Sina Delenda Est

Japan To Get First Aircraft Carriers Since World War II

By H I Sutton

Japan is set to deploy its first aircraft carriers since World War II. 

The Japanese Navy will modernize two helicopter destroyers into de facto aircraft carriers. 

This will increase the number of carrier operators in the Asia-Pacific region.

Japanese Navy carrier Izumo, photographed in 2016. She will be modified to support F-35 jets.

Historically the Imperial Japanese Navy placed a heavy emphasis on aircraft carriers. 

The Hōshō, when she was commissioned on December 27, 1922, was the first purpose built aircraft carrier in the world. 

Going into the Battle of Midway in June 1942 Japan had the largest aircraft carrier fleet in the world. 

This did not last. 

By the end of the war many carriers had been sunk, mostly by the U.S. Navy. 

After the war the remaining carriers were scrapped and Japan entered a period of disarmament, adopting a Constitution in 1947 that forbade the maintenance of forces that could wage war.
Amid the Korean War and Cold War, with U.S. support, military capabilities were rebuilt for the purpose of self-defense, which was deemed constitutional.
Recently Japan’s neighbors have began acquiring carriers. 

China is building a fleet of large aircraft carriers. 

One of them, Shandong, sailed through the Taiwan Strait on November 17 with fighter jets on deck. The passage, which could be interpreted as a show of force, was reportedly trailed by U.S Navy and Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) vessels. 

South Korea is also planning its first jet-equipped carriers.
Against this backdrop the interpretation of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution has shifted under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

Japan will not have aircraft carriers, but it will have Multi-Purpose Operation Destroyers. 

To a lay person the difference is only in the name. 

Two current ‘Helicopter Destroyers’ will be modified to carry F-35B fighters.Actually, the return to de facto aircraft carriers has been a multi-step journey, at least in naval architecture terms. 

Starting in the Cold War, Japan built extra-large destroyers equipped with more helicopters than those of other nations. 

The Shirane class were 7,500 tons and could carry 3 Sea King helicopters. 

Other countries' destroyers could carry one or two helicopters. 

But there was no suggestion that they might carry jet aircraft.
The ships which followed them were in a different league altogether. 

Euphemistically called 'helicopter destroyers,' these have the look and feel of flat-top aircraft carriers. And at 19,000 tons they are larger than some of the light carriers in service with other navies. 

But the biggest was yet to come. 

The follow-on Izumo class comes in at 27,000 tons. 

It is these 2 ships which are slated to receive F-35B Lightning-II jets.
Japan formally announced the purchase of 42 Lockheed Martin F-35B jets in August. 

These are the jump jet version, capable of short take-off and vertical landing (STOVL) operations. This allows them to operate aboard Japan’s new carriers. 

The air force already operates the larger F-35A model which is not capable of landing on the new carriers. 

By the time the -B models enter service, probably in the 2020s, the carriers should be ready to receive them.
Japan’s carriers will be smaller and fewer than China’s, but they slow the pace by which the JMSDF is being overtaken by the rapidly modernizing Chinese fleet.

Chinese Aggressions

The UK’s shift in attitude to the threat of China
By James Forsyth

Defence secretary Gavin Williamson



Gavin Williamson’s speech today is another demonstration of how the UK government’s attitude to China has changed.
In the Cameron Osborne era, the UK was determined to be China’s best friend in the West.
All the emphasis was on creating a ‘golden era’ in Anglo-Chinese relations.
But now, the government strikes a more realistic tone on China.
In his speech today, Williamson brackets China with Russia as a threat.
The headlines today have been about Williamson’s decision to send the UK’s new aircraft carrier, carrying both US and UK jets, to the Pacific in a message to Beijing.
But just as telling is the emphasis that Williamson places on various alliances.
He talks about the Five Eyes—the intelligence sharing agreement between the US, the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand—which is at the forefront of efforts to deal with Chinese intellectual property theft. 
Williamson also stresses the UK’s growing closeness to Japan, South Korea and India—three countries that are vital to any attempt to balance and contain Chinese power in Asia.
The government’s shift in thinking on China is sensible.
Ultimately, the UK will not benefit from a world in which China’s power grows unchecked.

The Empire Strikes Back

Japan to get first aircraft carrier since second world war amid China concerns

By Justin McCurry in Tokyo

Japan is to upgrade two of its existing Izumo-class helicopter carriers.

Japan is to acquire at least one aircraft carrier for the first time since the second world war, as it attempts to counter Chinese maritime expansion in the Pacific ocean.
The government will upgrade its two existing Izumo-class helicopter carriers so they can transport and launch fighter jets, according to media reports. 

The plans are expected to be included in new defence guidelines due to be released next month.
This week the Nikkei business paper reported that Japan was poised to buy 100 F-35 stealth jets from the US at a cost of more than US$8.8bn, a year after President Donald Trump urged Tokyo to buy more US-made military equipment.
The reported order is in addition to 42 F-35 jets it has already bought from the US.

Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, told President Trump in September that high-spec military equipment would be “important to strengthen Japan’s defences”.
By refitting its two 248-metre-long Izumo-class vessels, which can each carry up to 14 helicopters, Japan would in effect be acquiring its first aircraft carriers since the end of the war.
Previous Japanese governments have ruled out acquiring aircraft carriers, adhering to the postwar consensus that the vessels’ capabilities could be interpreted as offensive, in a possible violation of the country’s “pacifist” constitution.
In its latest defence white paper, Japan noted that China had acquired and built aircraft carriers to enable it to expand into Pacific waters near Japan’s outlying south-western islands.
Increased Chinese naval activity in waters far from its shores has added to bilateral tensions over Japan's Senkaku islands.
“It’s desirable that the Izumo can be used for multiple purposes,” the defence minister, Takeshi Iwaya, told reporters this week.
The carriers will be deployed to defend Japan’s remote south-western islands, according to the Mainichi Shimbun.
The defence white paper, published in August, also voiced concern about Chinese military spending and naval activity in the South China Sea.

China's New Aircraft Carrier

It is not clear when the Type 002 will be launched and eventually commissioned, but the Chinese are thought to have a set a goal of having four carrier strike groups in operational service by 2030.

By Dave Majumdar


China has apparently started construction of its third aircraft carrier, but details about the new vessel are scant. 

However, unlike the two previous Chinese carriers, the Type 001 Liaoning—formerly the Soviet Kuznetsov-class Varyag—and the Type 001A Shandong, the new Type 002 ship will be equipped with catapult launch systems similar in concept to those found onboard U.S. Navy vessels.
The Chinese are known to be working on the development of an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS ) hardware similar to those found onboard the latest USS Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carriers, but development of those advanced electromagnetic catapults has proven to be difficult even for the United States. 

According to Chinese media, Beijing intends to forego conventional steam catapults and move directly to EMALS technology. 

Assuming, that the Chinese are moving forward with an EMALS-equipped vessel, it is an indication that Beijing’s third carrier will be of an indigenous design—albeit one likely aided by technology gleaned from the United States through espionage.
“China is expected to begin construction on its first catapult-capable carrier in 2018, which will enable additional fighter aircraft, fixed-wing early-warning aircraft, and more rapid flight operations,” reads the Pentagon’s 2018 report to Congress on the Chinese military .
Indeed, Chinese media reported earlier this year that the Shanghai Jiangnan Shipyard Group was given the green light to start construction on China’s third carrier. 

“But the shipyard is still working on the carrier’s hull, which is expected to take about two years,” a Chinese defense industrial source told the South China Morning Post . 

“Building the new carrier will be more complicated and challenging than the other two ships.”
There are few specific details available about the specifications of the Type 002. 

However, Chinese media have suggested that the new vessels would displace roughly 80,000-tons, which is comparable in size to the now-retired USS John F. Kennedy (CV-67). 

At a displacement of roughly 80,000-tons, the prospective Chinese aircraft carrier would be similar in size to the nuclear-powered Project 1143.7 Orel-class design, the only example of which, Ulyanovsk, was scrapped on the ways after the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991.
Given that China acquired Liaoning and all of her blueprints from a newly independent Ukraine, it is possible that Beijing also acquired the design for Ulyanovsk from Kiev under a similar arrangement. 

