The United States has a problem- the Chinese Navy has officially become the world's largest
navy.
Thankfully, the capabilities of the Chinese Navy are decades behind that of the American
Navy, but in any confrontation with China, the US Navy will at best only be able to call
up on 60% of its fleet, thanks to naval commitments elsewhere in the world.
When forced to face off against just over half of the US fleet, the Chinese Navy's chances
for victory in any Pacific conflict quickly escalate.
For now though the US Navy doesn't need to worry, China is still not a true blue-water
navy that's capable of operating for extended periods of time far from its own shores, although
it has sent task forces to the horn of Africa to aid in anti-piracy efforts.
Overall on a ship-to-ship basis, the Chinese navy's technology ranges from a decade to
four decades behind the United States, especially amongst its very noisy submarine forces.
Yet the situation is quickly changing.
China has in recent years funded a major investment in its naval forces, which has resulted in
a frenzy of ship-building.
Currently China out-builds the United States when it comes to ships, though again it's
important to remember that the capabilities of each ship so far fails to match up to those
of American ships.
Also, this is still the initial surge phase of China's new, modern navy- after reaching
a predetermined target number of ships, the ship-building frenzy will slow to a rate similar
to the US's.
China's growing naval might is worrying not just the United States, but many of China's
own neighbors who have routinely been bullied by China's growing might.
Japan, the Philippines, and Vietnam- to name a few- all have serious disputes with China,
which has on numerous times claimed territory rightfully within their territorial waters
for itself.
China's frenzy of island-building in the South China Sea has also sparked international concerns,
and while President Obama's shifting of naval power to the Pacific quickly halted the island
expansions, China has so far refused to vacate the five islands it has built.
This is in spite of a ruling by The Hauge which dismissed China's fanciful claims to
the region.
Instead, China has fortified its South China Sea holdings, adding radars, flight lines
for combat planes, and missile defense systems.
The message is clear: China is not budging.
While the US is not seeking a military confrontation with China, its commitments to defend many
of the nations that China is currently bullying or intimidating may force its hand.
In that case, the US may find itself with its hands full dealing with Chinese naval
and ballistic missile power, unless radical reforms of the American navy take place.
The greatest threat to American naval forces in the Pacific is China's staggeringly large
stockpile of anti-ship ballistic missiles.
These giant missiles can be fired from the heart of China, and guided to their target
as far out in the Pacific as Guam, by a system of space and airborne radar and targeting
assets.
With thousands of these missiles, the US fleet appears to be in serious jeopardy.
To counter the ballistic missile threat from China, the US Navy has adopted a doctrine
of dispersed operations.
While in the past battlegroups would be centered around an aircraft carrier and fight relatively
close together, new doctrine has led the Navy to widely disperse its battlegroups, so as
to make each individual ship harder to hit.
New investments in anti-ballistic missile systems have also added robust capabilities
to American fleets, and a new generation of anti-missile missiles have performed very
well in testing.
Yet a major problem for the US Navy is the sheer number of ballistic and conventional
missiles China could throw at American ships.
While it's highly unlikely that China would be able to achieve air superiority against
the US Navy, new, extremely long range anti-ship missiles would see Chinese fighters able to
use their weapons against American ships from hundreds of miles away, and never even get
close to American interceptors meant to protect their ships from this threat.
Then there's the threat posed by Chinese submarines, which could fire off anti-ship missiles while
lurking under the waves- they would need to be closer to their American targets than Chinese
jets, but would still be able to operate far outside of the traditional security envelope
established around American battlegroups.
One solution to these twin problems is to simply push out the radius of the security
envelope around a battlegroup.
Unmanned refueling tankers are already being deployed amongst American fleets, and this
will allow a carrier's combat air patrol to operate much further away than normal, which
would let them intercept Chinese aircraft before getting close enough to fire.
To counter the submarine threat, the US Navy, under its Ghost Fleet Overlord program, has
been testing autonomous ships that can assist manned ships in combat.
One of these ships is an anti-submarine warfare platform, which would patrol the waters around
a battle group completely on its own, searching for Chinese subs and engaging any discovered.
Another key to defending American ships in the Pacific is a heavy investment into technologies
and tools to disrupt China's kill chains- or a chain of assets required to successfully
launch a ballistic missile and accurately guide it to its target a thousand miles away.
This includes space-based and airborne surveillance and radar platforms as well as communication
nodes, and while details remain classified, the US so far remains confident that it can
disrupt China's kill-chain capabilities enough to protect most of its ships.
For their part, the Chinese have never demonstrated they have the sophistication to implement,
and protect, a kill-chain system that can successfully target and destroy a ship far
out at sea.
New plans are calling for a heavy investment by the US in anti-ballistic missile systems,
such as directed energy weapons and kinetic interceptors such as rail guns.
