USAF 1LT Nathan Alexander dropped me a line to ask if we had plans to expand our coverage of China. He's fluent in Chinese, married to a Chinese family, has been to Beijing 3 times, listens to Chinese pop music (sorry to hear it), and studies and reads Chinese books frequently. So it seemed only appropriate to have him do a companion piece to Trent's earlier blog post on this subject.
Chinese Airpower Revisited
by Nathan Alexander of Brain Fertilizer
As someone with a military background and considerable experience with China, I was asked to offer some thoughts on Trent's post: The Myth of Chinese Air Power. Perhaps the problem is simply that I have focused on different aspects of China, and I don't have much knowledge of some of the points made in the article about political infighting with the government or the effectiveness of their missile force. I can, however, give my general reactions to the article, as well as sharing my assessment of Chinese Air Power.
I think it's vital to start with a glance at Chinese history, and even more importantly, the lessons China has learned from this history. Military aggression was always an integral part of the cycle of dynasties, both in helping to enrich the emperor through expansion of the empire in early stages, and then contributing to the collapse by overreaching, and by the costs of maintaining a large empire.
So their current priority is to maintain the security of the borders and territory, but above all to protect the capital. Their entire military is designed with this priority in mind.
* India is a rival mainly because the aspirations, strengths, and problems are so similar. They occupy the same niche on so many levels that they are often at odds. But the Himalayas act as a natural barrier, so a large land army with a moderate Air Force to harry supply lines is sufficient.
* There is no threat from Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, or Mongolia, but the vast expanses of desert and grasslands can be guarded by the same large ground force with some support from a semi-modern air force.
* Russia is weak and beset with problems, but even when they were stronger in their Soviet days, China's large Army and the expanses of Manchuria would have been sufficient to defend the capital.
* Japan's improbable return to military aggression is always a worry, and so China has developed a strong system of coastal observation and anti-ship cruise missile defenses. Japan would not be able to develop a robust invasion force without ample warning time for China to build up its defense.
* The nations of South East Asia (such as Viet Nam, Thailand, and Burma) pose no special threat. Again, a strong ground component combined with a reasonably-competent Air Force was all that was needed.
Recently, however, China's goals have changed slightly. China needs natural resources, and so covets the Spratly Islands. China needs capital available for investment into development, and so covets Taiwan. China also would like to regain its position as the supreme Asian power, able to influence all other Asian nations as approximations of the classic vassal states. To achieve these desires, China must have the ability to project power. But power projection requires a force nearly the exact ideological opposite of the defense force they had in the early 80s. They began the first steps of a long modernization.
They began to buy more modern weaponry, and to develop their own. They improved the F-7 (MiG-21). They improved the F-8. They bought modern submarines, and developed new tanks, and built new destroyers and frigates. They looked to the West, and saw that one strength of our military is our NCO corps. And they took steps to create a professional enlisted corps, rather than depending on 2-year conscripts. They saw the effectiveness of modern, non-scripted joint training, and have attempted to emulate that.
At the end of 10 years, they looked up from their work and saw us wipe out Iraq with hardly any effort.
Taiwan began asserting their independence in the late 80s. This highlighted one essential problem: that Taiwan is an unsinkable, unmovable aircraft carrier permanently stationed 60 miles off of their coast. It is ideally suited to adversely influence any military action China attempts to take in East Asia. China began to shift their modernization toward putting pressure on Taiwan to re-unite. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that there were great amounts of military surplus items and technology available for purchase at a time when China became flush with cash. They began to purchase weaponry that could force the US to stand off at a distance if conflict were to break out with Taiwan: Su-27 and Su-30 Flankers, Sovremenny-class Destroyers with Sunburn Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles. Diesel-powered attack submarines.
And then we succeeded with minimal losses in Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq again. And lost in Somalia. And China watched and learned.
China is not a third-world nation by any means. They are hampered by staggering numbers of people still living in poverty, but are able to accept higher levels of poverty than we can in a democratic nation. They are more hampered by lack of technological prowess: they don't have the ability to make the tools they need to make the tools to calibrate the machines to make the highest-technology fighters, missiles, radars and stealth technology. They don't have the ability, even now, to make the Su-30 themselves without Russian help.
So they have turned to other means. They realize they can never match us, strength for strength. They have pioneered Anti-US asymmetrical warfare, developing anti-personnel lasers, GPU- and laser-guidance jammers, countermeasures designed to foil JSARS, AWACS, and UAV surveillance. They have hackers on reserve, waiting to foul and foil our networks.