Beijing’s engineers would have benefited greatly from the acquisition of such technology from the fragmented remains of Soviet Union, having never previously designed or built a combat vessel of such a massive scale. 

Moscow had completed development of most the critical technologies—such as steam catapults—needed for a fully capable carrier on Ulyanovsk before the implosion of the Soviet state.
Even if Beijing did not obtain the design for Ulyanovsk, the Chinese are clearly benefiting from Soviet technological developments that they gleaned from Liaoning. 

Indeed, Chinese media is reporting that Ukrainian engineers have been assisting Beijing’s shipbuilders with the development of the new carriers. 

“China has set up a strong and professional aircraft carrier team since early 2000, when it decided to retrofit the Varyag to launch as the Liaoning, and it hired many Ukrainian experts ... as technical advisers,” a Chinese defense industry source told the South China Morning Post.
Nonetheless, there are indications that Beijing is looking towards the West for inspiration for the Type 002, particularly for the design of ships’ topsides. 

“The new vessel will have a smaller tower island than the Liaoning and its sister ship because it needs to accommodate China’s carrier-based J-15 fighter jets, which are quite large,” a Chinese defense industry source told South China Morning Post. 

“It has been suggested that they look to Britain’s warship, the HMS Queen Elizabeth, which has two small tower islands on the deck. That would create more space for the runway and aircraft, but no final decision has been made yet.”
It is not clear when the Type 002 will be launched and eventually commissioned, but the Chinese are thought to have a set a goal of having four carrier strike groups in operational service by 2030.

The US Navy just sent Russia and China powerful messages with aircraft-carrier shows of force

• The US Navy carried out two high-profile aircraft-carrier training events in key waters that send messages to China and Russia.
• The US has identified China and Russia as its great rivals and has said it intends to build military capacity to thwart their military ambitions.
• The US Navy hadn't been taking an active role in checking these two countries, but recently it made big statements.
• Exercises including strong US allies and F-35C stealth jet fighters no doubt raised eyebrows in Moscow and Beijing.

By Alex Lockie
Aircraft from the Freedom Fighters of Carrier Air Wing 7 flying in formation above the Nimitz-class aircraft carriers USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Harry S. Truman.

The US Navy carried out two high-profile aircraft-carrier training events in key waters that send messages to China and Russia, the US's two main competitors and the only countries close to matching the US's military might.
The US Navy's Ronald Regan Carrier Strike Group joined Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force's Escort Flotilla 4 Battle Group to conduct joint military exercises in the hotly contested South China Sea on Friday, the Navy said.
Japan sent the Kaga, a small aircraft carrier technically classified as a destroyer, along with guided-missile destroyers to train with the US's only forward-deployed aircraft carrier, the Reagan.
The training advanced the US and Japan's vision of a "free and open Indo-Pacific," a key part of US strategy to prevent Beijing from tightening its grip on the region by further militarizing the South China Sea.
But beyond just teaching US and Japanese carriers how to fight together, Washington sent Beijing a message that it won't be pushed out of the South China Sea and that if a fight comes, it won't stand alone.
China, which illegally annexed about 90% of the South China Sea and has sought to unilaterally dictate who can use the resource-rich waterway that sees trillions of dollars in annual trade, has struggled to make allies in the region. 

The US has moved to counter China's attempts at hegemony by deepening ties with Australia, Japan, and India.
On top of that, the US just showed for the first time ever that it can update its supercarriers with a stealth aircraft perfect for taking out island fortresses like Beijing's South China Sea holdings: the F-35C.

Russia checked by the 2nd Fleet
An F-35C conducting a catapult takeoff from the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Half a world away, the USS Abraham Lincoln and USS Harry S. Truman carriers did joint training including the F-35C for the first time. 

But the exercise most likely had an additional audience in mind: Russia.
The US recently decided to bring back the Second Fleet, a Navy command that countered the threat from the Soviet Union and was stood down in 2011 when it seemed as if the Russia threat had waned.
As Russia's navy increasingly menaces the US and looks to assert itself as a powerful navy in the Mediterranean and elsewhere, the US has again found the need to defend its home waters of the near Atlantic.
Russia, which has only one inactive, shoddy aircraft carrier, cannot hope to compete with the US's multiple carriers and advanced aircraft.
The US has recently reshuffled its schedule of aircraft-carrier deployments to have more ships present to keep the pressure on Russia and China. 

New US national defense and strategy documents from President Donald Trump's administration outline a decided shift in US focus from a post-Cold War mentality — when the US's enemies were small, lightly armed cells of terrorists hidden in hills — to a full-on competition among world powers, as it was in the world wars.
Russia and China have taken notice, with Russian ships exercising in the Mediterranean— waters they wouldn't have normally reached before Russia's incursion into Syria in 2015 — and Chinese ships challenging the right of US ships and planes to pass through international spaces.
Also in 2015, the US suspended "freedom of navigation" patrols, its main way of checking Chinese ambition in the South China Sea.
But now the Navy is taking those challenges seriously.
"We are the best Navy in the world, and given the complex and competitive environment we are in, we can't take anything for granted or settle for the status quo," Rear Adm. John Wade, the commander of the Abraham Lincoln Strike Group, said in a Navy press release.
With a renewed mission and the world's first carrier-launched stealth aircraft, the US has sent a clear signal to its main military rivals that US Navy power is back and on the move.

Sina Delenda Est

With Ships and Missiles, China Is Ready to Challenge U.S. Navy in Pacific
By Steven Lee Myers

China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, at sea in April. First launched by the Soviet Union in 1988, it was sold for $20 million to a Chinese investor who said it would become a floating casino, though he was in reality acting on behalf of the People’s Liberation Army Navy.

DALIAN, China — In April, on the 69th anniversary of the founding of China’s Navy, the country’s first domestically built aircraft carrier stirred from its berth in the port city of Dalian on the Bohai Sea, tethered to tugboats for a test of its seaworthiness.
“China’s first homegrown aircraft carrier just moved a bit, and the United States, Japan and India squirmed,” a military news website crowed, referring to the three nations China views as its main rivals.
Not long ago, such boasts would have been dismissed as the bravado of a second-string military. 

No longer.
A modernization program focused on naval and missile forces has shifted the balance of power in the Pacific in ways the United States and its allies are only beginning to digest.
While China lags in projecting firepower on a global scale, it can now challenge American military supremacy in the places that matter most to it: the waters around Taiwan and in the disputed South China Sea.
That means a growing section of the Pacific Ocean — where the United States has operated unchallenged since the naval battles of World War II — is once again contested territory, with Chinese warships and aircraft regularly bumping up against those of the United States and its allies.
To prevail in these waters, according to officials and analysts who scrutinize Chinese military developments, China does not need a military that can defeat the United States outright but merely one that can make intervention in the region too costly for Washington to contemplate. 

Many analysts say Beijing has already achieved that goal.
To do so, it has developed “anti-access” capabilities that use radar, satellites and missiles to neutralize the decisive edge that America’s powerful aircraft carrier strike groups have enjoyed. 

It is also rapidly expanding its naval forces with the goal of deploying a “blue water” navy that would allow it to defend its growing interests beyond its coastal waters.
“China is now capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios short of war with the United States,” the new commander of the United States Indo-Pacific Command, Adm. Philip S. Davidson, acknowledged in written remarks submitted during his Senate confirmation process in March.
He described China as a “peer competitor” gaining on the United States not by matching its forces weapon by weapon but by building critical “asymmetrical capabilities,” including with anti-ship missiles and in submarine warfare. 

“There is no guarantee that the United States would win a future conflict with China,” he concluded.
Last year, the Chinese Navy became the world’s largest, with more warships and submarines than the United States, and it continues to build new ships at a stunning rate. 

Though the American fleet remains superior qualitatively, it is spread much thinner.
“The task of building a powerful navy has never been as urgent as it is today,” Xi Jinping declared in April as he presided over a naval procession off the southern Chinese island of Hainan that opened exercises involving 48 ships and submarines. 

The Ministry of National Defense said they were the largest since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949.
Even as the United States wages a trade war against China, Chinese warships and aircraft have picked up the pace of operations in the waters off Japan, Taiwan, and the islands, shoals and reefs it has claimed in the South China Sea over the objections of Vietnam and the Philippines.
When two American warships — the Higgins, a destroyer, and the Antietam, a cruiser — sailed within a few miles of disputed islands in the Paracels in May, Chinese vessels rushed to challenge what Beijing later denounced as “a provocative act.” 

