Tag Archive for: PLA

How China’s military plugs into the global space sector

In August, a photograph of China’s Dalian shipyard surfaced on Chinese social media site Weibo showing five hulls of Luyang III–type vessels under construction. Once completed, these destroyers will sail out into blue waters, projecting the might of the Chinese navy and carrying with them a lethal high-tech projectile—the YJ-18A missile. Able to severely damage a warship with tens of thousands of tons of displacement in a single strike, the YJ-18A can sprint up to Mach 3.0 before impact and carry a 300-kilogram warhead. The result is a serious threat to US carrier strike groups in the South China Sea and beyond.

While the YJ-18A is designed to skim just five to 10 meters above sea level, it is also an example of China’s growing sophistication in outer space. The missile, designed to be almost impossible to intercept, relies on a constellation of Chinese satellites known as BeiDou.

While the civilian benefits are numerous, BeiDou is primarily a military technology. Similar to the United States’ GPS, China’s BeiDou is used to provide position, navigation and timing services to users. The catalyst for the development of this satellite system was likely the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis. During a campaign of electoral intimidation aimed at Taiwan, the People’s Liberation Army fired missiles into the strait. However, the campaign backfired when a disruption to its GPS access caused China to lose track of its own missiles. BeiDou was announced shortly afterwards.

The BeiDou system was completed In June 2020. The final launch was a colossal national achievement, representing the culmination of two decades of work at a cost of more than US$9 billion. President Xi Jinping celebrated the finished system as a shining example of China’s ‘great rejuvenation’ as a superpower.

Yet, BeiDou is also a shining example of China’s military–civil fusion strategy.

Xi has favoured military–civil fusion as a method to harness entrepreneurs, researchers and scholars to spur the development of the PLA. The strategy aims to create an ecosystem in which even overtly civilian companies and universities collaborate with the military.

In the case of BeiDou, China has leveraged many of its academic researchers and their partners to propel its creation and refinement. One prominent example of this is Wuhan University.

The university is supervised by the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defence, which in turn is overseen by the State Council’s Central Commission for Integrated Military and Civilian Development. Along with its strong links to the military sector, there have also been allegations that the university conducts cyberattacks on behalf of the military. As a result, it has been categorised as a very high-risk institution for collaboration.

With the lines between the civilian and the military blurred by the State Council, Wuhan University can use its international affiliations to support the PLA. Once such affiliation is with the International GNSS Service, a voluntary federation comprising 350 organizations across 118 countries. Its mission is to provide open-access data products on navigational satellites for the benefit of its members and the wider scientific community.

Historically, China has faced difficulties establishing its own satellite tracking stations. Its ground station in Kiribati became a thorny issue during the Pacific island nation’s 2003 election. More recently, Chinese stations in Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Chile and Venezuela have provoked concerns. While China still needs these large stations for its wider ambitions in outer space, it can readily access an existing global network of 520 smaller reference stations that monitor navigational satellites.

Wuhan University has used the International GNSS Service to access an invaluable stream of data. Its centre on satellite systems hosts one of the service’s global data centres. Through this, Wuhan University can utilise a worldwide network that stretches from Canberra to Reykjavik, allowing the Chinese military to plug into the global space sector.

This data is then available to support projects funded by the PLA. The Wuhan centre has reported involvement in at least 30 research and 300 engineering initiatives. Such work receives funding from the military sector to shore up deficiencies and gain strategic edges. One example of a project that used international data looked at strategies to decrease ionospheric interference for BeiDou. Such a study—or those like it—almost certainly culminates to support capabilities like the YJ-18A missile.

As a result of such efforts, the Wuhan centre on satellite systems received an award for ‘Outstanding Contribution’ by the PLA’s General Armaments Department (since renamed the Equipment Development Department).

Organisations like the International GNSS Service need to be aware that even overtly civilian entities like Wuhan University can be intertwined with the Chinese military. Collaboration with high-risk institutions must be done with extreme care to ensure data and products intended to support international science and commerce are not redirected towards unwanted military uses.

What the Ukraine war should teach China

As Russia’s war on Ukraine enters its fourth month, the endgame remains murky. But one thing is clear: Russia’s military has taken a beating from Ukrainian forces that, at the start of the conflict, were thought to be no match for it. For China’s People’s Liberation Army, which shares many of the deficiencies that are undercutting Russia’s effectiveness on the battlefield, this should be a wake-up call.

One such deficiency is corruption. Of the world’s 20 largest economies, Russia rates the worst in this domain. Perhaps it shouldn’t have been surprising, then, that Russia’s military—long considered one of the world’s strongest—has been severely weakened by a variety of abuses. Judging by the number of senior generals arrested for corruption in China in the past decade, the rot inside the PLA may run just as deep.

Shortly after Xi Jinping came to power in November 2012, he launched an anti-corruption drive that, by the end of 2017, had ensnared more than 100 generals. Two former vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission, which commands the PLA, were arrested for taking bribes in exchange for promotions. Another commission member died by suicide in 2017 while an investigation into his ties to the disgraced vice-chairmen was underway.

