hallo84Ok. This is getting nowhere. China may have an AShBM. It may or may not be the DF-15 variant we’ve seen.
Who says they’re fixed? There is a precedent-the Pershing II. It added fins to a new RV giving it a MARV to improve terminal accuracy over the Pershing I. That’d be a good idea for a AShBM as well, but the presence of fins doesn’t prove that a weapon is an AShBM.
But, let’s discontinue this speculation for now, because unless the PLA comes out and tells us, we won’t know for sure, right?
For the sake of argument, let’s assume that the DF-15 has an AShBM variant. If that is true, and given China’s new ASAT capability, I’d think the prospects of a conflict over Formosa in the near term have increased exponentially.
An AShBM is designed to penetrate defenses and kill a carrier, I think we can agree that’d be the point of such a system. Given that, and the fact that an AShBM may be rendered moot in about a decade when the ABM variant of the AEGIS system is operationally fielded, it is possible that China sees this new capability as a means to a victory, taking the primary threat of US Naval power out of the equation by either deterrence or destruction. So, China has a limited window where they could theoretically actually go into Formosa and win, possibly without even having to take on the USA.
Here are the future critical indicators to a conflict as I see them.
1. A Democratic victory in 2008 would put someone in the White House who is less likely to send a CVBG into an area where over 6,000 people may be killed before they can even intervene in the conflict. Such a person would be more likely to pursue a political solution, especially after the divisiveness of Iraq and the Democratic Party’s apparently anti-war stance for the moment.
2. A well publicized test firing into the Pacific of an AShBM system would indicate that China wants the US to know about the system’s capabilities, just like the publicized ASAT test. That could potentially indicate that China is warning the US of the potential consequences of military involvement.
So, were those two things to happen, it is possible that they could be precursors to Chinese military action. Granted, this is all just speculation and analysis, but you have to admit that if the DF-15 variant works as some people think it does, it presents China with a unique window of opportunity, one that could be closed in a decade or less.
Thoughts?
Why would there be a publicized firing? Beijing already made sure Washington know it has such ability and AShBM have been continually appearing on the Annual Report to Congress: Military Power of the People’s Republic of China is quite evident.
The fact that DDP presidential candidate Frank Sheh was shunned in his very recent visit to US by both AIT officials and Powell was the resulting political solution from Washington.
China does not need another 1996. America is much more willing play bad cop instead.
hallo84The tech gap is diminishing with every year. The window of opportunity for for Taiwan independence is closing fast!
There never was any window of oppertunity in the first place.
The only two chances that could be vaguely considereds as such. One is during the Korean war and another was in 1972 if Chang Kai Shek didn’t with draw from UN unilaterally. Then there would still be a de facto Republic of China representing Taiwan.
Baring these two, I don’t see how PRC would be any willing to let Taiwan go.
Richard Fisher is a military equipement fanboy. His work involve mostly internet surfing and stealing from chinese internet sources. He has never actually studied the history behind the two sides, neither does he understand any political motivations of the leaders of the two sides both in the past and now.
hint #1 check up on Taiwanese nuke development and you will conclude that nuclear weapons were actually deployed on the Island by the US and yet PRC still was willing to attempt an invasion.
China has never in history backed down even in the fact of much superior adversary. This was demonstrated by the Korean war, and the sino-soviet clash. Both of which involved an adversary with proven nuclear weapons. In the sino-soviet clash tactical nuclear war was only narrowly adverted.
hallo84Besides, the trajectory of the inbound weapon can be predicted, because you know what it’s going for. A modified CIWS Phalanx could be conceived to defend against such a weapon.
If this was indeed a Kinetic weapon like the ASAT then Phalanx CIWS will literally do nothing. A 500kg kinetic weapon at M6 will definately do a hell of a lot of damage if it can score a direct hit.
hallo84I cannot speak for the Japanese, but at least one other nation’s SSKs did recon of Chinese territorial waters in years past.
