Chinese Navy (PLAN) News & Discussions

[grey boy 2]

Panoramic night view at the Huangpu River(五一劳动节，魔都外滩观景的游人爆满，黄浦江畔的中外战舰也是彩灯高挂，高楼大厦的五彩霓虹时时有，满灯的威武战舰却不多见，魔都配战舰，“五一”的风景更美丽。)

 

[Zarvan]

 

[samsara]

Chinese Naval Shipbuilding: Measuring the Waves
An interview with Andrew S. Erickson
By Shannon Tiezzi
April 25, 2017
After a six-century hiatus, sea power development may once again find its center of gravity in the Asia-Pacific. While the Trump Administration plans a naval buildup, China is already well into a buildup of its own. A new book from Naval Institute Press explains why Beijing is making such waves, how big they are, and how great they might become. To learn more, The Diplomat’s Editor-in-Chief Shannon Tiezzi interviewed Naval War College professor Andrew S. Erickson, the editor of Chinese Naval Shipbuilding.

Tell me about your book. I understand that it’s the sixth volume in the joint China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI)-Naval Institute Press (USNI) series, “Studies in Chinese Maritime Development.”

That’s right! It’s the product of two great historic centers of American thinking on seapower: Newport and Annapolis.

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Here’s why we collaborated on this book: China’s maritime transformation is already making major waves. It’s not just one of this century’s most significant events, but part of an even greater sea change: for the first time in 600 years, sea power development may be flowing away from the Euro-Atlantic shipyards of the West. For the first time in nearly two millennia, it may be flowing toward a longtime land power that’s going seaward to stay. As Chinese mandarins and mariners chart their country’s new course, specificity is often scarce — yet ships are no abstraction. For all these reasons, it’s never been more important to assess what ships China can supply its navy and other sea forces with, today and tomorrow. From a Newport-based perspective, in particular, this raises three pressing questions: What are China’s prospects for success in key areas of naval shipbuilding? What are the likely results for China’s navy? What does this mean for the U.S. Navy (USN)?

To answer these questions, we assembled some of the world’s leading experts and linguistic analysts. Our contributors include sailors, scholars, and industry experts. They’ve commanded ships at sea, led naval programs ashore, seasoned intelligence analysts, toured Chinese vessels, invested in Chinese shipyards, and briefed leaders facing urgent national security decisions. China continues to lack transparency in important respects, but much has been revealed through such interdisciplinary analysis — a hallmark of CMSI efforts.

Accordingly, our contributors assess the impact of Beijing’s substantial economic resources, growing maritime focus, and uneven but improving defense industrial base on its prospects for success in key areas of naval shipbuilding; the likely results for China’s sea forces, particularly its navy; and the implications for the USN.

We do so in five thematic parts:

• The first section surveys the foundation and resources for China’s naval shipbuilding, providing an overall framework.
• The next three sections examine specialized subsets of China’s shipbuilding program: infrastructure, architecture and design, and impediments.
  • Section two, on shipyard infrastructure, surveys China’s vessel construction facilities and their production and evolution.
  • The third section covers Chinese naval architecture and design, from standards to production processes to civil-military disparities, and Beijing’s prospects for narrowing them through its preferred centralized approach.
  • Section four addresses remaining shipbuilding challenges for China.
• The final section returns to the strategic level by offering alternative futures, conclusions, and takeaways.

How close is China’s navy to challenging America’s as the world’s largest (in numbers) and strongest (in capabilities)?

China’s shipbuilding industry is poised to make the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) the world’s second largest navy by 2020, and — if current trends continue — a combat fleet that in overall order of battle (i.e., hardware-specific terms) is quantitatively and even perhaps qualitatively on a par with that of the USN by 2030.

By imbibing lessons learned and underwritten by others, Beijing benefits from a second-mover advantage. Purchasing foreign naval systems, pushing licensed production well past contractual limits, and even engaging in cyber theft has allowed China to focus less on research, and more on development. It has “leap frogged” some naval development, engineering, and production steps to achieve tremendous cost and time savings by leveraging work done by the United States and other countries. We explore this process of “imitative innovation” in depth. At the same time, the PLAN’s growing fleet will incur a rising maintenance bill as the new ship classes mature, following the time-worn naval adage that “you buy a boat three times” as the costs of vessel ownership and upkeep surpass the outlays for the initial purchase.

