Category Archives: China aggression

Ballistic Missile Subs VS. China?

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Chairman Meets USS Alaska Sub Crew During Kings Bay Visit

NAVAL SUBMARINE BASE KINGS BAY, Ga., May 20, 2016 — “I hope we don’t ever need them, but if we do, these guys are ready,” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said after meeting with sailors from the Ohio-class ballistic missile submarine USS Alaska here today.

Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford said he was impressed by the sailors and Marines he met at the base on the Florida-Georgia border. The Senior Enlisted Advisor to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Command Sgt. Maj. John W. Troxell, accompanied the chairman during his visit.

Dunford said he wanted to “further his education” about the strategic nuclear triad. The USS Alaska is a nuclear powered ballistic missile submarine that carries 24 Trident D-5 nuclear-tipped missiles. It is, as one sailor said, “floating deterrence.”

 

A crew of 155 live in and around the various bits of machinery and weapons aboard the Alaska, which in Navy parlance is called a boat, like other submarines. It is a big boat, measuring 560 feet long and 42 feet wide. Blue and Gold crews take turns manning the boat to optimize the time it is on patrol. It is one of six ballistic missile submarines and two guided-missile submarines based at Kings Bay as part of Submarine Group 10.

   

Trident Training Facility

Dunford met with officers and enlisted personnel, and visited the Trident submarine training facility here. This is a 500,000-square-foot facility, where sailors can train up even as the submarine is being sailed by another crew.

The training facility — one of the largest buildings in Georgia — allows sailors to simulate the jobs they would perform on the boat. This includes everything from patching leaks and fighting fires to rehearsing the launching procedure for Trident missiles and loading and firing torpedoes.

Dunford boarded the Alaska, which was floating inside a huge building the sailors call “the barn.” Security was extremely tight, as it should be when nuclear weapons are in the mix. The general observed sailors conducting a drill aboard the boat and then toured it.

Future Visits

The chairman will visit bases housing the other two legs of the strategic nuclear triad — strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles — in the coming months. He has already visited U.S. Strategic Command at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, and the Joint Interagency Space Center in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

***** What is going on and why is this news?

China’s Nuclear Subs Are Ready to Terrorize the Sea

Beijing will soon be able to launch nuclear missiles from the sea. And that’s going to make it harder to deter any future Chinese aggression.

DailyBeast: China’s about to join an exclusive club for nuclear powers. After decades of development, 2016 could be the year the Chinese navy finally sends its ballistic-missile submarines—“SSBN” is the Pentagon’s designation—to sea for the first time for operational patrols with live, nuclear-tipped rockets.

If indeed the Jin-class subs head to sea this year, China will achieve a level of nuclear strike capability that, at present, just two countries—the United States and Russia—can match or exceed.

“China will probably conduct its first SSBN nuclear deterrence patrol sometime in 2016,” the Pentagon warned in the latest edition of its annual report on the Chinese military, published in mid-May (PDF). Once the Jins set sail, Beijing will command a nuclear “triad” composed of ground-, air-, and sea-launched nuclear weapons.

 

That’s a big deal, according to the dominant theory of nuclear warfare. “The theory is that a diverse array of delivery systems creates survivability by complicating a first strike,” Jeffrey Lewis, an expert on nuclear geopolitics with the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, told The Daily Beast.

In other words, if a country possesses all three kinds of nukes, it’s harder for an enemy to wipe them all out in a surprise attack. And if you can’t destroy your enemy’s entire atomic arsenal, he can nuke you back—so you’d better not attack at all.

The word for that is “deterrence.” And China could be on the verge of gaining a deterrence capability that most countries simply can’t afford. China reportedly possesses several hundred atomic warheads, but no one outside of the Chinese Communist Party leadership and, perhaps, top foreign intelligence agencies, knows the exact number.

Regardless, that’s far fewer than the roughly 7,000 warheads that the U.S. and Russia each possess but more than any of the world’s other nuclear powers, with the possible exception of France. And compared to Beijing only Moscow and Washington boast a wider range of launchers for their nukes.

The Chinese military’s rocket branch maintains around a hundred long-range rockets in land-based silos. The Chinese air force’s H-6 bombers first dropped atomic bombs back in the 1970s—and modern versions of the bombers can fire cruise missiles that are compatible with nuclear warheads. When the Jins are finally war-ready, they will complete Beijing’s land-air-sea atomic triad.

