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The Chinese government is rapidly building a bigger, more sophisticated military. Heres what they have, what they want, and what it means for the U.S.
In a single generation, China has transformed itself from a largely agrarian country into a global manufacturing and trading powerhouse. Chinas economy is 20 times bigger than it was two decades ago and is on track to surpass the United States as the worlds largest. But perhaps most startling has been the growth of Chinas ambitious and increasingly powerful military.
Dark Sword DroneIn 2006, China unveiled an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design known as Dark Sword, which has since vanished from the public eye. Western analysts arent sure whether the craft is still under development. If it is, certain design characteristicssuch as a suspected ramjet enginesuggest that its a high-speed drone that could carry out surveillance and strikes far from Chinese shores. Whatever the Dark Swords fate, Chinas UAV plans are ambitious: This past summer, the Chinese government announced plans to build 11 coastal drone bases.
The J-20 is far from Chinas only new aircraft. The PLA is also aggressively upgrading its drone fleet. A decade ago, the army had almost no unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). At aviation trade shows today, Chinese contractors display scores of drones under development. Among the most notable: the Yilong (Pterodactyl I) and BZK-005, which greatly resemble the U.S. militarys Predator and Global Hawk, respectively. Chinas future UAVs may also get a boost from American technology: Iran has reportedly given Chinese scientists access to the RQ-170 advanced spy drone that went down in its territory last year.
Additionally, China is investing heavily in its navy. Today, the U.S. is the only country that can send aircraft carriers loaded with fighter jets to any corner of the globe. The PLA would like to change that. The Chinese have spent the past few years retrofitting a 65,000-ton Soviet aircraft carrier (which the PLA acquired using a fake travel agency as a front) with new engines and weapons including Flying Leopard surface-to-air missile batteries and automated air defense machine-gun systems. The ship, called the Liaoning, can carry approximately 50 aircraft, including the Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark, a fighter jet that may be as capable as an F-18. China is also building stealthy 8,000-ton destroyers, along with nuclear submarines and amphibious assault ships. A new 36,000-ton cruise ship modified for military purposes, the Bahai Sea Green Pearl, can carry more than 2,000 soldiers and 300 vehicles. With its new naval muscle, China has dispatched troops and police to U.N. peacekeeping operations in places as far-flung as Africa and Latin America.
Pterodactyl I Drone
Chinas Pterodactyl I UAV strongly resembles the U.S. militarys Predator drone. It appears to be designed for medium-altitude, long-endurance surveillance and strike missions. Another Chinese dronethe Soaring Dragonlooks like a smaller version of the U.S. Armys RQ-4 Global Hawk; analysts think its designed for high-altitude maritime surveillance and reconnaissance.
In some ways, Chinas rise echoes that of imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, Britain was the worlds undisputed economic and military superpower. When Germany decided to build battleships to match the Grand Fleets dreadnoughts, the two nations entered an arms race that helped set the stage for the first world war. But when war broke out, Britain didnt lose a single battleship to Germanys High Seas Fleet. German mines and submarines, on the other handnew technologies that arrived unexpectedly and changed the rules of battlesunk 13 British battleships.
Similarly, the PLA has more to gain by developing new technologies than by racing to match American sea and air power. China doesnt have to amass a navy as powerful as the American fleet if it can make the seas too dangerous for U.S. ships to travel. To that end, the PLA is acquiring weapons such as mobile, truck-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles and radar-evading, ramjet-powered Sunburn cruise missiles, which tear toward their targets at Mach 2.5, giving defenses only seconds to respond.
China could also easily go after American vulnerabilities in space. More than 80 percent of U.S. government and military communications, which direct everything from soldiers in the field to precision missile strikes, travel over satellites. GPS satellites control the movement of 800,000 U.S. military receivers on everything from aircraft carriers to individual bombs and artillery shells. The system isnt foolproof: In early 2010, a GPS glitch left almost 10,000 of these receivers unable to connect for days.
J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet
In 2011, the PLA began testing the J-20, Chinas first homegrown stealth fighter, which could enter service sometime after 2017. Analysts believe the J-20 has radar-deflecting skin and internal weapons bays. Very little public information about Chinas combat aircraft development program exists, but the emergence this past September of a second stealth fighter prototypethe J-31 Falcon Eagle, which some observers think could be capable of performing takeoffs and landings on aircraft carrierssuggests that the J-20 is only the first in a series of advanced Chinese fighters.
Meanwhile, China is also expanding its ability to knock things out of space. In addition to its proven satellite-killing missiles, the PLA is developing maneuverable microsatellites that would act like tiny space kamikazes, along with directed-energy (laser) devices that could blind or melt U.S. systems in space. In 2007, Senior Colonel Yao Yunzhu of the Chinese Academy of Military Science (the highest research institute in the PLA) announced that the U.S. wouldnt be the worlds only space superpower for long. The Chinese plan to send more than 100 civilian and military satellites into orbit in the next decade, and the PLA is testing what appears to be an unmanned, reusable space plane.