China’s evolutionary approach — one of the benefits of building multiple kinds of ships rapidly — offers its architects and engineers broad exposure. It typically takes about 10 repeats in construction of a given type of ship to maximize production efficiency, however. China’s now engaged in longer production runs of fewer classes, which could reflect a change in its development process, and that it’s learning certain efficiencies.

Workforce quality – of paramount importance – remains a challenge; but for China in many respects it’s easier to attract workers than in the United States — particularly amid the current global commercial shipbuilding bust. An evolutionary approach to ship design also preserves flexibility amid uncertainty concerning what one’s potential adversaries will develop next. There are ways to offset uncertainties by employing common systems and subcomponents.

Most importantly, China’s sea forces have some significantly different missions than their American counterparts. In the words of Princeton professor Thomas Christensen, they are “posing problems” even without fully “catching up.” Quantity has a quality all its own in this regard. Across many realms, including industry, China is being disruptive: if not always by being good, then at least simply by being big. Presence matters considerably, and China can displace others through sheer numbers. Qualitative comparisons of naval systems will only matter in the case of an actual fight, which no one wants. Up to that point on the escalation ladder, China’s colossal bulk gives it dominance and initiative. We can see some of this in practice already in Beijing’s peacetime advances in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, Chinese ship-design and -building progress is increasing the PLAN’s ability to contest sea control in a widening arc of the Western Pacific. And Chinese analysts continually probe for weaknesses to exploit; they regard satellite infrastructure as a particular vulnerability for an overseas navy such as the USN.

To what extent is the PLAN a global navy, rather than a regional one focused on regional issues (including in the South China Sea)?

China’s core maritime focus remains on upholding its security interests and furthering its claims in the Near Seas. As the U.S. Office of Naval Intelligence’s unclassified 2015 report and other authoritative analyses indicate, however, Beijing seeks to retain this focus while also adding an outer layer of far-seas operations. How much can be devoted to this outer layer is a question that merits continued attention. Since China clearly wants some degree of blue-water capabilities, nuclear propulsion will be increasingly desirable; although it remains a work in progress.

For a country that has played such a dramatic role in threatening aircraft carriers through its development of counter-intervention capabilities, it’s somewhat ironic how much China wants to develop its own aircraft carriers. These apex predators of the sea are also the most modularized naval system, one of the few ships that are relatively easy to upgrade over a considerable lifespan. China’s already shown it can build decent carrier hulls. But deck aviation platforms are primarily a conveyance for aircraft-delivered payloads. Payload delivery is essential to a fleet’s performance; so too is having infrastructure sufficient to support and sustain it. Challenges remain in such areas as electronics, maritime monitoring, and C4ISR. All are often underappreciated due to their subtlety and ubiquity of employment, but are nonetheless essential. They may be less amenable to China’s preferred approach of copying and emulation than are simpler structural systems. Chinese personnel are improving markedly in their training, but need to become still more proficient in using their equipment, including shipboard electronics. International sustainment system infrastructure is a necessary precondition for long-range sea power; Beijing is dipping its toe into these waters with its first overseas naval supply facility, in Djibouti.

Even amid China’s remaining challenges, however, it’s not too early for the USN to think more comprehensively about prospects for contested sea control. As China’s navy develops, in how many other regions of the world might America and allied forces find their naval presence undermined or even contested?

What is the relationship among Chinese naval, paranaval, and commercial shipbuilding?

Modern history has never before witnessed such rapid shipbuilding industry growth as China’s. From 2002-12, commercial shipbuilding output surged thirteen-fold. Beijing has largely met its goal of becoming the world’s largest shipbuilder by 2015. Yet progress is uneven, with military shipbuilding leading overall but with significant weakness in propulsion and electronics for both military and civilian applications. China’s commercial shipyards have achieved a massive (over)capacity in low-end ships, but remain limited in their ability to produce quality high-end, or high-value, merchant ships. Naval shipbuilding, by contrast, receives the best people, infrastructure, and resources; and needn’t compete on price for international buyers.