China did the same to three Australian ships passing through the South China Sea in April.
Only three years ago, Xi stood beside President Barack Obama in the Rose Garden and promised not to militarize artificial islands it has built farther south in the Spratlys archipelago. 

Chinese officials have since acknowledged deploying missiles there, but argue that they are necessary because of American “incursions” in Chinese waters.
When Defense Secretary Jim Mattis visited Beijing in June, Xi bluntly warned him that China would not yield “even one inch” of territory it claims as its own.
Ballistic missiles designed to strike ships on display at a military parade in Beijing in 2015.

‘Anti-Access/Area Denial’
China’s naval expansion began in 2000 but accelerated sharply after Xi took command in 2013. 

He has drastically shifted the military’s focus to naval as well as air and strategic rocket forces, while purging commanders accused of corruption and cutting the traditional land forces.
The People’s Liberation Army — the bedrock of Communist power since the revolution — has actually shrunk in order to free up resources for a more modern fighting force. 

Since 2015, the army has cut 300,000 enlisted soldiers and officers, paring the military to two million personnel over all, compared with 1.4 million in the United States.
While every branch of China’s armed forces lags behind the United States’ in firepower and experience, China has made significant gains in asymmetrical weaponry to blunt America’s advantages. 

One focus has been in what American military planners call A2/AD, for “anti-access/area denial,” or what the Chinese call “counter-intervention.”
A centerpiece of this strategy is an arsenal of high-speed ballistic missiles designed to strike moving ships. 

The latest versions, the DF-21D and, since 2016, the DF-26, are popularly known as “carrier killers,” since they can threaten the most powerful vessels in the American fleet long before they get close to China.
The DF-26, which made its debut in a military parade in Beijing in 2015 and was tested in the Bohai Sea last year, has a range that would allow it to menace ships and bases as far away as Guam, according to the latest Pentagon report on the Chinese military, released this month. 

These missiles are almost impossible to detect and intercept, and are directed at moving targets by an increasingly sophisticated Chinese network of radar and satellites.
China announced in April that the DF-26 had entered service. 

State television showed rocket launchers carrying 22 of them, though the number deployed now is unknown. 

A brigade equipped with them is reported to be based in Henan Province, in central China.
Such missiles pose a particular challenge to American commanders because neutralizing them might require an attack deep inside Chinese territory, which would be a major escalation.
The American Navy has never faced such a threat before, the Congressional Research Office warned in a report in May, adding that some analysts consider the missiles “game changing.”
The “carrier killers” have been supplemented by the deployment this year of missiles in the South China Sea. 

The weaponry includes the new YJ-12B anti-ship cruise missile, which puts most of the waters between the Philippines and Vietnam in range.
The Chinese military is preparing for a limited military conflict from the sea, according to a 2013 paper in a journal called The Science of Military Strategy.
Lyle Morris, an analyst with the RAND Corporation, said that China’s deployment of missiles in the disputed Paracel and Spratly Islands “will dramatically change how the U.S. military operates” across Asia and the Pacific.
The best American response, he added, would be “to find new and innovative methods” of deploying ships outside their range. 

Given the longer range of the ballistic missiles, however, that is not possible “in most contingencies” the American Navy would be likely to face in Asia.

Soldiers with the People’s Liberation Army Navy patrolling Woody Island in the disputed Paracel archipelago in 2016.

Blue-Water Ambitions
The aircraft carrier that put to sea in April for its first trials is China’s second, but the first built domestically. 

It is the most prominent manifestation of a modernization project meant to propel the country into the upper tier of military powers. 

Only the United States, with 11 nuclear-powered carriers, operates more than one.
A third Chinese carrier is under construction in a port near Shanghai. 

Analysts believe China will eventually build five or six.
The Chinese military, traditionally focused on repelling a land invasion, increasingly aims to project power into the “blue waters” of the world to protect China’s expanding economic and diplomatic interests, from the Pacific to the Atlantic.
The carriers attract the most attention but China’s naval expansion has been far broader. 

The Chinese Navy — officially the People’s Liberation Army Navy — has built more than 100 warships and submarines in the last decade alone, more than the entire naval fleets of all but a handful of nations.
Last year, China also introduced the first of a new class of a heavy cruisers — or “super destroyers” — that, according to the American Office of Naval Intelligence, “are comparable in many respects to most modern Western warships.” 

Two more were launched from dry dock in Dalian in July, the state media reported.
Last year, China counted 317 warships and submarines in active service, compared with 283 in the United States Navy, which has been essentially unrivaled in the open seas since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.
Unlike the Soviet Union, which drained its coffers during the Cold War arms race, military spending in China is a manageable percentage of a growing economy. 

Beijing’s defense budget now ranks second only to the United States: $228 billion to $610 billion, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The roots of China’s focus on sea power and “area denial” can be traced to what many Chinese viewed as humiliation in 1995 and 1996. 

When Taiwan moved to hold its first democratic elections, China fired missiles near the island, prompting President Bill Clinton to dispatch two aircraft carriers to the region.
“We avoided the sea, took it as a moat and a joyful little pond to the Middle Kingdom,” a naval analyst, Chen Guoqiang, wrote recently in the official Navy newspaper. 

“So not only did we lose all the advantages of the sea but also our territories became the prey of the imperialist powers.”
China’s naval buildup since then has been remarkable. 

In 1995, China had only three submarines. 

It now has nearly 60 and plans to expand to nearly 80, according to a report last month by the United States Congressional Research Service.
As it has in its civilian economy, China has bought or absorbed technologies from the rest of the world, in some cases illicitly. 

Much of its military hardware is of Soviet origin or modeled on antiquated Soviet designs, but with each new wave of production, analysts say, China is deploying more advanced capabilities.
China’s first aircraft carrier was originally launched by the Soviet Union in 1988 and left to rust when the nation collapsed three years later. 

Newly independent Ukraine sold it for $20 million to a Chinese investor who claimed it would become a floating casino, though he was really acting on behalf of Beijing, which refurbished the vessel and named it the Liaoning.
The second aircraft carrier — as yet unnamed — is largely based on the Liaoning’s designs, but is reported to have enhanced technology. 

In February, the China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation disclosed that it has plans to build nuclear-powered carriers, which have far greater endurance than ones that require refueling stops.
China’s military has encountered some growing pains. 

It is hampered by corruption, which Xi has vowed to wipe out, and a lack of combat experience. 

As a fighting force, it remains untested by combat.
In January, it was embarrassed when one of its most advanced submarines was detected as it neared Japanese islands known as the Senkaku. 

The attack submarine should never have been spotted.
The second aircraft carrier also appears to have experienced hiccups. 

Its first sea trials were announced in April and then inexplicably delayed. 

Not long after the trials went ahead in May, the general manager of China Shipbuilding was placed under investigation for “serious violation of laws and discipline,” the official Xinhua news agency reported, without elaborating.

Fiery Cross Reef in the South China Sea. The deployment of missiles on three man-made reefs in the disputed Spratly Islands — Subi, Mischief and Fiery Cross — has prompted protests from the White House.

Defending Its Claims
China’s military advances have nonetheless emboldened the country’s leadership.
The state media declared the carrier Liaoning “combat ready” in the summer after it moved with six other warships through the Miyako Strait that splits Japan’s Ryukyu Islands and conducted its first flight operations in the Pacific.
The Liaoning’s battle group now routinely circles Taiwan. 

So do Chinese fighter jets and bombers.
China’s new J-20 stealth fighter conducted its first training mission at sea in May, while its strategic bomber, the H-6, landed for the first time on Woody Island in the Paracels. 

From the airfield there or from those in the Spratly Islands, the bombers could strike all of Southeast Asia.
The recent Pentagon report noted that H-6 flights in the Pacific were intended to demonstrate the ability to strike American bases in Japan and South Korea, and as far away as Guam.
“Competition is the American way of seeing it,” said Li Jie, an analyst with the Chinese Naval Research Institute in Beijing. 

