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Time To Prepare For China's Aircraft Carrier
China, Iran Creating 'No-Go' Zones To Thwart U.S. Military Power
Scientists Warned Against JSF
Gates: Europe Demilitarization Has Gone Too Far
Combination Of Enlisted And Officers' Clubs Reflects Broad Changes In Armed Forces
Carrier Fight Moves To Halls Of Congress
Underestimating China
China’s Hawks Demand Cold War On The US
Time To Prepare For China's Aircraft Carrier
(GLOBAL TIMES (CHINA) 11 MAR 10)
This is not the first year that "aircraft carrier" has become one of the buzzwords at China's two sessions. The conventional question, as put by a foreign journalist during the first press conference of this year's NPC session, reveals how much attention China's budding naval force has drawn.
Now, it is about time for the world to be prepared for China's first aircraft carrier plan in the future.
And, only when the old logic of sea power, illustrated by Alfred Thayer Mahan (1840-1914) in his book, The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783, is broken and a new strategy gains ground can the preparation be properly made.
With maritime power and economic development closely intertwined, those who control the sea control the world. Urged by these Mahanian notions, Western nations like the US have tirelessly pursued a naval buildup for years.
More importantly, these notions have made the West to put on tinted glasses while looking at the rising sea power of the world's fastest-growing economy.
Alarm is often raised to a new high, especially when it comes to the issue of aircraft carrier. Given the old-fashioned, assertive speculation, the Chinese navy has long adopted a low-key approach to modernization.
Should the Mahanian logic not be broken, the impact of a potential maritime conflict could be distrastrous. The reason is simple: Numerous examples can be cited that almost all nations in the world are striving for naval buildup. The US is in possession of 11 aircraft carriers, and neighboring nations like India and South Korea have launched jumbo projects to build aircraft carriers.
But the Chinese are by no means the Mahanians.
Despite the connection made between economic strength and naval muscle, the defensive nature and mutually-beneficial purpose of China's rising sea power emphasizes the difference between Mahanian theory and China's developing maritime strategy.
To fuel its economic growth, China has increasingly relied on the oceans as the avenues to safeguard its overseas investments, market and energy supplies. Yet this is something that needs to be understood by Western nations. A clear understanding of the situation is in the long-term national interest of Western nations.
China's ambition of building a blue-water navy is to pursue the basic right to develop, rather than maritime hegemony.
The Chinese navy equipped with aircraft carriers and other advanced weaponry would be able to better help maintain regional stability and world peace.
All these will build up the credibility of the new strategy of sea power in the emerging world order.
Today's China is not the US or the UK of 120 years ago when Mahan published his masterpiece.
Should a new, accurate logic be communicated to and accepted by the world, it would help dispel the suspicion and even hostility that may be aroused by China's sea power.
After all, as much as other nations, China has the legitimate right to build up its naval force – including aircraft carriers.
China, Iran Creating 'No-Go' Zones To Thwart U.S. Military Power
(AOL NEWS POLITICS DAILY 01 MAR 10) ... David Wood
During the Cold War, the Pentagon built the greatest naval and air forces the world had ever seen, endowing the United States with the superpower ability to land huge military forces anywhere in the world, at any time, whether invited in or not.
So it was that Washington, using its armada of aircraft carriers, cruise missile-launching submarines, fast cargo ships, long-range bombers, airlifters, and air refueling fighters, could eject the Iraqis from Kuwait (1991), bomb Serbia (1999), kick over the Taliban regime in Afghanistan (2001), and knock off Saddam and his cronies (2003). Everybody else had to meekly follow along (or sit on the sidelines).
But now the party's over. The United States, Pentagon strategists say, is quickly losing its ability to barge in without permission. Potential target countries and even some lukewarm allies are figuring out ingenious ways to blunt American power without trying to meet it head-on, using a combination of high-tech and low-tech jujitsu.
At the same time, U.S. naval and air forces have been shrinking under the weight of ever more expensive hardware. It's no longer the case that the United States can overwhelm clever defenses with sheer numbers.
As Defense Secretary Robert Gates summed up the problem this month, countries in places where the United States has strategic interests -- including the Persian Gulf and the Pacific -- are building "sophisticated, new technologies to deny our forces access to the global commons of sea, air, space and cyberspace.''