In some cases, at least, China’s preferred focus on commercial specifications may offer a “good enough” basis for military specifications, saving considerable effort. Some USN experts, in fact, now wish to minimize uniquely-military specifications, and instead create effective commercial specs that can serve military purposes. Which will be the more difficult challenge in practice: upgrading commercial specs to military level requirements; or the reverse? This remains a fascinating question.

In any case, in the “post-Peak-ship” era, China’s commercial shipbuilding industry has tremendous slack capacity. As Gabe Collins and Eric Anderson explain, the state is in part seeking to fill the void with naval, Coast Guard, and Maritime Militia shipbuilding. This allows for lucrative, stable government contracts; and in many ways, is easier than attempting to compete with South Korean and Japanese commercial shipyards to build offshore oil and gas platforms, LNG tankers, and other complex ship projects. Over the next 5-10 years, China’s non-commercial shipbuilding sector is likely to enjoy both quantitative and qualitative expansion. Although naval ships will require far greater technical sophistication and effort, China’s already cranking out scores of relatively simple Coast Guard and Maritime Militia hulls. Concerning examples include China’s construction of: (1) very large, partly-armed “mega-cutters”; and (2) dozens of Maritime Militia vessels of 500-tons and above with reinforced hulls, powerful water cannons — as well as, reportedly, built-in armaments stores in some cases. Both types of paranaval vessels exploit all China’s advantages in shipyard capacity and “mixed economy” gray zone capabilities. Neighboring countries will be hard-pressed to cope with such advances if they don’t work closely with the United States and Japan.

What are the key challenges facing China’s shipbuilding industry today?

Shipbuilding occurs in a larger strategic, macroeconomic, and social policy environment. International and national priorities interact. Within Beijing’s strategic decision-making context over time, evolving ways of war and missions have shaped the design, development, outfitting, and deployment of PLAN ships. And — as Chris Carlson and Jack Bianchi emphasize — ships are the literal embodiment of Beijing’s naval strategy.

Specific Chinese shipbuilding plans and military standards looking out two-to-three decades are derived from the Weapons and Armament Development Strategy, a highly-classified document drafted by the General Armament Department and approved by the Central Military Commission. This integrative planning guidance includes sections assessing the international security environment, military equipment requirements, analysis of the strengths and weakness of Chinese armaments in relation to naval objectives, and assessments of scientific and technical development. In coordination with this overall guidance, esoteric but vital national, military, and industrial technical standards inform each Chinese warship’s course from conception to delivery.

For all these processes and specifications, China’s organizational efficiency and innovation capacity was one of the greatest areas of debate among our contributors. Skeptics stress that Chinese defense conglomerates remain “stove-piped” monopolies. Positioned atop key sectors, they don’t compete significantly despite periodic efforts at decentralization. This sclerosis hampers innovation. Chinese planners are trying to address such problems by applying Western examples (modeled on world-leading titans like Lockheed Martin and Boeing — as Julian Snelder explains). Yet the institutional culture arguably remains shaped by values, norms, and incentives lingering from the past.

Nevertheless, some Chinese shipbuilding programs are clearly achieving effective systems integration. The key appears to be having a strong program management office and manager. In China’s space industry, as Kevin Pollpeter and Mark Stokes relate, China’s top leadership engaged with such bureaucrats to ensure that the implementing organizations actually followed assigned standards. To better understand a given program’s prospects, one may examine the director, deputies, chief engineers, and key institutions involved (including the relevant ship institute). For China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, for instance, the key program management figures likely reside in the Seventh Academy and the military products division.

