In the middle of China’s Taklamakan desert, a military range complex outlines a full-scale footprint of a US Navy aircraft carrier and its Aegis missile cruiser escort. According to a November 7, 2021 article by the US Naval Institute, the fully instrumented range is a testing ground for China’s anti-ship missile program.
China Creates Missile Targets Designed Like U.S. Aerial Carriers, and Declays in Remote Desert
Since World War 2, the US air carrier has been the ocean’s queen. The US Task Forces projected US power, dominance and overwhelm for over seventy five years by bombarding and besieging America’s enemies. They have enforced order, as defined by America on land and sea. They are unrivalled no matter where they may be found.
While the Soviet Navy faced competition with the US Navy in the Cold War period, it never really challenged the US’s dominance of its nuclear-powered, floating aircraft attack ships. Aegis cruiser, a specially-built escort for the aircraft carrier. It was designed to fight the Soviet Navy in defending their queen from a barrage of missile threats. This defense is extremely capable and can engage any threat from air, land or sea. This is the only ship that can pose a serious threat to an American carrier task force.
The USNI report indicates that the Chinese are determined to do just this. If they want to equal or surpass an Aegis’ threat capability and be in touch with the US treasured queens of sea, the Chinese continue to develop their anti-ship ballistic missile technology.
Unfortunate Parting Gifts
It is an investment in weapons design and development that requires sophisticated instruments. This demonstrates a technological approach to platforms, electronics and methods of defeating US defenses.
It didn’t help that the US recently left a fully operational Counter Rocket, Artillery, Mortar (C-RAM) Intercept System in Afghanistan. Ground-based systems are a relative of the Phalanx guns system, which was originally developed by the US Navy to protect against anti-ship missile attacks.
A potential mini-arms race can start when an enemy takes possession of one. The adversary will seek to find and exploit any vulnerabilities it finds in the C-RAM. The US is looking at ways to improve the system to make it less vulnerable to countermeasures from the enemy.
It is the same thing that happens when weapons technology moves back and forth.
A Large Coastal Navy
Now, the Chinese Navy has more vessels than the US Navy. USNI also recently reported that China now has three-hundred fifty-five (355) ships, more than the US Navy’s two-hundred ninety-seven (297) ships.
China Has World’s Largest Navy With 355 Ships and Counting, Says Pentagon
The Chinese Navy is mainly a coastal force. A few Chinese ships that are bluewater capital vessels make up the Chinese naval force. This is in contrast to the US’s much larger global oceans capability. Many Chinese ships were designed for sorties in the Sea of Japan, Formosa Strait and, more recently, South China Sea. The Chinese government is keen to have both influence as well as resources.
These ships are equipped with anti-ship missiles. As the Chinese strive to become a threat to their neighboring countries and to be able to defend themselves against the US Navy, many of them have these anti-ship missiles.
Chinese can also create coastal battery-launched anti-ship systems similar to those used by the US in protecting the borders of their countries’ coasts. In their attempt to project their own version of force projection using economic goals for the resources in the region, the Chinese use the Spratly islands in South China Sea as an unsinkable ship. This is similar to the US’ use of Guam and Hawaii in the Pacific Ocean and Diego Garcia and Diego Garcia in India Ocean.
An Increasingly Maritime China
China is now a maritime economy. They are the largest global shipper. Cargo ships transport imported raw material from all over the world. Unrestricted ports access is essential for the survival of their country.
China is striving to be upwardly mobile. The government set out an ambitious plan of foreign aid, deals-making, acquisitions, infrastructure, modernization and technological developments in order to control the global supply chain. China’s merchants are vertically integrating everything they can, collecting pieces of the global manufacturing and shipping industrial base. The empire is enriched by the wealth of the fleets of freighters that ply the seas as Spanish galleons. China’s industrial cities receive far-flung resources that are needed to produce. China is now the Spain 21StJahrhundert, he was a practitioner of a form late in industrial colonialism.
When your survival is dependent upon the bounty of the sea, there are two things you can’t afford to do. You must have access to the ocean without restrictions or blocking due to disagreements between powerful countries.
In the year 2021, one nation’s navy has the power to control the oceans. With impunity, the US Navy and its air carrier task force can project US power wherever they are needed.
In peacetime, it means the United States is the world’s guarantor of the freedom of the shipping lanes, a task for which its navy is second to none. At the moment, China seems content to abandon the United States’ global guarantee for freedom of the waters.
Rising Tensions
Relations between China and America may not be as friendly. The national interests of America are increasingly being impacted by Chinese self-interest. The possibility exists that those differences could reach economic conflict at a time when analysts refer to Grey Zone Warfare as a high-stakes state of tension not far from open warfare.
In these days, provocations between the two nations over freedoms of navigation are commonplace. Regularly, the US Navy sends its ships close to South China Sea Spratly Island to observe the Chinese forces exerting forceful control on the vessels of smaller nations. This is something that the US considers unacceptable. It actively assists the countries in the region in strengthening their resistance to Chinese pressure.
In response, in August-September of 2021, the Chinese Navy sortied a four-ship flotilla sailing within 46 miles of Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. According to Business Insider, “The People’s Liberation Army Navy task force, comprising a guided-missile cruiser, a guided-missile destroyer, a general intelligence vessel, and an auxiliary vessel, was conducting military and surveillance operations in the Bering Sea and North Pacific Ocean.”
China’s state-affiliated Global Times, goaded the US, saying that China intends to do more freedom of navigation demonstrations as far as Guam and Hawaii in the future.
The US should be proud of its freedom to navigate when Chinese warships cross the Caribbean Sea, or land near Hawaii and Guam. This day is coming soon. pic.twitter.com/7fRn8PVZuS
— Hu Xijin 胡锡进 (@HuXijin_GT) September 8, 2021
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