“China is simply protecting its rights and its interests in the Pacific.”
And China’s interests are expanding.
In 2017, it opened its first overseas military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa, saying that it will be used to support its participation in multinational antipiracy patrols off Somalia.
It now appears to be planning to acquire access to a network of ports and bases throughout the Indian Ocean. 

Though ostensibly commercial, these projects have laid the groundwork for a necklace of refueling and resupply arrangements that will “facilitate Beijing’s long-range naval operations,” according to a new report by C4ADS, a research organization in Washington.
“They soon will be able, for example, to send a squadron of ships to somewhere, say in Africa, and have all the capabilities to make a landing in force to protect Chinese assets,” said Vassily Kashin, an expert with the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow.
The need was driven home in 2015 when Chinese warships evacuated 629 Chinese and 279 foreigners from Yemen when the country’s civil war raged in Aden, a southern port city.
One of the frigates involved in the rescue, the Linyi, was featured in a patriotic blockbuster film, “Operation Red Sea.”
“The Chinese are going to be more present,” Mr. Kashin added, “and everyone has to get used to it.”

Fighter jets on the Liaoning in the East China Sea in April.

China’s New Aircraft Carrier Is Already Obsolete

The carrier fleet is a frontal assault on the core of U.S. power in the Pacific, an attempt to build a force capable of ending America’s naval dominance with a fleet that could defeat it in a Midway-style battle
BY SAM ROGGEVEEN
China's sole aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, arrives in Hong Kong waters on July 7, 2017. 

China’s first home-built aircraft carrier, which was seen Monday being towed from berth, will begin sea trials imminently. 

When the new vessel enters service some time in 2019 or 2020, China will become the world’s second most powerful operator of aircraft carriers, with a grand total of two. 

It is a position from which it will never be dislodged.
Yes, France, Russia, and Brazil operate a carrier each; Italy has a couple of small carriers; and the United Kingdom is rebuilding a respectable two-ship fleet, as is India. 

Other countries, such as Japan and Australia, operate several helicopter carriers, though not fixed-wing aircraft. 

But China won’t stop at two, nor will it remain satisfied with the inferior Soviet-derived design that was seen Monday. (The first carrier of the People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLA Navy, is a Soviet-era ship purchased half-finished from Ukraine.)
There are rumors that China’s next ship is already being built, and although it will be smaller than the U.S. Navy’s Nimitz-class and probably not nuclear-powered, in most other respects it will resemble an American supercarrier. 

The follow-on ships will be better still. 

No nation other than the United States has that kind of ambition, and it will give China unquestionably the second-most powerful navy in the world — though admittedly one still a very, very long way behind the U.S. fleet.
But there’s a mystery at the heart of China’s ambitious aircraft carrier program, because over the course of its immense naval modernization effort of the last two decades, China has put so much effort into making aircraft carriers obsolete.
China has acquired dozens of submarines, fleets of strike aircraft, and missiles that can be fired from the air, land, sea, and under the sea, all with one purpose: to make it excessively dangerous for large surface ships to operate near China’s coast. 

China has even invented an entirely new class of weapon — the anti-ship ballistic missile — that has been dubbed a “carrier killer.”


So why is China’s navy, the very institution that has made America’s carrier fleet in the Pacific so vulnerable, now investing in its own carrier fleet? 

It has surely occurred to the Chinese that the United States will respond to the PLA’s carriers just as China has done to America’s. 

In fact, it’s already happening. 

The U.S. Defense Department is now testing a stealthy long-range anti-ship missile that is almost certainly a reaction to the dramatic growth of China’s surface fleet.
So is China making a big mistake? 

Is the aircrafft carrier program a folly driven by the navy brass, with no clear strategic purpose?
We shouldn’t dismiss that possibility. 

In fact, that may be exactly how China’s carrier program started. 

In early 2015, the South China Morning Post published a series of articles revealing the extraordinary pre-history of China’s carrier program. 

In the mid-1990s, a small group of entrepreneurial PLA Navy officers enlisted the help of Hong Kong businessman Xu Zengping to purchase the hull of a half-finished Soviet-era carrier from Ukraine on the public pretense that it would be rebuilt as a floating casino. 

Incredibly, the officers told Xu that this initiative had no official backing from Beijing. 

They were making a potentially transformative arms purchase on their own initiative.
The carrier program has clearly grown since those beginnings and has much further to grow still, so it is safe to assume that the Chinese leadership has now embraced it and has a specific plan in mind for its growing fleet. 

What could that plan be?
China is a great power with a huge economy. 

In fact, a recent Australian government report estimates that by 2030, the Chinese economy will be worth $42 trillion versus $24 trillion for the United States — in other words, in less than 15 years’ time China’s economy could be almost double the size of America’s.
No country of that size would accept that it should remain strategically subordinate to another great power in its own backyard, and China certainly doesn’t. 

Beijing already wants to lead in Asia, and that means having a powerful military with the ability to project power over long distances. 

For China to become Asia’s strategic leader, it will need to push the United States out. 

So the carrier fleet is a frontal assault on the core of U.S. power in the Pacific, an attempt to build a force capable of ending America’s naval dominance with a fleet that could defeat it in a Midway-style battle.
But even for a country as big as China, building a fleet of that size and capability is a formidable and massively expensive challenge. 

At the current pace of modernization, it could take decades to build such a fleet, particularly if the United States and its allies respond by improving their own capabilities. 

And that’s not to mention the heightened risk of a catastrophic great-power war.
So here’s an alternative explanation: China’s carrier-centered navy is not designed so much to challenge U.S. maritime supremacy as to inherit it. 

China may be betting that the United States will slowly withdraw of its own accord because the cost of maintaining that leadership is rising so dramatically. 

Consider America’s defense commitment to Taiwan. 

Before China’s massive investment in anti-ship capabilities, the United States could safely sail its carrier through the Taiwan Strait, and its ability to defend Taiwan remained unquestioned. 

Now, the United States would be at serious risk of losing one or two carrier battle groups in any confrontation over Taiwan. 

The cost of defending South Korea has risen steeply, too, with North Korea close to deploying a nuclear-tipped missile that can reach cities on the continental United States, if it hasn’t already.
As the costs of U.S. military leadership in Asia rise, questions about why the United States needs to maintain that leadership become louder. 

America’s military presence in Asia made sense in the Cold War, but it is much harder to justify now.
If China inherits U.S. leadership in Asia, it won’t need a fleet as big as America’s. 

Some experts predict China will build just six carriers, quite enough to cement its leadership in a post-American Asia. 

And that’s when China’s carrier fleet will really come into its own, for although aircraft carriers are increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated anti-ship weapons, America has demonstrated that they are incredibly useful when you have command of the oceans.
That’s why China’s new fleet is such bad news for the small Southeast Asian nations in particular. 

In a post-American Asia, larger powers such as South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and Australia have a fighting chance of resisting Chinese coercion if they invest more heavily in their own defense capacities. 

That isn’t an option for smaller powers, particularly as they enter China’s economic orbit via initiatives such as the Belt and Road.
The Chinese aircraft carrier about to put to sea is no match for the U.S. Navy, but that should bring little comfort to the United States and its Asian allies. 

Indeed, China may be betting that it will never have to confront the U.S. fleet and that it can prepare for the day the Navy sails back to home shores.

The Empire Strikes Back

Japan Seeks to Answer China With an Aircraft Carrier
By Chieko Tsuneoka and Peter Landers

The JS Izumo, here berthed near Tokyo in 2016, is one of four Japanese flat-top destroyers, whose decks allow helicopters to take off and land.

TOKYO—Japan’s ruling party called for the nation to develop its own aircraft carrier and buy American F-35B fighter jets in response to aggressive Chinese actions.
The proposal Tuesday from the defense panel of Liberal Democratic Party, if adopted, would be the latest step by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to beef up defense of outlying islands including those also claimed by Beijing. 

It would also be a further step away from the country’s postwar imposed pacifism.
Japan already has four flat-top destroyers of the Izumo and Hyuga classes, which can accommodate helicopters. 

The panel didn’t specify the type of aircraft carrier it is recommending, but a ruling-party official said lawmakers are looking at whether to adapt those destroyers, built at a cost of $1 billion or more, to handle fighter jets.
The panel also recommended acquiring F-35B jets, which can take off and land vertically, making them suitable for shorter-deck carriers such as the Izumo and small islands without full-length runways. 