Finally, China can’t field a world-class blue water navy without improving its long-endurance propulsion systems. Particularly in the nuclear realm, its preferred approach of grafting foreign technologies piece-by-piece onto an increasingly domestically-manufactured base may hinder major progress. China’s currently struggling to achieve improvements in quietness, sensors, and other aspects of its SSNs and SSBNs. Lofty financial and technological hurdles would have to be surmounted for rapid improvement. To its credit, China has strong political will and determination in this area. There’s also potential for nuclear reactor technology transfer from Russia, particularly in the form of efforts to teach China to design and manufacture quieter pumps. But many of a submarine’s noise sources are generated in the secondary loops — where the steam is transformed into propulsion power and electricity. Improvements there have been a Chinese priority over the last decade, but open sources don’t clarify the current status. Beijing nonetheless has a vast wealth of national resources to commit to this, and the single most important variable that could bring China these capabilities is a Russian willingness to share such expertise.

Is it fair to say that there is a naval “arms race” in the Asia-Pacific right now, with China’s neighbors scrambling to catch up to its rapid shipbuilding?

For over a decade, China’s military-maritime modernization has influenced programmatic priorities in the Pentagon and across the Asia-Pacific. Following a two-decade hiatus in great sea power competition, USN planning is focusing anew on high-end warfare in mid-ocean waters against challenges to American sea control. As Ronald O’Rourke of the Congressional Research Service documents in his chapter, related new U.S. requirements include procuring attack submarines capable of penetrating contested waters; improving networked ASW capabilities; acquiring longer-range carrier-based platforms (manned and unmanned) and weapons; improving magazine depth and cost per shot for air and missile defense operations; enhancing electromagnetic warfare capabilities; and breaking kill chains by non-kinetic and kinetic means.

At the platform level, many of these developments particularly affect the USN surface force (e.g., ongoing restructuring of the LCS/new frigate program) and its concepts of operations (e.g., distributed lethality and arming warships more heavily with anti-surface weapons).

Elsewhere in the region, Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force and Coast Guard have enjoyed modest budgetary increases. Both Washington and Tokyo are helping to strengthen the capacity of regional coast guards.

What other uncertainties confront American planners?

Beyond the challenges I’ve just discussed, it’s possible that emerging technologies might change naval warfare — and related Chinese thinking — dramatically. Disruptive changes since 1945 have included nuclear weapons, nuclear-powered submarines, night optics, satellite navigation (GPS) and precision-guided munitions, and persistent aerial surveillance. Typically, however, the initial adopter didn’t maintain a monopoly on the technology for long.

As Paul Scharre and Tyler Jost contend in their chapter, future outcomes may be affected by four key “wild card” competitions susceptible to disruptive technology advances — Hiding vs. Finding, Understanding vs. Confusion, Network Resilience vs. Degradation, and Hitting vs. Intercepting. Related questions include: Are there ways for these technologies to be married with operational concepts in their use to achieve truly disruptive approaches? (China’s “salami-slicing” off increments of disputed sovereignty claims with its Coast Guard and Maritime Militia is already a potent low-end example.) Will the results be truly revolutionary, or more incremental in practice? In any case, advances in China’s technology base, shipbuilding, and design would impact all four areas.

On your next trip to Washington, what will you recommend to U.S. policy-makers?

In publishing this book, we’ve sought to increase understanding of China, its shipbuilding, its navy, and what it all means. I’m pleased to report that it’s already found a place in key government offices. Busy officials and other interested readers should flip to the introduction, which summarizes our findings over the next 13 pages. Here are two key takeaways:

First, for blue water navies, numbers, capability, and presence all matter — there are no shortcuts that preserve sea power on the cheap. To keep the economically-vital, geopolitically pivotal portion of the global commons running through maritime East Asia peaceful and open, the USN must maintain a high level of ship-days there. Only with sufficient numbers of capable ships in the fleet will this be possible long-term.

Second, to help counter China’s salami-slicing tactics in the Near Seas, the United States should work to build allied and partner capacity and increase the frequency of its own patrols. Japan is a particularly important ally in these efforts. As O’Rourke observes in his chapter, non-lethal weapons such as water cannons, acoustic projectors, and active denial systems may be considered to afford USN surface combatants a more nuanced array of tactical options in “gray zone” contingencies—for instance, those involving the shadowing and harassment of U.S. special mission ships in international waters by Chinese Maritime Militia “fishing boats.”

