Industry - Analysis RSS Feed Defense Focus: China's weapons -- Part 1
http://www.upi.com/International_Security/Industry/Analysis/2008/02/06/defense_focus_chinas_weapons_--_part_1/7890/
Published: Feb. 6, 2008 at 8:35 PM
Print story Email to a friend Font size:By MARTIN SIEFF
UPI Senior News Analyst
WA****NGTON, Feb. 6 (UPI) -- The Chinese domestic arms industry may one
day be one of the biggest and most im****tant in the world, but it is
very far from that yet. Western experts believe China will need major
outside suppliers for large amounts of equipment for years to come.
The complex, evolving Russian-Chinese arms relation****p reflects the
complexities and surprising weakness of China's current arms industry.
China is already one of the premier industrial powers on Earth in
terms of steel production and industrial, light engineering and
consumer durable ex****ts. Guangdong province in southwestern China was
named by The Economist magazine a few years ago as the new "Workshop
of the World," a title it took from Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania through
most of the 20th century and from Birmingham or Sheffield in England
through the 19th century.
In some areas, that has already translated into formidable military-
industrial and potential strategic clout. China already makes its own
intercontinental ballistic missiles and increasingly sophisticated
space satellites. On Jan. 11, 2007, it startled the world by
successful carrying out an anti-satellite test by exploding one of its
own satellites to destroy another one. A significant number of
satellites that China has launched that it has claimed are for weather
surveillance purposes have orbits that are close to, or significantly
intersect, the orbits of known U.S. intelligence, surveillance
reconnaissance or military communications satellites, and some U.S.
experts believe that after its successful ASAT test of a year ago,
China may be planning to use them to destroy or cripple U.S. ISR and
command and control, space-based capabilities in the event of any
future conflict.
Diesel submarines, a technology that the United States has abandoned
for decades, is an area where China has bought off-the-shelf expertise
-- in this case from Russia -- and used it to create its own
indigenous and reliable military industry. China already produces
large numbers of diesel submarines per year -- especially the
formidable Kilo class. In 2006 the U.S. Department of Defense noted
that China produced 14 submarines. The United States built only one --
although that was a nuclear-powered one, as all subs in the U.S. Navy
have been for many years.
Liberal U.S. analysts have argued that China's concentration on
building diesel-powered subs rather than nuclear-powered ones in
significant numbers and its refusal so far to build an aircraft
carrier fleet -- though there are some moves at last in this direction
-- means that its current leader****p has no plans or desire to
challenge the United States for global military supremacy.
Conservatives argue that the growth in Chinese military spending, arms
manufacture and military budgets proves that they do have such
ambitions.
In fact the growth of China's long-term strategic ambitions and
military clout appears perfectly clear, but it remains limited, and
will be for years or decades to come, by the limits of the nation's
weapons-producing facilities.
China does make nuclear submarines, strategic ones that carry
submarine-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles and it has had
that capability for many years. But the speed at which it can produce
such weapons and their technical reliability remains highly
questionable. By contrast, its ability to churn out large numbers of
much shorter-range and more limited capability but still tactically
useful Kilo-class subs is unquestioned.
--
Next: China's aircraft carrier strategy
|
