U.S. military officials wary of China's expanding fleet of submarines
By David Lague Published: February 7, 2008
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/02/07/asia/subs.php
BEIJING: For a procession of senior U.S. military commanders who have
visited China in recent years, the complaint has become almost
routine.
As part of a sustained military buildup, they say, China is investing
heavily in so-called area-denial weapons without explaining why it
needs them.
The term area-denial weapons refers to a combination of armaments,
technology and tactics that could be used to dominate a specific area
or keep opposing forces at bay in a conflict. And one of the most
formidable examples U.S. commanders identify is the Chinese Navy's
rapidly expanding fleet of nuclear and conventional submarines.
"I would say that the U.S. feels a strong threat from Chinese
submarines," said Andrei Chang, an expert on Chinese and Taiwan
military forces and editor in chief of the magazine Kanwa Defence
Review.
"China now has more submarines than Russia, and the speed they are
building them is amazing," Chang said.
U.S. and other Western military analysts estimate that China now has
more than 30 advanced and increasingly stealthy submarines, along with
dozens of older, obsolete types. "China is capable of serial
production of modern diesel-electric submarines and is moving forward
with new nuclear submarines," the Pentagon said last year in its
annual re****t on the Chinese military.
By the end of the decade, experts say, China will have more submarines
than the United States, although it will still lag in overall
capability.
In a conflict, these Chinese submarines - many armed with state-of-the-
art torpedoes and anti-****p missiles - would sharply increase the
threat to enemy war****ps approaching the strategically im****tant
waterways of North Asia, according to security experts.
On a visit to China last month, the senior U.S. military commander in
Asia, Admiral Timothy Keating, said the Pentagon was continuing to
monitor the development of China's area-denial weapons, including
submarines.
"Chinese submarines have very impressive capabilities, and their
numbers are increasing," Keating told re****ters in Beijing. Like other
U.S. commanders, he also called on China to be more open about its
plans.
If China were more transparent about the need for these weapons, it
would improve trust and reduce the danger of crisis or conflict,
Keating said.
"In submarine operations in particular, because of the medium in which
they are conducted, underwater, there is greater potential, in my
opinion, for inadvertent activity that could be misconstrued or
misunderstood," he told re****ters.
Under pressure from Wa****ngton, senior Chinese officers have said that
the buildup is strictly tailored to defending China's interests and
that it poses no threat to any other nation.
"The distance between the Chinese and U.S. militaries is big," said
General Chen Bingde, chief of general staff in Beijing of the People's
Liberation Army. "If you fear China's military buildup, you don't have
much courage."
While the administration of President George W. Bush continues to
press Beijing for transparency, most foreign security experts,
including senior Pentagon analysts, believe China's unstated
objectives are relatively clear.
They say that China plans to use its submarines and other area-denial
weapons to delay or deter a U.S. intervention in case of conflict over
Taiwan. China regards the self-governing island as part of its
territory and has warned regularly that it would use force to prevent
Taiwan from moving toward formal independence.
Stealthy submarines would pose a direct threat to the deployment of
U.S. aircraft carrier battle groups, almost certainly the first line
of any American response to a Taiwan crisis, according to security
experts.
In conjunction with attacks on military surveillance satellites,
regional U.S. bases and communication networks, the Chinese military
would attempt to keep U.S. forces at a distance while attempting to
overwhelm the island's defenses, they say.
"This is precisely what the submarines are for," said Allan Behm, a
security analyst in Canberra and a former senior Australian Defense
Department official. "They can bottle up and deny an enemy access to
any given area; in this case that means the U.S. Pacific fleet."
On previous occasions of high tension over Taiwan, Wa****ngton has
deployed aircraft carriers to neighboring waters, sending a signal to
China that it should not use force against Taiwan.
But in a clear demonstration of the increasing vulnerability of these
war****ps, one of China's new Song-class conventional submarines was
able to remain undetected as it shadowed the U.S. carrier Kitty Hawk
off the coast of Okinawa, Japan, in late 2006. It then surfaced well
within torpedo range.
For some China experts in the U.S. military, this was an aggressive
signal to Wa****ngton that ranked with China's destruction in January
2007 of one of its own obsolete weather satellites with an
antisatellite missile. In so doing, the Chinese Navy demonstrated that
it could challenge the most powerful surface combatants of the U.S.
Navy in waters around Taiwan. It also gave evidence that Chinese
submarine technology had advanced more rapidly than some experts had
expected.
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