Dr. Andrew S. Erickson is professor of Strategy in the Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute, and an Associate in Research at Harvard University’s John King Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He is series editor of the Naval Institute Press book series “Studies in Chinese Maritime Development,” of which Chinese Naval Shipbuilding is the sixth volume. The views expressed here are his alone.
http://thediplomat.com/2017/04/chinese-naval-shipbuilding-measuring-the-waves/

* * * * *

China’s Vision of the Future Networked Battlefield

Cyber, space and electronic warfare challenges to the US in the Western Pacific

By James Johnson - The Diplomat, April 26, 2017

Compared to the extensive coverage on China’s traditional war-fighting capabilities (e.g. its ‘carrier killer’ anti-ship missiles) far less ink has been spilled on Chinese thinking on the critical systems and nodes (or C4ISR in military lexicon -- Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance), which enable and enhance these advanced weapons. These systems expand the range, accuracy, and lethality of Beijing’s military power projection.

This war-fighting toolkit includes: long-range precision strike missiles for use in early and preemptive strikes; stealth jet fighters to bypass enemy air defenses, and destroy its command and control centers; anti-satellite missiles to take out critical space-based intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) systems; and other emerging technologies such as rail-guns, ‘stealth-defeating’ quantum radars, and autonomous systems.

A more integrated Chinese warfighting force could fundamentally alter the regional military balance, which is already rapidly moving in Beijing’s favor. According to the authors of a Chinese military magazine, China must prepare to fight to safeguard and secure its “central leadership” in the South China Sea.

To be sure, a fully networked fighting force would prove highly effective during a future amphibious assault in the Senkakus, an island blockade against Taiwan, or a blockade on critical trading sea-lanes in the South China Seas — which China’s neighbors would unlikely be unable to resist.

In 2015 as part of broader military reforms, the Strategic Support Force was created to form an “information umbrella” for future integrated joint force operations in the space, cyber, and electronic warfare on the future ‘informatized’ battlefield. A Chinese state-sponsored newspaper, recently claimed China would very soon be able to conduct operations as complex as the 2011 U.S. raid on Osama Bin Laden. However, it remains to be seen whether the PLA is able to overcome its deep-seated inter-service rivalry, endemic bureaucratic stove-piping and a lack of combat experience with modern military hardware.

The World’s First “Quantum Power”?

Last year, China launched the world’s first quantum satellite (aka Micius) demonstrating Chinese rapid advances in quantum information science. Beijing is clear-eyed about the potential strategic implications quantum technologies will hold for future warfare. Some Chinese analysts have even compared the strategic impact of quantum power with nuclear weapons.

Worryingly for the Pentagon, Chinese strategists appear confident that quantum communications capabilities are already deployable for “local wars” in China’s “near-seas.” If China is able to leapfrog the United States to become the world’s first “quantum power” it will pose a serious challenge to U.S. military-technological superiority — especially to U.S. military stealth and intelligence gathering capabilities.

Underlying the gravity of this challenge, a White House official recently warned that the U.S. information-centric ways of war are increasingly “under siege” from Chinese quantum technology — analogous to China’s own “offset strategy.” China has reportedly already developed a range of disruptive quantum technologies with military applications, such as: “unhackable” quantum cryptography; sophisticated tools to decrypt military communications; and next generation stealth quantum radars.

Despite these challenges, the Pentagon has yet to commit meaningful resources to the development of quantum technologies. Apparently, the policy wonks have concluded that these systems would not significantly enhance military communication security. Instead of taking on this challenge head-on the evidence suggests U.S. funding into critical military technologies (i.e. cyber, space, and quantum) has actually decreased over the past five years.

Even with limited military use, Chinese quantum technologies could radically and irreversibly shift the future military balance in Asia. This paradigm shift could harbinger a far greater asymmetric challenge to the United States compared with China’s other so-called “Assassin mace” weapons e.g. anti-ship and anti-satellite missiles.

“New” Preemptive Strike and Coercive Options for China

Washington’s main fear is this: once the various technical and organizational shortcomings have been overcome, a fully networked war-fighting force will offer Beijing new options in the use offensive weapons for future preemptive and coercive missions in Asia. Specifically, to hold U.S. carrier strike groups and bases in the Western Pacific at risk through lethal cross-domain operations.