One might be tempted to think that Xi’s campaign purged the PLA of corruption. But that’s unlikely, given that the enabling conditions—including cronyism, secrecy and lack of oversight—have hardly been eradicated.

Beyond corruption, the PLA displays similar structural weaknesses to Russia’s military, such as an obsessive focus on hardware, lack of training that simulates real combat conditions, poor logistics and a persistent failure to develop joint operational capabilities. Like the Russian military, the PLA relies on a rigid top-down command structure that makes it difficult, if not impossible, for lower-level officers and soldiers to take the initiative in combat settings.

Another key weakness of the Russian and Chinese militaries is politicisation. In fact, heavily influenced by the culture of the Soviet Red Army, the PLA is even more politicised than today’s Russian military.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, the Russian military escaped communist party control and abolished the system of political commissars. As a result, politicisation is now personalistic in nature and resembles typical patronage systems, in which unqualified individuals are appointed to senior positions. In peacetime, the consequences might seem limited to weakened morale. But, as Russia has learned in Ukraine, war exposes the extent of incompetence that patronage allows.

This doesn’t bode well for China. The PLA is under the Chinese Communist Party’s full control, and its primary mission is to defend the CCP’s political monopoly. The political commissar system created by Leon Trotsky when he established the Red Army is alive and well in China, with the appointment and promotion of PLA officers determined not only by their professional qualifications, but also by their perceived loyalty to the CCP. Even junior officers are politically vetted before receiving commissions. The result is a confusing dual-command structure, which could hobble professional PLA soldiers’ ability to fight battles effectively, as it did to the Red Army in the early days of the Nazi invasion during World War II.

A final key weakness shared by the Russian military and the PLA is their lack of combat experience. Over the past three decades, Russia’s military has fought only relatively small wars, in Chechnya, Georgia, Ukraine and Syria. This clearly did not prepare it to invade all of Ukraine, as demonstrated by its recent decision to narrow its focus and objectives to the eastern Donbas region.

Here, too, China is worse off. The Chinese military hasn’t fought a real battle since its disastrous border war with Vietnam in 1979. So, while it has invested massively in military modernisation since the early 1990s, the PLA’s competence and capabilities in combat remain untested.

If Russia has performed so poorly in Ukraine, how can the PLA—whose weaknesses, including politicisation and lack of combat experience, are even more pronounced—expect to win a war today, especially a large-scale conflict that draws in major powers like the United States? It doesn’t help that structural reforms capable of addressing the PLA’s most glaring weaknesses will be difficult, if not impossible, to implement. Depoliticising the military would entail the removal of the CCP’s organisational presence and the abolition of the political commissar system, neither of which is on the cards. And gaining real combat experience in peacetime is impractical.

The only feasible step China can take to bolster the PLA is to increase transparency considerably. If more media scrutiny had been allowed in Russia, the rot in its military would have been exposed—and probably addressed—long before it started a war that it can’t win, at least not in the quick and overwhelming manner the Kremlin expected. For Xi, the lesson is that Chinese officials must shine more light on one of the country’s most secretive institutions, precisely because they are unlikely to be satisfied with what they find.

Equipping Australia’s navy to meet the threat from PLA anti-ship cruise missiles

‘Vampire! Vampire! Vampire!’—three words that would send shivers down the spine of any ship’s captain. This is because ‘vampire’ is the US military’s brevity code for a hostile anti-ship missile.

Typically, advanced anti-ship cruise missiles (ASCMs) have long ranges and advanced guidance systems and in some cases incorporate stealthy design features, decoys and countermeasures to assist them in penetrating sophisticated air-defence systems.

As I explain in my new ASPI report, launched today, since the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait crisis, the People’s Republic of China has heavily invested in its multibranched armed forces. For over two decades, the People’s Liberation Army has consistently acquired, developed and surreptitiously obtained new technologies and capabilities, including a prodigious array of increasingly sophisticated ASCMs, such as the supersonic sea-skimming YJ-12 ASCM, which has a range around 400–537 kilometres. YJ-12 variants can be launched from bombers, surface ships and land batteries.

The PLA has also invested in capabilities to sustain ASCM maritime strike operations even under high-intensity battle conditions against a technologically advanced power such as the US; for example, land-based C4ISR (command, control, communications, computing, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) networks, passive defences such as hardened air bases, plus active defences such as surface-to-air missiles.

In any regional war, the PLA would likely execute combat operations under its ‘counter-intervention strategy’, which aims to leverage its anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) capabilities for maximum asymmetric effect to deter, deny or defeat US and allied forces from intervening over a range of territorial disputes in the Western Pacific. ASCMs form part of the PLA’s broader A2/AD capability toolbox, which also includes naval assets such as submarines, air assets such as fighter squadrons, land assets such as theatre ballistic missiles, and cyber capabilities.