Chinas most potent new capability, though, might be what the PLA has called informationized warfare, or cyber war. Just as the U.S. military has created its own Cyber Command, the PLA has assigned more than 130,000 personnel to cyber warfare programs. And while Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned about a potential cyber Pearl Harbor, the greater threat might be the theft of U.S. government secrets and intellectual property. So far, operations thought to have originated in China have compromised sensitive networks in the State Department as well as computers involved in the F-35 joint strike fighter program.
DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile
Stationary ballistic missiles are easy for enemy forces to destroy preemptively. Chinas mobile, truck-launched DF-21D ballistic missiles are not. After blasting off near the coast, the missiles travel to the edge of space before reentering the atmosphere at more than 3,000 mph and dropping 1,300 pounds of explosives on targets. China didnt nickname the DF-21D the carrier killer. U.S. defense analysts did.
In the 1984 movie Red Dawn, one character explained why war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable: Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, theyre gonna fight. A few years ago, when Hollywood set out to remake the movie, the filmmakers updated the script by replacing the Soviet bad guys with the Chinese. Then real-world economics came into play. To avoid losing access to Chinas multibillion-dollar film market, they digitally switched the adversary to North Korea in postproduction.
The episode underscores an important point: Unlike the U.S. and the Soviets, the U.S. and China are bound together by hundreds of billions of dollars in mutual trade and investments. War between the two countries would be mutually ruinous. Leaders on both sides know it. American and Chinese forces will eye each other suspiciously, and the relationship may become tense. But recall that the much feared war between the U.S. and Sovietsthe issue that defined world politics for the second half of the 20th centurynever did break out. With so much to lose, the two toughest kids decided it wasnt worth it to fight.
The Shenlong Space Plane
With a space station under construction and plans for a manned moon mission, China aims to alter the balance of power in orbit. In 2007, the nation showed off its antisatellite missiles by shooting down a decommissioned weather satellite, creating 40,000 shards of space junk in the process. Now its testing an unmanned orbital vehicle known as Shenlong, or Divine Dragon. Comparable to the U.S. Air Forces X-37B space plane, the Shenlong could rapidly place satellites in orbitand potentially carry weapons that could disable the communications, navigation, and surveillance satellites of adversaries.
A Look Inside China's Secret Arsenal | Popular Science
In a single generation, China has transformed itself from a largely agrarian country into a global manufacturing and trading powerhouse. Chinas economy is 20 times bigger than it was two decades ago and is on track to surpass the United States as the worlds largest. But perhaps most startling has been the growth of Chinas ambitious and increasingly powerful military.
Dark Sword DroneIn 2006, China unveiled an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design known as Dark Sword, which has since vanished from the public eye. Western analysts arent sure whether the craft is still under development. If it is, certain design characteristicssuch as a suspected ramjet enginesuggest that its a high-speed drone that could carry out surveillance and strikes far from Chinese shores. Whatever the Dark Swords fate, Chinas UAV plans are ambitious: This past summer, the Chinese government announced plans to build 11 coastal drone bases.
The J-20 is far from Chinas only new aircraft. The PLA is also aggressively upgrading its drone fleet. A decade ago, the army had almost no unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). At aviation trade shows today, Chinese contractors display scores of drones under development. Among the most notable: the Yilong (Pterodactyl I) and BZK-005, which greatly resemble the U.S. militarys Predator and Global Hawk, respectively. Chinas future UAVs may also get a boost from American technology: Iran has reportedly given Chinese scientists access to the RQ-170 advanced spy drone that went down in its territory last year.
Additionally, China is investing heavily in its navy. Today, the U.S. is the only country that can send aircraft carriers loaded with fighter jets to any corner of the globe. The PLA would like to change that. The Chinese have spent the past few years retrofitting a 65,000-ton Soviet aircraft carrier (which the PLA acquired using a fake travel agency as a front) with new engines and weapons including Flying Leopard surface-to-air missile batteries and automated air defense machine-gun systems. The ship, called the Liaoning, can carry approximately 50 aircraft, including the Shenyang J-15 Flying Shark, a fighter jet that may be as capable as an F-18. China is also building stealthy 8,000-ton destroyers, along with nuclear submarines and amphibious assault ships. A new 36,000-ton cruise ship modified for military purposes, the Bahai Sea Green Pearl, can carry more than 2,000 soldiers and 300 vehicles. With its new naval muscle, China has dispatched troops and police to U.N. peacekeeping operations in places as far-flung as Africa and Latin America.
Pterodactyl I Drone
Chinas Pterodactyl I UAV strongly resembles the U.S. militarys Predator drone. It appears to be designed for medium-altitude, long-endurance surveillance and strike missions. Another Chinese dronethe Soaring Dragonlooks like a smaller version of the U.S. Armys RQ-4 Global Hawk; analysts think its designed for high-altitude maritime surveillance and reconnaissance.