Equally worryingly, the possession of these capabilities may embolden Chinese leaders to behave more assertively and aggressively to defend and expand their unresolved (and widely disputed) sovereignty claims — especially in the South China Sea.

As if further proof was needed, a Chinese Ministry of Defense in response to reports that the Trump administration is crafting a new arms package for Taiwan asserted it would be “futile” and “doomed” for Taiwan to consider using military force to prevent unification with Mainland China. These comments clearly signaled to Washington a renewed sense of confidence and resolve; consummate with an increasingly credible warfighting force.

A destabilizing and highly escalatory dynamic is rapidly unfolding in Asia: China and the U.S. are both accumulating increasingly advanced military systems to enable and enhance their respective war-fighting tools, designed to deny the other side the upper hand in the use of these capabilities. During future conflict or crisis, this obsession will incentivize both sides to strike first, to deprive the other the chance of jeopardizing vulnerable battlefield “eyes, ears, brain and nervous systems.”

Unless Washington and Beijing can devise ways to mollify these destabilizing dynamics i.e. reduce the incentives to strike first, the policy implications for U.S.-China relations and future Asian stability will be huge. These deteriorating action-reaction dynamics will lead to downward spirals of uncertainty, insecurity, and instability. Actions and rhetoric taken for defensive purposes will be viewed as aggressive; leading to arms-racing and ultimately conflict.

Dr. James Johnson completed his Masters in Asia Pacific Studies in 2011, and successfully defended his PhD thesis at the University of Leicester in 2016. James has published research and presented conference papers in the following areas: Security Studies; U.S.-China Relations; Nuclear Strategy; Chinese Military Doctrine; and East Asian Security and has worked in the financial sector for 20 years.

 

[cirr]

02.05.2017

 

[BDforever]

02.05.2017

View attachment 394241

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tell about Bangladesh or I will do surgical strike

 

[Deino]

02.05.2017

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When is it ready for launch !?

 

[samsara]

https://twitter.com/x/status/858893897233088512

 

[grey boy 2]

052C DDG "150" (夜幕下的长春舰)

054A FFG "532"

 

[english_man]

https://twitter.com/x/status/858893897233088512

Is it expected, that the remainder of this class to be updated as well?
Anyway it looks pretty good.

 

[samsara]

When is it ready for launch !?

Somewhere in JULY 2017.

 

[samsara]

The China Aircraft Carrier Bookshelf

BY ANDREW S. ERICKSON - 29 March 2017

Minnie Chan, “China Building Navy’s Biggest Amphibious Assault Vessel, Sources Say,” South China Morning Post, 29 March 2017.

“… Another source said that after visit his visit to see the Type 075 [Landing Helicopter Dock next-generation large amphibious assault vessel] under construction, [PLA Navy Commander] Vice-Admiral Shen [Jinlong] also inspected progress on the new Type 002 aircraft carrier. The Type 002 will be China’s third carrier, which has been under construction at the Jiangnan Changxingdao shipyard in Shanghai since March 2015. It is expected to be launched in about 2021.”

Regardless of how this specific reporting ends up playing out, the compendium of sources below offer larger points that are likely to hold over time:

RELATED ANALYSIS—THE CHINA AIRCRAFT CARRIER BOOKSHELF:​

“Showing off the Hardware: China’s First Aircraft-Carrier Bares its Teeth,” The Economist, 19 January 2017.

For Admiral Wu Shengli, the commander of China’s navy since 2006, it must have been a sweet swansong to mark his imminent retirement. In November China announced that its first and only aircraft-carrier, the Liaoning, was combat ready. On December 24th its navy duly dispatched an impressive-looking carrier battle-group with three escorting destroyers, a couple of frigates, a corvette and a refuelling ship. It sailed from the northern port of Qingdao down through the Miyako Strait, past Taiwan and into the South China Sea. …

China’s deployment of an aircraft-carrier is not a military game-changer. But it is a conspicuous symbol of the country’s ambitions as a maritime and global power. The Liaoning has been a crucial building block for the navy in its evolution from a coastal defence force into what is now a modern navy that China uses to assert its (contested) maritime claims in the East and South China Seas. Within the next 25 years China expects its navy to become a powerful blue-water fleet that can guard China’s sea lanes of communication against any aggressor, push the US Navy beyond the “second island chain” far out into the Pacific… and protect the country’s far-flung commercial interests.