Those innocuous words spell trouble. While the U.S. military and strategy community is focused on Afghanistan and the fight in Marja, others – Iran and China, to name two – are chipping away at America's access to the Taiwan Strait, the South China Sea, the Persian Gulf and the increasingly critical extraterrestrial realms.
"This era of U.S. military dominance is waning at an increasing and alarming rate,'' Andrew Krepinevich, a West Point-educated officer and former senior Pentagon strategist, writes in a new report. "With the spread of advanced military technologies and their exploitation by other militaries, especially China's People's Liberation Army and to a far lesser extent Iran's military and Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the U.S. military's ability to preserve military access to two key areas of vital interest, the western Pacific and the Persian Gulf, is being increasingly challenged.''
At present, "there is little indication that China or Iran intend to alter their efforts to create 'no-go' zones in the maritime areas off their coasts,'' writes Krepinevich, president of the non-partisan think tank, the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments.
What will save America's bacon, Gates and others hope, is something called the Air-Sea Battle Concept. Problem: It has yet to be invented.
The most worrisome of the "area denial/anti-access'' strategies being deployed against the United States (and others) is by China, which groups its defenses under the term "shashoujian,'' or "assassin's mace.'' The term refers to an ancient weapon, easily concealed by Chinese warriors and used to cripple a more powerful attacker.
In its modern incarnation, Krepinevich explains, shashoujian is a powerful combination of traditional but sophisticated air defenses, ballistic and anti-ship missiles, and similar weapons to put at risk nearby U.S. forces and regional bases, together with anti-satellite and cyberwar weapons to disable U.S. reconnaissance and command-and-control networks.
Dennis Blair, the top U.S. intelligence official, described these developments in detail in a report to Congress last month, adding that taken together, they "improve China's ability to execute an anti-access and area-denial strategy in the western Pacific.''
Iran's area-denial arsenal includes coastal and inland missile batteries, ballistic missiles to threaten U.S. bases and Arabian oil facilities, mines and shallow-draft missile boats that can quickly swarm around heavy, slow-moving U.S. warships. Iran's ability to threaten any would-be invaders, or simply to shut off access to the Gulf, would be enhanced if it acquires a nuclear weapons capability, which some analysts believe could happen within President Obama's current term in office.
As these new challenges have grown, America's air and naval forces have been quietly shrinking, a function of the staggering increase in complexity and cost of the hardware. Although other factors are at play, the bottom line is that the Pentagon can afford fewer planes and ships because each one costs more and more. As former Lockheed Martin chairman Norm Augustine pointed out in 1983, the cost of a fighter aircraft has quadrupled every 10 years, since the dawn of the age of aviation.
The F16 fighter, for instance, originally cost about $35 million each (adjusted for inflation). It is being replaced by the F-35, currently priced at $266 million each. The pattern holds for the F-22, which the Pentagon has bought to replace its F-15s, and the B-1 and B-2 bombers built to replace B-52s and F-111s. Small wonder the Air Force inventory of fighter-attack planes and bombers has sagged 20 percent during the past 15 years from 2,073 to 1,649.
The Navy also has fallen victim to the rising-cost, falling-inventory phenomenon. During the Vietnam War it boasted 932 warships. By 1985 the Navy could barely maintain 571 ships (despite the Reagan administration's rallying cry of a "600-ship Navy!''). Today's Navy has dwindled to 283 expensive warships.
Robert Work, currently the under secretary of the Navy, pointed out as a private researcher last year that not only is the current naval force inadequate for a bust-in-the-door mission, the Navy's plans for a larger future fleet are still inadequate – and unaffordable to boot. The Navy's planned future fleet of 313 ships, he wrote in a major paper on naval strategy, "lacks the range to face increasingly lethal, land-based maritime reconnaissance/strike complexes (networks), or nuclear armed adversaries.'' And, he said, it ignores the growing challenge of China's shashoujian.
Anyway, Work added, "the signs are that the Navy's plans are far too ambitious given likely future resource allocations ... the Navy needs to scale back its current plans; they are simply too ambitious for expected future budgets.''