The PLA’s ASCM capability generates four serious challenges for Australian and allied naval forces. First, ASCMs are difficult to detect because of their low signatures, and sea-skimming ASCMs can be detected by a surface ship’s radar only when they pop up over the horizon. Second, countering ASCMs is difficult because of their high speeds, manoeuvrability and swarming technology, plus the possibility of decoys and countermeasures to help penetrate surface ships’ anti-air defences. Third, ASCM raids might saturate anti-air defences and either sink ships or leave them with severely depleted missile magazines. Fourth, terrorist groups are known to have accessed PLA ASCM technology; it has been sold to Iran and then on-sold to Hezbollah, which attacked an Israeli warship with ASCMs in July 2006.

The PLA’s ASCM threat is significant because existing Royal Australian Navy surface ships have small air-defence missile magazines, and even the new surface ships that will begin arriving in around 2033 won’t rectify the fleet-wide shortfall of vertical launching system (VLS) missile cells. The RAN’s eight Anzac-class frigates have eight VLS cells each, and the three Hobart-class destroyers have 48 per ship. The Anzac frigates will remain in service until around 2044 and the Hobart destroyers even longer. Even when the Hunter-class frigates begin to arrive around 2033, each ship will only pack a punch of 32 VLS cells. This means that the RAN surface fleet won’t begin to receive moderate numbers of VLS cells until after 2033, which might be too little, too late, given that there’s the very real risk of a regional war occurring between 2020 and 2030.

While the RAN waits for the Hunter-class frigates to arrive, what else can be done to radically improve the survivability of deployed RAN taskforces against the sprawling and increasingly sophisticated ASCM threat spectrum?

The answer is that any solution should consider tackling four critical issues: deeper fleet magazines; disaggregation of expensive crewed surface combatants into cheaper and expendable uncrewed assets; efforts to break the PLA’s ASCM kill chain; employment of long-range ordnance to engage in offensive air- and missile-defence operations, principally by targeting enemy ASCM launch platforms.

In the short term, the RAN could exploit proven military-off-the-shelf technology upgrades to its surface ship fleet. Options include using the Evolved Sea Sparrow Missile Block II, retrofitting ships with launchers to support the Rolling Airframe Missile Block II, using new hypervelocity projectile rounds in the existing five-inch naval guns, and potentially fitting embarked helicopters with an appropriate air search radar to detect hostile ASCMs at greater ranges.

In the medium term, the RAN could introduce a mix of crewed and uncrewed assets to deepen fleet magazines and underpin offensive and missile-defence operations. It might consider acquiring a batch of more capable guided missile destroyers from the US or Japan. The RAN could introduce a class of large unmanned surface vehicles to carry a variety of payloads, including strike-length Mk-41 VLS cells, innovative naval gun rounds to defend against ASCMs, high-power radio frequency weapons, and jammers and lasers to blind or dazzle electro-optical and infrared satellites.

The RAN could consider introducing small unmanned aerial vehicles, unmanned surface vehicles and unmanned undersea vehicles or high-altitude airships—to be fitted with sensors for detecting hostile ASCMs and enemy ASCM launch platforms. It could also consider introducing a large unmanned combat aerial vehicle with a very long range, high endurance and high payload capacity to provide deployed RAN task groups with a replenishable mobile magazine of anti-air, anti-ship and anti-submarine ordnance for neutralising enemy ASCM launch platforms.

In the longer term, the RAN could introduce long-range platforms and systems to help break an adversary’s kill chain. Options might include ‘magazine ships’ fitted with large numbers of air- and missile-defence interceptors and long-range strike missiles, a force of B-21 Raider long-range stealth bombers, antisatellite weapons and offensive cyberattack capabilities.

The problem faced by the RAN is that the current fleet is unlikely to meet the ASCM threat spectrum of today, let alone the ASCM threat spectrum of the 2030s and 2040s. Nor does the future RAN battle force appear sufficient to meet a dystopian future in which the PLA Navy will be the world’s largest navy. An even greater concern is that the ADF doesn’t possess the very long-range strike capability that would be needed to make any substantial contribution in a high-intensity regional war against a technologically advanced and sophisticated adversary.

Australia has been caught napping at the wheel. Ten years ago was the time for change, but now wholesale changes are well overdue. Decades of unchallenged US strategic primacy have arguably shielded Australia from the consequences of complacency and chronic underinvestment in Australia’s national defence. The problem is that US strategic primacy is being actively contested, if not visibly eroded.

Australia faces a bleak future, and the window for expediting effective countermeasures is rapidly closing. There’s good reason to believe that a bipartisan parliamentary inquiry might be a valuable exercise to educate the Australian public as to what a regional war against a nuclear-armed major-power adversary might look like and how it would affect the Australian way of life. The government might also consider commissioning a bipartisan and independent review of Australia’s defence capabilities to be run by a security-cleared, experienced and eminent Australian—a ‘Dibb review 2.0’.