But the actual Air Power threat? Not all that great. They can send up waves of F-7s and F-8s and hope they can ambush us after we run out of BVR missiles but before we can return to base. They might take out an F-14 (nearly obsolete US fighter) or two with a Flanker. They can probably do a good job of preventing us from achieving our tactical objectives, at least for the short term (maybe three months, max). But they can't threaten the US by any means, and would have great difficulty even threatening our Asian bases.
In conclusion, China is still maintaining a post-WWII Soviet style Air Power, and so it is impressive only in defense. They cannot project power more than 50 nm from land, and certainly cannot threaten our Air Forces any more than Iraq could. That's not likely to change much in the near future.
(c) Nathan Alexander, 2003 All opinions expressed are solely those of the author, and not representative of the USAF or any other official body.
I offer a few observations re: the Chinese air force.
1) The planes used by the Chinese are all characterized by extremely short ranges and limited engine life. This means that in practice they will experience tactical limitations in any sort of projection scenario. This also means that training hours are limited, which tends to have a severe impact on pilot quality. If the Israeli experience in their various wars tells us anything, this last problem can be critical.
2) For all of the talk of asymetrical warfare, there is very little that can be identified that isn't easy enough to protect against. Obviously one must know what sort of thing is coming in order to guard against it, but I short of information warfare (which by its nature is much easier to conceal) it is unlikely that the Chinese are going to have any serious surprises in store for us unless we simply stop looking. For all of the (many valid) criticisms of our intelligence services, willful ignorance tactical innovations really hasn't been observed. The few explicit countermeasures used in the recent war with Iraq (oil fires, GPS jammers, etc.) have been remarkably ineffective, and in fact often provided alert attackers with new opportunities.
3) The Chinese might frustrate our tactical objectives for a reasonably short time (your article mentioned 3-6 months, I consider that extremely unlikely), but at a very high cost. More to the point, if the Chinese modernize their air force sufficiently to actually provide a strong opponent, they will be forced to do so with higher cost units, which would limit their traditional quantity for deployment. These more advanced units would also require significantly enhanced training and other investment in human resources, a potentially dangerous initiative for a totalitarian police state. The Chinese record on modernization has been extremely poor (their sub fleet is a superlative example of this), and the nature of their military leadership is unlikely to militate in favor of the sort of technologically capable forces that win wars.
4) You mentioned that the Chinese 'might pick of an F-14 or two', if they ran out of missiles. They had best hurry, as the Tomcats are rapidly being replaced by newer F-18Es and sent to a well-earned retirement.
Just a few notes (until I can dig up some airpower numbers for comparison).
One of the things China has been pursuing quite aggressively is its short and medium range ballistic missile force. With the addition of things like millimeter-wave terminal guidance, they can pose a significant threat to carriers and staging bases.
The post Gulf War I literature coming out of China focused on a couple of issues, among them were Iraq's unwillingness to strike at staging areas, depots and airfields, with their ballistic missile force. China's army group which handles their ballistic missile force tends to be very forward leaning and aggressive particularly with respect to their behavior with shorter range missiles. China has also noted that, at least during the first Gulf War, US forces had extremely high combat consumption.
So the question becomes less one of whether or not China's air force is powerful, per se, but rather one of whether or not China's plans to maximize its utility, particularly in the opening stages of a conflict, will pan out against American strategies to prevent same.
The chinese have been big buyers of missile technology for some time now, and indeed their military journals are full of discussions as to how such systems would be quite useful against western assets (specifically carriers, about which the chinese have an obsession that exceeds even that of the Soviets during the height of the cold war). Unfortunately, ballistic missiles tend to be very poor weapons to use against carriers, as these are moving targets, which degrade the effect of even terminally guided ballistic systems. Millimeter wave systems are severely impacted by the at-sea environment, and can be interfered with by countermeasures currently used on most naval vessels. This isn't to say that there aren't other methods of using ballistic missiles in an anti-carrier role, but countermeasures do exist, and the chinese are nowhere near the point of being able to make serious use of such weapons at this time.
Where they ARE more dangerous is in the anti-airfield/staging area/port role, and the chinese have gone to great lengths to prepare for this. Their extensive use of short-range systems (perfect for bombarding Taiwanese airfields, AA sites, and other military bases, practically worthless for everything else) suggests that any potential conflict would begin with a sustained bombardment of missiles, followed by short, sharp airstrikes from the relatively short-legged air force. Given the design of their missile systems, the technological limitations of both their missiles and aircraft, and the nature of the sort of war that they might fight, there is simply no other possible explanation for the pattern of missile deployments in the southern and south-eastern military districts.