So what's the plan? The plan is to develop a plan, for now being called the Air-Sea Battle Concept. The idea is based loosely on a strategy the Army came up with during the Cold War when the generals realized they were out-manned and out-gunned by the Red Army. Their solution was AirLand Battle, based mostly on the early work of Army Gen. Donn Starry, who advocated using closely coordinated air and ground combat power to attack deep into the enemy's rear at the outset of the fight, rather than waiting for the enemy to advance up to "the front.''
AirLand Battle became a reality after much headbutting among senior generals not willing to share the glory (or the budget dollars). It arguably helped to deter Soviet aggression in Europe. And it proved highly successful in Desert Storm and in the invasion of Iraq.
The hope for Air-Sea Battle is to achieve similar synergy by joining naval and air power with space and cyberspace war-fighting capabilities for "defeating adversaries across the range of military operations, including adversaries equipped with sophisticated anti-access and area denial capabilities,'' according to the Pentagon's most recent strategic plan, the Quadrennial Defense Review, published earlier this month.
If that sounds vague, it's because there's not much behind the words. A laconic sentence in the QDR hints that no one has any idea what Air-Sea Battle might mean in practice: "As it matures, the concept will also help guide the development of future capabilities needed for effective power projection operations.''
Last fall, the leaders of the Air Force and Navy, two services not known for cozy relations, signed an agreement to share work on this concept.
They immediately recruited a small working group, which set off on a listening tour to hear the views of senior U.S. commanders on what Air-Sea Battle should look like.
While the Air-Sea Battle task force is at work, Iran's extremist Revolutionary Guards are slowly taking over control of the government, according to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, suggesting that Iran's keep-out defenses will continue to be hardened. And China's work on cyberwar continues.
As all that unfolds, the Pentagon's attention will be elsewhere. Gates has directed that the Defense Department's strategic and budgeting focus in 2011 be directed at fighting "the wars we are in today,'' in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Scientists Warned Against JSF
A 10-Year-Old Defence Report Found Faults With The Warplane
(THE AUSTRALIAN 25 FEB 10) ... Cameron Stewart
An internal Defence study warned that the new Joint Strike Fighter would be a high-risk venture for Australia, admitting that the plane had weaknesses, including poor engine thrust that made it difficult to dodge missiles.
The blunt criticisms of the warplane contained in the study by Defence scientists in 2000 have never been aired publicly by the government.
But the Defence Science and Technology Organisation study, obtained by The Australian, was far more critical of the other fighter jet options available to Australia if it did not choose the JSF.
The document uses highly undiplomatic language to trash the performance of the warplanes used by Australia's closest allies.
The DSTO study, described as a "first-cut analysis" of Australia's future fighter needs, was written two years before the Howard government signed up to the US-led JSF program in 2002, abandoning the tender process and stunning aircraft manufacturers.
Titled "A Preliminary Assessment of Inhabited Platforms for AIR6000" and written by the DSTO's Graeme Murray and David Carr, the study is significant because it is one of only a handful of studies that looked at alternatives to the JSF.
The government plans to buy 100 JSFs for $16 billion in what will be the largest Australian defence purchase in history.
The DSTO report, written at a time when the JSF existed only on paper, said that if Australia signed on to the JSF program, it would be doing so without knowing the plane's final capability and costs.
"JSF has present serious shortfalls in engine performance and incomplete sensor-fusion capability," the DSTO said.
"The aircraft lacks engine thrust in the baseline configuration due to the high weight, affecting the use of manoeuvrability to defeat missile attack."
It also warned of hi-tech risks in the program because of tight schedule and cost targets, but it gave the plane strong marks for its stealth, range, payload and its "all weather, 24-hour lethality".
It said the JSF would not be cheaper to acquire than other fighters, but would be cheaper to maintain and service.
The study favours the JSF over other options and is blunt about the shortcomings of Australia's other fighter options. It describes the US F-16 used by the US Air Force as having a weak airframe and poor stealth.
"Old airframe lacks agility to outmanoeuvre missiles and has a small internal fuel capacity," the DSTO said of the F-16.
It said Europe's Typhoon fighter had limited strike capability and was unreliable.
"Present (strike) capability is lacking due to limited sensors and weapons carrying capability," it said of the Typhoon.
"Low reliability will mean high costs to operate."
It said Sweden's Gripen fighter had poor stealth, an underdeveloped electronic warfare system and payload and range limitations.