To be fair, the Chinese vessels are, in a sense, playing catch-up. The Soviet Union and the United States deployed the first nuclear ballistic-missile submarines at the height of the Cold War in the 1960s—and France and the United Kingdom soon followed suit. Today the U.S. Navy’s 14 Ohio-class missile subs take turns quietly sailing deep in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, ready to fire their 24 nuclear-tipped rockets on a moment’s notice.

Russia, France, and the U.K. still operate SSBNs, and India is developing one of its own. The Chinese navy began tinkering with missile subs in 1981. The experimental Xia-class vessel and its JL-1 rocket were technological failures and never sailed on an operational mission.

Since 2007, the Chinese navy has completed four of the follow-on Jin-class subs and is reportedly planning on building four more. More than 400 feet long, a Jin can carry as many as a dozen JL-2 rockets, each with a range of 4,500 miles. A Jin sailing in the central Pacific Ocean could strike targets anywhere in the United States.

If the Jins finally deploy this year, a whopping 35 years will have passed since China first tried to develop a functional SSBN. But developing a missile sub is hard.

Expensive, too. China has not disclosed the cost of the Jins, but consider that the U.S. Navy plans to spend $97 billion replacing its 14 Ohios with a dozen new submarines. Missile subs are big and complex—and their rockets are, too. Training reliable crews and designing an effective command-and-control system are equally difficult to do. Chinese subs have been plagued with quality-control problems.

“While it is clear that the [Chinese navy] is making strides towards correcting these issues, the capabilities of China’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet remain in a process of maturity,” the Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington, D.C.-based advocacy group, explains on its website.

To Beijing, achieving a nuclear triad is apparently worth the labor and expense. But Lewis cautions against reading the development of the Chinese atomic triad as the result of some sort of clear, top-down policy.

Officials in the U.S. and Russia take for granted the wisdom of a nuclear triad. But in fact, the triads in both of those countries developed as a result of rivalries within their respective militaries. During the early Cold War, the U.S. Navy lobbied lawmakers and the president for missile submarines in part to wrest from the U.S. Air Force some of the funding and prestige that came with being America’s main nuclear strike force.

The same internal conflict could be behind the Jins’ development. And whether China’s missile subs set sail for the first time this year could depend as much on politics as on technology and training. “There are a lot of rivalries and intrigues playing out that might result in a triad—or not,” Lewis said.

 

‘Unsafe’ intercept over South China Sea

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Pentagon: ‘Unsafe’ intercept over South China Sea

 

Washington (CNN)At least two Chinese J-11 tactical aircraft carried out an “unsafe” intercept of a United States EP-3 reconnaissance aircraft that was conducting a routine mission in international airspace over the South China Sea, a U.S. defense official told CNN Wednesday.

The Chinese jets came within 50 feet of the American aircraft at one point, the official said.
The incident took place on Tuesday.
 
“We have made progress reducing risk between our operational forces and those of the People’s Republic of China by improved dialogue at multiple levels under the bilateral Confidence Building Measures and the Military Maritime Consultative Agreement,” Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman, said.
“Over the past year, we have seen improvements in PRC actions, flying in a safe and professional manner,” he said. “We are addressing the issue through the appropriate diplomatic and military channels.”
A separate defense official told CNN this type of incident is not something the U.S. military frequently sees in that region with Chinese aircraft. Incidents with Russian aircraft in the Black Sea that have been well documented over the past year are much more common.
This is an incident that “definitely has people’s attention” at the Pentagon, the second official said.
“This is potentially part of a disturbing trend line as the Chinese try to push their military envelope into greater parts of the sea surrounding their mainland,” Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who serves on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.
Murphy said that it is important that the U.S. does not overreact to these types of occurrences, which have recently involved Chinese and Russian militaries.
“What the Chinese and the Russians are trying to do is to provoke us into some kind of action that will feed into their domestic narratives, both in China and in Russia,” Murphy said.
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What is China doing?
 

China’s Putting Anti-Stealth Radar in the South China Sea

Radar installed on an “artificial” island could detect the B-2, F-35, and F-22.

PopularMechanics: China appears to be building an anti-stealth radar system on an artificial island in the middle of the South China Sea, where a military-grade system would be useful in detecting stealth aircraft in the contentious and contested area.