To that end, probably around 2004, China made up its mind that it must have aircraft-carriers. A second, indigenously designed one, based on the Liaoning but with the latest radar and space for more aircraft, is nearing completion at the northern port of Dalian. Many analysts believe that a third such vessel, larger and more complex, is under construction in Shanghai. Andrew Erickson of the US Naval War College says Admiral Wu adopted a “crawl, walk, run” approach to developing a carrier capability, recognising the difficulties involved. Carrier operations are inherently dangerous—America lost 8,500 aircrew in the 40 years to 1988 on its way to reaching what Mr Erickson calls its current “gold standard” of carrier expertise. …

It is not clear how many carriers China plans to build. As a rule of thumb, you need three to be certain of having one at sea all the time. Mr Erickson says that some analysts in China have been suggesting a fleet as large as six. Mr Singer thinks it is possible that China’s carriers will one day match the capability of American ones. Mr Erickson says that while China can copy a lot, without combat experience and “tribal knowledge” passed from one crew to another, it will find it hard to attain that level.

China, ironically, has done more than any other country to sow doubts about whether carriers are worth all the effort and expense, by developing shore-based anti-ship ballistic missiles, such as the DF-21D and DF-26, known as “carrier killers”. Submarines are less vulnerable, but highly visible ships bristling with weaponry are still badges of pride for aspiring great powers like China. As in America, the view in China that carriers and status go together will be hard to change.


Andrew S. Erickson, “How Does China’s First Aircraft Carrier Stack Up?” interview for China Power Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 20 April 2016.

Republished via RealClearDefense.

My Key Quotations:

“Already with China’s so-called starter carrier, Liaoning, there is significant potential in the near future to take it overseas for some basic naval diplomacy . . . and this will already have tremendous symbolic and psychological effects.”

“The problem here for China is that deck aviation is really not so much about the ship that supports everything . . . it’s really the complex system of systems of aviation operations operating off the carrier. That’s the key value of the carrier. That’s the key to the carrier’s ability to project power in the form of the ability to conduct actual strikes. And that’s where it’s very hard to get anywhere close to the U.S.-type gold standard.”

Related Multimedia Report:

The entry of China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, into service with the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) attracted considerable attention from both the Chinese press and military observers around the world. For some, the Liaoning was a symbol of China’s global power; for others, it represented a significant first step toward a more muscular and assertive Chinese navy.

Originally built as a “heavy aircraft-carrying cruiser” for the Soviet Navy, the ship was laid down as the Riga and renamed the Varyag in 1990. A Chinese travel agency purchased the unfinished hull in 1998, and three years later the ship was towed from the Ukraine to China, where it underwent extensive modernization of its hull, radar, and electronics systems. After years of refits, the Liaoning was commissioned into the PLAN in September 2012 as a training ship unassigned to any of the Navy’s three major fleets. Two months after the ship was commissioned, the PLAN conducted its first carrier-based takeoff and landings. Although the Chinese have made significant progress in developing their carrier program, it will be several years before a carrier air regiment is fully integrated into the PLAN. Significant questions about the Liaoning’s capabilities and future prospects remain, the most important of which may be what the Liaoning means for the rise of China as a global power. …

Further Reading:

• Andrew S. Erickson et. al, “Beijing’s ‘Starter Carrier’ and Future Steps: Alternatives and Implications,” Naval War College Review Vol 65, No. 1 (2012).
• Andrew S. Erickson and Andrew R. Wilson, “China’s Aircraft Carrier Dilemma,” Naval War College Review, Vol. 59, No. 4 (2006).
• James Holmes, “Will China Become an Aircraft Carrier Superpower?,” Foreign Policy, January 21, 2016.
• Ronald O’Rouke, “China Naval Modernization: Implications for U.S. Navy Capabilities – Background and Issues for Congress,” Congressional Research Service, 7-5700, RL33153, March 31, 2015.
• “The PLA Navy: New Capabilities and Missions for the 21st Century,” Office of Naval Intelligence (Suitland, Maryland: Office of Naval Intelligence, 2015).