The DSTO found that the earlier version of the F/A-18E Super Hornet -- not the Block II version that has since been purchased by Australia -- was underpowered, lacked endurance and "risks being shot from behind with a radar-guided missile".
The US F-15E lacked stealth while France's Rafale had an unreliable and weak engine.
"The F-15E is good now, but not likely to be defensible in the expected electronic warfare environment in the 2010 timeframe," the DSTO said. "Rafale has short-term shortfalls in engine and radar performance."
The DSTO said the F-22 fighter -- the production of which was recently cancelled by US Defence Secretary Robert Gates -- had limited strike capability and was very expensive.
Despite these criticisms, the study recommended narrowing Australia's choice of a new fighter jet to only three: the JSF, the American F-15E and the French Rafale.
Gates: Europe Demilitarization Has Gone Too Far
(ASSOCIATED PRESS 23 FEB 10) ... Robert Burns
WASHINGTON — Europeans’ aversion to military force is limiting NATO’s ability to fight wars effectively, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Tuesday.
In remarks to a forum on rewriting the basic mission plan for the NATO alliance, Gates called for far-reaching reforms in an organization that was created 61 years ago as a political and military bulwark against the former Soviet Union and its Red Army.
The early successes of NATO in averting post-World War II eruptions of European conflict have led to a new set of concerns, Gates said.
“The demilitarization of Europe — where large swaths of the general public and political class are averse to military force and the risks that go with it — has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment to achieving real security and lasting peace in the 21st,” he told an audience filled with uniformed military officers from many of NATO’s 28 member countries.
The danger, he added, is that potential future adversaries may view NATO as a paper tiger.
“Not only can real or perceived weakness be a temptation to miscalculation and aggression, but, on a more basic level, the resulting funding and capability shortfalls make it difficult to operate and fight together to confront shared threats,” Gates said.
In his more than three years as Pentagon chief, Gates has repeatedly urged European members of NATO to boost their defense budgets and to find ways to modernize their forces, while also praising their commitment to fighting alongside the United States in Afghanistan.
“For many years, for example, we have been aware that NATO needs more cargo aircraft and more helicopters of all types, and yet we still don’t have these capabilities,” he said. “And their absence is directly impacting operations in Afghanistan. Similarly, NATO requires more aerial refueling tankers and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance platforms for immediate use on the battlefield.”
In Prague, Michal Thim of the Association for International Affairs, an independent Czech think tank, said Gates’ comments were not surprising.
“The United States have been concerned about the defense policies of European allies for a long time,” Thim said. He interpreted Gates’ remarks as indicating the Obama administration is losing patience with Europe.
Kees Homan, a former director of the Dutch military college and now with the Clingendael Institute in The Hague, said Gates is only partly right when he spoke of the popular aversion in Europe to war.
Europeans will fight when they perceive it to be in their self interest. The problem in Afghanistan, he said, was that the war lacked consensus.
France’s Defense Ministry had no comment on Gates’ remarks. Neither did the German Defense Ministry.
Gates welcomed the in-depth effort by NATO to revise and update what it calls its “strategic concept,” or its basic mission document. He stressed that it must be more than a paper exercise, given the real world conflicts NATO is fighting today — with about 120,000 troops, including U.S. forces, in Afghanistan, and the prospect of staying there in some numbers for years to come.
“Most are living in austere conditions, and many are facing enemy fire on a daily basis,” he said. “That is a stark reminder that NATO is not now, nor should it ever be, a talk-shop or a Renaissance weekend on steroids. It is a military alliance with real-world obligations that have life-or-death consequences.”
A group of experts led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright is working to update NATO’s strategic concept. It was last revised in 1999, before the alliance began substantial military operations beyond its borders — most notably in Afghanistan.
Gates’ speech kicked off a daylong seminar at the National Defense University to wrap up preliminary thinking on how to revise the strategic concept. The final product is expected to be formally adopted at an alliance summit in November in Lisbon, Portugal. NATO nations had a major falling out over the Iraq war in 2003, with several, including France, Germany and Belgium, opposing it and blocking alliance participation.
Combination Of Enlisted And Officers' Clubs Reflects Broad Changes In Armed Forces: Social Segregation By Ranks Disappearing
(NORTH COUNTY TIMES (CA) 23 FEB 10) ... Jeff Rowe
For decades, officers' clubs were revered, exclusive institutions of the military services.
