China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

[don]

By JANE PERLEZ

BEIJING — In a ceremony attended by the country’s top leaders, China put its first aircraft carrier into service on Tuesday, a move intended to signal its growing military might as tensions escalate between Beijing and its neighbors over islands in nearby seas.

Officials said the carrier, a discarded vessel bought from Ukraine in 1998 and refurbished by China, would protect national sovereignty, an issue that has become a touchstone of the government’s dispute with Japan over ownership of islands in the East China Sea.

But despite the triumphant tone of the launch, which was watched by President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, and despite rousing assessments by Chinese military experts about the importance of the carrier, the vessel will be used only for training and testing for the foreseeable future.

The mark “16” emblazoned on the carrier’s side indicates that it is limited to training, Chinese and other military experts said. China does not have planes capable of landing on the carrier and so far training for such landings has been carried out on land, they said.

Even so, the public appearance of the carrier at the northeastern port of Dalian was used as an occasion to stir patriotic feelings, which have run at fever pitch in the last 10 days over the dispute between China and Japan over the East China Sea islands, called Senkaku in Japan and Diaoyu in China.

The carrier will “raise the overall operational strength of the Chinese Navy” and help China “to effectively protect national sovereignty, security and development interests,” the Ministry of Defense said.

The Communist Party congress that will begin the country’s once-in-a-decade leadership transition is expected to be held next month, and the public unveiling of the carrier appeared to be part of an effort to forge national unity ahead of the event.

For international purposes, the public unveiling of the carrier seemed intended to signal to smaller nations in the South China Sea, including the Philippines, an American ally, that China has an increasing number of impressive assets to deploy.

American military planners have played down the significance of the commissioning of the carrier. Some Navy officials have even said they would encourage China to move ahead with building its own aircraft carrier and the ships to accompany it, because it would be a waste of money.

Other military experts outside China have agreed with that assessment.

“The fact is the aircraft carrier is useless for the Chinese Navy,” You Ji, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore, said in an interview. “If it is used against America, it has no survivability. If it is used against China’s neighbors, it’s a sign of bullying.”

Vietnam, a neighbor with whom China has fought wars, operates land-based Russian Su-30 aircraft that could pose a threat to the aircraft carrier, Mr. You said. “In the South China Sea, if the carrier is damaged by the Vietnamese, it’s a huge loss of face,” he said. “It’s not worth it.”

Up to now, Chinese pilots have been limited to practicing simulated carrier landings on concrete strips on land in Chinese J-8 aircraft based on Soviet-made MiG-23s produced about 25 years ago, Mr. You said. The pilots could not undertake the difficult maneuver of landing on a moving carrier because China does not yet have suitable aircraft, Mr. You said.

The question of whether China will move ahead and build its own carrier depends in large part, he said, on whether China can develop aircraft to land on one. “It’s a long, long process for constructing such aircraft,” he said.

In contrast to some of the skepticism expressed by military experts outside China, Li Jie, a researcher at the Chinese Naval Research Institute, said in an interview in the state-run People’s Daily that the carrier would change the Chinese Navy’s traditional mind-set and bring qualitative changes to its operational style and structure, he said.

Although the Chinese military does not publish a breakdown of its military spending, foreign military experts say the navy is less well financed than the army and air force.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/wo...gewanted=print

[lakedaemonian]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

Milestone rather than millstone in my opinion.

It's an overt and tangible display of China's re-emergence as an economic, political, and military power.

YUP...that carrier would be on fire from end to end within minutes of any full conventional conflict with the US.

And there's also a very good chance the same thing would happen to it if attacked by Japan's capable military, or Australia's.

Vietnam might even be able to sink it as well depending.

BUT it would likely result in increased escalation and the potential for a conflict to go nuclear.

The US treats its aircraft carrier battle groups as moveable sovereign US territory.

Any direct attack on a US carrier would equate to an attack on Washington DC.

Maybe Beijing will take the same approach regarding the use of this carrier in the region.

Unlike the US carrier battle groups that have 75+ years of institutional/operational experience with carrier operations, the Chinese are looking at a Mount Everest sized challenge to be able to walk/talk/sing/dance/juggle concurrently when it comes to carrier operations.

If the Chinese are having considerable challenges in just cycling aircraft onto the carrier in calm open water, then they have a decade+ learning curve ahead of them before they will be able to operate in a high environmental and military threat environment.

Having a carrier is VERY useful political/diplomatic tool..........but it's an entirely different thing to have a carrier that can survive and thrive in horrific weather conditions while being actively hunted by a peer or near-peer opponent.

Even without being fully operational it can still serve a useful purpose in putting the negotiating squeeze on all these "disputed" territories in foreign EEZs.

Territory isn't REALLY your own unless you have the genuine ability to successfully defend it if necessary.

[BadJuju]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

Unlike the US carrier battle groups that have 75+ years of institutional/operational experience with carrier operations, the Chinese are looking at a Mount Everest sized challenge to be able to walk/talk/sing/dance/juggle concurrently when it comes to carrier operations.

I am not sure if I saw this here or somewhere else, but someone mentioned that one distinct advantage the US military has over most military organizations is its overall training. The US military receives far more training and the training that it receives is much closer to real life situations. This is an advantage that cannot be downplayed. So what you said here is fairly pertinent to that. US personnel and command have far more experience operating.