Satellite imagery obtained by the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Asian Maritime Transparency Initiative and DigitalGlobe (which provided the images above and below) shows the Cuateron Reef recently enlarged by dredging and now measuring about 52 acres. Beijing didn’t stop there. The imagery also shows that China has built or is building two radar towers, a lighthouse, a communications tower, bunker, and quay for the docking of supply ships. The most interesting development is a large field covered with evenly spaced 20 meter poles. This is the kind of thing you’d need for over-the-horizon high-frequency radar systems, which can detect objects at up to 3,000 kilometers (1,864 miles), including stealth aircraft.

While HF radars can spot stealth planes, they cannot guide missiles to targets—for now. Even so, the radars are useful in providing an early warning network, cueing Chinese fighter planes such as the J-11—also based on an artificial island in the South China Sea—to the probable location of stealth aircraft.

The position of the radar would be ideal for detecting American and allied aircraft operating from bases in the Philippines. The Philippines, embroiled in a dispute with China over the Scarborough and Second Thomas shoals—has made its air and naval facilities available to the United States.

In recent years, China has laid claim to 90 percent of the South China Sea. While many countries claim part of the South China Sea, none have claimed—and seized—as much as China. To support its claim, China has taken several shoals and reefs and expanded them dramatically with sand dredged from the sea floor. China believes (or at least claims) that this bit of terraforming amounts to a legal transformation of these shoals from nuisance navigational hazards to full sovereign territory, complete with a12-mile territorial boundary and a 200 mile exclusive right to economic development.

The radar site, first noticed in 2015, became particularly newsworthy after last week’s announcement that China had deployed HQ-9 long-range surface-to-air missiles on another artificial island in the South China Sea. Although the two systems are too far apart to support one another, together they do support the argument that China is fortifying the South China Sea.

Cheat Sheet on the Defense Authorization Bill

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Guantanamo Bay:

Since Congress specifically provided the president with the authority to acquire the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Chairman Royce’s legislation asserts Congress should have to approve any decision to give it away, which certainly shouldn’t happen with this communist and hostile Cuban government.

As Chairman Royce has said, “the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay is critical to our national security and humanitarian operations that have saved countless lives.  We must protect against executive overreach during this administration, and the next, and the next.”

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DefenseNews/WASHINGTON — Responding to fears the US military’s technological superiority is at risk, the Senate Armed Services Committee advanced an annual defense policy bill that would open competition to commercial industry, seen as a spur to innovation and cost-efficiency.

The marquee change, if the SASC’s version of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act passes Congress and is signed by the president, is the proposed closure of the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer’s office and reassignment of its duties to two new defense undersecretaries for innovation and acquisitions management. It also contains far-reaching language to curb a major concern of SASC Chairman John McCain: cost-plus contracts.

In February, McCain made headlines when he vowed not to authorize the Air Force’s Long Range Strike-Bomber so long as it was procured using a cost-plus contract. The SASC bill does not check that box, but it promises a broader impact, to discourage cost-plus contracts, where a contractor is paid for all of its allowed expenses to a set limit, plus additional payment to allow for a profit.

In a background briefing on Monday, a senior committee aide — who likened DoD’s dependence on cost-plus to a drug addiction — said the venerable contracting vehicle has its uses, but too often fuels cost overruns and is out of step with the way commercial firms in Silicon Valley and elsewhere do business. Fixed-price contracts, on the other hand, give firms an incentive to work as efficiently as possible to maximize their profits.

“All of this reform is because the Cold War has ended, and post-Cold War, American technological military dominance is over, and not only can our adversaries see that they can replicate what we can do with the traditional defense marketplace, they are seeing there is a lot of technology in the commercial marketplace,” said the aide. “If they can access that quicker than we can access that and derive defense products from that new base, they can potentially leap ahead of us.”

The bill, which the SASC voted to advance to the full Senate last week, contained 130 acquisition reform provisions — a continuation of the committee’s work last year. Some language aimed at curbing bid protests would mean any large firms that lose a protest they file would have to pay a penalty, while other provisions would curb barriers to entry for so-called non-traditional firms.

Complex, DoD-unique cost-accounting standards geared toward the minutiae of cost-plus contracts have not only created a barrier for commercial firms but an auditing backlog within DoD that is preventing 30- and 40-year-old contracts from being closed, the Senate aide said.

