Chinese Aggressions

US Carriers Navigate South China Sea

By India.com 

On board image of USS Ronald Reagan, US' only warship in Asia region.

Washington -- While the United States is watchful over the next move of North Korea, it also has its eyes fixed on Beijing’s domination in the South China Sea. 

The USS Ronald Reagan – Washington’s largest warship in Asia – navigated the region where China has objected to US’ presence.
Officers on the Reagan claim that PLA’s Navy frigates maintain close surveillance on their warship on daily basis, despite it operating within its limits in the joint water body.

Deep routing drills were carried out by the F-18 Super Hornet jet fighters, which were dispatched from the USS Ronald Reagan on Saturday. 

A watchful Beijing, reports claimed, had deployed two frigates of People’s Liberation Army’s Navy, to maintain a constant line-of-sight vigil.
Amid their surveillance, the official claimed, the PLA vessels also check carriers en route to other destinations.
The row in South China Sea escalated after Japan and South Korea, two of the major US allies in the region, objected to what they called China’s undermining of naval sovereignty of neighbouring nations in the South China Sea.
The US, which conducts routine exercises in the sea with Japan and South Korea, has appealed China to retract its military presence from waters which are not part of its territory. 

Washington claims that Beijing has prevented free movement of vessels in areas which should offer unrestricted movement as per the international protocol.
China, on the other hand, has objected to US’ intervention in the South China Sea, accusing it of attempting to destabilise the region and break the unity among the Southeast Asian nations.

Chinese Peril

China May Have Created a New Way to Sink U.S. Aircraft Carriers

By Dave Majumdar

The Pentagon just released its annual report on China’s military power, which once again highlighted Beijing’s efforts to put American aircraft carriers at risk. 

Right on cue, China announced a major milestone for a system that might be a key component of its antiaccess/area-denial (A2/AD) strategy.

This week, Chinese state media reported that the Caihong-T 4 (CH-T4), China’s massive, solar-powered drone, for the first time flew at an altitude of twenty thousand meters. 

This is important because there are no clouds above twenty thousand meters, which allows solar-powered drones to operate for significantly longer periods of time.
How long? 

Basically, indefinitely. 

According to China Daily, “future improvements will enable it to remain aloft several months or even several years.”
Jeffrey Lin and P.W. Singer, who write the excellent Eastern Arsenal blog, note that the CH-T4 is an impressive combination of big and light. 

The drone’s wingspan is around 130 feet, which is wider than a Boeing 737. 

At the same time, the CH-T4 only weighs between 880 and 1,100 pounds. 

By way of comparison, Boeing 737’s lowest typical operating empty weight is over seventy thousand pounds, and its maximum gross takeoff weight can reach as high as 170,000 pounds. 

Besides being slender, the CH-T4’s lightness is due to its carbon fiber and plastic components.
The drone can also travel at speeds of 125 miles per hour. 

However, it will also be able to cruise at sixty-five thousand feet, so it will be able to cover a huge swath of land without moving very far. 

Indeed, Lin and Singer point out: “It can utilize its high flight ceiling to maintain line-of-sight contact with over 400,000 square miles of ground and water. That's about the size of Egypt. For both militaries and tech firms, covering so much territory makes it an excellent data relay and communications node.”
What Lin and Singer don’t mention is that these capabilities will make the CH-T4 an excellent asset in China’s quest to hold America’s aircraft carriers at risk in the Western Pacific. 

Much of the attention given to that effort focuses on China’s so-called “carrier-killer” missile, the DF-21D. 

But as I noted last week in relation to North Korea, the missile itself is only one piece of the puzzle. Even more important is the sophisticated “kill chain” of surveillance, radar and communications systems needed to track and provide updated targeting information to the antiship ballistic missile while it is in flight.
Publicly available information indicates that America’s efforts to defeat China’s antiaccess/area-denial strategies focus on disrupting this “kill chain.” 

