Tells the story of the growing Chinese Navy - The People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) - and its expanding capabilities, evolving roles and military implications for the USA. Divided into four thematic sections, this special collection of essays surveys and analyzes the most important aspects of China's navel modernization.
Contents: (1) Scope, Sources, and Terminology; (2) Overview of China¿s Naval Modern.; Inception; Elements of Modern. Effort; Limitations and Weaknesses; Reasons for Modern. Effort; Elements of China¿s Naval Modern.; Anti-Ship Ballistic Missiles; Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles; Subs.; Aircraft Carriers; Surface Combatants; Amphibious Ships; Maritime Surveill. and Targeting Systems; Operations Away From Home Waters; Comparing U.S. and Chinese Naval Capabilities; Potential Oversight Issues for Congress; China as a Defense-Planning Priority; (3) Potential Navy-Related Program Implications; Highly Capable Ships and Aircraft; Pacific Fleet¿s Share of the Navy; Homeporting Pacific Fleet Ships in Forward Locations; Larger vs. Smaller Ships.
China’s shipbuilding industry has grown more rapidly than any other in modern history. Commercial shipbuilding output jumped thirteen-fold from 2002–12, ensuring that Beijing has largely reached its goal of becoming the world’s leading shipbuilder. Yet progress is uneven, with military shipbuilding leading overall but with significant weakness in propulsion and electronics for military and civilian applications. It has never been more important to assess what ships China can supply its navy and other maritime forces with, today and in the future. Chinese Naval Shipbuilding answers three pressing questions: What are China’s prospects for success in key areas of naval shipbuilding? What are the likely results for China’s navy? What are the implications for the U.S. Navy? To address these critical issues, this volume assembles some of the world’s leading experts and linguistic analysts, often pairing them in research teams. These sailors, scholars, industry professionals, and government specialists have commanded ships at sea, led shipbuilding programs ashore, toured Chinese vessels and production facilities, invested in Chinese shipyards, and analyzed and presented important data to top-level decision-makers in times of crisis. In synthesizing their collective insights, this book fills a key gap in our understanding of China, its shipbuilding industry, its navy, and what it all means.
Conventional wisdom portrays the People's Republic of China (PRC) People's Liberation Army (PLA) as a backward continental force that will not pose a military challenge to its neighbors or to the United States well into the 21st century. PLA writings that demonstrate interest in exploiting the revolution in military affairs (RMA) are dismissed by a large segment of the PLA- watching community as wistful fantasies. The author offers an alternative perspective by outlining emerging PLA operational concepts and a range of research and development projects that appear to have been heavily influenced by U.S. and Russian writings on the RMA. Fulfillment of the PLA's vision for the 21st century could have significant repercussions for U.S. interests in the Asia-Pacific region.
Xi Jinping has made his ambitions for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perfectly clear, there is no mystery what he wants, first, that China should become a "great maritime power" and secondly, that the PLA "become a world-class armed force by 2050." He wants this latter objective to be largely completed by 2035. China as a Twenty-First-Century Naval Power focuses on China's navy and how it is being transformed to satisfy the "world class" goal. Beginning with an exploration of why China is seeking to become such a major maritime power, author Michael McDevitt first explores the strategic rationale behind Xi's two objectives. China's reliance on foreign trade and overseas interests such as China's Belt and Road strategy. In turn this has created concerns within the senior levels of China's military about the vulnerability of its overseas interests and maritime life-lines. is a major theme. McDevitt dubs this China's "sea lane anxiety" and traces how this has required the PLA Navy to evolve from a "near seas"-focused navy to one that has global reach; a "blue water navy." He details how quickly this transformation has taken place, thanks to a patient step-by-step approach and abundant funding. The more than 10 years of anti-piracy patrols in the far reaches of the Indian Ocean has acted as a learning curve accelerator to "blue water" status. McDevitt then explores the PLA Navy's role in the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. He provides a detailed assessment of what the PLAN will be expected to do if Beijing chooses to attack Taiwan potentially triggering combat with America's "first responders" in East Asia, especially the U.S. Seventh Fleet and U.S. Fifth Air Force. He conducts a close exploration of how the PLA Navy fits into China's campaign plan aimed at keeping reinforcing U.S. forces at arm's length (what the Pentagon calls anti-access and area denial [A2/AD]) if war has broken out over Taiwan, or because of attacks on U.S. allies and friends that live in the shadow of China. McDevitt does not know how Xi defines "world class" but the evidence from the past 15 years of building a blue water force has already made the PLA Navy the second largest globally capable navy in the world. This book concludes with a forecast of what Xi's vision of a "world-class navy" might look like in the next fifteen years when the 2035 deadline is reached.