[don]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

I am not sure if I saw this here or somewhere else, but someone mentioned that one distinct advantage the US military has over most military organizations is its overall training. The US military receives far more training and the training that it receives is much closer to real life situations. This is an advantage that cannot be downplayed. So what you said here is fairly pertinent to that. US personnel and command have far more experience operating.

US personnel have far more experience fighting

[touchring]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

US personnel have far more experience fighting

Battle harden, I've to agree on that. Having been through two years of conscript military service, I've only fired less than 150 rounds onto paper boards in the firing range, another 1000 rounds of blanks, and maybe 5000 rounds of 'bang bang bang' - if you know what I mean. lol

I've always believed that given the same weaponary, a professional volunteer army can defeat a conscript army many times bigger.

As for China, with their single child policy, soldiers are often only sons and even only child.....

[Woodsman]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

The Kuznetsov class ships are bigger than their little cousin in the Kiev class, coming in at 45 tons and 55 tons respectively. They're more like the heavy cruisers of yore and this one seems destined for the same role as the Kiev class the Chinese bought a few years back and coverted into a floating hotel and casino.


The smallest American carrier is the Enterprise class at 94 tons and the largest is the Gerald Ford class at 101 tons. We have 13 of them with one more on the way. Ours have actual airplanes on them, too, and we have been operating them in peace and war for the last 85 years. No worries.


To be fair, if EJ's worse case scenarios come to pass we might see a few floating hotels of our own someday.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

I am not sure if I saw this here or somewhere else, but someone mentioned that one distinct advantage the US military has over most military organizations is its overall training. The US military receives far more training and the training that it receives is much closer to real life situations. This is an advantage that cannot be downplayed. So what you said here is fairly pertinent to that. US personnel and command have far more experience operating.

The US would currently possess the world's most combat experienced military in the world.

But it's worth noting that experience is mostly related to counter-insurgency/small war/special operations.

It has NOT been focused on countering peer or near-peer adversaries such as China in conventional conflict.

But in terms of flight hours and such of combat aircraft pilots(fixed and rotary wing) no one would even come close to the US.

Probably the biggest threat the US military faces is retaining all those highly experienced folks and the eventual need to replace equipment that has far exceeded it's estimated training/operational lifecycle use as planned when originally procured.....wear and tear has been accelerated these past 11 years.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

Battle harden, I've to agree on that. Having been through two years of conscript military service, I've only fired less than 150 rounds onto paper boards in the firing range, another 1000 rounds of blanks, and maybe 5000 rounds of 'bang bang bang' - if you know what I mean. lol

I've always believed that given the same weaponary, a professional volunteer army can defeat a conscript army many times bigger.

As for China, with their single child policy, soldiers are often only sons and even only child.....

Two good points.

A professional anything is likely to defeat a conscripted anything when the rest of the circumstances such as resources/motivation/morale/leadership are not completely skewed against the professional side of the house.

I've come across some pretty capable conscripts(such as Singapore's) and I've come across some absolutely rubbish conscripts that I wouldn't trust to take out the rubbish.

In my experience the expression Profession of Arms is quite relevant.

The second point towards China's one child policy is a really interesting one:

On the one hand there is an expression in China that you do not use your best iron to make nails(meaning don't invest your best people/sons into the military),

On the other China's experience with warfare since Korea in 1953 is limited to little known border conflicts with the Soviet Union and Vietnam....so without having the recent institutional/genetic knowledge of the cost of war, they may be more susceptible to calling for it.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: China's Pride of the Fleet: carrier or millstone

The Kuznetsov class ships are bigger than their little cousin in the Kiev class, coming in at 45 tons and 55 tons respectively. They're more like the heavy cruisers of yore and this one seems destined for the same role as the Kiev class the Chinese bought a few years back and coverted into a floating hotel and casino.


The smallest American carrier is the Enterprise class at 94 tons and the largest is the Gerald Ford class at 101 tons. We have 13 of them with one more on the way. Ours have actual airplanes on them, too, and we have been operating them in peace and war for the last 85 years. No worries.


To be fair, if EJ's worse case scenarios come to pass we might see a few floating hotels of our own someday.

Here's a relevant article just published about China's political use of it's growing sea power:

http://thediplomat.com/2012/09/26/wa...ower/?all=true

It would appear China's strategy according to this article is for China to continue to ratchet up it's assertive/aggressive regional position via "death by a thousand cuts."

It's worth noting that with the nationalist flames being fanned or at least being managed like smokejumpers managing a forest fire....things have the potential to get out of control for China and move in an unintended direction.

If China comes up against Japan's or Korea's Navy in the region and shots are fired....which is entirely possible since there are so many contact points and opportunities for failure, I would guess that China stands a considerable chance of coming out the loser in isolated engagements.

If an incident were to occur, and China is embarrassed/humiliated, how will the Chinese people already stoked with anger respond? How with the Chinese government that is shaping and externalizing blame likely respond?

China's military has not had the opportunity to cut it's teeth on a target since it's border conflict with Vietnam nearly 2 generations ago.

China will need to have it's Grenada to adapt/improve.......but China will not be going up against a handful of Cubans with small arms. It will likely be going up against professional military.

The Philippines are quickly trying to ramp up their very limited ability to defend(therefor claim effective ownership of) it's EEZ with some US hand me down ships and more on the shopping list.

I would think if there is an INTENTIONAL spark(incident(s), NOT war) in the region, instead of the aforementioned and distinct possibility of an UNINTENTIONAL spark. I would think CHina would be more likely to target the Philippines as an example.

Something easily achievable with a low(er) risk of political/military embarrassment.