Short of the pages of hyperventilated technothrillers, it is extremely unlikely that the Chinese will pose a serious threat to carriers with either their land-based missiles or aircraft in the short- to mid-term.
China is a bigger, more socially cohesive, Indonesia with an effective secret police and nukes.
I wonder about whether China is really all that socially cohesive. It has a massive economic and cultural divide brewing between the 'rich' coastal regions and the improverished heartland, its government has very very little 'street cred' beyond the areas in which it has deployed security forces, and the gerontocracy running the show strikes me as almost hopelessly out of touch...
On the other hand, if you are comparing it solely to Indonesia..point taken...
Scott
Chinese airpower is a contradiction in terms. It's a joke. The chief function of the PLAAF is the same as X-Soviet industry - turning good raw materials into useless crap. Its real purpose is traditional domestic politics - transfer of income and power from some domestic groups to other domestic groups.
China's reliance on tactical ballistic misisles may well be the greatest techno-strategic blunder of this century [in case you are wondering, the "battlecruiser" class warship was the #1 useless money-pit of the 20th Century].
The lumbering IRBM and its antiquated cruise missile cousins [anything that flies a simple, predictable course] are on the verge of becoming totally obsolete.
Not only has ABM technology improved [not just Patriot-3 , but SM-3 and the Israeli 'Arrow'], but Tactical High-Enegy lasers are currently knocking down 155mm artillery shells in flight. They are made of INCH thick steel and they SPIN, but they explode in flight anyway. The F-35 JSF has the power and structural hardpoints to mount a Plasma Cannon! That R&D program was mentioned in 'open sources' 4 months ago.
China's [and North Korea's] missile forces have less than a decade to consume vital resources before they are rendered effectively useless.
They will have as much impact on reality as the Kaiser's Imperial German Navy did on WWI - formidable in appearance but nothing of any consequence once the shooting starts. And to make matters worse, the Chinese are not likely to realise this because of the institutional bias toward a fielded weapon system - they simply will not be able to let go of their missile force once they build it.
BTW, www.strategypage.com has the original "Asymetric Warfare" article written by two PLA officers. I saw nothing more than wishful thinking wrapped in post-marxist double-speak. Judge for yourself.
I didn't really discuss China's missile forces for two reasons:
1) The topic was Air Power, and missile forces are more like long range artillery. It cannot perform most of the functions of Air Power.
2) I don't know as much about the missile forces as I do ground and air.
There is much more to asymmetrical warfare than just GPS jammers and computer hackers. If you stop and think about most of our strengths, you can be sure that China has thought of those things as well, and is developing a counter. How effective any specific counter might be, we don't know, and probably won't unless we are in conflict.
Right now, the two biggest threats to any carrier are the Sunburn anti-ship missiles on the Sovremenny-class destroyers and diesel attack submarines. But again, that's not air power.
I hadn't really considered the aspect of striking at staging areas; that's an intriguing aspect. The main staging area would probably be Taiwan, certainly in range of a host of missiles. They may not be terribly accurate, but some will hit, and it would disrupt operations staging from there in any case.
But Korea and Japan are far more troublesome to the Chinese point of view. Of course, they wouldn't want to get anyone else involved against them, so they might not strike at South Korea; that's debatable, and would depend on the state of North Korea at that time, as well, I assume. However (and this is just my gut feeling), if conflict were to break out in East Asia, I think China would do everything it could to keep Japan out of the fight. Quite possibly to the point of foregoing any strike at staging areas on Japanese soil. Any thoughts on that?
Well strategically speaking, attacking Japan would prove very costly however vital to prevent intervention fromm countries such as America (naval bases so on) based on the islands. But might be possible that japan would be attacked simply for the reasons of revenge (WWII)in all, Chinese forces suck, lack quality and funds to gain a tactical anvantage overall. Would be EXTREMELY lucky to succeed in a campaign against any modernized country today.
the crass ignorance and stupidity of Nathan Alexander, Tom Holsinger, Trent Telenko and their "followers" on this board is simply pathetic.
no wonder America is in such a mess.
too many (WAY TOO MANY) idiots like them in the government, the military and the general population.
nicely said there #10. The USAF hasn't faced a real opponent since Korean war (when the new born PLAAF gave them considerable trouble). Against China's 2300 combat aircraft they will have about ONE base + a few dozen carrier aircraft operating 5000km from home soil. Keep being your asshole selves and let's see what happens in 2012.