China military watch

The long-awaited and much-delayed 2021 China military power report, released by the US Department of Defense earlier this month, makes for interesting reading. The report is full of important analyses of myriad developments in the People’s Liberation Army that could occupy several months’ worth of ‘China military watch’. This article considers the significance of PLA nuclear advancements.

The starting point must be the report’s observation that China is clearly undertaking a rapid breakout from its minimum deterrence posture and is moving from a total stockpile of 272 deliverable nuclear warheads as of 2020 to 700 deliverable warheads by 2027 and at least 1,000 by 2030.

This is occurring simultaneously with the construction of large numbers of new missile silos in Xinjiang and Inner Mongolia, noted in August’s ‘China military watch’, and coincides with two tests of a potential intercontinental hypersonic glide vehicle employing a fractional orbital bombardment system–type trajectory over the South Pole to circumvent US missile defences. The report also notes a requirement for new lower yield nuclear weapons that could imply an operational-level or tactical-level nuclear warfighting capability.

The rapid modernisation of Chinese nuclear forces suggests a move towards a launch-on-warning posture. Russia has been assisting China in developing new early warning systems that would enable Beijing to retaliate much faster against any incoming attack.

The sea-based leg of China’s emerging nuclear triad is also progressing. The 2021 report confirms that the PLA Navy’s six Type 094 Jin-class nuclear submarines (SSBNs) are fully operational, each one carrying 12 JL-2 missiles, and notes that the JL-3 to be carried on the Type 096 Tang-class SSBNs will allow the entire continental US to be covered from bastions in the Bohai and South China Seas.

The air leg is also moving forward quickly. PLA Air Force H-6N bombers are now operational and able to carry long-range air-launched ballistic missiles that can be nuclear armed. The H-20 bomber is still in development, as is a regional strike bomber.

These developments are significant when set against the context of a growing risk of military conflict over Taiwan this decade. The pace of China’s expansion of its nuclear forces, and a clear move away from a minimum-deterrence posture, would act to expand Beijing’s choices on how it might annex Taiwan absent a move by Taipei towards a negotiated unification under the 1992 Consensus.

As Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists recently tweeted, ‘A mainstream hypothesis about China’s nuclear build-up appears to be forming, one that US intel has been entertaining for some time: to provide cover for conventional scenarios. Basically, we can attack Taiwan and there’s nothing you can do about it unless you go all the way.’ This view is supported by nuclear security professor Vipin Narang, who tweeted, ‘China estimates that the risk of a conventional war with the US is higher now than ever, and it needs to stalemate the US at the nuclear level—escape nuclear coercion—in order to open space for more aggressive conventional options’. He says that ‘the take home risk with all these developments isn’t the risk of nuclear war with China—though that obviously goes up—but the risk of a really nasty conventional war where China unloads its massive arsenal of conventional missiles in theater [without] fear of US nuclear escalation’.

If China is planning to attack Taiwan this decade, rapidly boosting its nuclear forces would deny the US any option for threatening escalation in the face of a Chinese conventional attack and make it harder for the US to deter China from using force. Beijing may recognise that in spite of its rhetoric about peaceful unification, Taiwan is slipping from its grasp, and that force could become the only option for Xi Jinping if he wishes to achieve his ‘China dream’. Growing domestic economic pressures also shorten the fuse for Xi to risk war to take Taiwan.

Certainly, the expansion documented in the report is unlikely to see China achieve parity with the US, which currently has 3,800 nuclear warheads—most of which are on largely invulnerable ballistic missile submarines. China can’t carry out a bolt-from-the-blue disarming nuclear first strike, even with its projected larger arsenal. But that’s not the objective. Beijing’s goals are to make the US much more wary of either conventional or limited nuclear attacks against the Chinese mainland in a Taiwan crisis and to free up options for China to use force more decisively below the nuclear threshold.

Expanding its nuclear arsenal also allows China to project conventional force elsewhere with less risk of a counter-response—for example, in a crisis with India over disputed territory—and increases Beijing’s coercive potential against countries such as Japan, the ASEAN states and Australia.

The expansion of its land-based intercontinental ballistic missile force, along with growth of its sea- and air-based nuclear legs, means that China’s warhead-production facilities will need to expand, particularly as it begins to invest in multiple independently targetable re-entry vehicles and deploys hypersonic glide vehicles such as the DF-17, which is now operational and could be nuclear armed. China is also working on a new missile, the DF-27, that will have a range of between 5,000 and 8,000 kilometres, which could bring Hawaii in range.

China’s expanding nuclear arsenal and the growing concern that Beijing is moving towards a launch-on-warning posture, together with the potential for a sub-strategic and tactical capacity, are raising questions about whether it is also shifting from its traditional ‘no first use’ posture. The report notes that China’s no-first-use policy is declaratory and suggests that ‘there is some ambiguity about conditions where [it] would no longer apply’. It states, ‘The PRC’s lack of transparency regarding the scope and scale of its nuclear modernization program … raises questions regarding its future intent as it fields larger, more capable nuclear forces.’