The U.S. has deployed its own F-35Bs at a U.S. base in Japan.

The defense panel of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party recommends buying F-35B fighter jets—like this one taking off from the USS Wasp earlier this month—which can take off and land vertically. 

Echoing language used by Mr. Abe, the panel said Japan faces the greatest crisis situation of the postwar era. 

It cited Chinese incursions near Japan's Senkaku islands.

In recent years China has sent progressively larger coast-guard ships, some of them armed, to circle the islands.
A ruling-party official said the final version of the recommendations would be released in late May. They are meant to influence the next five-year defense plan, which Mr. Abe’s government is set to issue by December.
A Defense Ministry spokeswoman said the government is studying new uses for the Izumo-class destroyers and examining the capabilities of F-35B aircraft, but hasn’t decided what to deploy.
Japan hasn’t had a full-fledged aircraft carrier since World War II. 

As prime minister, Mr. Abe has sought to remove some of the shackles placed on Japan’s postwar military. 

Defense spending is set to rise 1.3% to a record $47 billion in the year starting April 1. 

That includes funds for new bases on southern islands as well as the country’s first cruise missiles and stronger ballistic-missile defenses.

Under Mr. Abe, the defense budget has been growing since 2013. 

Japan, one of the U.S.’s most important allies, has trained a new amphibious troop unit and bought F-35A fighters, which take off conventionally. 

In the coming fiscal year, it plans to spend more than $800 million to buy six of the jets, completing the 28-jet purchase laid out in the current five-year defense plan.
During a visit to Tokyo in November, President Donald Trump called for Japan to buy “massive” amounts of military equipment from the U.S.

China Threat

US navy carrier's Vietnam visit signals closer ties amid China tensions
By Bennett Murray in Da Nang

A child wears a US navy hat during a visit by sailors to Da Nang SOS Children’s Village. 

Thousands of sailors from a US navy carrier and two escort vessels have taken part in a charm offensive while on a port call to the Vietnamese coastal city of Da Nang, in the largest US troop presence in the country since the war ended in 1975.
In a classroom on the outskirts of the city, uniformed navy sailors played rock and country classics for dozens of enthralled children who had disabilities that have been blamed on the Agent Orange sprayed by the US military during the war. 

After the performance, more sailors arrived for some arts and crafts.
Cooks from the USS Carl Vinson visited local restaurants to learn Vietnamese recipes, and the US naval band performed songs from the war-era Vietnamese composer Trinh Cong Son.
Dignitaries from both the US navy and the Vietnamese government lauded the visit as a sign of budding friendship between the two former foes, but looming over the fun, lighthearted atmosphere of the week was the question of China. 

Although geopolitical issues were largely left unspoken, analysts said the trip largely stemmed from anxieties over a millennia-old rivalry between Vietnam and its northern neighbour.
Nguyen Chi Tuyen, a dissident blogger from Hanoi also known by his pen name Anh Chi, said the Vietnamese people welcomed US military engagement with “our hearts and minds”.
He said opposition to China was deeply embedded in Vietnam’s national identity, with the South China Sea dispute only the most recent in a line of conflicts stretching back to China’s first emperor, Qin Shi Huang, in the third century BC.
China claims almost all the South China Sea, including waters internationally recognised as Vietnam’s. 

The two countries fought a series of bloody skirmishes over the sea’s islands in the 1970s and 80s, with the last occurring in 1988.
Tuyen is no fan Vietnam’s single-party communist state, which bans dissent. 

He has been arrested several times and was once beaten by thugs working for the secret police.
But he said most anti-government activists supported the Carl Vinson’s arrival. 

They also want American arms sales to Vietnam, which were legalised in 2016 when Barack Obama lifted a weapons embargo that had been in place since the war.
Tuyen said that shortly before the embargo was lifted, Senator John McCain, a longtime advocate of close bilateral ties, asked him and three other dissidents at a private meeting in Hanoi whether the move would damage the human rights situation in Vietnam. 

All four told McCain the US should go through with sales, said Tuyen.
“We know about the threat that if the US government lifts the ban, they can use them against the activists and the people,” he said. 

“But we think it is much more important than our own security that if the US government lifts the ban, Vietnam … can use the weapons to defend our own country.”
Carl Thayer, an emeritus professor at the University of New South Wales and an expert on south-east Asia, said the Vietnamese government considered the Carl Vinson’s docking to be a balancing act between powers.
“The visit of the USS Carl Vinson does not signal that Vietnam is moving into the US orbit to oppose China. It signals that as trust has developed between Vietnam and the United States, the leaders in Hanoi are comfortable with a step up in naval engagement with the United States,” he said.
But Le Dang Doanh, a former economic adviser to the government and a Communist party member, said Hanoi felt its hand was being forced. 

“It is Beijing that has pushed Vietnam closer to the US more than Washington has come closer to Vietnam.”
He said he was anxious about whether the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, who recently changed China’s constitution to abolish term limits, would use force against Vietnam as a show of strength. China’s former leader Deng Xiaoping ordered the 1979 invasion of Vietnam shortly after consolidating power, Doanh pointed out.
“I don’t know how Xi Jinping will demonstrate his power, we need to pay high attention,” he said.
Would Vietnam would ever abandon its non-alignment policy and become a US ally? 

“It’s not sure [if there could be an alliance], but it’s certainly not their last visit,” said Doanh.

Chinese aggressions

Mattis says a U.S. aircraft carrier is likely to visit Vietnam amid Chinese tension
By Alex Horton 

The nuclear-powered USS Carl Vinson aircraft carrier leaves San Diego Bay for deployment to the western Pacific Friday, Jan. 5, 2018.

HANOI, Vietnam — The United States is finalizing plans to dock an aircraft carrier in the south of Vietnam this March, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Thursday, part of growing military cooperation between the nations and a 1,092-foot-long signal to China to rethink its aggressive expansion.
The USS Carl Vinson will make a port call in Danang, according to the proposal, the first-ever carrier port call after smaller U.S.-flagged ships have moored here.
“We recognize that relationships never stay the same. They either get stronger or they get weaker, and America wants a stronger relationship with a stronger Vietnam,” Mattis told his counterpart Ngo Xuan Lich.
Mattis’s trip to Southeast Asia included a two-day visit in Indonesia, part of a larger Pentagon strategy to foster military relationships to blunt influence of big state powers like Russia and China.
The United States believes it may have found a key ally in Vietnam. 

The nation is increasingly emboldened to challenge Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea, a strategic region flush with resources.
China has mostly claimed the sea as its own and has studded artificial islands with radar arrays and military outpost, edging out Vietnam and other nations dependent on waters for fishing and commerce.
Vietnam-U.S. defense relations are still taking shape. 

Mattis said his talks with Vietnamese officials spurred creation of channels to develop military education and U.N. peacekeeping training but did not involve definite plans to sell or provide specific military equipment.
The United States sold a Coast Guard cutter to Vietnam last year, which officials said became the largest ship in its fleet.
That recent activity has relieved officials in Vietnam who believe the United States was too focused on brushfire insurgencies in the Middle East and Africa while China consolidated territory unchecked, said Zack Cooper, an Asia security analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.
“They want to make sure the U.S. is actively engaged with the South China Sea,” Cooper said.
Mattis also met with Communist Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, and thanked Vietnam for supporting U.N. sanctions against North Korea and recognized U.S. efforts to remedy the effects of toxic defoliants such as Agent Orange left behind at a Danang air base.
He also met with President Tran Dai Quang. 

Mattis will conclude his trip Friday, when he will meet his South Korean counterpart in Hawaii to discuss strategic issues in the region.

Vietnam wins U.S. defense pledges as tension with China grows

By Eric Beech and My Pham

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis (L) hosts an honor cordon for Vietnamese Defense Minister Gen. Ngo Xuan Lich (R) at the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, U.S., August 8, 2017.