For example, in 2013, then chief of naval operations Jonathan Greenert and then Air Force chief of staff Gen. Mark Welsh coauthored an essay in Foreign Policy on how Air-Sea Battle intended to overcome A2/AD threats. 

In the article, they wrote that “Air-Sea Battle defeats threats to access by, first, disrupting an adversary’s command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR) systems; second, destroying adversary weapons launchers (including aircraft, ships, and missile sites); and finally, defeating the weapons an adversary launches.”
The logic of this approach, they argued, is that it “exploits the fact that, to attack our forces, an adversary must complete a sequence of actions, commonly referred to as a ‘kill chain.’ 

For example, surveillance systems locate U.S. forces, communications networks relay targeting information to weapons launchers, weapons are launched, and then they must hone in on U.S. forces. 

Each of these steps is vulnerable to interdiction or disruption, and because each step must work, our forces can focus on the weakest links in the chain, not each and every one.”
Once it is operational, the CH-T4 will complicate these efforts by increasing the redundancies in China’s kill chain. 

For instance, if America is able to disrupt or destroy Chinese satellites, Beijing can rely on the drone to provide the information necessary to track American ships. 

The CH-T4 will have other comparable advantages over other surveillance systems. 

On the one hand, they will be cheaper and more flexible than satellites, while at the same time flying higher and farther away from the battlefield than different surveillance aircraft and ships. 

This combination will make it more difficult for Washington to destroy the surveillance step of the kill chain, although it could still focus on other steps such as disrupting the communication networks.
None of this is news to the U.S. military. 

Although the Pentagon’s newest report on China’s military didn’t mention the CH-T4 by name, it did note that “the acquisition and development of longer-range unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) will increase China’s ability to conduct long-range ISR and strike operations.”
Fortunately, the U.S. military will have some time to figure out its response, as China Daily reports that it will “take several years for designers and engineers to improve and test the aircraft before it is delivered to users.” 

If the United States’ own record at developing this type of technology is any guide, Beijing should expect a few more hiccups along the way. 

NASA's Environmental Research Aircraft and Sensor Technology (ERAST) began working on the Helios Prototype well over a decade ago. 

In 2001, it completed an important milestone by flying at an altitude of ninety-six thousand feet (29,260 meters). 

Yet a Helios crashed during a flight test just two years later. 

Europe, meanwhile, is also trying to develop so-called pseudo satellites.

Sina Delenda Est

Why China Fears America's Aircraft Carriers
By Kyle Mizokami

More than twenty years ago, a military confrontation in East Asia pushed the United States and China uncomfortably close to conflict. 

Largely unknown in America, the event made a lasting impression on China, especially Chinese military planners. 

The Third Taiwan Crisis, as historians call it, was China’s introduction to the power and flexibility of the aircraft carrier, something it obsesses about to this day.
The crisis began in 1995. 

Taiwan’s first-ever democratic elections for president were set for 1996, a major event that Beijing naturally opposed. 

The sitting president, Lee Teng-hui of the Kuomintang party, was invited to the United States to speak at his alma mater, Cornell University. 

Lee was already disliked by Beijing for his emphasis on “Taiwanization,” which favored home rule and established a separate Taiwanese identity away from mainland China. 

Now he was being asked to speak at Cornell on Taiwan’s democratization, and Beijing was furious.
The Clinton administration was reluctant to grant Lee a visa—he had been denied one for a similar talk at Cornell the year before—but near-unanimous support from Congress forced the White House’s hand. 

Lee was granted a visa and visited Cornell in June. 

The Xinhua state news agency warned, “The issue of Taiwan is as explosive as a barrel of gunpowder. It is extremely dangerous to warm it up, no matter whether the warming is done by the United States or by Lee Teng-hui. This wanton wound inflicted upon China will help the Chinese people more clearly realize what kind of a country the United States is.”
In August 1995, China announced a series of missiles exercises in the East China Sea. 

Although the exercises weren’t unusual, their announcement was, and there was speculation that this was the beginning of an intimidation campaign by China, both as retaliation against the Cornell visit and intimidation of Taiwan’s electorate ahead of the next year’s elections. 