The Navy wants to develop and procure three new types of unmanned vehicles (UVs) in FY2020 and beyond-Large Unmanned Surface Vehicles (LUSVs), Medium Unmanned Surface Vehicles (MUSVs), and Extra-Large Unmanned Undersea Vehicles (XLUUVs). The Navy is requesting $628.8 million in FY2020 research and development funding for these three UV programs and their enabling technologies. The Navy wants to acquire these three types of UVs (which this report refers to collectively as large UVs) as part of an effort to shift the Navy to a new fleet architecture (i.e., a new combination of ships and other platforms) that is more widely distributed than the Navy's current architecture. Compared to the current fleet architecture, this more-distributed architecture is to include proportionately fewer large surface combatants (i.e., cruisers and destroyers), proportionately more small surface combatants (i.e., frigates and Littoral Combat Ships), and the addition of significant numbers of large UVs. The Navy wants to employ accelerated acquisition strategies for procuring these large UVs, so as to get them into service more quickly. The emphasis that the Navy placed on UV programs in its FY2020 budget submission and the Navy's desire to employ accelerated acquisition strategies in acquiring these large UVs together can be viewed as an expression of the urgency that the Navy attaches to fielding large UVs for meeting future military challenges from countries such as China. The LUSV program is a proposed new start project for FY2020. The Navy wants to procure two LUSVs per year in FY2020FY2024. The Navy wants LUSVs to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships based on commercial ship designs, with ample capacity for carrying various modular payloads-particularly anti-surface warfare (ASuW) and strike payloads, meaning principally anti-ship and land-attack missiles. The Navy reportedly envisions LUSVs as being 200 feet to 300 feet in length and having a full load displacement of about 2,000 tons. The MUSV program began in FY2019. The Navy plans to award a contract for the first MUSV in FY2019 and wants to award a contract for the second MUSV in FY2023. The Navy wants MUSVs, like LUSVs, to be low-cost, high-endurance, reconfigurable ships that can accommodate various payloads. Initial payloads for MUSVs are to be intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) payloads and electronic warfare (EW) systems. The Navy defines MUSVs as having a length of between 12 meters (about 39 feet) and 50 meters (about 164 feet). The Navy wants to pursue the MUSV program as a rapid prototyping effort under what is known as Section 804 acquisition authority. The XLUUV program, also known as Orca, was established to address a Joint Emergent Operational Need (JEON). The Navy wants to procure nine XLUUVs in FY2020-FY2024. The Navy announced on February 13, 2019, that it had selected Boeing to fabricate, test, and deliver the first four Orca XLUUVs and associated support elements. On March 27, 2019, the Navy announced that the award to Boeing had been expanded to include the fifth Orca. The Navy's large UV programs pose a number of oversight issues for Congress, including issues relating to the analytical basis for the more-distributed fleet architecture; the Navy's accelerated acquisition strategies and funding method for these programs; technical, schedule, and cost risk in the programs; the proposed annual procurement rates for the programs; the industrial base implications of the programs; the personnel implications of the programs; and whether the Navy has accurately priced the work it is proposing to do in FY2020 on the programs.