Dues were cheap and so were the drinks. After a combat mission or tough day of training, adjourning to the O-club was a cherished way to cap the day.
Lifelong friendships were cemented, an officer's social status ratified. Officers' clubs were thought to be part of the morale-maintenance and bonding that was vital to an effective fighting force.
Now, in changes driven by economics, demographics, health and social engineering, officers' and enlisted clubs have been closing at bases around the nation, the buildings transformed into other uses, or converted into all-ranks cafes, sports bars, restaurants and meeting places.
The Navy has closed many officers' clubs; the Army has closed a majority, a Pentagon spokesman said. Even the Marines, the most tradition-bound of the services, have closed officers' clubs.
And the closures are fostering a new social order in the military, one where comradeship and cohesion are based more on a top-to-bottom unit allegiance rather than the stratified worlds of officers and the enlisted.
At Camp Pendleton, one of the officers' clubs was converted last year into a family-readiness center. A portion of the old club was renovated and reopened a few months ago as Pub 1795, named after its building number. From 4 to 9 p.m. Fridays, it's open for officers only. The rest of the time, the Marines use it for classes, meetings and events such as retirement parties.
Farthest ahead in converting officers' clubs is the Air Force, the Pentagon said.
Air Force officers' clubs are becoming activity centers, said Henry Frye, general manager of the Hap Arnold Club at March Air Reserve Base near Moreno Valley. The club was named for the general who guided the Air Force through its formative years.
"We're shifting from one culture to another, and it's still in progress," Frye said.
Lunch with the boss
On a recent day in the Back Street Cafe, a section of the Hap Arnold Club, Tech. Sgt. Rodney Doll of Moreno Valley and Senior Airman Richard Pacheco were eating lunch when their boss in the aircraft maintenance squadron, Capt. Glenn Baker, sat down at the next table.
They chatted easily, something that would not have happened years ago in a place Pacheco and Doll never would have entered.
"Before, you didn't really talk to the officers," Doll said. "Communication is better now. We work professionally, but now we also can kick back with them."
Baker also likes the new order. "I experience what they experience," he said. "We need feedback and interaction -- we get a better end product. They speak freely."
Should any of them come back in the evening, they could watch the Olympics on the six screens in the Aces Sports Bar, which opened last year and feels like it could be anywhere in civilian America.
Meshing the clubs is part of a broader, fundamental change in how enlisted troops and officers interact.
"It's a more relaxed (but) professional environment," said Master Sgt. John Hale, a historian at March and new owner of a master's degree in archaeology.
Still, it's a profound change in the sociology of the armed forces.
"I'm reeling trying to grasp this," said Abe Shragge, a history professor at UC San Diego, who teaches a class in how war is represented in popular culture and music.
Combining officers' and enlisted clubs is a "wholesale cultural change -- it's remarkable." he said. "A sports bar open to all ranks -- I see that as more culturally normal than the segregated culture of the past."
Funding crunch
Economics, funding, health and safety also contributed to the clubs' change.
Funding for Air Force clubs was cut in 1991, which meant the clubs had to pay for their utilities, supplies and labor. Two other factors are influencing the demise of officers' clubs: concerns about alcohol-related accidents and diseases, and newer officers preferring to spend recreation time on family and activities other than drinking after work.
"In the 1980s, we started deglamorizing alcohol," said Bryan Driver, a spokesman in Washington, D.C., for Marine Corps Community Services.
Retired USAF Col. Bill Gavitt recalled officers' clubs as the focus of social activity during his active-duty days in the 1950s, '60s and '70s.
"Alcohol was cheap; club drinks were cheap," he said. "Alcohol was so abundant and easy to get that many developed alcohol problems."
Gavitt is a former president of the March Field chapter of the Military Officers' Association of America. He lives in Riverside and still attends events at the now all-ranks Hap Arnold Club.
"We were stuffy too long," he said of the rank-segregated clubs. "You depend on the troops to help you at the hospital, to service your airplane -- these are the people you depend on for your life. It's a pyramid, and everyone stands on everyone else's shoulders."
Despite the demise of the O-clubs, some new gathering places have sprung up that are evocative of them.
