TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER

China's communist leadership has long anticipated that to militarily subdue democratic Taiwan it will first need to win a battle against the United States. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is now preparing for one specific, and key, battle. It is developing methods to disable or sink American aircraft carriers and gathering the specific force packages to do so. With such a strike, Beijing hopes to quickly terminate American involvement in a Taiwan War.

SHIFTING PRIORITIES
The early 1990s saw much evidence of carrier-related research and nationalist-political advocacy, particularly from the PLA Navy (PLAN), to build a Chinese aircraft carrier. But, following the political crises of 1995 and 1996, which saw the Clinton administration deploy two battle groups around the carriers Independence and Nimitz near Taiwan in response to threatening PLA exercises in March 1996, sinking a U.S. carrier became much more pressing than building one.

In developing that capability, Beijing hopes to deter U.S. military assistance to Taiwan, and by actually sinking one, to terminate U.S. attempts to save the island. This strategy follows from the bias--a potentially dangerous one for China--that America's aversion to military casualties equates to its unwillingness to risk a real war over the fate of Taiwan. This is apparently a widely held view. It was expressed most boldly by Major General Huang Bin, a professor at the PLA National Defense University, in Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao daily newspaper on May 13:

"Missiles, aircraft, and submarines all are means that can be used to attack an aircraft carrier. We have the ability to deal with an aircraft carrier that dares to get into our range of fire. Once we decide to use force against Taiwan, we definitely will consider an intervention by the United States. The United States likes vain glory; if one of its aircraft carrier should be attacked and destroyed, people in the United States would begin to complain and quarrel loudly, and the U.S. president would find the going harder and harder."

SUMMONING COURAGE
General Huang's statement is in fact not especially audacious, considering that since the mid-1990s the weakness of aircraft carriers and the methods to attack them has been a frequent topic in China's military press. It would appear that the PLA is mustering its courage, trying to convince itself that it can with some success attack U.S. carriers. In October and November 2000, for example, after Russian Pacific-based fighters and bombers made surprise runs against the carrier Kitty Hawk, the People's Liberation Army Daily could barely conceal its glee, devoting three articles to the incident.

GATHERING FORCES
The PLA's apparently growing confidence is likely bolstered by the fact that it is also gathering the forces needed to confront U.S. carriers at a useful distance from the Mainland.

--Sensor Package. Finding an aircraft carrier group is aLMOST as important as attacking it. Understanding this, the PLA is investing in multiple layers of reconnaissance and surveillance systems. In space, it is expected to soon deploy the first of new generations of high-resolution electro-optical satellites and radar satellites, which are especially useful in piercing cloud cover. The PLA has been developing over-the-horizon (OTH) radar with ranges up to thousands of kilometers for a long time. And its Air Force will soon take delivery of its Russian A-50E AWACS to find ships at sea. But because radar can be jammed, it is likely that the PLA will also use hundreds of small fishing boats, as well as agents in Japan, to track U.S. naval forces.

--Air Strike Package. The PLA Air Force (PLAAF) is now beginning to cooperate with the Navy in conducting naval strikes. Later in this decade, elderly PLA Naval Air Force H-6 (Tu-16) bombers will be supplanted by eighty to 100 PLAAF Russian Sukhoi Su-30MKK and about twenty indigenous Xian JH-7A fighter bombers. Both will carry long-range antiradar or antiship missiles, some of which will have supersonic speeds that can defeat U.S. close-in weapon systems (CIWS) for defense against such missiles. Both will also have new long-range self-guided air-to-air missiles (AAM) like the Russian R-77 or the indigenous Project 129 AAM, that will approach the usefulness of U.S. missiles like the AIM-120 AMRAAM. This means that PLAAF fighters will soon have half a chance fighting their way to their targets.

--Sub-Strike Package. According to Russian press reports, China signed a contract on May 2 to purchase eight Project 636 KILO class conventional submarines, to be delivered in five years. The PLAN already has four KILOs, including two Project 636s, with advanced quieting technology that makes them very difficult to detect. The PLAN's new KILOs, however, will be armed with the Russian Novator CLUB antiship missile system. The CLUB-N is a 300km range cruise missile that looks like the American TOMOHAWK and can be configured for land-attack missions. The CLUB-S has a subsonic first stage with a 220km range, but also uses a rocket-powered second stage to defeat CIWS. In addition, the PLAN may now be building its fifth Project 039 or SONG class conventional submarine. Early difficulties with this class appear to have been solved: Series production is centering on an upgraded Project 039A version. For most of this decade, the PLAN will also have some twenty older MING class conventional submarines and approximately five older Project 091 HAN class nuclear-powered attack submarines. While these may be less effective than the KILOs or the SONGs, they will nevertheless greatly complicate the task of the defenders.