China is building a modern and regionally powerful Navy with a modest but growing capability for conducting operations beyond China's near-seas region. The question of how the United States should respond to China's military modernization effort, including its naval modernization effort, is a key issue in U.S. defense planning. The question is of particular importance to the U.S. Navy, because many U.S. military programs for countering improved Chinese military forces would fall within the Navy's budget. As a part of the U.S. strategic rebalancing toward the Asia-Pacific region announced in January 2012, Department of Defense (DOD) planning is placing an increased emphasis on the Asia-Pacific region. Observers expect that, as a result, there will be a stronger emphasis in DOD planning on U.S. naval and air forces. Administration officials have stated that notwithstanding constraints on U.S. defense spending, DOD will seek to protect initiatives relating to the U.S. military presence in the Asia-Pacific region. Decisions that Congress and the executive branch make regarding U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military capabilities could affect the likelihood or possible outcome of a potential U.S.-Chinese military conflict in the Pacific over Taiwan or some other issue. Some observers consider such a conflict to be very unlikely, in part because of significant U.S.-Chinese economic linkages and the tremendous damage that such a conflict could cause on both sides. In the absence of such a conflict, however, the U.S.-Chinese military balance in the Pacific could nevertheless influence day-to-day choices made by other Pacific countries, including choices on whether to align their policies more closely with China or the United States. In this sense, decisions that Congress and the executive branch make regarding U.S. Navy programs for countering improved Chinese maritime military forces could influence the political evolution of the Pacific, which in turn could affect the ability of the United States to pursue goals relating to various policy issues, both in the Pacific and elsewhere. China's naval modernization effort encompasses a broad array of weapon acquisition programs, including anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs), submarines, surface ships, aircraft, and supporting C4ISR (command and control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance) systems. China's naval modernization effort also includes reforms and improvements in maintenance and logistics, naval doctrine, personnel quality, education and training, and exercises. Observers believe China's naval modernization effort is oriented toward developing capabilities for doing the following: addressing the situation with Taiwan militarily, if need be; asserting or defending China's territorial claims in the South China Sea and East China Sea; enforcing China's view that it has the right to regulate foreign military activities in its 200-mile maritime exclusive economic zone (EEZ); displacing U.S. influence in the Western Pacific; and asserting China's status as a leading regional power and major world power. Consistent with these goals, observers believe China wants its military to be capable of acting as an anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) force-a force that can deter U.S. intervention in a conflict in China's near-seas region over Taiwan or some other issue, or failing that, delay the arrival or reduce the effectiveness of intervening U.S. forces. China may also use its navy for other purposes, such as conducting maritime security (including anti-piracy) operations, evacuating Chinese nationals in foreign countries when necessary, and conducting humanitarian assistance/disaster response (HA/DR) operations.
Updated 12/10/2020: In December 2016, the Navy released a force-structure goal that callsfor achieving and maintaining a fleet of 355 ships of certain types and numbers. The 355-shipgoal was made U.S. policy by Section 1025 of the FY2018 National Defense AuthorizationAct (H.R. 2810/P.L. 115- 91 of December 12, 2017). The Navy and the Department of Defense(DOD) have been working since 2019 to develop a successor for the 355-ship force-level goal.The new goal is expected to introduce a new, more distributed fleet architecture featuring asmaller proportion of larger ships, a larger proportion of smaller ships, and a new third tier oflarge unmanned vehicles (UVs). On December 9, 2020, the Trump Administration released a document that can beviewed as its vision for future Navy force structure and/or a draft version of the FY202230-year Navy shipbuilding plan. The document presents a Navy force-level goal that callsfor achieving by 2045 a Navy with a more distributed fleet architecture, 382 to 446 mannedships, and 143 to 242 large UVs. The Administration that takes office on January 20, 2021,is required by law to release the FY2022 30-year Navy shipbuilding plan in connection withDOD's proposed FY2022 budget, which will be submitted to Congress in 2021. In preparingthe FY2022 30-year shipbuilding plan, the Administration that takes office on January 20,2021, may choose to adopt, revise, or set aside the document that was released on December9, 2020. The Navy states that its original FY2021 budget submission requests the procurement ofeight new ships, but this figure includes LPD-31, an LPD-17 Flight II amphibious ship thatCongress procured (i.e., authorized and appropriated procurement funding for) in FY2020.Excluding this ship, the Navy's original FY2021 budget submission requests the procurementof seven new ships rather than eight. In late November 2020, the Trump Administrationreportedly decided to request the procurement of a second Virginia-class attack submarinein FY2021. CRS as of December 10, 2020, had not received any documentation from theAdministration detailing the exact changes to the Virginia-class program funding linesthat would result from this reported change. Pending the delivery of that information fromthe administration, this CRS report continues to use the Navy's original FY2021 budgetsubmission in its tables and narrative discussions.