To address this, the bill would set up a new accounting standards board aimed at pro-competition changes.

“We’re looking to move more and more companies away from that [accounting standard], and make sure the way accounting looks in the department is more and more commercial-like, so companies aren’t creating new accounting systems just to deal with the Department of Defense,” the aide said.

For a company like SpaceX, which is developing its own rocket engine, assessing a reasonable price is a tricky proposition, the Senate aide said. For DoD, which uses cost-plus contracting, it’s the agreed-upon cost of production plus a reasonable profit, while for a commercial firm, it’s about what the market will bear.

“In the fixed-price world, your profit margin is about how well you execute,” the aide said. “A government contractor is more like a utility, and the argument is who’s more innovative, someone with a high margin or a public utility?”

A four-year pilot program established by the bill would exact fees to fund advanced prototypes purchased through fixed-price contracts. The penalties would amount to, for a cost-plus technology development contract, an additional 1 percent of DoD’s year-to-year obligation, and on a procurement contract, 2 percent. This requirement would begin in 2018.

Among other measures, the bill would establish a phased-in, internal approval process for cost-plus contracts, which by 2020 would apply to any cost-plus contract over $5 million.

Ultimately, the Defense Department will not be kept from using cost-plus contracts where needed, particularly for defense-unique platforms like, say, a nuclear submarine. However, the aide stopped short of saying the proposed bill, if enacted, would have precluded the current acquisition strategy for the bomber. Instead, the bill reinforces the signal that arrangements of this type will face new scrutiny.

“We would hope the department would look at that in a different manner,” the aide said. “Ultimately it will be discretionary. We don’t want to impinge on the [defense] secretary.”

Bid Protests

Acknowledging the value of the bid protest process as a policing function for defense acquisitions, the aide said it also creates a risk-averse culture among acquisitions officials that is stymying innovation. Hence the proposed “loser pays” provision.

That language would apply to a protest-losing company with more than $100 million in annual revenue, or an incumbent firm that protests the loss of a contract, keeps the business via a bridge contract and then loses. The penalty would equal the Government Accountability Office’s cost to process the protest.

What’s driving the language, the Senate aide said, is that Wall Street analysts have begun to tout protests as being part of the fiduciary responsibility of a losing firm. Members of the committee fear that this thinking, unchecked, will fuel a boom in protests.

Another concern was that the risk aversion among contracting officers was leading to contract awards for lowest-price, technically acceptable, offerings over offerings that were neither the most innovative or the best value for the government.

 

Table 1. FY2017 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 4909)

amounts in millions of dollars of discretionary budget authority

Bill Title Budget Request HASC reported bill (H.R. 4909) Senate committee- reported bill Conference Report
National Defense Base Budget
Procurement 101,971.6 103,062.3
Research and Development 71,391.8 71,629.8
Operation and Maintenance 171,318.5 169,325.3
Military Personnel 135,269.2 134,849.8
Defense Health Program and Other Authorizations 36,557.0 37,025.6
Military Construction/Family Housing 7,444.1 7,694.0
Subtotal: DOD Base Budget 523,952.1 523,586.9
Atomic Energy Defense Activities 19,240.5 19,512.1
Other Defense-Related Agencies 211.0 300.0
TOTAL: National Defense Budget Function (050) Base Budget 543,403.6 543,399.0
DOD OCO Budget 58,798.0 58,793.5
GRAND TOTAL: FY2017 NDAA 602,201.6 602,192.5

Beware: Lil Blue Men Militia, S. China Sea

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The only estimate of the size of the Maritime Militia obtained during the course of this research was from a source published in 1978, which put the number of personnel at 750,000 on approximately 140,000 craft.5 In its 2010 Defense White Paper, China stated that it had 8 million primary militia members nationwide.6 The Maritime Militia is a smaller unique subset since it performs many of its missions at sea. Since an accurate number is not available this chapter takes more of a grassroots approach and attempts to determine the average size of a unit at the local level. It is important to note that the Maritime Militia is distinct from both China’s coastal militia (shore based) and its naval reserve, although some coastal militia units have been transformed into Maritime Militia units. Full white paper is here.