--Surface Strike Package. The PLAN is adding two new modernized Sovremenniy class destroyers to two already acquired. Armed with their hard-to-intercept supersonic 300km range YAKHONT and the 120km range MOSKIT missiles, these ships would likely wait behind the submarines and attacking aircraft. But the PLA may also be considering purchasing a SLAVA class cruiser from Ukraine. These are armed with sixteen 550km range GRANIT supersonic antiship missiles.

Surveillance/Targeting
--2-4 A-50E Awacs
--2-4 Optical and Radar Satellites
--Over The Horizon Radar

Air Strike
--80-100 Su-30MKK w 4x antiship missiles
--20 JH-7A w 2x antiship missiles
--?? J-10 w 2x antiship missiles

Missile Strike
--DF-21 intermediate range ballistic missile
--DF-15 short range ballistic missile
--Yakhont antiship missile
--Sunburn antiship missile
--Club Sub-launched antiship missiles
--Air-launched antiship missiles

--Other Strike Options. Another option mentioned in PLA literature is to attack carriers with long-range ballistic missiles. The former Soviet Union had considered this in the 1960s. With proper targeting, satellite navigation guidance and perhaps an enhanced radiation warhead, ballistic missile strikes could disable a carrier. The PLA can also be expected to make great use of deep-sea mines, such as its rocket-propelled EM-52, which could break the keel of a large ship. In addition, the PLA may use Special Forces to attempt to disable carriers in port and attack U.S. aircraft on foreign bases. This is especially critical, given that carriers now rely increasingly on land-based Navy and Air Force support aircraft.

CAN THEY DO IT?
It took the former Soviet Union more than twenty years to build a credible threat to U.S. carriers. China is trying to do so within this decade. To its credit, the PLA is rapidly gathering the right kinds of forces. Skeptics, however, will always question whether the PLA can use them in a sufficiently coordinated fashion to create maximum stress on carrier defenses. Once it has such forces in hand, the PLA will then have to marry layers of long-range sensors to force packages of air, submarine and surface ships armed with new long-range missiles. It may be that the Ukranian carrier Varyag, now being refurbished in a guarded Dalian shipyard, will best serve as a target ship to refine PLA carrier-attack doctrine and tactics. If properly used, the forces China is gathering could--at a minimum--stop one U.S. carrier battle group.

IMPLICATIONS FOR WASHINGTON
In a surprise attack scenario, given its strategic dependence on naval forces in East Asia, the United States might be able to muster only one carrier to support Taiwan. Strategic and economic pressures have reduced its fleet to thirteen carriers with smaller and less capable air wings. Former distinct fighter and attack aircraft are now melded in one platform, the F/A-18E/F. While this might be a convenient economical compromise for the Navy, it is not clearly superior to the Su-30MKK. Since 1999, the long-range antisubmarine function has been taken from the superb S-3 VIKING aircraft, and the number of E-2C HAWKEYE radar warning aircraft have been cut from five to four per air wing. It is time to reverse this trend. It is time to consider the systems needed to defeat China's gathering anticarrier forces if deterrence is to be sustained on the Taiwan Strait.

In the News/Activism forum, on a thread titled TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER, virgil wrote: If the Chinese attacked Taiwan and sunk a US carrier, how do you think Japan would react? Or all of the Pacific rim countries? China would be isolated. And they could just kiss the Panama Canal privleges good bye. We won't stand for that. America will protect its interests. Don't expect Europe to help though. They may sink the carrier with a lot of expenditure and a few lies, but we will hurt them where it counts. We'll send them back to the stone age from whence they recently came. Wal-Mart might have a problem though. Actually I think this article is floating about because there is also a big defense bill floating about in Congress right now.

Personally, I think that a war between China and the United States will go our way for one simple reason: they have to come and get us.

The hinge on which any Chinese invasion plan for Taiwan moves is the number of troopships and assault boats that can be sent across the Taiwan Strait. John Pike posted this to FAS back when he was with that outfit:

If you look real close, you'll find that it's an overlay of Operation NEPTUNE, the invasion of Normandy, on a map of the Taiwan Strait. The big mistake that Pike made was that he believes that there would be a landing in the North, while I suspect that the Chicoms would land in the southern lowlands to build up for the slog up the mountainous spine of the island.

There's a problem. The ROC's are a fairly well trained defense force of some 220,000 men on active duty. God knows how many can be called up on short notice. 21st Army Group was able to achieve local superiority in the decisive first hours of D-Day before OBWest could commit its infantry reserves to the battle. At present, I don't see the Chinese being able to master the Taiwan Strait until they really expand their navy. Otherwise, how can they get the bodies they need ashore to master the Taiwanese defense?