At March, Sally's Alley feels like a World War II aviators club. Its walls are covered with graffiti written mostly by pilots; scarves worn by bomber pilots hang from the ceiling; and a list of "rules" includes an admonition to "say good night to the bartender."
Traditional as it feels, though, Sally's Alley also is part of the new military social frontier.
All ranks are welcome.
Carrier Fight Moves To Halls Of Congress
(NORFOLK VIRGINIAN-PILOT 19 FEB 10) ... Editorial
It's more than disconcerting to hear a Hampton Roads congressman's assessment that losing an aircraft carrier to Florida is inevitable. Unless we "get a break," U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes said, Florida has the momentum and the political pull to shift a Norfolk-based nuclear carrier to Mayport Naval Station in 2015.
Forbes also said he'd fight like crazy to keep that from happening. But the push in Washington and at the Pentagon seems to be headed south.
Moving a carrier to Mayport would be illogical and unnecessarily expensive. But if we're relying on a break, not sound reasoning and fiscal responsibility, to keep our strong military presence in Hampton Roads, we might as well prepare to say goodbye to the 6,000 jobs and $425 million in annual income that a carrier carries with it.
In fact, if we're conceding that loss, we might prepare ourselves for worse. The Department of Defense is unlikely to spend $1 billion readying Mayport for just one nuclear carrier; it could send two or three.
The economic effect of losing one is sobering enough - similar to losing the families and neighborhoods associated with two public high schools. But multiply that by three. It's the equivalent of Northrop Grumman shuttering operations in Hampton Roads. Or all at once losing the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, Stihl Inc., Amerigroup Corp., Farm Fresh, Dollar Tree and the USJFCOM/JWFC Training, Analysis & Simulation Center in Suffolk.
Beyond the economic impact, and more important, is what this would do to a culture that revolves around the military. Kids would lose their Little League coaches. Churches would lose leaders. We'd all lose neighbors and friends.
We'd have no need to expand the tunnels or construct a transit system, no reason to build more houses or schools, no worries about waiting in line at restaurants or theaters. Businesses of all kinds would suffer. The ripples would be far worse than anything we've seen in this recession. It would, according to optimistic estimates, take a decade or more to recover.
Despite the Quadrennial Defense Review's recommendation to move a carrier to Florida, the case for keeping it in Norfolk remains strong. Unlike May-port, Hampton Roads doesn't need to spend $76 million to improve wharves or dredge a river to accommodate a nuclear carrier. It doesn't need to spend more than half a billion dollars setting up a new base.
Florida's only advantage is political. It has more votes than Virginia and a congressional delegation more united in the mission. Florida's leaders have been working for years, and spending millions, to siphon military assets of any kind from any state that has them. The state is closer than ever to winning.
The Defense review declared that moving a carrier to Mayport would "mitigate the risk of a terrorist attack, accident or natural disaster," but it failed to say why Norfolk is at greater risk than other ports - and why a carrier would be safer in Jacksonville, where the chance of severe storms is much greater.
Carriers, also based in Washington and California, are spending more time at sea, so the chances of having the East Coast fleet in Hampton Roads at the same time are increasingly unlikely.
Congress is considering the Defense Department's $708 billion budget request. While there's one minute to make the case for fiscal responsibility, while one congressman remains uncertain, our senators and representatives cannot stop fighting to keep the carriers here.
It will take the kind of unified effort that has been in short supply in Washington, a test not of party but of legislative mettle and influence. Failure will have consequences.
Hampton Roads' business leaders, its tourism officials, university presidents and military brass must join them in making Washington understand that a move to Mayport is perhaps justified by politics, but not by reality.
Underestimating China
(WASHINGTON TIMES 12 FEB 10) ... Adm. James A. Lyons
On a recent visit to Australia, Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus downplayed the threat posed by China's rapid modernization of its military forces, highlighted in Australia's 2009 Defense White Paper. With no discernable threat, China's unprecedented force modernization program has grown at a double-digit rate for the past 10 years.
Though China professes that the modernization of its military forces threatens no one and is only for defensive purposes, it is classic Chinese subterfuge. Every new weapons system it has acquired or developed is designed specifically to target or intimidate U.S. military forces. For example, China's development of an anti-ship ballistic missile is designed to target U.S. aircraft carriers - not some commercial container ship. It has purchased from Russia the Supersonic SS-N-22 Sunburn anti-ship cruise missile, which was designed specifically to strike our Aegis cruisers and destroyers. It has tripled to 36 the number of surface combatants carrying anti-ship cruise missiles.