WASHINGTON/HANOI -- Vietnam has won the promise of a visit from a U.S. aircraft carrier and deeper defense cooperation from the United States as strains show with China over the disputed South China Sea.
Within Southeast Asia, Vietnam has become an increasingly lonely voice in challenging Chinese claims to the vast majority of the waterway and was forced to suspend some offshore oil drilling last month after pressure from Beijing.
U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis told Vietnamese counterpart Ngo Xuan Lich in Washington on Tuesday that a strong defense relationship was based on common interests that included freedom of navigation in the South China Sea.
"The Secretary welcomed Vietnam's engagement and growing leadership in the Asia-Pacific region," a statement from the Pentagon said.
The defense ministers agreed on a visit by a U.S. aircraft carrier to Vietnam next year -- the first such visit since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. 

President Donald Trump discussed the possibility of a carrier visit with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc when they met at the White House in May.
The agreement was consistent with Vietnam's diplomatic strategy of being open to all countries, said Ha Hoang Hop, a Vietnamese political analyst who has advised the government.
"Vietnam is not willing to compromise on issues of sovereignty and also makes its own preparations," he said.
Beijing has been irritated by Vietnam's growing defense relationships with the United States and rival Asian powers, including Japan and India.
Tension has risen since June, when Vietnam infuriated China by drilling for oil and gas in an offshore block that Beijing disputes. 

The exploration was suspended after diplomatic protests from China.

China was also annoyed by Vietnam's stand at an Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting at the weekend, when it held out for language in a communique that noted concern about island-building and militarization in the South China Sea.

A scheduled meeting between Chinese and Vietnamese foreign ministers on the sidelines of the summit was canceled. 

China also pointed to Vietnam's own reclamation work in the South China Sea.
Beijing is sensitive to even a veiled reference by ASEAN to its reclamation of seven reefs and its military installations in the South China Sea, which it claims in almost its entirety despite the competing claims of five other countries.
More than $3 trillion in cargo passes through the waterway every year.
Australia, Japan and the United States urged Southeast Asia and China on Monday to ensure that a South China Sea code of conduct they have committed to draw up would be legally binding and said they strongly opposed "coercive unilateral actions".

Chinese Peril

Why China’s new aircraft carrier is significant
By Christopher Bodeen 

In this photo released by China’s Xinhua News Agency, a newly-built aircraft carrier is transferred from dry dock into the water at a launch ceremony at a shipyard in Dalian in northeastern China’s Liaoning Province, Wednesday, April 26, 2017. China launched its first aircraft carrier built entirely on its own on Wednesday, in a demonstration of the growing technical sophistication of its defense industries and determination to safeguard its maritime territorial claims and crucial trade routes. 

BEIJING — China on Wednesday launched the navy’s second aircraft carrier, its first to be entirely homebuilt.
While the 50,000-ton ship still needs considerable work before commissioning, analysts say its launch telegraphs China’s ambitions to become the region’s most powerful and influential country. That’s an alarming prospect to others.
Here’s a look at how the new carrier came into being and what impact it is expected to have.
___
CARRIER SHOWS CHINA’S MILITARY PROGRESS
China’s carrier program got off the ground with the purchase of the Varyag, an incomplete carrier begun during the 1980s and then inherited by Ukraine after the breakup of the former Soviet Union. Beijing bought the ship in 1998 and towed it to China, where it underwent years of extensive refurbishing before being commissioned as the Liaoning in 2012. 

It was originally described as being mainly for training and research but last year was declared combat-ready. 

Development of the new carrier began in 2013 and moved into high-gear in 2015. 

Based on the same original Soviet design, its construction is believed to have benefited greatly from lessons learned in fitting-out the Liaoning. 

Both ships suffer some of the limitations inherent in the design, including a ski jump-style launching system that limits the amount of fuel and bombs its Chinese J-15 fighters can carry. 

Michael Chase of the U.S. think tank RAND Corporation said the carriers reflect the progress China’s has made in shipbuilding and other defense industries, and future carriers will be even more sophisticated, particularly in their propulsion and aircraft launch systems.
__
CARRIER AT HEART OF CHINA’S MILITARY AMBITIONS
China had long said it needs aircraft carriers to protect its shoreline and other maritime interests. That’s seen as reflecting Beijing’s desire to put teeth behind its increasingly assertive claims to territory in the East China and South China seas, while establishing itself as the region’s most powerful and influential nation and challenging America’s global influence and leadership. 

Carriers also factor into China’s threat to use force to gain control over self-governing Taiwan, from which it separated amid civil war in 1949. 

Carriers could be deployed to intimidate the island’s government and 23 million residents, something it apparently attempted earlier this year when it sailed the Liaoning through the Taiwan Strait. 

Fueled by a fast-growing defense budget that is now the world’s second biggest after the U.S., China’s navy has also been acquiring destroyers, nuclear submarines and other ultramodern vessels. 

Its air force is meanwhile rapidly introducing fourth-generation fighter jets and has produced prototypes of two different kinds of fifth-generation stealth fighters.
___
CARRIER RAISES CONCERNS AMONG NEIGHBORS
Apart from Taiwan, Chinese carriers are seen as a threat primarily by China’s historical rivals Japan and India. 

Beijing and Tokyo have long feuded over a collection of tiny uninhabited islands in the East China Sea and China in recent years increased the presence of its navy and coast guard in the area while repeatedly sending military planes to patrol the nearby airspace. 

Many Chinese consider the dispute to be a legacy of Japan’s brutal invasion and occupation of much of their country during the 1930s and 1940s, memories of which are kept fresh by state propaganda and the education system. 

India has looked on nervously as the Chinese navy expands its presence in its traditional sphere of influence, the Indian Ocean. 

That includes the development of ports and airports with potential military uses in Pakistan and elsewhere, along with China’s first overseas military base in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti. 

Chinese carriers are seen as less threatening to the region’s leading military power, the U.S., although American officials have called for more transparency from Beijing about how it intends to use the ships. 

Rather than a military threat, the carriers are more of an indirect challenge to U.S. influence in the region.

Why China's New Aircraft Carrier Should Worry India

By Mihir Sharma
THE VIKRAMADITYA HAS BEEN PLAGUED WITH DELAYS.

The launch of China’s second aircraft carrier, expected as soon as this week, will be an important and depressing moment for India. 

The “Type 001A” -- likely to be named the “Shandong” -- will give China an edge for the first time in the carrier race with its Asian rival, a literal two-to-one advantage. 

After decommissioning the INS Viraat earlier this year, the Indian Navy is down to a single carrier, INS Vikramaditya. 

Worse, the Shandong has been built at China’s own giant shipyard at Dalian; Vikramaditya is merely a repurposed 1980s-era Russian carrier formerly known as the Admiral Gorshkov.
Even more telling than the raw numbers is what China’s progress says about India’s ability to provide security in its own backyard. 

Chinese naval strategists have open designs on the Indian Ocean: According to one, “China needs two carrier strike groups in the West Pacific Ocean and two in the Indian Ocean.” 

The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has talked a great deal about revitalizing the Indian military; it’s opened the defense sector up to greater foreign investment and is building a much-closer relationship with the U.S. military, largely with China in mind. 

But spending has lagged. 

Worse, successive governments simply don’t seem to have thought through where best to direct those scarce resources.
For its part, the Indian Navy has gone all-in on a strategy that emphasizes carrier battle groups. 

The idea is that India must dominate the ocean that bears its name and needs carriers in order to project power well beyond its shores. 

As a result, it wasted far too much time and treasure on the Admiral Gorshkov, which arrived from Russia six years late and at three times the cost that had initially been promised.
Its efforts to develop a homegrown carrier have been even more misbegotten. 

The Navy plans to name, commission and float the INS Vikrant next year. 

At that point, the ship reportedly won’t have its aviation complex in place, or even anti-aircraft missiles. 

The Navy has puzzlingly refused to buy India’s indigenous light fighter, the Tejas, saying it’s too heavy. 

Meanwhile, the MiG-29s being used instead are enormously troubled, according to India’s government auditor; more than 60 percent of their engines were withdrawn from service or rejected in just four years. 

The Vikrant will only be properly combat-ready by 2023 -- eight years behind schedule.
No one would expect India to match China’s defense spending head-to-head. 

China’s economy is four times the size of India’s; not surprisingly, its defense budget is at least three times larger. 