These developments matter in terms of timing, not just in relation to an anticipated crisis over Taiwan, but also because the Biden administration is considering the possibility of adopting a no-first-use or ‘sole purpose’ declaration as part of its 2022 nuclear posture review. The administration should consider the implications of doing so for allies concerned about US leadership and for deterrence more broadly. China is moving to rapidly break out of its traditional minimum deterrence posture and could be planning to use its nuclear forces as a shield behind which it would feel free to employ conventional forces in a future crisis.

What’s behind the spike in Chinese incursions into Taiwan’s air defence zone?

A problem in recent public commentary on tensions between China and Taiwan has been a conflation of what we know and what we fear. Nowhere is this more evident than on the topic of incursions by Chinese military aircraft into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone, or ADIZ.

This month saw a shift from a pattern of incremental increases in the number of People’s Liberation Army Air Force aircraft participating in coordinated incursions into Taiwanese airspace to an exponential explosion. The campaign peaked at 56 aircraft on 4 October, with 159 over the four-day period of 1–4 October. The increase has prompted concerns that the threat of war across the Taiwan Strait is escalating.

But are these fears justified?

Overall, incidences of Chinese jets entering Taiwan’s airspace while flying directly towards the island have been rare this year. This is particularly the case for China’s often mentioned ‘nuclear capable’ Xian H-6 strategic bombers. Since 22 May, H-6 bombers have entered Taiwan’s airspace on only seven of the 82 days in which incursions were recorded. While a record of 12 H-6 bombers entered the ADIZ on 4 October, neither on this occasion nor on any other during this period were they headed towards the island.

By comparison, Shaanxi Y-8 anti-submarine warfare (ASW) aircraft have been by far the most commonly observed aircraft, appearing on 59 of those 82 days. And like recent incursions involving H-6 bombers, these aircraft almost invariably headed away from, rather than towards, Taiwan. They typically cut across the ADIZ through the Taixinan Basin more than 200 kilometres south of Taiwan island—an area that is both strategically vital and suited to submarine warfare—and were heading towards the Bashi Channel, which lies between Taiwan and the Philippines. The flight paths of most of these incursions varied little.

ASW aircraft can track submarine activity and, depending on the technology they’re equipped with, scan and map the seabed. The message their frequent incursions are sending is clear: China is undertaking exploratory or preliminary work aimed at mapping and/or preparing a passage for its navy through the first island chain via the Bashi Channel. It may also be positioning itself to cut off Taiwan’s key maritime and aviation lifelines—which Taiwanese experts predict China will be able to do by 2025.

Other features of the incursions tell a similar story. According to data from Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defence, almost all aerial incursions over the past six months have occurred in the southwestern corner of Taiwan’s ADIZ and have followed three paths—heading in a southeasterly direction towards the Bashi Channel, heading in that direction and turning northeast along the periphery of the east side of Taiwan’s ADIZ, and winding around Taiwan’s Dongsha Island, which lies almost 450 kilometres south of Taiwan.

Incursions near Dongsha Island, also known as Pratas Island, have been performed most regularly by Shaanxi KJ-500 airborne early warning and control aircraft, which have surveillance and reconnaissance capabilities. H-6 bombers have also flown by the island but were almost certainly used in a reconnaissance role. Specialist reconnaissance aircraft; electronic intelligence-gathering aircraft and electronic warfare aircraft (and, earlier in the year, uncrewed surveillance drones) have also flown close to the island. While ASW sweeps have usually been unescorted, these flights have often coincided with fighter sorties. The latter have invariably cut between, or come close to cutting between, Taiwan and Dongsha Island.

Much has been written about the possibility that China could seize Dongsha Island, which is uninhabited except for a small military garrison. Fighter incursions may appear menacing, but surveillance and reconnaissance sweeps are more worrying, because they can produce actionable intelligence for an invasion. Yet the emergence of fighters between Taiwan and Dongsha are also significant. If China wants to secure a maritime route through to the Bashi Channel, it would want to cut off or control the island, which lies close to the route it is likely to prefer. It would also want to shrink or claim for itself the southern section of Taiwan’s ADIZ so that it controls the airspace above this route.

In the Greco-Persian Wars in the 5th century BC, the Persian king Darius famously demanded ‘earth and water’—a euphemism for total subjugation. Yet it seems that the more immediate objective of China’s incursions into Taiwan’s ADIZ has been seizing ‘water’ as opposed to ‘earth’. This makes sense when we consider that the trigger for the early October wave of flights appears to have been US-led naval exercises in the western Pacific, as opposed to political developments inside Taiwan. It also makes sense when we consider that the southwest section of the ADIZ has been identified as ‘one of the American military’s major areas of operation in the South China Sea’.