Currently one of the biggest problems with protecting American fleets is not an inability
to accurately target and destroy incoming missiles, but simply that China would rely
on overwhelming barrages mean to force US ships to expend all the missiles in their
batteries trying to protect themselves.
Once each ship's battery is depleted, it is for all intents and purposes, defenseless
against incoming missiles- specially of the ballistic variety.
A directed energy weapon would have no magazine size limits, as it would fire off electrical
power generated by the ship.
It could fire for as long as the ships generated electricity, and intercept incoming missiles
at the speed of light- making it incredibly accurate.
High energy lasers could burn out missile warheads and guidance electronics, causing
them to prematurely detonate or simply fly out of control.
Kinetic railgun interceptors would still need a magazine of projectiles, but these projectiles
are both much cheaper to produce than a modern missile, and can be made much, much smaller.
A single rail gun battery could hold hundreds of rounds for a fraction of the cost of a
traditional vertical launch cell on a big warship.
But even these innovations aren't enough to successfully defeat China at sea, because
the fact remains that China has invested extremely heavily in both anti-ship ballistic and traditional
missiles.
To make matters worse, the US Navy's current ship designs are only making China's job of
destroying them easier.
For decades US ships were built around extremely powerful suits of radar and other sensors,
which gave them incredible situational awareness and command of their battlespace, but in a
modern war also make them incredibly easy targets to find for any sophisticated foe,
such as China.
In essence, US ships and their sensor systems put out so much electronic noise, that finding
them out at sea would be as easy for China as it would be for you to find a screaming
person in a pitch-black room.
High energy sensor systems are an absolute necessity for any naval force, so simply doing
away with them is not realistic.
Instead, the Navy needs to seriously rethink its current force structure.
At the moment, the US navy is very destroyer and cruiser-heavy, it's the biggest, meanest,
guy on the block, and packs the strongest right hook in the world.
To defeat China and not suffer catastrophic losses in doing so, the American navy needs
to go on a serious diet and slim down.
Rather than relying on traditional concentrations of big destroyers and guided missile cruisers,
the US navy needs to slash funding for these large ships and invest in a force of mid-range
ships.
About half the size of a modern destroyer, these smaller ships would carry less ordnance,
but would be cheaper to build, maintain, and operate, and could be fielded in large numbers
versus smaller numbers of bigger ships.
These medium-sized ships would be widely dispersed across a battlespace, and thanks to their
sheer numbers and smaller profiles, enough of them could get close enough to Chinese
forces with an acceptable degree of risk that they could take advantage of passive sensors
to track and target Chinese ships and shore targets.
Passive sensor systems put out much less energy than active systems, and thus a large network
of smaller ships could relay targeting data back to the main battlegroup while remaining
relatively undetected.
America's big guns could safely remain undetected out at sea, and still be able to service targets
accurately.
New studies call for these smaller ships to be completely unmanned, or at least optionally
manned with crews no greater than 24.
In fact, the Navy is looking to adopt unmanned ships in a big way- literally- and the service
is right now testing two large unmanned ships.
Under program Ghost Fleet Overlord, the US navy intends to build several Large Unmanned
Vessels- or LUVs- to supplement its traditional manned forces.
The goal of these LUVs will be to offset the risk of battlegroups being overwhelmed by
saturation strikes and expending all of their missile batteries in self defense.
In essence, each LUV will be nothing more than a seaborne missile battery, housing hundreds
of missiles, which could either be fired remotely at targets or used to resupply battlegroups
out at sea.
Nicknamed arsenal ships, the concept dates back to the 1980s, and each individual ship
could carry about half the firepower of an entire battlegroup.
That's a hell of a lot of punch in just one ship, but many experts fear that that's exactly
the problem.
These big robotic missile ships will still rely on extremely powerful active sensor systems
that will be easy for Chinese forces to spot and target.
Arsenal ships also have one other major downside- they serve no purpose outside of actual war.
Unlike traditional manned ships, arsenal ships could not be deployed on training missions,
relationship-building missions with friendly countries, or counter-terrorism missions.
They would have only a single use, in only a single scenario, giving the Navy a lot less
bang for its buck dollar for dollar.
Instead, experts are calling for the Navy to switch from large robotic arsenal ships
to the fleet of smaller unmanned, or optionally manned, ships we discussed earlier.
Not only will this give the Navy much greater survivability against Chinese missile forces,
but the ships could still carry out a range of peacetime missions as well.
In fact, a recent study showed that for the same price, the US Navy could actually get
1.4 times the missile tubes going with a fleet of smaller ships than the current plan to
purchase lower numbers of the big robot arsenal ships.
In the end, hopefully the Navy never needs to implement any of its plans to defeat China
at sea, as nobody wants to see a confrontation between the two nations.
Yet for the US and many of the South Pacific nations that have found themselves bullied
by China in the last decade and a half, it's a comforting thought to know that the United
States Navy is always preparing for that unfortunate happenstance.
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