But the People’s Republic faces a parallel dilemma when confronting the U.S., whose military budget is about three times as big as China’s.
China has approached this disparity with a much clearer strategy in mind, as well as a far more rational evaluation of its relative strength. 

Rather than focusing on matching America’s carrier fleet, China first emphasized asymmetric weaponry such as ballistic missiles and submarines, a reflection of the Soviets’ Cold War strategy. 

Only now -- as its interests and capabilities have grown -- is it pouring resources into developing carrier groups.
By contrast, India’s carrier-first strategy has drained the Navy of resources and left it with just 13 conventional submarines in service. 

Eleven of those are more than a quarter-century old. 

The two new ones, amazingly, were commissioned and sent out to wander the deep sea without their main armament, torpedoes. 

Nor has India tried to counter China’s numerical superiority -- 70 to 15 -- in terms of submarines with specialized anti-submarine weaponry, including helicopters. 

The Indian fleet has less than 30 superannuated medium-sized anti-sub helicopters, the first of which was bought in 1971.
India’s problem isn’t ultimately a shortage of money; it’s a lack of forethought and political courage. Carriers are big and showy, and bolster national pride; diesel submarines don’t, or at least not to the same degree. 

A more rational strategy for India -- and its peers in Asia and the Pacific Rim who fear China’s growing military might -- would ensure that India’s submarine fleet and its anti-submarine armaments are capable enough on their own to deter attempts to control the Indian Ocean, while closer ties with other navies fill in the gaps.
That would require a clear-eyed appraisal of India’s defense and economic capabilities and requirements -- a problem when India doesn’t have an outline of its strategy on the lines of American or Chinese white papers, nor even a full-time defense minister. 

The Navy is fortunately starting to train more closely with the U.S. and other partners such as Japan, which should increase its effectiveness. 

But until it thinks harder about where its money should go, it’s going to have a tricky time keeping China out of its backyard.

1.Granted, China's first aircraft carrier was also constructed around the shell of a Russian vessel, the Varyag, which the Chinese pretended to have purchased to use as a floating casino.

Our aircraft carrier was not headed to North Korea. It was delivering Ivanka Trump merchandise to China!

By Tom Toles

In a breakthrough trade agreement, Trump agreed that China is no longer a currency manipulator in exchange for China opening its markets to Ivanka Trump merchandise. 

China will also grant trademark rights to Ivanka Trump in exchange for the opportunity to actually manufacture all of her merchandise and then sell it back to the United States at variable discount rates denominated in renminbi.
In addition, China also agreed to help persuade the recalcitrant hermit kingdom of Kim Jong Un to open the North Korean market to Ivanka Trump goods. 

It was agreed that the high-stepping military parades would look less menacing if the soldiers all sported high-end Ivanka Trump shoes, and failed missile tests would come across better if loaded with Ivanka Emoluments Perfume.
Trump has not given up on America First, though, and not only will he build his wall, but also he will have it built in Florida to protect his Palm Beach executive mansion and corporate headquarters from the sea-level rise caused by his Trump Coal and Toxic Gas line of unregulated fossil-fuel products.
The fossil-friendly courtiers at his other Trump palace, in Washington, will reward him for his favors by crowning him Emperor Donald the First and granting him new powers vested in him by the Trump Advisory Council (formerly Congress) and upheld by the Trump-appointed Supreme Courtiers. 

This will allow Trump to finally repeal Obamacare and replace it with delicious Trump-brand Let-Them-Eat-Cake Care.
He described it as the most beautiful chocolate cake you have ever seen.

Sick Carrier of Asia

China flexing aircraft carrier muscle, but so far it's a paper tiger
By KATSUJI NAKAZAWA

The Liaoning, China's first and only aircraft carrier, at sea on Dec. 24, 2016. 

TOKYO -- In an unprecedented show of force, China dispatched its first and only aircraft carrier on an extensive training mission amid rising tensions with the U.S. late last year.
The Liaoning left its home port in Qingdao, Shandong Province, on Dec. 20, a month before Donald Trump's inauguration as the new U.S. president, and entered the Western Pacific via the East China Sea.
The Liaoning then went to the South China Sea and sailed north, passing through the Taiwan Strait, before returning to Qingdao on Jan. 13. 

The carrier's long voyage made a big splash internationally as it involved transiting three flashpoints along the way.
The three flashpoints are the East China Sea, the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
"The aim of the Chinese aircraft carrier's latest cruise was [to send a message to] China's own people, not Trump or Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen," said a Chinese researcher specializing in China's domestic politics and national security issues.
The researcher made the remarks at the end of last year, without elaborating. 

A close look at subsequent Chinese media reports gives some insight into the researcher's thinking.
Chinese media outlets gave extensive coverage to what they described as the Liaoning's "practical" training exercises, with state-run China Central Television reporting on them on its main 7:00 p.m. news program on Jan. 13.
Chinese media outlets are all under the sway of the Communist Party's Publicity Department, the ruling party's propaganda body. 

The recent flurry of media reports about the Liaoning is part of China's "public opinion warfare."
China's "three warfares" strategy consists of "public opinion warfare," "psychological warfare" and "legal warfare."
It would be safe to say that the Publicity Department tried to reassure the public about the strength of the Chinese military and dispel concerns over anticipated threats from the Trump administration.

Paper tiger
But the truth is that the Liaoning still lacks combat capabilities.
"Carrier-based aircraft are slow to take off. Even if many such planes finally took off in the event of a military contingency, most of them would have to [return and] land on the carrier before actually launching operations," said a source familiar with the Chinese military.
There are at least three reasons for the Liaoning's lack of combat capabilities.

The Chinese aircraft carrier is not equipped with catapults for aircraft launches. 

Chinese carrier-borne planes cannot carry enough fuel for long operations. 

China also lacks know-how about the combat operations of carrier battle groups, which include numerous support ships.
The Liaoning, therefore, pales before its U.S. rivals.
A U.S. aircraft carrier is equipped with multiple catapults, allowing up to 50 planes to take off in quick succession. 

The U.S. Navy has also accumulated extensive know-how about conducting combat operations of carrier battle groups over the past half-century.
The aircraft catapult is a difficult technology to master. 

The Liaoning has no such device for launching aircraft at speeds sufficient for flight. 

The carrier can carry up to 20 planes. But they cannot quickly take off from the carrier.

The Liaoning entered service a little over four years ago.
China purchased the Varyag, an incomplete ex-Soviet aircraft carrier, as scrap from Ukraine, as it did not have the ability to build a carrier on its own. 

The Varyag was refurbished in Dalian, Liaoning Province, and rechristened the Liaoning. 

The ship was commissioned in 2012.
Chinese media outlets reported on the Liaoning's training exercises with great fanfare. 

But the carrier is still at the stage of conducting takeoff and landing drills and making trial voyages.
Including a new vessel to be commissioned in the near future, the U.S. possesses a total of 11 aircraft carriers. 

Obviously, China's carrier fleet would not be able to take on a U.S. carrier battle group.
Defense officials from many countries agree that the Chinese carrier is still just just for show -- a "paper tiger," a term often used by Mao Zedong, the revolutionary leader who led China to communism.
Before China acquired its nuclear weapons capability, Mao resorted to bluster. 

He called such weapons possessed by the U.S. and other countries "a paper tiger."
But ordinary Chinese people cannot easily understand the huge gap in military capabilities between their country and the U.S. 

That is why the barrage of propaganda reports by domestic media outlets can be highly effective.
China has made strenuous efforts recently to build an aircraft carrier on its own.
A Chinese company claiming to be private also purchased the retired ex-Soviet aircraft carrier Kiev. The Chinese military studied the ship's construction, and it is now open to the public at a theme park in Tianjin, China.
China also acquired another retired ex-Soviet carrier, the Minsk, for study through a South Korean company. 

After being scrutinized, the Minsk was also opened to the public in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province.
China is now building two homegrown aircraft carriers, with one of them, China's second carrier after the Liaoning, expected to be launched in the near future.
If the second Chinese aircraft carrier forms a battle group and starts operating in the Western Pacific and the South China Sea in a few years' time, the security situation in the region could change as the gap in U.S. and Chinese military capabilities will narrow gradually.

Economic tensions
Tensions between China and the U.S. are rising on the economic front as well.
Trump has harshly condemned China for racking up trade surpluses with the U.S. through unfair practices such as manipulating its currency, the yuan. 