Unicorn
But unlike Japan they don’t have to fear any political consequences if such as sub was found out. China won’t make a big fuss about it.
I would’t be surprised if PLAN actually knew about the sub but did nothing more than give it a ping on VHF.
hallo84And maybe Japan do sub intrusion to China territory quite often too, they can and probably without detected!. Their ‘shio’ series (kuroshio, oyashio etc) long range SSK are silent, more silent than PLAN.
I don’t think so… considering the poitical implications involved if such a ship was ever detected. Japan simply does not have the same creditability as everyone else is Asia. For any japanese politicians it would mean career suicide.
Plus its a SSK and given the fact that it CAN NOT remained submerged puts this theory to doubt.
hallo84From what I heard, the Song was tracked by a LA class the entire way, it just wasn’t revealed to the public that’s all. All I can say is that some of the people inside PLAN are getting way too adventurous and arrogant to repeatedly try to pull some stunts like this.
I though the incident was never clarified by USN… Do you have any inside source you’d like to share?
I would’nt say repeatedly as PLAN rarely confronts anyone. Intrusion by submarine actually happens more often than people think. The only thing special in this case is that Japan decided to make it PR promotion.
As for 093, unlike 039, it’s suppose to operate further away from the shore, I think given its importance, it probably has ran into some USN subs without knowing about it.
Quite likely but given that only 3 USN subs are based in the pacific and only recently. I wouldn’t say that a US SSN tails the 093 every time.
My view is that the current 093 is probably slightly better than the common reference point of Victor III and early 688, but probably not reaching the level of improved 688. But that’s why 095 has such urgency right now.
hmmm… we do know there is a 095 project but where is this urgency you are trying to infer? Do you have some inside source that we don’t know about?
hallo84isn’t 110db quite loud liked a rock concert underwater?.
Well seawolf class still has 95db and is among the most quiet submarine.
110db is better than most russian subs and on par with LA class.
The thing is there is always white noise caused by natural current, commercial traffic and the fact that deep diving subs can hide under convergence zone of thermic layers. So even with 110db, with an experienced skipper, they can still be undetected.
hallo84So is this rumor or fact?
If the ATV will be launched in a calendar year 2008, when was it laid down?
The reactor hasn’t finished development in July of 2006 so any talk about launching a hull in 2008 is pre mature unless the reactor comes on line.
hallo84Two types of seekers?
One radar and another employing TV guided?
hallo84I’m not so sure, those fins are pretty small and I don’t think they would be enough to give you the sort of delicate control you would need to allow a M6 projectile to hit a moving warship, even one as large as a carrier. Having terminal guidenence does not automatically mean an anti-ship version.
Yeah but similar DF-15 pictures surfaced quite a while ago. Roughly at the same time when anti ship MRBM was mentioned… Maybe vector thrusters work with the fins together…
hallo84… mysterious 093SSN from CDF.
The pics are on exhibit at the 80th anniversary of PLA.
There is also the new type 05 155mmSPH on display as well.
Heh… seems PRC are bent on being much more transparent about military projects.
hallo84I would trust USN anti-submarine capabilities over the PLAN’s any day. 😉
To put into perspective, the regions where PLAn currently operates does not require the ASW capability USN posses. Any money spent on getting these capability is wasted unless China decides to confront USN on the pecific.
On the other hand if USN decides to fight PLAN within the second island chain then they too are restricted to the same conditions and capabilities as PLAN. A USN SSN won’t fair any better in shallow waters than an SSK.
hallo84Hey Hydropod! You posted something about a dancing girl at CDF. Care to elaborate?! 😀
Cryptic way for Big Shrimp to leak info without being invited to have tea by bureau of national security.
We make inference on what is seemingly an innocent pop culture article.
hallo84Duh! What happens to that great pile of dollars (BTW, about 70% of it is dollars & dollar-denominated securities, mostly US Treasury bonds, & 30% in other currencies) in a war with the USA? A great part of it immediately ceases to have any value, as the US treasury would promptly repudiate the debt. A few other governments might also take it as an opportunity to shed some debt, e.g. S. Korea & Japan. It isn’t a “war chest” at all. In fact, that huge stash of US bonds is powerful evidence that China has no plans to go to war in the near future.