The exercises involved the People’s Liberation Army’s Second Artillery Corps (now the PLA Rocket Forces) and the redeployment of Chinese F-7 fighters (China’s version of the MiG-21 Fishbed fighter) 250 miles from Taiwan. 

Also, in a move that would sound very familiar in 2017, up to one hundred Chinese civilian fishing boats entered territorial waters around the Taiwanese island of Matsu, just off the coast of the mainland.
According to Globalsecurity.org, redeployments of Chinese long-range missile forces continued into 1996, and the Chinese military actually prepared for military action. 

China drew up contingency plans for thirty days of missile strikes against Taiwan, one strike a day, shortly after the March 1996 presidential elections. 

These strikes were not carried out, but preparations were likely detected by U.S. intelligence.
In March 1996, China announced its fourth major military exercises since the Cornell visit. 

The country’s military announced a series of missile test zones off the Chinese coastline, which also put the missiles in the approximate direction of Taiwan. 

In reality, China fired three missiles, two of which splashed down just thirty miles from the Taiwanese capital of Taipei and one of which splashed down thirty-five miles from Kaohsiung. Together, the two cities handled most of the country’s commercial shipping traffic. 

For an export-driven country like Taiwan, the missile launches seemed like an ominous shot across the country’s economic bow.
American forces were already operating in the area. 

The USS Bunker Hill, a Ticonderoga-class Aegis cruiser, was stationed off southern Taiwan to monitor Chinese missile tests with its SPY-1 radar system. 

The Japan-based USS Independence, along with the destroyers Hewitt and O’Brien and frigate McClusky, took up position on the eastern side of the island.
After the missile tests, the carrier USS Nimitz left the Persian Gulf region and raced back to the western Pacific. 

This was an even more powerful carrier battle group, consisting of the Aegis cruiser Port Royal, guided missile destroyers Oldendorf and Callaghan (which would later be transferred to the Taiwanese Navy), guided missile frigate USS Ford, and nuclear attack submarine USS Portsmouth. Nimitz and its escorts took up station in the Philippine Sea, ready to assist Independence. 

Contrary to popular belief, neither carrier actually entered the Taiwan Strait.
The People’s Liberation Army, unable to do anything about the American aircraft carriers, was utterly humiliated. 

China, which was just beginning to show the consequences of rapid economic expansion, still did not have a military capable of posing a credible threat to American ships just a short distance from of its coastline.
While we might never know the discussions that later took place, we know what has happened since. Just two years later a Chinese businessman purchased the hulk of the unfinished Russian aircraft carrier Riga, with the stated intention of turning it into a resort and casino. 

We know this ship today as China’s first aircraft carrier, Liaoning, after it was transferred to the PLA Navy and underwent a fifteen-year refurbishment. 

At least one other carrier is under construction, and the ultimate goal may be as many as five Chinese carriers.
At the same time, the Second Artillery Corps leveraged its expertise in long-range rockets to create the DF-21D antiship ballistic missile. 

The DF-21 has obvious applications against large capital ships, such as aircraft carriers, and in a future crisis could force the U.S. Navy to operate eight to nine hundred miles off Taiwan and the rest of the so-called “First Island Chain.”
The Third Taiwan Crisis was a brutal lesson for a China that had long prepared to fight wars inside of its own borders. 

Still, the PLA Navy deserves credit for learning from the incident and now, twenty-two years later, it is quite possible that China could seriously damage or even sink an American carrier. 

Also unlike the United States, China is in the unique position of both seeing the value of carriers and building its own fleet while at the same time devoting a lot of time and resources to the subject of sinking them. 

The United States may soon find itself in the same position.

Why China Fears America's New Ford-Class Aircraft Carriers

By Kyle Mizokami

In 2009, the U.S. Navy finally began construction of the first new type of aircraft carrier in nearly thirty-five years. 

Named after former president and naval aviator Gerald R. Ford, the USS Ford fully takes the nuclear supercarrier into the twenty-first century. 