China's strategic modernization program is no less impressive. Its four new nuclear missiles - some probably with multiple warheads - coupled with its recently demonstrated anti-ballistic-missile and anti-satellite intercept capability cannot be ignored. Nor can its development of a new strategic bomber and a fifth-generation fighter.
The building of underground submarine pens on Hainan Island, which can house both strategic and nuclear-attack submarines, cannot go unnoticed. By this year, China could have 60 attack submarines. Hainan Island's strategic location provides quick access to the critical sea lines of communication that lead to northeastern Asia and Australia, plus ready access to the broad reaches of the Western Pacific. This facility, coupled with China's illegal action to claim the entire South China Sea as part of its "historic waters," should be a wake-up call. Further, its unilateral claim of sovereignty over disputed islands in the South China Sea, including the Paracels, Spratlys, Senkaku and Taiwan, provides substance to China's goal of dominating an island chain that includes Taiwan. Taiwan is the key to extending that dominance out to a second island chain that includes Guam.
The Australian Defense White Paper properly recognizes the threat posed by China to Australia's national security and also highlights the adverse impact it could have on U.S. naval and Marine forces in the Western Pacific. Australia places its security not only on its own self-reliant military forces, but on the strategic underpinnings provided by its most important ally, the United States. In that sense, Australia is concerned about the reduction in U.S. strategic forces and the lack of a modernization program. The extension of the U.S. strategic umbrella is critical to Australia, as it is to our other friends and allies in the region, including Japan and South Korea.
According to reports, Mr. Mabus stated that the immediate challenges to stability across the Pacific did not stem from China's growing naval power, but the threat from pirates, terrorists and illegal fishing. This view obviously reflects the Obama administration's new strategy of not preparing for major conflicts, which is a formula for disaster. Further, it plays into the China propaganda line that its modernization is only for defensive purposes. China goes on to state that it has never committed aggression against anyone. This propaganda is repeated by pro-China supporters, plus a line attributed to Henry Kissinger that "military imperialism is not China's style." Then China's aggression in Tibet, Vietnam, India, Russia and the South China Sea must have been aberrations.
How much further will Chinese imperialism reach, when, by the end of this decade, it could have multiple aircraft carriers, a growing large-ship amphibious navy, near nuclear parity should the president succeed with further U.S. nuclear warhead reductions, and growing numbers of fifth-generation fighters? It's not just this picture that worries some of our Australian allies, but also the refusal of the Obama administration to see how it may be accelerating a growing threat.
I agree with Mr. Mabus that our commitment to the Western Pacific region must remain absolute. Many of the programs that need to be supported to enhance that commitment go beyond the Navy's budget.
Our recently announced sale of the Patriot defensive weapon system to Taiwan was a good start, but more needs to be done. Taiwan also needs F-16 fighters now, then fifth-generation F-35s later this decade, and submarines. We should never let Chinese bluster - like its threat to cease its mostly useless "assistance" to end Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs - interrupt American aid to democratic Taiwan. The Navy budget needs to include funding for a 12th aircraft carrier, plus funding for a core surface naval force that is imbedded with the capabilities of a Zumwalt-class destroyer to counter known and future threats.
Unlike Mr. Mabus, I can see clearly that China is a real and growing threat to U.S. naval forces in Asia, to U.S. allies and friends such as Taiwan and to freedom of navigation in the maritime and outer-space realms. Denying these facts will not make China go away and will not impress our allies.
(Retired Navy Adm. James A. Lyons was commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet and senior U.S. military representative to the United Nations.)
China’s Hawks Demand Cold War On The US
(LONDON TIMES (UK) 07 FEB 10) ... Michael Sheridan
MORE than half of Chinese people questioned in a poll believe China and America are heading for a new “cold war”.
The finding came after battles over Taiwan, Tibet, trade, climate change, internet freedom and human rights which have poisoned relations in the three months since President Barack Obama made a fruitless visit to Beijing.
According to diplomatic sources, a rancorous postmortem examination is under way inside the US government, led by officials who think the president was badly advised and was made to appear weak.
