Bumped.
More cause for concern:
I’m not saying that guy’s wrong, but I think the listing of 340+ PLAN ships vs. 293 USN ships is a bit misleading, in that the PLAN list includes a bunch of stuff like 220 assorted gunboats, missile boats, corvettes, and sub chasers which are considerably smaller and less capable than the US Navy’s ships. Those might be a threat in coastal waters, but probably aren’t a big threat to ships out in open water.
To put a point on that, the USN’s 293 ships have a tonnage of 4.6 million tons combined, while the entire PLAN fleet has a tonnage of something like 1.7 million combined. In other words, US ships are MUCH larger (and capable) on average than PLAN ones.
Another thing the article overlooks is that the US Navy has 2600+ aircraft, while the PLANAF has 710.
I’ll say it: he’s wrong and your comparison of the tonnage of the ships is a much better indicator of which fleet is ‘bigger’ than counting the raw number of ships as if the collection of 127 vessels cataloged as coastal warfare vessels of the PLAN with displacements ranging from 220-520 tons represents a force about twice as big as 10 US carrier battle groups, carriers and escorts combined.
The author also dodges that he doesn’t have a realistic solution to what he identifies as the ‘problem’ by concluding
The United States can fund a significant fleet that matches the growth of the PLA Navy - or not. Whether the fleet is 250 or 500 ships is for elected officials and the Navy to decide, but those leaders much identify, acknowledge, and own that risk.
The US Navy isn’t going to expand to a 500 ship fleet; that would be obscenely expensive, unneeded, and even if it were to be desired tomorrow, the political will to expand the fleet that massively over a nothingburger doesn’t exist. The Soviet Navy was ‘bigger’ than the US Navy during pretty much the entire Cold War in terms numbers of combatants, and for the same reason, half the numbers consisted of corvettes or patrol boats. Even in the Reagan-era Cold War build-up the goal was only a 600 ship fleet, which was sizably outnumbered by the Soviet total of 1,057 ship in 1990; but the US fleet was quite clearly the ‘larger’ of the two by a substantial margin in terms of tonnage.
Plus, it comes down to motivation - maybe less urgent for navy than army troops - but allegedly during Tien Amen, the PLA troops had to be given “vitamin shots” before clearing the square, to ensure they stayed focused on the task.
Motivation seems to be an issue with Russian troops in Ukraine, too. Fortunately, Russia has established a second line of defense whose job is to shoot any soldiers leaving the front line.
True… I meant in the sense that his analysis that the bigger fleet always wins wasn’t wrong. It’s all in how you define “bigger”, isn’t it?
Has there ever been a historical case of a lower-tonnage but higher-hull-count fleet going up against a higher-tonnage but lower-hull-count fleet? And if so, which one won? That should conclusively settle what we ought to mean by “the large navy always wins”.
I really think that the idea that “largest navy wins” is different from “largest fleet wins”, and even then I’m not sure that the idea of the former really holds. As the Battle off Samar demonstrates, conditions and tactics can allow a smaller, weaker force to confound the plans of a larger one. As long as the smaller navy was managed well and the larger one was managed poorly, I can see the smaller one being able to defeat the longer one as long as its luck holds out.
I don’t believe you can look at historical sea battles and use them for prediction of a US-China conflict, with satellite tracking and targeting, BLOS ship killer missiles, stealth fighters and bombers, sophisticated IADS, AI enabled drones, missiles, and bombs, etc.
The Secretary of the Air Force is certainly worried:
He defines it as number of ships - he even cites the US Cold War 600-ship navy as proof of the need for quantity over quality in the article without realizing that he’s undermining his own argument since the Soviet Fleet at the time numbered over 1,000 vessels and had the same issue that he ignores in classifying the Chinese Navy as larger than the US one; he’s counting as if every ship was equal when a large part of the Chinese and Soviet Navies are/were made up of very small ships. In the battles/wars he’s citing as evidence of his theory, both sides had a fairly equally even distribution of ship sizes in the numbers involved.
USNI Proceedings, the periodical the article that the CNN news bit references was published in has a very lively comment & discussion section for responses to previous months articles, it’ll be interesting to see how Tangredi’s article is received in the next few month’s issues. As an example, the same January issue that Tangredi’s article is in has two responses to an article in December’s issue called “NATO Navies Must Get the Balance Right” which both point out flaws in the thesis of that article.
Why not? The navies in the Battle off Samar were near-peers and both advanced for the time. Fact is, no matter what technology is being employed, there will be one side that has a situational awareness advantage over the other. The technologies mentioned just seem to mean that the battle will happen at a longer range.
That sounds ominous but I don’t think that should surprise anyone. Who else would China be preparing to beat in a future war? The US is clearly the #1 military superpower in the world currently. If I was building my military I’d be planning to beat them. If I can do that I doubt anyone else is much worry.
I am sure the Soviets also configured their military to beat the US (and NATO by extension).
The Secretary of the Air Force wants more money in his budget. It behooves him to scare people.
