing).
I'm not convinced America needs to worry about China, but if I was, that's how I would address the issue, to reexamine all social outlays and America's military commitments overseas.
Thanks neverdem. I guess this might explain why I saw an article on Xinhua, titled something like, “China won’t seek world hegemony”.
Cheers!
I am well aware of how important it is to many Americans (especially good ol boys like yourself) that there is a clear US military advantage.
However, most Chinese are not interested in an arms race and are more concerned with economic progress. They will leave the arms race to people like you. Most Chinese want to see their navy add a few carriers. But most do not want to stretch their resources across the globe.
As long as Americans see it as their role, then by all means, send your own sons and daughters across the globe and let China's sons and daughters work for IBM :)
"Good ol boys" like myself?
I'm Minnesotan. Uffda.
As it is, I would much rather see the US remain the Arsenal of Democracy, than see it knuckle under to the Arsenal of Maoism.
Hint: many Chinese want to come to the States, and then stay. Happens with people from all over the world. Very few want to go to the Third-World economic disaster sites like China.
Cheers!
I'm Minnesotan. Uffda.
I believe the good ol boys are in all parts of the country. But you maybe right, a co-worker of mine (an African American) years ago told me I needed to be a little more mindful who I referred to as a good ol boy and said I didn't know what a good ol boy was until I lived in the deep South :) So, I take him at his word. He was from Mississippi.
As it is, I would much rather see the US remain the Arsenal of Democracy, than see it knuckle under to the Arsenal of Maoism.
You'll find more Maoist outside of China than inside China. And greater numbers in countries that have less people than some of China's cities. But most Chinese want a deterent force, but they in no way want to compete with the US in that area. Americans seem to value fatigues more than Chinese do. Chinese value the lab coat and business suit. So, I think there should be no disagreements. However, over the course of the next 4-5 decades, it will be increasingly taxing for Americans to keep that edge as China industrializes.
Hint: many Chinese want to come to the States, and then stay. Happens with people from all over the world. Very few want to go to the Third-World economic disaster sites like China.
I have no misgivings about China, I know they are still relatively poor. But I also know my history. Ireland was once one of the poorest country in Europe, along with Italy and Spain. Yet, today, those countries are classiefied as developed nations. Many came to the US to excsape their impoverished homeland. This was also true with Japan and more recently with South Korea (less Koreans are immigrating to the US than just a couple decades ago). South Korea is teetering on being classified as a developed nation, and yet, 50 years ago, it was an improverished agricultural society.
Heck, even the Scandanavians and Germans came over in large numbers (in the 1800's). So what assumption can we say about the homeland they left behind?
China is changing, so much so, that half the world's construction now occur in China. And I'm convinced, over the next decade and half, more than half the world's construction will occur. Some reverse migration is already happening with Chinese immigrants (the youth anyway).
Keep trying.
Cheers!
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