The technological innovations built into the new ship, while causing the inevitable delays involved in building a first-in-class vessel, will keep the Navy’s unique fleet of super flattops the largest and most advanced in the world for the foreseeable future.
USS Ford follows in the steps of the highly successful Nimitz-class carriers. 

Construction began in 2009 at Huntington Ingalls Industries in Newport News, Virginia—the same location where the Ford’s predecessors were built. 

Indeed, the Ford class resembles the Nimitz ships in many ways: they measure 1,106 feet long versus the Nimitz’s 1,092 feet. 

Both classes weigh the same: approximately one hundred thousand tons fully loaded. 

Layout is similar, too, with an island on the starboard side, four catapults and an angled flight deck.
The ship is powered by two new-design AB1 nuclear reactors. 

The reactors are manufactured by Bechtel, which beat out longtime naval reactor giants General Electric and Westinghouse for the reactor contract. 

Together, the two reactors create six hundred megawatts of electricity, triple the two hundred megawatts of the Nimitz class. 

That’s enough electricity to power every home in Hampton, Virginia; Pasadena, California; or Syracuse, New York.
Ford is going to need that power, not only to reach its estimated top speed of thirty-plus knots but also the new Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS), which uses electric currents to generate strong magnetic fields that can quickly accelerate an aircraft to takeoff speeds. 

The system is touted as easier on aircraft, extending their service lives, easier to maintain in general and capable of generating up to 25 percent more sorties than the older steam catapult system.
The new carrier will also use a new system to land aircraft. 

The new Advanced Arresting Gear uses a water turbine and induction motors to halt the momentum of landing carrier aircraft. 

Like EMALS, the AAG is expected to be more reliable than the existing aircraft arresting system on Nimitz-class ships and easier on airframes.
Ford will also have the most modern radar systems in the fleet. 

The Ford will have the new Dual Band Radar, which combines both the X-Band AN/SPY-3 Aegis radar and the S-Band Volume Surveillance Radar. 

DBR is capable of search, track and multiple missile illumination, detecting enemy aircraft and missiles and then guiding Evolved Sea Sparrow Missiles (ESSM) to intercept.
For self-defense, Ford will have two Mk. 29 missile launchers with eight ESSM each, and two Rolling Airframe Missile launchers. 

It will also have four Phalanx Close-In Weapon Systems for point defense against aircraft, missiles and small ships, and four M2 .50 caliber machine guns. 

Ford’s generous electrical capacity means that the ship could someday mount laser self-defense weapons. 

Powered by the ship’s nuclear reactors, such a system would have a virtually limitless ammunition supply, vastly increasing the ship’s defensive capability.
The carrier air wing will form the carrier’s primary means of deploying both offensive and defensive firepower. 

The Ford class will embark two squadrons of ten to twelve F-35C Joint Strike Fighters, two squadrons of ten to twelve F/A-18E/F Super Hornets, five EA-18G Growler electronic attack jets, four E-2D Hawkeye airborne early-warning and control aircraft, and two C-2 Greyhound carrier onboard delivery (COD) planes. 

It will also carry eight MH-60S Seahawk helicopters. 

Down the road, it will embark the MQ-25 Stingray refueling and intelligence collection drone, the eventual planned sixth-generation fighter to replace the Super Hornet, and, if Sen. John McCain has his way, a new long-range strike drone. 

The V-22 Osprey tiltrotor is also set to replace the C-2 Greyhound in the COD role.
Ford’s entry into active service will once again raise the Navy’s carrier force to eleven ships. 

The Navy’s carrier fleet is unique in having a congressionally mandated minimum force level: U.S. Code § 5062 states, “the naval combat forces of the Navy shall include not less than 11 operational aircraft carriers.” 

For, now the Navy is operating with a waiver.
More ships will follow. 

USS John F. Kennedy, the second aircraft carrier to bear the name of the thirty-fifth president of the United States, is under construction at Newport News and expected to enter service in 2020. 