While Russia has employed “Little Green Men” surreptitiously in Crimea, China uses its own “Little Blue Men” to support Near Seas claims. As the U.S. military operates near Beijing’s artificially-built South China Sea (SCS) features and seeks to prevent Beijing from ejecting foreign claimants from places like Second Thomas Shoal, it may well face surveillance and harassment from China’s maritime militia. Washington and its allies and partners must therefore understand how these irregular forces are commanded and controlled, before they are surprised and stymied by them.

China has long organized its civilian mariners into maritime militia, largely out of necessity. Recent years have seen a surge of emphasis on maritime militia building and increasing this unique force’s capabilities; however it is difficult to ascertain who or what entity within China’s government has ordered such emphasis. One can point to Xi Jinping’s visit to the Tanmen Maritime Militia in 2013, after which maritime militia building oriented toward the SCS has seen growth in places like Hainan, Guangdong, and Guangxi. Yet local militia training and organization plans prior to this date had already emphasized the training of maritime militia units.

Unit Composition and Organization

China’s militia has two major subcomponents: an “ordinary” reserve of registered male citizens akin to the U.S. Selective Service pool, and a “primary” force more readily mobilized to respond to various contingencies. The primary force receives dedicated resources, troops demobilized from active duty, and training. Within the primary force, maritime militia units—formed solely at the tactical level of organization—are smaller and more specialized on average than their land-based counterparts. Within the maritime militia, a small but growing elite set of units are the ones most likely to be deployed on more sophisticated operations that involve monitoring, displaying presence in front of, or opposing foreign actors. They do so in part by supporting China’s navy and coast guard in such efforts. Some cities with large mobilization potential—i.e., a large maritime industry or fishing community—will form battalion-sized units. Most localities create company-sized units, however. These companies are divided into platoons and squads, with the smallest grouping based on each individual vessel.

Chain of Command

Militia management begins broadly at the General Staff Department’s Mobilization Department, which oversees and formulates regulations for nationwide militia work. Uniquely a local military force, the maritime militia falls within the hierarchical People’s Liberation Army (PLA) army local force command structure that runs through all levels of local military organs. As stipulated in China’s “Militia Work Regulations,” real command of the militia begins at the Provincial Military District (MD) level and below. The thousands of county- and grassroots-level People’s Armed Forces Departments (PAFD) established in county-level cities, townships, villages, and maritime enterprises (fishing companies, shipyards, etc.) directly execute the organizing and training of maritime militia. Grassroots-level PAFDs report to county-level PAFDs, which report to Military Sub-district (MSD) Headquarters, themselves reporting to MD Headquarters. Maritime militia building also receives attention by Military Region-level Command, albeit in a supervisory fashion. Higher levels of military commands likely view the maritime militia as a subset of military organization within the broader ecosystem of local militia, with particular focus on broader mobilization efforts. Additionally, militia battalions and companies form party branches to ensure Party control at the grassroots levels.

It must be emphasized that maritime militia command authority resides within multiple entities, including both the local military organs (MD, MSD, PAFD) and their government/party counterparts. This is referred to as “双重领导” in Chinese, connoting the “dual-leadership” system by the local military and government’s principal leaders. It is thus common to see a city party secretary acting in his role as first-party secretary of the local military party committee overseeing the PAFD’s efforts at managing the maritime militia. An easily visible example: Sansha City’s mayor/party secretary Xiao Jie and his military counterpart Commander Cai Xihong both attended the founding ceremony of Sansha City’s Maritime Militia Company. “Dual-leadership” is further reinforced by the fact that local governments fund militia construction.

Since both military and government leaders are involved in local armed forces building, the National Defense Mobilization Committee System (NDMC) established at each corresponding level plays the critical role in binding them into one decision-making body. The NDMC brings together these leaders to organize, direct, and coordinate nationwide national defense mobilization, ensuring that national resources can be rapidly mobilized for defense or emergency needs. Local NDMCs can also establish civilian-military joint command structures facilitated by national defense mobilization communications networks. As a militia force, the maritime militia would need a specified duration to mobilize and gather in the area designated by their superiors. Localized mobilization orders transmitted to the maritime militia could originate from a variety of sources. Regardless, they would be sent down the chain and delivered to the maritime militia via the PAFDs managing them.