For one, none of the Chinese capabilities (the list is for both Chinese and US capabilities) are necessarily sea-based. And none of them need to be sea based to fight a naval force up to 800 (or more) miles away. How did land-based forces affect that battle or other historical sea battles? Beyond that, we would expect both sides to have nearly perfect situational awareness (as measured against the WWII situational awareness).
Ahh, I see what you are saying there. You can’t just add up the naval assets in a modern war, measure them out and expect it to hold with the calculations you get from past engagements. Makes sense, no real argument there.
This I would disagree with as being important, though. It does not matter how much situational awareness they have in comparison to WWII or any other era. Only the level of situational awareness and ability to act on it relative to their current opponent is important. Near perfect in that situation isn’t that great if your opponent is closer to perfect.
It’s difficult to say who will have better situational awareness and how that “better” will manifest itself.
For example, I expect both sides will have perfect knowledge of the what and where of all surface assets. The US surface assets are the majority of their forces (long range bombers and missiles plus subs make up the remainder). The Chinese will have a lot of land based weapons and planes that will be harder to detect and harder to take out. Plus the smaller, more agile fleet might actually survive longer in a sea battle where situational awareness asymmetry might be measured more in latency than location precision (Nobody expects that any aircraft carriers will be in fighting shape an hour after the battle starts).
Imagine a game of Battleship with a transparent board where one opponent is just a little bit near sighted so that they confuse the class of the ships occasionally, and the other has perfect vision. Not a very fun game for either side, is it?
A strange game. The only winning move is not to play. How about a nice game of chess?
The other thing to consider is that any near-term conflict between the United States and China will be asymmetric; that is, the two sides will have different missions and thus require different force structures to achieve their missions.
Assuming that an attempt to forcibly reintegrate Taiwan is the flashpoint, the U.S. will need a blue ocean navy to protect logistics and project power across the world’s largest ocean, while China will be operating no more than a few hundred miles from its bases, and can afford a force strongly oriented to operating in the littoral. The U.S. Navy’s mission is a lot more difficult than the PLA’s and it’s forces will have to be both stronger and structured differently.
By the same token, China has an asymmetry with Taiwan, in that the latter needs to attrit China’s maritime force projection capability to a level where it can deal with any plausible threat to put soldiers on the island itself. If I were Taiwan, I’d be thinking drone boats and mobile antiship missiles, with an army structured toward flexible defense against both beach landing forces and paratroop/airmobile forces.
But a lot depends on China’s approach to the conflict. Do they try Normandy Invasion-style assault, force on force? Do they try to sink a U.S. carrier at the outset, or target U.S. bases in the area (Guam, Okinawa)? How does this play out with U.S. allies and other nations in the area? Or do they try something a little more subtle, perhaps an air and sea blockade of the island, in hopes of putting the U.S. in the role of having to fire the first shot? Here’s a good sci-fi scenario for you: China releases a highly contagious biological disease in Taipei, claims to find evidence for it due to a Chinese national coming back from Taiwan, then independently asserts a quarantine (like with the Cuban Missile Crisis) over the island to “quell the pandemic”. How do other nations in the region respond?
So a simple toting up of ships or even tonnages misses the key issue - who can perform the mission required of them against the forces arrayed in opposition?
I am not a military person but I think this is very, very wrong.
Militaries strive for this perfect knowledge but rarely (if ever) have it.
Oceans are HUGE places (especially the Pacific).
Agreed, though I’m not as convinced as many others that China will move on Taiwan (unless some perfect opportunity presents itself). The South China Sea, on the other hand…
China’s approach with India has been to slowly cut razor thin portions at the border and occupy more territory.
In 2020, Indian and Chinese armies had skirmishes : 2020–2021 China–India skirmishes - Wikipedia
China has kept up with these skirmishes happening every few months or so.
Here is a Sikh battalion fighting such a Chinese incursion a month or so ago : Indian soldiers thrash advancing Chinese troops at LAC; Undated video surfaces after Tawang clash - YouTube
In general, India has been preparing to defend itself from China ever since the last Sino-Indian war. China sure has the upper hand today but there is the Quad : US, Japan, Australia and India chalking out a joint China defense strategy.
On a personal note, many in India feel that Tibet should be liberated prominent being the Dalai Lama and the exiled Tibetan community living in India.
It’s unlikely that either side will have even the capability of the former. However, even if it one side had even that sense of what their enemy is doing, one is going to be able to “see” more clearly than the other. Remember, even satellites are usually providing information from some time in the past. Everything else will rely on strategy, numbers and luck to be in the right place to get current information and exploit it.
Mind you, I’m not saying the US will necessarily be the one with the upper hand. However, I do think that is easily as important as anything else in a modern war, and probably easily as paramount to the number of ships the combatants have.
And really, the game has been stupid since day 1. Modern weapons really don’t change that. Sadly, the other side gets a say in whether you have to play it.
Any nation with satellites, or with allies with satellites, will always know the precise position of every naval ship in the world. Yes, oceans are big, but you don’t have to watch the entire ocean to follow a ship. Plus, ships leave wakes, and those are very easy to follow.