In China’s eyes, the American response — which includes a pledge by Obama to get tougher on trade — is a reaction against its rising power.
Now almost 55% of those questioned for Global Times, a state-run newspaper, agree that “a cold war will break out between the US and China”.
An independent survey of Chinese-language media for The Sunday Times has found army and navy officers predicting a military showdown and political leaders calling for China to sell more arms to America’s foes. The trigger for their fury was Obama’s decision to sell $6.4 billion (£4 billion) worth of weapons to Taiwan, the thriving democratic island that has ruled itself since 1949.
“We should retaliate with an eye for an eye and sell arms to Iran, North Korea, Syria, Cuba and Venezuela,” declared Liu Menxiong, a member of the Chinese people’s political consultative conference.
He added: “We have nothing to be afraid of. The North Koreans have stood up to America and has anything happened to them? No. Iran stands up to America and does disaster befall it? No.”
Officially, China has reacted by threatening sanctions against American companies selling arms to Taiwan and cancelling military visits.
But Chinese analysts think the leadership, riding a wave of patriotism as the year of the tiger dawns, may go further.
“This time China must punish the US,” said Major-General Yang Yi, a naval officer. “We must make them hurt.” A major-general in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Luo Yuan, told a television audience that more missiles would be deployed against Taiwan. And a PLA strategist, Colonel Meng Xianging, said China would “qualitatively upgrade” its military over the next 10 years to force a showdown “when we’re strong enough for a hand-to-hand fight with the US”.
Chinese indignation was compounded when the White House said Obama would meet the Dalai Lama, the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, in the next few weeks.
“When someone spits on you, you have to get back,” said Huang Xiangyang, a commentator in the China Daily newspaper, usually seen as a showcase for moderate opinion.
An internal publication at the elite Qinghua University last week predicted the strains would get worse because “core interests” were at risk. It said battles over exports, technology transfer, copyright piracy and the value of China’s currency, the yuan, would be fierce.
As a crescendo of strident nationalistic rhetoric swirls through the Chinese media and blogosphere, American officials seem baffled by what has gone wrong and how fast it has happened.
During Obama’s visit, the US ambassador to China, Jon Huntsman, claimed relations were “really at an all-time high in terms of the bilateral atmosphere ... a cruising altitude that is higher than any other time in recent memory”, according to an official transcript.
The ambassador must have been the only person at his embassy to think so, said a diplomat close to the talks.
“The truth was that the atmosphere was cold and intransigent when the president went to Beijing yet his China team went on pretending that everything was fine,” the diplomat said.
In reality, Chinese officials argued over every item of protocol, rigged a town hall meeting with a pre-selected audience, censored the only interview Obama gave to a Chinese newspaper and forbade the Americans to use their own helicopters to fly him to the Great Wall.
President Hu Jintao refused to give an inch on Obama’s plea to raise the value of the Chinese currency, while his vague promises of co-operation on climate change led the Americans to blunder into a fiasco at the Copenhagen summit three weeks later.
Diplomats say they have been told that there was “frigid” personal chemistry between Obama and the Chinese president, with none of the superficial friendship struck up by previous leaders of the two nations.
Yet after their meeting Obama’s China adviser, Jeff Bader, said: “It’s been highly successful in setting out and accomplishing the objectives we set ourselves.”
Then came Copenhagen, where Obama virtually had to force his way with his bodyguards into a conference room where the urbane Chinese premier, Wen Jiabao, was trying to strike a deal behind his back.
The Americans were also livid at what they saw as deliberate Chinese attempts to humiliate the president by sending lower-level officials to deal with him.
“They thought Obama was weak and they were testing him,” said a European diplomat based in China.
In Beijing, some diplomats even claim to detect a condescending attitude towards Obama, noting that Yang Jiechi, the foreign minister, prides himself on knowing the Bush dynasty and others among America’s traditional white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant elite.
But there are a few voices urging caution on Chinese public opinion. “China will look unreal if it behaves aggressively and competes for global leadership,” wrote Wang Yusheng, a retired diplomat, in the China Daily.
He warned that China was not as rich or as powerful as America or Japan and therefore such a move could be “hazardous”.
It is not clear whether anyone in Beijing is listening.