In some ways, Chinas rise echoes that of imperial Germany at the turn of the 20th century. At the time, Britain was the worlds undisputed economic and military superpower. When Germany decided to build battleships to match the Grand Fleets dreadnoughts, the two nations entered an arms race that helped set the stage for the first world war. But when war broke out, Britain didnt lose a single battleship to Germanys High Seas Fleet. German mines and submarines, on the other handnew technologies that arrived unexpectedly and changed the rules of battlesunk 13 British battleships.
Similarly, the PLA has more to gain by developing new technologies than by racing to match American sea and air power. China doesnt have to amass a navy as powerful as the American fleet if it can make the seas too dangerous for U.S. ships to travel. To that end, the PLA is acquiring weapons such as mobile, truck-launched anti-ship ballistic missiles and radar-evading, ramjet-powered Sunburn cruise missiles, which tear toward their targets at Mach 2.5, giving defenses only seconds to respond.
China could also easily go after American vulnerabilities in space. More than 80 percent of U.S. government and military communications, which direct everything from soldiers in the field to precision missile strikes, travel over satellites. GPS satellites control the movement of 800,000 U.S. military receivers on everything from aircraft carriers to individual bombs and artillery shells. The system isnt foolproof: In early 2010, a GPS glitch left almost 10,000 of these receivers unable to connect for days.
J-20 Stealth Fighter Jet
In 2011, the PLA began testing the J-20, Chinas first homegrown stealth fighter, which could enter service sometime after 2017. Analysts believe the J-20 has radar-deflecting skin and internal weapons bays. Very little public information about Chinas combat aircraft development program exists, but the emergence this past September of a second stealth fighter prototypethe J-31 Falcon Eagle, which some observers think could be capable of performing takeoffs and landings on aircraft carrierssuggests that the J-20 is only the first in a series of advanced Chinese fighters.
Meanwhile, China is also expanding its ability to knock things out of space. In addition to its proven satellite-killing missiles, the PLA is developing maneuverable microsatellites that would act like tiny space kamikazes, along with directed-energy (laser) devices that could blind or melt U.S. systems in space. In 2007, Senior Colonel Yao Yunzhu of the Chinese Academy of Military Science (the highest research institute in the PLA) announced that the U.S. wouldnt be the worlds only space superpower for long. The Chinese plan to send more than 100 civilian and military satellites into orbit in the next decade, and the PLA is testing what appears to be an unmanned, reusable space plane.
Chinas most potent new capability, though, might be what the PLA has called informationized warfare, or cyber war. Just as the U.S. military has created its own Cyber Command, the PLA has assigned more than 130,000 personnel to cyber warfare programs. And while Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta has warned about a potential cyber Pearl Harbor, the greater threat might be the theft of U.S. government secrets and intellectual property. So far, operations thought to have originated in China have compromised sensitive networks in the State Department as well as computers involved in the F-35 joint strike fighter program.
DF-21D Anti-Ship Ballistic Missile
Stationary ballistic missiles are easy for enemy forces to destroy preemptively. Chinas mobile, truck-launched DF-21D ballistic missiles are not. After blasting off near the coast, the missiles travel to the edge of space before reentering the atmosphere at more than 3,000 mph and dropping 1,300 pounds of explosives on targets. China didnt nickname the DF-21D the carrier killer. U.S. defense analysts did.
In the 1984 movie Red Dawn, one character explained why war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union seemed inevitable: Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, theyre gonna fight. A few years ago, when Hollywood set out to remake the movie, the filmmakers updated the script by replacing the Soviet bad guys with the Chinese. Then real-world economics came into play. To avoid losing access to Chinas multibillion-dollar film market, they digitally switched the adversary to North Korea in postproduction.
The episode underscores an important point: Unlike the U.S. and the Soviets, the U.S. and China are bound together by hundreds of billions of dollars in mutual trade and investments. War between the two countries would be mutually ruinous. Leaders on both sides know it. American and Chinese forces will eye each other suspiciously, and the relationship may become tense. But recall that the much feared war between the U.S. and Sovietsthe issue that defined world politics for the second half of the 20th centurynever did break out. With so much to lose, the two toughest kids decided it wasnt worth it to fight.
The Shenlong Space Plane
With a space station under construction and plans for a manned moon mission, China aims to alter the balance of power in orbit. In 2007, the nation showed off its antisatellite missiles by shooting down a decommissioned weather satellite, creating 40,000 shards of space junk in the process. Now its testing an unmanned orbital vehicle known as Shenlong, or Divine Dragon. Comparable to the U.S. Air Forces X-37B space plane, the Shenlong could rapidly place satellites in orbitand potentially carry weapons that could disable the communications, navigation, and surveillance satellites of adversaries.
A Look Inside China's Secret Arsenal | Popular Science