What happens if vast amounts of foreign currency suddenly start being spent inside China on weapons? Or anything else? It’s obvious Martin Walker hasn’t thought about that at all, or asked an economist why China hasn’t been spending any of it internally on any of the other things (e.g. infrastructure, rural income support – which has begun, but funded from internally, not using foreign reserves) which are considered priorities. Well, for a start the yuan will go through the roof, throwing vast numbers out of work unless the government takes action to stem the rise. But stemming the rise means buying foreign currency – oh. Back to square one.
Stupid article by an economic illiterate. China’s foreign reserves are a problem for China, an undesirable (in such quantities) by-product of policies designed to achieve other aims. Chinese plans to invest its reserves abroad are meant to reduce the problem in a way which doesn’t have undesirable domestic effects.
Whether or not China can afford to build aircraft carriers, in China, is not affected much by the size of foreign reserves. It depends on the Chinese internal economy. Foreign reserves enable China to pay for imports, or invest abroad. No doubt some will go on Russian weapons, but China prefers to build expertise so it can design & make its own weapons, so I’m sure that’ll only be a small part of the reserves, especially as spending very large sums in Russia would strengthen Russias military industries, which I doubt is high on Chinas list of priorities.
Economic illiterate?
Look who’s talking. LOL What have you got to show aside from your pseudonym swerve which literally means to deviate.
I’ll take Martin Walker’s view over yours any day of the week.
Walker never spoke about a war but rather the notion that PRC would be strategic competitors to the US. Your logic of either peace or war is truthfully quite pathetic. American support for the carrier project reflect this view.
Size of foreign reserves directly reflects the economic well being of a country.
Economic fact For a country with an economy that equals the rest of the world combined, 300 billion out of American T-bills over a few years won’t tank the dollar. If you think the dollar is this fragile then you are the economic illiterate.
Chinese foreign reserves are a problem if they are allowed to continue growing which is why Chinese are trying to diversify. Building a carrier fleet will require imports of raw material and technology on an unprecedented scale to off set the current surplus.
hallo84China’s war chest
UPI | May 24, 2007
MARTIN WALKER
With more than $1,200 billion in U.S. dollars, T-bills and securities in its piggy bank, China has been losing money as the value of the dollar has fallen against the euro.
This helps explain that startling announcement last week that China is planning to launch a state investment fund that would seek better returns on its money. It plans to start by investing in stocks and private capital funds like the Blackstone group, which this week announced the infusion of $3 billion of China’s massive hoard of cash.
Put this into perspective. At current market values, China’s $300 billion fund could buy the whole of Wal-Mart, and still have enough left over to buy the Big Three American car makers: Ford, GM and Chrysler. Or it could buy British oil giant BP and still have enough left over to buy Germany’s Siemens. If China wanted to put all its $1.2 trillion into stocks, it could buy Exxon-Mobil, Shell and BP and still have enough left to buy Wal-Mart.
Or China could put some of the money into its defense budget, buy aircraft carriers and challenge the traditional U.S. dominance of the seas. The standard U.S. Nimitz-style carriers cost around $6 billion each, and America’s next generation CVN-21 carriers will cost about double that sum. Then there will be the cost of the warplanes, training the crews, and the other surface vessels in the standard task force that support and protect the carrier.
So a fleet of 10 state-of-the-art CVN-21 carriers with their warplane, crew and task force support could be had for about the $300 billion that China is planning to invest — not counting the savings that Chinese manufacturing techniques and labor costs would bring. So China could in theory afford to challenge the traditional U.S. naval dominance in the Pacific Ocean.