This does not, however, mean that Taiwan is out of the woods. The first island chain constrains China’s aspirations to use its navy to project power. And with Taiwan between the two break-out points that lead directly into the Pacific—the Bashi Channel and the Miyako Strait—some in Beijing fear that America could ‘use Taiwan to keep China in check’ by promoting closer military cooperation. Such fears may have prompted previous incursions, such as the 12 June wave of 28 aircraft that followed soon after three US senators visited Taiwan, and the 12 April 12 wave of 25 aircraft, which occurred the day after US Secretary of State Antony Blinken condemned China’s ‘increasingly aggressive actions’. Blinken was not wrong to call China out, but criticisms need to remain grounded in the facts.

Western critiques accused of misstating the nature and immediacy of the threat China poses to Taiwan are increasingly viewed by Beijing as being in bad faith and aimed at cajoling Taiwan’s ‘collusion’ in the agenda to constrain China’s rise. The danger of reactive commentary is thus not only that it might misidentify the China threat, but that it could also serve to augment it.

Why is China ramping up construction of missile silos?

Earlier this year, freelance analysts in the United States confirmed vague Pentagon speculation since around 2018 that China intended to expand its force of land-based strategic missiles capable of reaching most or all of the US. These analysts found 120–145 newly constructed silos for such missiles—probably the DF-41, the newest in the Chinese arsenal. China has roughly 350 nuclear weapons of which about 100 are operational missiles capable of reaching the US, all with a single warhead. The DF-41 has been designed to carry multiple warheads, so these developments, taken together, foreshadow an uncharacteristically large and sudden surge in a critical Chinese nuclear capability.

What might have triggered this build-up? The most obvious possibility—and certainly a contributing factor—is that China fears falling too far behind the US (and Russia). US offensive nuclear forces have experienced relative neglect since the end of the Cold War—relative, in particular, to defences against strategic nuclear missiles. But Russia’s determined efforts to thwart these defences and maintain a viable deterrent, combined with the growing inefficiency and safety concerns associated with ageing US systems and the demise both of several arms-control agreements and of shared instincts to probe for new agreements, have resulted in a US commitment to a comprehensive modernisation program. These developments will certainly have major consequences for China as well.

But another unprecedented package of considerations might also be coming into play. In recent times China has openly portrayed its system of governance as a viable alternative to liberal democracy. It has declared its intent to seek reform of the so-called rules-based order and reaffirmed its intention to persist with its more spectacular aspirations for geopolitical change, notably bringing Taiwan formally into the People’s Republic of China and confirming Chinese sovereignty over the South China Sea. Beijing will certainly be aware that each of these aspirations will constitute a supreme test of the tools available to sustain stability and peace and may well have concluded that a nuclear order more supportive of its interests would be a prudent investment.

China was the last of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (China, France, Russia, the UK and the US) to acquire nuclear weapons—in 1964, nearly 20 years after the first US test. The PRC initially sought refuge under the wing of the USSR but concluded from the experience of the Korean War and China’s probing in 1954–55 of US resolve with respect to Taiwan that Moscow was an unreliable security partner. Mao Zedong reportedly resolved in 1955 that China would develop its own nuclear weapons. Thereafter, Sino-Soviet relations descended towards an emphatic rupture.

Moscow threatened in 1964 (when China conducted its first nuclear test) and in 1969 (following major infantry clashes along the Sino-Soviet border in Siberia) to destroy China’s nascent nuclear facilities, to which the US signalled its strong opposition. Later, in 1972, we saw the rapprochement between Beijing and Washington, a relationship that acquired rather surprising breadth and depth and which survived several major shocks to endure until 2017.

Over the years 1950 to 1966, America’s nuclear posture (set out in what became known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP) viewed China as inseparable from the USSR and therefore a primary target for the nuclear forces the US maintained on continuous alert. Between 1966 and 1982, China was detached from the Soviet Union but remained a primary target. Under the Reagan administration, China was reclassified as a secondary target under the SIOP (and the Pentagon was even directed to prepare to provide military assistance to China in the event of renewed Sino-Soviet conflict). More than a decade later, however, in the second term of the Clinton administration, China was reinstated in the SIOP as a primary nuclear target. Then, in what could be regarded as America’s primary pivot to Asia and China, the succeeding Bush administration elected to switch the centre of gravity of America’s nuclear posture from the Atlantic to the Pacific—including switching the home ports of five nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines from the Atlantic to Bangor, Washington, on the Pacific Ocean.

The key point is that this trajectory of events allowed China to develop its own nuclear capabilities at a leisurely pace and to keep its aspirations modest in terms of numbers and variety. Nuclear-induced tensions with the US arose from time to time, but they stemmed primarily from various proliferation pressures (Pakistan, North Korea and Iran) rather than from nuclear threats that China could direct at the US.

This is the context that makes the discovery of the new missile silos unusual and worrying. This is true even if, as some analysts suspect, China intends to deploy a much smaller number of missiles and move them randomly between neighbouring silos to enhance their probability of surviving a counterforce attack. We may have to prepare ourselves for more of the same as China seeks a nuclear posture vis-à-vis the US (and Russia) that it feels can more reliably support not only its strategic objectives but also the prominent or pre-eminent role in the international system that it envisages for itself.