While county-level PAFDs are manned by active duty PLA officers, grassroots-level PAFDs are manned by civilian government cadres. Training and education efforts target a “select group of militia cadres” (专职人民武装干部), units’ leaders (company, platoon, and squad) and “information personnel” (信息员). This group of personnel forms the backbone of the maritime militia and helps implement party control, command and control, and maintain unit cohesiveness. Essential to successful command and control of the maritime militia are the “boat captains”—often termed “船老大”—and the information personnel, which provide dedicated personnel for onboard leadership, identification, and communications. This is further facilitated by increasing incorporation of satellite communications technologies into the fishing fleet and thereby into the maritime militia.

Mission-based Command Authority

Although maritime militia are built out of the regular command structure of coastal military organs, they also serve naval and maritime law enforcement forces (MLE). The command relationships for the maritime militia may vary with the mission they are employed in. For example, maritime militia reconnaissance detachments report their findings directly to MD Headquarters, while another detachment summoned to assist with maritime law enforcement would be commanded by the Chinese Coast Guard (CCG) “in cooperation with their MD.” Similarly, support detachments serving roles for China’s navy would be under the command of the PLA Navy in cooperation with the detachment’s MD. It is clear that the maritime militia are controlled by their land-based local military organs, an arrangement flexible enough to serve a variety of supporting roles for the Chinese Navy and MLE forces. Many Chinese sources use a phrase that succinctly states such arrangements: “the military organ expresses its requirements, the NDMC coordinates, and the government implements” (军事机关提需求、国动委搞协调、政府抓落实), referring to the cooperation that occurs between civilian and military leaders in building the maritime militia.

More than One Way to Tie the Knot

Organization and command of maritime militia likely varies by locality. This stems largely from a given locality’s maritime industry and its influence on militia composition, requiring local leaders to plan maritime militia missions from what is available. Making command and decision making arrangements based on local conditions is critical to the proper functioning of such a force. Many ad hoc leading small groups are formed to handle a certain issue area, or provide temporary guidance for certain missions. The multiple organizations supporting maritime militia building (e.g., the CCG, Fisheries Bureau, and Maritime Safety Administration) are likely to enter these command structures in some fashion.

The 300,000-troop reduction that Xi announced at Beijing’s 3 September military parade will likely send additional personnel to the maritime militia, and could even further shape their command and control. Specifically, efforts to streamline the current long reporting chain through land-based forces might ensue. All the more reason that it’s vitally urgent to understand how China’s “Little Blue Men” get their sailing orders, and what those orders might be.

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China Has Militarized the S. China Sea

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China Is ‘clearly militarizing’ The South China Sea

The U.S. confirmed that China recently deployed fighter jets to Woody Island.

China is “clearly militarizing the South China (Sea),” said Admiral Harry Harris, head of the U.S. Pacific Command, adding: “You’d have to believe in a flat Earth to think otherwise.”

Harris said he believed China’s deployment of surface-to-air missiles on Woody Island in the South China Sea’s Paracel chain, new radars on Cuarteron Reef in the Spratlys and its building of airstrips were “actions that are changing in my opinion the operational landscape in the South China Sea.”

Soon after he spoke, U.S. government sources confirmed that China recently deployed fighter jets to Woody Island. It was not the first time Beijing sent jets there but it raised new questions about its intentions.

“The question is whether they might stay this time,” said Gregory Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

But U.S. and Chinese foreign ministers signaled that despite disagreements over the South China Sea, they were near agreement on a U.N. resolution against North Korea for its recent nuclear and missile tests and stressed their cooperation on economic and other issues. More from Huffington Post here.

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China dismisses US report of its so-called military threat in South China Sea

FNC: BEIJING –  China’s defense ministry criticized a U.S. report assessing its island-building efforts in the South China Sea, saying it “hyped up” China’s so-called military threat.

The U.S. Defense Department’s annual report on China’s military activities had “wilfully distorted China’s national defense policy,” said ministry spokesman Yang Yujun, adding that the U.S. was too suspicious.

China expressed its “strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition” to the Pentagon report, Yang said.

“China follows a national defense policy that is defensive in nature,” he said. “China’s deepening military reforms and its strengthening of weapons and equipment building are aimed at maintaining sovereignty, security and territorial integrity and guaranteeing China’s peaceful development.”

The report to the U.S. Congress on Friday said that China was focused on developing and weaponizing the islands it has built in the disputed waters of the South China Sea so it will have greater control over the maritime region without resorting to armed conflict.

It accused China of “increasingly assertive efforts to advance its national sovereignty and territorial claims” and a lack of transparency about its growing military capabilities that are causing tensions with other countries in the region.

