I’m not at all sold on the idea that the Chinese have a very effective anti-ship ballistic missile.
First, they’d have to locate the carrier somehow, which isn’t necessarily the easiest thing to do.
Second, their missile would have to have a large enough target acquisition “cone” so that it could still pick up the carrier in its new position, since it will have moved in an unknown direction at an unknown speed.
Third, it’ll have to identify the carrier separate from its escorts.
Fourth, it’ll have to guide itself onto the carrier.
And do all this in the face of Aegis/Standard SM-6 missiles, chaff, ECM and possible decoys.
It seems like a tall order, especially considering that the Chinese don’t have a huge reputation for developing their own weapons systems internally- they seem to copy a lot of Western or Russian stuff and then try to improve it. I have my doubts that the J-31 stacks up very comparably to the F-35, for example. To think that somehow they’ve pulled a very technically difficult rabbit out of their hat, when they can’t really manage to build their own fighters seems implausible at best.
Exactly. There are a lot of moving parts to the carrier killer concept (or maybe it’s the karrier ciller koncept) and, basically, we have the Chinese word that all the parts actually work as asserted. It’s the old adage…are their lips moving? Well, that’s a good tell that they are lying. We are talking about the CCP after all. Why folks take anything they say at face value is always a mystery to me.
Oh, I have no doubt they have a system, but I doubt it’s as dangerous as articles like the one posted make it out to be. The fact that Pentagon officials or folks from the Defense Department are worried (or say they are) isn’t that great an indication either…after all, if you want funding, the best way to get it is to convince folks there is a threat and that we need to catch back up because of the missile gap!
The U.S. might not even need aircraft carriers in that type of scenario. If China wanted to invade Taiwan, for instance, it would require a great many troop-transport vessels and warships, which would be vulnerable to U.S. submarine attack. Submarines are completely unaffected by China’s rocket/missile force and could just set up patrol areas around the Taiwan/east China Sea vicinity and sink at will.
The US certainly has more assets to help Taiwan than just carriers, yes. We also have ground based air craft that could potentially be used. We have other surface combatants besides carriers that would come into play. And as you say, we have plenty of attack submarines.
The carrier killer thing is really a scare tactic, designed I think more to let the US know they are still there, and probably is more geared towards us pissing them off with our freedom of navigation runs in the East and South China seas region (and the trade war thing) than anything else. The real threat is all those artificial islands that the CCP said were for peaceful purposes and would never be fortified or weaponized. I’m sure they haven’t been…the CCP said so after all!
[QUOTE=usedtobe;16318785Attacking China has never been a good idea, and they have rarely been interested in attacking anyone. Nepal is an exception - I have no idea why they want it.[/QUOTE]
It’s Tibet. And why China wants it is because the Tibetan plateau is where most of the rivers in China (and India & southeast Asia) originate. In fact, about 50% of the world’s population lives on fresh water that originates there.
That is a tremendously important strategic asset to any country. And especially China, with it’s growing population and desperate shortage of fresh water.
US submarines would be very vulnerable to torpedoes and other ASW devices: the South China Sea / Taiwan Strait is very shallow (70 metres) near Taiwan. It gets deep towards the Philippines.
Interestingly enough, the US Navy is going to start fitting out submarines with Harpoon missiles again, as well as starting to retrofit Tomahawk missiles (which are often fired from subs) with antiship warheads and guidance packages.
So they could conceivably hang out in deeper water and fire Harpoons and Tomahawks at any Chinese transports coming across the Strait.
There are also air-launched missiles with relatively long ranges- LRASM and JSM are the new ones, and Harpoon/Tomahawk are the older ones- all of which have a 150 or more nautical mile range.
Between that and the range of the F/A-18Es that would be launching them, you could conceivably sit a carrier near the northern tip of Luzon and cover the entire strait.
I was under the impression that shallow water helps the subs; it creates a lot of sound-bouncing-back echoes off the seabed and also the fact that there would be an immense number of vessels traveling in the Strait’s waters would generate a lot of background noise for subs to hide in. Granted, it might also make it hard for the sub to track targets.
Robby’s your Doper here. But that depth is less than the length of many submarines. For starters, this can make manoeuvring difficult. And adding fresh wrecks to the equation only makes it worse.