He has also vowed to give top priority to protecting American jobs.
In response to Trump's anti-China rhetoric and "America First" policy, Chinese private companies have started talking about expanding their investments in the U.S.
The move comes despite the Chinese government's desperate bid to resolve the problem of serious capital outflow.
Trump's "America First" policy is giving Chinese companies a convenient excuse to legally transfer funds out of their country to boost their holdings of safer dollar-denominated assets.
Chinese authorities have repeatedly conducted large-scale market interventions to stem the yuan's plunge amid the capital outflow.
As a result, the country's foreign exchange reserves shrank sharply to just over $3 trillion at the end of December 2016, compared with a record high of nearly $4 trillion registered at the end of June 2014.
At the beginning of this year, Chinese authorities imposed stricter controls on foreign currency exchanges, marking the latest in a series of steps to tackle the serious capital outflow problem.
In China, individuals are allowed to convert up to $50,000 worth of yuan into foreign currency a year.
Under the new regulation, they must effectively pledge not to use the money to purchase houses, securities, life insurance and some other products abroad when they submit applications to major banks.
The number of Chinese tourists visiting Japan has been rising in recent years. 

They will also have to comply with the new regulation. 

Some wealthy Chinese people have been on a property-purchase spree in Japan. 

But the new regulation will also likely put a damper on their spending.
Meanwhile, China's foreign direct investment is also slowing down sharply. 

Such investment tumbled about 40% in December 2016 on a year-on-year basis in terms of value, apparently as a result of Chinese authorities' guidance.

Sensitive year
With tensions running high between China and the U.S. both militarily and economically, Xi's regime needs to be vigilant against a possible surge in anti-U.S. feelings at home.
In a move that broke with long-standing U.S. diplomatic protocol and angered Beijing, President Trump spoke by telephone with Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party on Dec. 2, 2016.
Beijing still regards Taiwan as a renegade province that must be reunified with the mainland, by force if necessary, and has pressured the Taiwanese leader to acknowledge the "One China" principle.
Trump has also repeatedly expressed doubts about the "One China" principle, which the U.S. has upheld for many years.
If the situation remains unchanged, a campaign to boycott American products or anti-U.S. demonstrations could take place in mainland China. 

Xi wants to prevent any such incidents that could lead to social instability as he prepares for a crucial political event.
If history is any guide, Xi has good reason to tread carefully. 

When a U.S. military plane mistakenly bombed the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, killing three Chinese, large-scale demonstrations were held by angry Chinese protesters in Beijing.
This year is also politically sensitive. 

The Chinese Communist Party is to hold its next five-yearly national congress this autumn. 

A tug-of-war within the ruling party is expected to further intensify over the lineup of a new leadership team to be chosen there.
The Trump administration will probably try to unsettle the Xi regime in various ways.
Under such circumstances, the Xi regime needs to reassure the public. 

That is why it has made the most use of the Liaoning. 

The first and only Chinese aircraft carrier is a treasured military asset of the Xi regime, although it is in reality just a paper tiger.

China Taunts a U.S. Distracted by Putin

In both actions and rhetoric, Chinese officials have ratcheted up the conflict over disputed territories, looking to capitalize on a distracted U.S.
By David Axe

While the U.S. media and political establishment were focused on Russia’s hacks of the recent U.S. presidential election—and the retaliatory sanctions the outgoing Obama administration announced on Dec. 29—the Chinese navy was moving aggressively into the contested waters of the strategic South China Sea.
In a move that combined actions and words, China’s sailed its aircraft carrier boldly through disputed waters while prominent Chinese figures voiced rhetoric significantly escalating Beijing’s global ambitions.
It will mostly fall on president Donald Trump and his administration to formulate a response.
It’s customary for Beijing to tease an incoming U.S. presidential administration with some kind of military or diplomatic demonstration. 

American experts expected the Trump administration to face some kind of challenge. 

And indeed on Dec. 15, the crew of a Chinese navy ship briefly hijacked a U.S. Navy underwater research drone, drawing a flurry of indignant and contradictory tweets from Trump.
But the far greater challenge came 10 days later—and could represent a sneak peak of China’s forceful approach to the United States’ military and diplomatic posture for at least the next four years.
The first obvious sign of China’s big move came on Christmas Day, when Japanese forces detected Liaoning, the Chinese navy’s first and so far only aircraft carrier, sailing out of the East China Sea into the Western Pacific for the first time.
China is currently building a second carrier, and has said it will eventually begin construction on a third flattop. 

The U.S. Navy possesses 10 large carriers plus nine carrier-like assault ships that can carry a modest number fixed-wing planes.
Liaoning, a former Soviet vessel that China acquired and rebuilt at great expense starting in 1998, entered Chinese navy service in 2012. 

Normally based at Dalían in northern China, Liaoning has spent the past four years periodically venturing into coastal waters for training. 

The Christmas Day sortie qualifies as the 1,000-foot vessel’s first frontline deployment.
With fighter jets and helicopters arrayed on her deck and accompanied by five heavily-armed escort vessels, Liaoning cut an arc through the Pacific just 60 miles off the coast of Japan’s Okinawa prefecture before heading southwest.
The Obama administration reacted with a practiced shrug. U.S. State Department spokesman Mark Toner pointed out that all countries have the right the sail their warships in international waters. 

“It’s freedom of navigation,” Toner said.
Taiwan was less sanguine as the Chinese flattop closed to within 90 miles of the island country on her way back toward China. 

The defense ministry in Taipei announced it “will pay close attention to [Liaoning’s] future movement.”
Tensions between the United States, Taiwan and China lately have been running higher than usual. On Dec. 2, President Trump shattered decades of protocol when he spoke on the phone with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen.
Since 1979, the U.S. government has carefully avoided officially recognizing Taiwan as a fully independent country—in order to avoid inciting the wrath of China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province and has threatened to invade if the island ever makes official its own independence.

It’s possible to read Liaoning’s passage near Taiwan as a forceful retort to the Dec. 2 phone call. 

Even then, Beijing wasn’t done.
Sailing into the resource-rich South China Sea—where China, The Philippines, Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei have all asserted overlapping, and unresolved, territorial claims—Liaoning hailed at Hainan, an island province of China in the South China Sea southwest of Taiwan.
Starting in 2012, China massively expanded Hainan’s port facilities to accommodate not just one full-size carrier but two. 

By contrast, the United States keeps just one large carrier and one assault ship in the Western Pacific. Both vessels are homeported in Japan.
Liaoning briefly stopped at Sanya on Hainan in 2013, at a time when tensions in the South China Sea were arguably much lower. 

The flattop’s visit three years later served as a clear reminder to nearby countries and the United States that, before too long, China will be able to quickly deploy naval power in the South China Sea that roughly matches America’s own naval contingent in the region.
And in a sharp break from the past, a Chinese official matched his country’s swelling military might with new, bombastic rhetoric. 

The South China Sea is China’s “ancestral sea” and also “China’s territorial waters,” Xing Jincheng, a Chinese-military political commissar on Hainan, wrote in a Dec. 29 op-ed.
Xing, who was appointed in 2013 to oversee Hainan’s naval militia, wrote that he considered it his job to wage “the first battle for the rights to the South China Sea.”
That kind of rhetoric is becoming more prominent among Chinese officials and government proxies. In a Nov. 12 speech, Zhu Feng, the director of the China Center for Collaborative Studies of the South China Sea at Nanjing University, spoke forcefully about China’s rise as a “global” military power.
In recent years, Chinese leaders have shied away from describing Beijing’s ambitions as global, instead insisting that the country merely wants to be a “regional” power—in other words, a force incapable of challenging America’s worldwide military dominance.
“To become a successful country, one must be a global power, and the global powers must be the world’s military powers,” Zhu said.
Describing the Hainan carrier base as “China’s most important naval port,” Zhu predicted that the sea route from Hainan into the South China Sea would become “the world’s most important channel.”
Just one force stands in the way of China’s “free access” to the South China Sea, Zhu stated. 

“For China to become a maritime power, we must limit the United States’ global naval freedom of intervention.”
“I tell you very frankly that the South China Sea dispute has just begun,” Zhu added.