Yang said it was the United States that had been “frequently sending military aircraft and warships to the South China Sea to make a show of force.”

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In part from FreeBeacon: The construction indicates China “is attempting to bolster its de facto control by improving military and civilian infrastructure in the South China Seas.”

The airfields, harbors, and resupply facilities will allow China to “detect and challenge” rival claimants to the island and increase the military capabilities available to China and short their deployment times.

The report shows before-and-after pictures of seven disputed Spratly islands, including Fiery Cross Reef where a major buildup took place on 663 new acres of the island.

fierycrossreef

China’s missile buildup is one of the most prominent features of the PLA arsenal with new missiles and the addition of multiple warheads on both new and older systems.

The report also revealed that China is planning a new long-range stealth bomber that would give Beijing a nuclear triad along with ground- and sea-based strategic missiles.

China “is developing and testing several new classes and variants of offensive missiles, including a hypersonic glide vehicle; forming additional missile units; upgrading older missile systems; and developing methods to counter ballistic missile defenses,” the report said.

Several new attack and ballistic missile submarines also have been built and are continuing to be deployed.

China is also building up its space warfare capabilities, and last year, it advanced work on an anti-satellite missile tested in July 2014.

A section of the report on China’s energy strategy reveals that China will remain heavily dependent on foreign oil. Sixty percent of its oil was imported in 2015, and by 2035, Beijing will be importing 80 percent of its oil.

Energy supplies are vulnerable to disruption as some 83 percent of China’s oil currently passes through the South China Sea and Strait of Malacca.

Land pipelines are being built from Russia and Kazakhstan as part of efforts to maintain a supply chain that is less susceptible to disruption.

The report described China’s development of long-range precision attack capabilities as “extraordinarily rapid.”

Ten years ago China’s military had a limited capability to strike targets beyond the 100-mile-wide Taiwan Strait. “Today, however, China is fielding an array of conventionally armed short-range ballistic missiles (SRBMs), as well as ground- and air-launched land-attack cruise missiles (LACMs), special operations forces (SOF), and cyber warfare capabilities to hold targets at risk throughout the region,” the report said.

precisionstrike

“U.S. bases in Japan are in range of a growing number of Chinese [medium-range ballistic missiles] as well as a variety of [land-attack cruise missiles],” the report said, adding that Guam could be targeted by long-range cruise missiles on H-6K bombers that conducted the first flights into the Pacific last year.

The DF-26 missile also was unveiled at a military parade and can conduct precision attacks on Guam, a major U.S. military hub and a key base for the Pentagon’s pivot to Asia.

Land-attack cruise missiles also are far more accurate and can strike enemy airbases, logistic centers, communications, and other ground-based infrastructure.

In a future conflict, the PLA plans to attack supply centers and power projection capabilities that are used in coordinating transportation, communications, and logistics.

China’s military spending was estimated in the report to be greater than $180 billion but could be larger because of Chinese secrecy. The report estimates the budget will grow to $260 billion by 2020.

The report contains a section explaining that the PLA remains a politicized “Party army” rather than a traditional national armed force.

Chinese state media rejects the notion of an apolitical national army because Chinese leaders regard the Soviet Communist Party lack of control over the military as a key factor in the 1991 collapse of the Soviet Union.

One new reform was creating a Political Work Department within the PLA to maintain party control. “The PLA’s political work system is the primary means through which the CCP ‘controls the gun’ in accordance with Mao Zedong’s famous dictum that ‘political power grows out of the barrel of a gun,’” the report says.

Control mechanisms include political commissars, a Party committee system, and Party investigative units.

The Pentagon’s policy, according to the report, seeks to “deepen practical cooperation” while managing differences, a policy that critics say has led to misunderstanding China’s growing official animosity toward the United States.

The solution offered in the report for dealing with the increasing Chinese military threat is to “monitor and adapt” to the buildup and encourage Beijing to end the secrecy of its strategy and arms buildup.

The report made no mention of China’s growing anti-American stance as reflected in both state-run media and official military writings.

In 2013, China’s Communist Party-affiliated newspaper Global Times published a detailed report on future nuclear attacks on the western United States showing how the strikes would kill 12 million Americans through blast and radiation.

The Obama administration and Pentagon made no condemnation of the unprecedented nuclear threat. Read more here.