Look what the Chinese have to really do. They have to get about 300,000 infantry and support personnel from Fujian province well over 100 miles of water. This may include an airborne division landing, probably as a feint, up north or against Taiwanese communications nodes. To do that, they can't do it in junks. They need normal, real, honest-to-God transports and amphibious assault craft. They need tons o' Higgins Boats to make a forced assault against defended beaches.

Now then, all this doesn't happen in a vaccuum. China has to deal with the wider strategic problem of the Pacific theater. The Chinese are falling into the trap that the Japanese did of thinking in terms of the Decisive Battle. Americans thought in terms of a Decisive series of Campaigns. Allow me to illustrate.

If you look at the map, please notice the small chain of islands south of the Marianas called the Carolines. Japanese doctrine called for a decisive battleship gun duel in the region of the Carolines after the opening of hostilities. They wanted to draw the Americans out. The Americans, on the other hand, thought in terms of a multi-year campaign that would stretch from Pearl Harbor to the China coast.

One side was thinking in terms of one battle, while ignoring larger strategic and political questions that might have kept them from going to war in the first place. The other side was thinking in terms of a series of battles that would eventually lead to Tokyo Bay.

This is exactly what the Chinese are doing now. They are building themselves up for a decisive battle in the hopes that that a smashing victory can cow the Americans into submission. And that's just the political assumption that they have made.

Here is the dunderheaded military assumption: Japan will stay neutral and the United States will come charging into a Chinese missile trap like a wild bull. It won't happen that way. On the contrary, the Chinese will find, to their horror, that the U.S. Navy and the Combined Fleet will be working as allies in this war. After all, Japan cannot afford to allow China to control the sea lanes leading to the Home Islands.

The IJN is a formidable fighting force. Other than the United States and the Royal Navies, it is probably the best in the world.

I mentioned the need for the Chicoms to get 300,000 guys across by hook or by crook. Well, most of them are going in transports. We will have a war warning. You have to gather troops at Fujian province to load them onto the boats.

Now if you're Admiral Yang or somesutch, you have to look forward to a cruise missile curtain as your troopships are going accross the Strait. That's what the Americans are going to do to the fleet. The Chinese are thinking in terms of the naval battle. The Americans, thinking in several layers, are going to use bombers as cruise missile platforms with hunter/killer guidance, probably supplemented by orbiting drones, GPS systems, and attack submarines.

Some Chicoms will get ashore. Perhaps 25-75 thousand. That's not enough to take on a Taiwanese army desperate to defend the only homeland they've ever known (and probably defending a government that has just declared independence, as well...). But the pressure on the PLAN to go out and kill carriers will become immense, and that's when they'll do something really stupid.

Remember during the Falklands War when the General Belgrano came out to fight and perhaps kill the Invincible and the Hermes? Belgrano got a couple of fish amidships for its troubles and lost a couple of hundred guys. Think of the same thing on a massive scale. Only we will let the Chinese come out to play. Go back and look at the map. Imagine an American/Japanese task force of four to five carriers, plus innumerable destroyers, frigates, subs, support vessels, and hundreds of aircraft.

The "Combined Fleet" will be lined up in an arc from Pelielu in the south to the Bonins and the Home Islands in the North. We want them to go into that big void east of the Philippines! It's the Carolines in reverse from WWII. Only the Chinese must come to us to have a chance to win the war! I mean, this whole area is made for us. The pressure on our friend Admiral Yang to start bagging carriers will come right from the CCP's Military Committee itself. He doesn't attack, he goes in disgrace. And his family's political prospects go with it. You know, the cushy job his eldest son has in Beijing?

And the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy will go out into the Pacific. Past its mainland aircover. That's when we will see the biggest slaughter since the Great Marianas Turkey Shoot of 1944. Submarines, frigates. Air strike packages that would warm the cockles of the heart of any former FR aviator. The Imperial Japanese Navy will get its first surface kills since Leyte Gulf.

Sometime, as the Chinese troopships are picked off by cruise missiles, they won't be able to make it halfway across, and they'll stop coming. Meanwhile, the airborne division and the first wave that landed will be marooned. They will "cease resistance", so to speak, so that they can return to China with "face" intact. It will all be handled in a very Chinese fashion, so to speak, so that business interests will not be harmed in the long run.

This is how I know it's going to happen. I just don't see the Chinese being able to hold back from the need to kill a carrier. If we are successful in attritting their assault craft, and if that puts the whole campaign in jeopardy, then the Chinese have to come out to Play. That's when we win the war. We will not do things by the Chinese playbook.

And it will happen because the Chinese will be thinking in terms of a decisive naval action, while we will be thinking in terms of a decisive naval campaign.

Be Seeing You,

Chris

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.