Here are selected minutes from the interview:

Andrew Erickson: How does China’s first Aircraft Carrier Stack Up?

ADDITIONAL PUBLICATIONS, PRESENTATIONS, AND MEDIA SOURCES:

Andrew S. Erickson and Capt. Christopher P. Carlson, USNR (Ret.), “Sustained Support: the PLAN Evolves its Expeditionary Logistics Strategy,” Jane’s Navy International, 9 March 2016.

Contents

• Projecting force
• Sustaining forces
• Special delivery
• Remote maintenance
• Supporting facilities
• UNDERWAY REPLENISHMENT
• COMMENT

As China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy seeks to support sustained operations at distance, Andrew Erickson and Christopher Carlson discuss its strategy and tools for supporting this new international presence

China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) has stepped out onto the international scene in recent years with sustained deployments of counter-piracy escort task groups to the Indian Ocean and the Gulf of Aden. These deployments, numbering 22 and counting since 26 December 2008, have enabled the PLAN to sustain presence around the Horn of Africa and even deploy onwards into the Mediterranean Sea and beyond. China is now looking to bolster this strategic presence in both scope and scale by investing in supply ships, using Chinese commercial shipping lines, and exploiting its emerging access to commercial ports around the world as it seeks to provide logistics support to deployed naval vessels.

China has never had a sustained overseas presence or foreign basing footprint. Yet it is building a fleet that will enable the PLAN to deploy not only at high intensity in China’s immediate periphery (‘Near Seas’, including the Yellow, East, and South China seas), but also with gradually increasing tempo and regularity throughout the Asia-Pacific region and the Indian Ocean (‘Far Seas’ operations). This ongoing effort, if Beijing seeks for it to become more continuous in nature, will require greater power projection capabilities, as well as enhanced logistics support, and maybe even a long-term presence on foreign soil.

Drawing on the US Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) traditional definition of power projection (as employed in Joint Publication 1-02, Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, as amended through 2013) – to rapidly and effectively deploy and sustain forces – the foremost means of China’s power projection in both respects lies in its navy and in the PLA Air Force (PLAAF) and PLAN air forces, and in their ability to operate at distance over time. Today, as the necessary force structure to support Chinese objectives vis-à-vis the Near Seas has largely been achieved and China’s shipbuilding and aviation industries have demonstrated an ability to produce advanced ships and aircraft, an effort is under way to progressively increase the numbers of some of the more capable platforms that could be used for Far Seas operations. These include area air-defence destroyers and frigates, replenishment vessels, and fighter aircraft – the last of which will need aircraft carriers or foreign bases to fly from. As the US Navy (USN) knows only too well, expanding bluewater presence and doing more things in more places at once requires a larger, better-supported fleet. …

Spotted at the author's blog...

How nice the picture of the young, genius Chinese scientist, Dr. Qian Xuesen 钱学森 [11 December 1911 – 31 October 2009] (the co-founder of JPL was known in the early days of his life in the USA as Hsue-Shen Tsien or often shortened as H. S. Tsien in many past scientific literature & books published in the West) was used as the cover page of this book: History of Rocketry and Astronautics, by Andrew S. Erickson (Editor), 2015. He's widely regarded as the Father of China's Aerospace and Rocketry.​

 

[grey boy 2]

The 2nd 12000 tons class coast guard "3901" first mission of patrolling the Xisha Islands(中国大型万吨海警3901舰首航西沙群岛

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[grey boy 2]

054A FFG

 

[cirr]

Type 901 AOE #2 launched

 

[lcloo]

PLAN's 25th Somali flotilla marines handed over to the Somali government 3 Somali pirates and 3 AK-47 captured from last months rescure of a foreign cargo ship.