The average depth, IIRC, is over 100 meters in the Taiwan strait . Not particularly deep, but not exactly having to run on the surface shallow. I was never on a sub, but I seem to recall they can operate in waters over 50 meters deep fairly well, though this is from memory so maybe they need it to be deeper.
They might not be as effective in shallower waters, but they won’t be the only thing out there either. China would have to contend with ground based air craft, with surface ships, carrier based air craft and shore or sea based missiles, in addition to the subs. So, it’s not like they could focus on ASW alone…they are going to have to divide their attention between a range of threats.
Right, all things being equal, a modern nuclear sub would prefer to be in deeper waters so that it is free to maneuver. This includes maneuvering speed – in shallower waters you don’t want to go too fast because it’s comparatively easier to run aground if you have a depth excursion.
In terms of the US/USSR and Afghanistan… both of us have functioning government and essentially have a method of control. Afghanistan is not very centralized and what we see as a country is some arbitrary border that was drawn around tribal lands that was decided by colonial powers as they carved territory out amongst themselves. Can’t knock down a country that really isn’t a country, you’d have to have an outpost in every city/town/village, or decimate the population to even think about effective control. The way to win there is to leave them alone, whoever does that they’ll probably love.
In terms of China vs the World, aside from requiring a physical presence to claim jurisdiction, and a concern of probability that the World will invade them which is going to be very low, they’ll go cyber. Way too costly to build out traditional forces when you get a lot more “bang for the buck” with cyber and cause a lot of damage and keep your people within your territory.
Do they mention warhead ambiguity at all? Because the first thing NORAD will think when it sees the thermal plume from multiple hundreds of potentially-ICBM class rockets lift off----like those D-21s need to lift them to altitude—is that a massive counter value nuclear first strike has been launched by the PRC. (The PRC is not thought to have a counter force deterrent capability when confronting either the USA or Russia.)
That will change in the first few minutes, but that’s a big risk to run and hope that the conflict stays conventional, and confined to military targets within the WestPac theater.
In my lifetime, India, Nepal, Vietnam, and the Soviet Union.
As for the OP’s question, I do not see any major technological advantage the Chinese lack.
How deeply have you looked into China’s capabilities? I mean, off the top of my head I’d say their inability to produce their own jet engines is kind of a major issue, and that’s just one thing. It’s stopping them from building really good fighters, as they have to either use inferior engines or they are fully reliant on Russia to provide engines and parts.
Other than that, most of their technologies that have theoretical parity with the west are, well, theoretical or we’ve only seen brief glimpses coupled with what THEY say they can do. They are heavily missile reliant, as they deliberately went this path to focus on something they perceive as a weakness in the US, especially the US fleet and Pacific basing stance, but their missiles haven’t been proven in combat or combat conditions, especially their hypersonic or carrier killer missiles.
I think their biggest disadvantage isn’t in their (mainly stolen) technology, however, it’s in their system, especially how their military is organized and trained. They have serious organizational weaknesses, and their training for their soldiers is pretty bad and really hurts their combat readiness. And all of this is before you bring in the fact that the PLA and the other branches aren’t bound to the nation…they are basically the party’s private military, sworn to the party and lead by the party leadership. It would be like if the Republicans had their own military that was accountable only to them, but worse, as at least the Republicans are elected.
I can see why, on paper and without looking into this any deeper than a few articles on CNN saying that China could wipe us out in a few minutes in the event of a war or gassing on about their new stealth fighter or their carriers or whatever that people would think China is really powerful. To me, they are a paper dragon. They have some very modern systems, but many of those were stolen and copied, and given China’s manufacturing quality control and the systemic corruption in their system, especially before about 5 or so years ago, but even today, I’d say that taking any capabilities the Chinese are stating with a huge grain of salt is in order. Even if we see a test (that China is allowing to be seen and written about, using by their state controlled media), that doesn’t really say much about the weapons system as a whole. It doesn’t speak to how reliable the rest of the system are in the field, nor how well trained the regular crews are in it’s use or even how well that system performs in combat conditions. Often, Chinese development and procurement go at a very fast pace compared to the US. Part of that is because China steals most of the systems from other countries then re-engineers it to produce a descent copy. But part of that is because they simply don’t test in the same ways we do or for the same reasons we do.
I am no longer an expert. I do follow several blogs. I must ask you to go this one China Defense Blog, as today’s lead story features wonderful photos of PLA soldiers atop yaks.