The third carrier, Enterprise, is expected to begin construction next year and will join the fleet in the early 2020s. 

The current push by President Donald Trump and the chief of naval operations to a 350–355-ship fleet will likely include at least one additional Ford-class carrier in the near term.
Designed with the latest technology, Ford is not without problems. 

Both EMALS and the Advanced Arresting Gear System have run into considerable problems, and the Navy briefly pondered finishing Kennedy with a more traditional, proven arresting gear system. Despite developmental delays, it appears both new takeoff and landing systems are nearly ready. According to the Navy, Ford is 99 percent done and 93 percent of testing is complete. 

Ford is scheduled for delivery to the Navy this April.

Sina Delenda Est

Is Great Britain Preparing for a War with China?
By Michael Peck

The Pacific Ocean does not exactly bubble with happy memories for Britain. 

In December 1941, Japanese torpedo bombers sank the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse off Malaya. 

In early 1942, the Japanese captured eighty thousand British soldiers at Singapore.
Already overstretched fighting the Nazis in Europe, Britain couldn’t do much in the Far East during World War II. 

For almost a century, America has been the big stick in the Pacific.
So why is Britain vowing to send its military muscle to the Pacific?
Kim Darroch, the British ambassador to the United States, recently told a Washington think tank that Britain will send aircraft carriers to the Pacific once they become operational in the 2020s. 

Four Royal Air Force Typhoon fighters, which arrived in Japan in October for joint exercises, are scheduled to fly over the South China Sea.
“Certainly, as we bring our two new aircraft carriers onstream in 2020, and as we renew and update our defense forces, they will be seen in the Pacific,” Darroch announced. 

“And we absolutely share the objective of this U.S. administration, and the next one, to protect freedom of navigation and to keep sea routes and air routes open.”
Naturally, Beijing warned that these moves could threaten relations between China and Britain.
There are two questions here. 

The first is technical: What exactly does Britain think it can accomplish militarily against China? 

The Royal Navy is now down to just nineteen destroyers and frigates, and is phasing out its antiship missiles, leaving British warships to slug it out with cannon like the Grand Fleet at Jutland in 1916. 

The Royal Air Force is shrinking, and the British Army has fewer infantrymen than were killed on the first day of the Somme in 1916.
Compare this to China, whose defense spending has surged 12.9 percent per year between 1989 and 2011. 

Even with the Chinese economy slowing, the defense budget was still expected to increase by 7.9 percent in 2016.
Assuming the Queen Elizabeth–class carriers and their F-35B aircraft are ready by 2020—two big ifs, given the history of these two programs—then each carrier will accommodate perhaps fifty aircraft at most, including F-35B vertical/short takeoff and landing strike fighters, as well as assorted airborne early-warning and antisubmarine aircraft and helicopters.
If the Americans, with their bigger carriers and sophisticated Aegis-equipped escorts, are worried about Chinese submarines, hypersonic weapons and carrier-killer ballistic missiles, how would a British carrier task force fare? 

If a time warp could take a Queen Elizabeth battlegroup back to 1982, it could possibly take on the entire Argentine air force and navy. 

But China in 2020? 

Not likely.
Which in turn brings up the question of what Britain hopes to accomplish. 

As a means of asserting British influence in East Asia, the British military presence probably won’t help much unless London is prepared to somehow wield a bigger stick (nuclear weapons don’t count—China has them too). 

As deterrence against a Chinese attack on Taiwan or Japan, if Beijing isn’t afraid of the United States, then it’s not likely to be afraid of Britain.
Militarily, despite some claims that Britain could defeat China under some conditions, this seems a risky proposition at best. 

With Chinese GDP almost five times greater than Britain’s, it is a proposition that will only get riskier. 

In the high-tech arms race between America and China, Britain simply doesn’t have the resources to compete.
Nor should it. 

Regardless of what China does, there is still the emerging Russian threat in Europe. 

Wouldn’t it make sense to concentrate the Royal Navy in Europe and the Mediterranean, as in World War II, and let the United States worry about the Pacific?