Were it to choose to do so, it seems they would have a helping hand from the U.S. Navy. Adm. Tim Keating, who now runs the Pacific Command and used to serve on the carrier Nimitz, has just completed a five-day friendly visit to China. And at a lunch with Vice Adm. Wu Shengli, commander of China’s navy, Keating stressed the difficulty and complexity of developing, building and operating an aircraft carrier. But at his news conference the following day, Keating said the United States would be willing to help if that is what China decides to do.
“It is not an area where we would want any tension to arise unnecessarily,” he said. “And we would, if they choose to develop (an aircraft carrier program) help them to the degree that they seek and the degree that we’re capable, in developing their programs.”
The immediate response from many armchair strategists was to wonder if Admiral Keating had taken leave of his senses. Why would the U.S. Navy want to help a potential challenger for the control of the seas?
And yet the immediate Chinese response was very cautious. Maj. Gen. Yang Chunchang of China’s Academy of Military Sciences told the Chinese-run Hong Kong daily, Wen Wei Po, that he “was concerned about (the implications of) Keating’s remarks.” Chinese strategists are wary of U.S. plans to infiltrate China’s military machine and gather intelligence through joint exercises and exchange visits.
U.S. Navy officials have been thinking about China’s plans for an aircraft carrier for more than a decade, since China first began talks with Russia about buying one of their small and obsolete carriers, so that they could start the long climb up the learning curve of naval aviation.
There is a school of American thought that would actually welcome a massive Chinese investment in aircraft carriers, on the grounds that it would take them as long as 20 years to be able to build the ships and aircraft, train the crews, and learn the tactics of operating carriers, and they would be very hard put to catch up with the U.S. Navy’s 80 years of experience. (The U.S. Navy paid a stiff price for a similar over-confidence regarding another Asian fleet back on Dec. 7, 1941.)
Others maintain that luring China into building such a navy would be a clever fiscal trap that would overwhelm and distort the Chinese defense budget for decades to come, and simply offer some very fat targets for the U.S. advantage in stealthy hunter-killer submarines. There is also a view that in the age of stealthy submarines and super-fast torpedoes like the Russian Skval and precision-guided weapons, big aircraft carriers are already obsolete.
Maybe. But do not forget that China has already put men into space, and earlier this year a Chinese anti-satellite weapon knocked out an obsolete satellite orbiting high above the earth. The Chinese may be technologically behind the United States, but they are evidently catching up fast.
And the argument that building a carrier fleet would bust the Chinese budget looks very thin against the potential tsunami of dollars that Beijing is planning to pour into the world’s financial markets. If the Beijing government decides that a carrier fleet is in the national interest, and that China’s strategic goals require the ability to control its own waters and the key shipping lanes and oil tanker routes, they can certainly afford it. And there would be no more visible symbol of China’s new role as a great power than a carrier fleet that embodies a challenge to America’s command of the seas.
We have, of course, been here before, at the beginning of the 20th century when Kaiser Wilhelm’s Germany decided to build a High Seas Fleet that could challenge Britain’s dominance of the seas. The subsequent arms race as each side vied to produce more and more Dreadnought-type heavy battleships played an important role in the escalation of tensions that helped bring about the First World War.
This time, we have a third candidate for the new naval arms race. Indian Defense Minister A.K. Antony told his country’s parliament last week that India plans to have three carriers on the seas by 2017. They already operate the Virar, bought from Britain (where it was known as HMS Hermes), and are currently refurbishing the former Soviet carrier Admiral Gorshkov. India is also now building at Cochin its own new 41,000-ton carrier, designed to carry Russian-designed Mig-29s.
But remembering the cost of all this, it should be emphasized that China’s current account surplus grew by $136 billion in the first three months of this year. At that rate, they could afford to build a 10-carrier fleet with just half of this year’s surplus. And last week, Credit Suisse estimated that China’s total war chest, or rather its total reserves, could hit $2 trillion, or $2,000 billion, by the end of next year.
As China decides whether it wants to take the risk of challenging the United States for the command of the seas, or even just for the command of the waters around Taiwan, money will be no object.
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