China military watch

The arms control community has been gripped by the discovery that China appears to be building hundreds of new missile silos. The development raises the prospect that China may be breaking out of its traditional ‘minimum deterrent’ capability. And it raises the question of whether China is edging away from a ‘no first use’ nuclear posture.

It’s important to understand exactly what is happening and consider the broader context of China’s nuclear force development. The discovery by researchers at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies in California that 119 missile silos were being built in the desert near the city of Yumen in the Gansu region suggested a rapid expansion of China’s nuclear weapons capabilities. A second field of 120 silos under construction was discovered near the city of Hami, 380 kilometres northwest of the Yumen field. The two silo fields closely match those established in a People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force training area in Jilantai in Inner Mongolia. The discovery of a third potential site was revealed last week by the US Air Force’s China Aerospace Studies Institute. The new location is near Hanggin Banner, also in Inner Mongolia.

Together, the three fields of new silos, once finished, will represent a truly unprecedented potential expansion of China’s nuclear forces, if each silo holds an intercontinental ballistic missile, or ICBM.

China’s nuclear modernisation program for ICBMs is focused on the DF-41, which will replace the PLA’s ageing DF-4 and DF-5A missiles. The DF-41 is a road-mobile, solid-fuelled ICBM that can carry several nuclear warheads as multiple independent re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). But analysis last year suggested that a silo-launched mode is available for the DF-41.

Deploying the road-mobile DF-41 in silos in Yumen, Hami and Hanggin Banner, and expanding the DF-41 ICBM force significantly in the process, would achieve several objectives. An expanded force of silo-based weapons would demand that Washington consider the prospect of a devastating second strike in retaliation for any US precision strike—even if the US used non-nuclear weapons—on Chinese nuclear forces, such as mobile missile launchers on transporter erector launcher, or TEL, vehicles.

Certainly, the US could try to take out the silos, but it seems unlikely that precision conventional weapons would be assured of success, and a nuclear first strike would guarantee a Chinese response. So, with no easy way for the US to defeat the silo-based weapons and the high risk of a massive Chinese retaliation in the face of any US strike on the mainland, China’s ability to deter such a strike in the first place would increase.

This would give the Chinese government greater freedom to act below the nuclear threshold, wielding its non-nuclear sword, while being more effectively defended by an expanded nuclear shield. Sea-based deterrent forces on the PLA Navy’s Jin-class ballistic missile submarines (and eventually on the quieter Type 096), as well as the emerging PLA Air Force strategic leg of a nuclear triad, will add to this mix.

It’s possible that China won’t deploy a DF-41 in every silo, emulating an old US idea of a shell game that was suggested for its Peacekeeper ICBM in the 1980s. That concept involved moving a small number of missiles between silos to complicate adversary targeting.

In expanding its nuclear forces, China may also move towards a ‘launch on warning’ posture. That, in turn, would demand more effective missile early warning capabilities and a more effective and survivable nuclear command-and-control system. Russia is assisting China in establishing a space-based missile early warning system that would be crucial in ensuring a survivable nuclear deterrent, especially for silo-based ICBMs. Russia is also contributing to Chinese development of a ballistic missile defence system. These projects have raised concern about the risk of inadvertent escalation if China deployed dual-role intermediate-range missiles such as the DF-26.

Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists estimated China’s total nuclear arsenal in 2020 at 320 warheads, which included ICBMs of the PLA Rocket Force, submarine-launched ballistic missiles and the emerging PLA Air Force strategic capability. The US Defense Intelligence Agency suggested in 2019 that China ‘is likely to at least double the size of its nuclear stockpile’ over the next decade. In April, US Strategic Command went further, stating that ‘China is well ahead of the pace necessary to double their nuclear stockpile by the end of the decade’. The construction of large numbers of ICBM silos would align with predictions that China’s nuclear forces will expand, at a minimum, to twice the current size. But much will also depend on the amount of fissile material China has access to.

According to the International Panel on Fissile Materials, as of April, China had approximately 14 tons of weapons-grade highly enriched uranium and approximately 2.9 tons of military-grade plutonium. The International Atomic Energy Agency notes that about 8 kilograms of plutonium is required for a nuclear weapon, while the critical mass of uranium required for a nuclear weapon is 15 kilograms. Taking into account estimates of 200 deployed warheads and up to 320 in total, which together would consume a portion of China’s stockpiles of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium, China would have sufficient fissile material for about 730 nuclear warheads without having to build new enrichment or reprocessing facilities.

The key question to ask is why Beijing is choosing to do this now. Replacing older delivery systems is certainly one reason, with the goal being to strengthen China’s deterrent credibility in the face of improving US ballistic missile defence and non-nuclear precision-strike capabilities. Large numbers of silo-based ICBMs add to the challenge facing US nuclear planners in any future war, such as that which might occur this decade over Taiwan. China may be anticipating such a conflict, and this rapid expansion reduces the US’s ability to strike the mainland without facing unacceptable risks of rapid nuclear retaliation.

