The PLAN’s military and technological prowess against the US Navy in the field of submarine construction and anti-submarine warfare is progressing apace, and the “era of total US submarine dominance” over the People’s Republic of China is reaching its end.
That’s the conclusion reached by one of America’s top cited business newspapers in a piece focused on the Asian nation’s scientific and industrial advances for naval warfare. China, the paper pointed out, is gradually “narrowing” the gap between itself and the United States in the highly complex fields of submarine technology and undersea detection.
These developments not only threaten the Pentagon’s regional strategy of hemming China into its home ports, but could challenge US naval supremacy globally over the long term.
Earlier this year, for instance, research by the US Naval War College’s China Maritime Studies Institute pointed to Chinese advances in efficient nuclear reactors, quiet-running pump-jet propulsion systems and internal quieting devices, the latter based on “imitative innovation” of Russian technology, predicting that the PLAN’s latest nuclear-powered subs will be much harder to track than before.
Additionally, analyses of satellite photos of the Huludao Shipyard in Liaoning, northeastern China taken last year showed the construction of sections of submarine hulls larger than anything US analysts have ever seen in a Chinese sub, along with what seemed to be plans to increase production capacity.
US media citing leaked US Navy intelligence already sounded the alarm about China’s impressive shipbuilding capacity this past fall, which at 23.2 million tons per year, compared with 100,000 tons per year in the US, gives the People’s Republic the ability to build warships at a rate some 200 times greater than the US in a pinch.
On top of that, the PLAN’s rapid construction of a vast network of underwater sensors in the South China Sea and other areas along the Chinese coast known as the “Underwater Great Wall”, to look out for sub, surface warship and aerial activity, means that the Pentagon will find it more difficult to place its warships, subs and aircraft in areas around the Asian nation. The Underwater Great Wall’s construction is reportedly nearing its completion, and includes a vast network of passive and active sonar sensors, plus remote controlled underwater and surface drones which can look out for enemy activity.
China is reportedly also “getting better” at finding silent-running US attack and cruise missile subs sneaking around near its home waters, combining buoy and drone-based monitoring with the use of patrol aircraft and helicopters, for example.
In addition are the PLAN’s growing number of exercises with Russia, which, it can be assumed not only increases the Chinese Navy’s ability to coordinate with its northern neighbor in the event of an emergency, but allows it to learn from the Russian Navy’s half century-plus year experience as a major global naval power rivaled only to the US.
“The implications for the US and our Pacific allies will be profound,” former US Navy officer Christopher Carlson said, pointing to the headaches the US Navy will face, and the additional resources it will need, to locate and keep track of China’s new generation of quiet-running nuclear subs.
Strategically, the outlet noted, maneuvers that the US once took for granted, like the ability to approach close China’s home shores, will now no longer be a given, with the PLAN’s nuclear-powered attack subs able to pick off approaching American warships before they could reach Taiwan in a crisis, for example.
On top of that is the Chinese sub-based ballistic missile threat to the US homeland –a threat Washington has long been used to meting out, but not experiencing itself, in relation to the Asian giant.
“Finding a boat this quiet is going to be really hard,” Carlson said of the Chinese sub threat, predicting the new Chinese boats will probably be about as quiet as the Project 971 Shchuka-B (NATO reporting name Akula, or "Shark") class fourth generation nuclear-powered attack subs which the Soviet Union and then Russia started fielding in the 1980s and 1990s.
China’s fleet of 79 submarines includes at least 16 nuclear-powered attack and ballistic missile subs, including six Type 093 (NATO reporting name Shang class) attack subs and six Type 094 (NATO reporting name Jin) ballistic missile boats operating “near-continuous” patrols between Hainan Island and the South China Sea. But Carlson warned that the Asian nation could build up to triple the current US rate averaging 1.2 subs per year.
Costly as Aircraft Carriers, Difficult to Build
“Submarine-building is the pinnacle of technological excellence in economics and industry, and only a few countries have mastered the technologies which China has now broken into – France, Britain, the Soviet Union/Russia, and the United States,” Vasily Dandykin, a veteran Russian military analyst and retired Russian Navy Captain 1stRank, told Sputnik.
Several factors account for the US’ slowing pace when it comes to the construction of new submarines, according to the observer, starting with Washington’s decision to rest on its laurels after the end of the Cold War, to the drop in the number of high-class specialists in the field.
“The downtime” in the US’ submarine-related programs resulted from “complacency after the collapse of the Soviet Union,” when “not just America, but also Europe rested on their laurels,” according to Dandykin. “The Americans have the world’s largest military budget, which exceeds those of all other countries in the world. That means that somewhere they got carried away with such gigantic and expensive projects which did not justify their cost,” the analyst said, pointing to out of control spending on novelties like the $8 billion-per ship Zumwalt class of destroyers.
“There were a lot of such projects that sucked up a lot of money. And now it turns out that all of these experiments boil down to the fact that they’re 10 years behind Russia in the creation of a new fourth-generation strategic nuclear submarine,” made possible, according to the analyst, thanks to the backlog of revolutionary Soviet sub designs that Russian builders have been able to develop and build on.
“The ‘downtime’ that occurred had an impact in this area, not just with submarines, but the construction of the surface fleet, the entire American fleet. Here, without a doubt, China’s pace has been impressive, first and foremost in terms of the construction of large ships for the surface fleet. But I think they will push themselves and try to build up their nuclear submarine fleet as quickly as possible,” Dandykin predicted.
As far as China’s subs themselves go, Dandykin pointed out that for the moment, the majority of the PLAN’s fleet still consists of diesel-electric subs, and for them to reach the same technological level as the US, as they have already done when it comes to ships like universal landing ships and destroyers, will take time. The PLAN’s current nuclear-powered ballistic missile-launching subs belong to the second generation at best, in the retired naval officer’s estimation, and the newest efforts are aimed at the creation of third-generation vessels.
Accordingly, Dandykin believes US efforts to hype up the “Chinese threat” are “a little disingenuous,” and designed mainly to lobby for the allocation of even more resources for US sub-building efforts – a titanic effort equivalent, more or less, to the construction of an aircraft carrier in both technological and financial terms.