How China’s military–civil fusion policy ties into its push for world-class universities

When the University College Cork in Ireland withdrew from a partnership with Minzu University of China (MUC) in 2021, speculation cited concerns linking MUC with human rights abuses against Uyghurs in Xinjiang. This included the arrest of a Uyghur professor at MUC who was accused of separatism and escalating ethnic tensions.

The speculation, however, failed to unveil MUC’s direct involvement in developing technologies used to oppress ethnic minorities in China.

MUC and Xinjiang University are two universities under the ‘double first-class university plan’ which is intended to provide 42 elite Chinese universities with resources to become ‘world-class’ universities. Both are working on speech– and facial-recognition technologies used to target ethnic minorities.

These two universities host joint research institutes with iFlytek, a Chinese company sanctioned in October 2019 after being implicated in human rights violations against Uyghurs, and faculty members have worked on projects commissioned by the company.

Xinjiang University and iFlytek jointly run a speech and language research laboratory, through which iFlytek leverages the university’s Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Arabic language expertise contributing to China’s ‘speech and language information industry’.

The lab’s research could enhance iFlytek’s speech-recognition technology, such as its ‘voiceprint’ system that can compare a recording from a phone or app against a database of tens of millions of voices.

The face- and speech-recognition technologies developed by these universities are powered by artificial intelligence, a high priority technology under China’s military–civil fusion (MCF) strategy. Through MCF, China seeks to leverage the research and development capabilities of universities to advance both the country’s domestic economy and national defence apparatus.

The double first-class universities plan works to integrate universities into this MCF research and development pipeline where they’re expected to serve as an integral source of science and technology innovation, bolstering research outcomes in the military and civilian sectors.

The plan evolved from previous initiatives, including the 211 project and the more selective 985 project, established in 1995 and 1998. All 39 of the universities in the 985 project were selected as double first-class universities, indicating that they’ve been cultivated for this type of work for more than two decades.

A new update to ASPI International Cyber Policy Centre’s China Defence Universities Tracker, built by then ASPI analyst Alex Joske in 2019, has added 15 new universities. They include 11 of the remaining 42 double first-class universities not originally covered in the tracker, in addition to Guangdong University of Technology, the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Dalian Maritime University and Southern University of Science and Technology. As well as the addition of new universities, we have also updated existing university entries on the tracker.

China’s top universities, especially those under the double first-class plan, are intended to excel in scientific research to enable the two-way transformation of military and civilian science and technology. Several have established transfer centres that facilitate the development of technology for MCF.

Guangdong University of Technology, for example, jointly founded the Guangdong National Defence Science and Technology Application Promotion Centre, which produces equipment including military robots, automatic anti-aircraft missiles and other missile defence systems. Because universities are positioned to collaborate on research, these technology transfer centres can apply research outcomes from international cooperation to their own R&D.

Southern University of Science and Technology leverages its overseas cooperation to improve research outcomes for its technology transfer centre. The centre explicitly seeks to collaborate with overseas research institutes including California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich and the National University of Singapore, among others.

Zhengzhou University, one of the 11 double first-class universities identified above, has integrated very effectively into the MCF system. It has close ties with the Information Engineering University, which is affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army and known to carry out offensive cyber operations.

The two universities signed an MCF cooperation agreement in the field of cybersecurity and informatisation in 2018 with plans to establish a joint cybersecurity centre.

Zhengzhou University also hosts the National Supercomputer (Zhengzhou) Centre which, in April, was added to the list of entities considered to be conducting activities ‘contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States’ because of its work on ‘supercomputers used by China’s military actors, its destabilizing military modernization efforts, and/or weapons of mass destruction programs’.

The updated tracker now includes entries on nearly 100 civilian universities, 50 PLA institutions, China’s nuclear weapons program, three Ministry of State Security institutions, four Ministry of Public Security universities and 12 state-owned defence industry conglomerates.

As these universities continue to accelerate their integration into China’s MCF system, it will be important to continue to monitor their activities and contributions. It’s equally important for governments, universities and private companies around the world to equip themselves with the knowledge and tools to inform their collaboration with, and funding of, Chinese research institutions.

The tracker (and accompanying report)—which has become ASPI’s second-most-visited research product of all time—has attracted a global audience with enormous traffic from the US and China, followed by Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, Singapore, France, Taiwan, the Netherlands, Russia and India. With this audience, the tracker aims to build understanding of the implications of the expansion of China’s military–civil fusion.

The tracker continues to be a free, public tool to help universities, governments and the business community conduct better due diligence as they navigate their engagement and collaboration with entities from China.

China’s new bomber should be cause for concern for Australia

Australia should be paying close attention to the imminent appearance of the Xian H-20 stealth bomber built by the Aviation Industry Corporation of China. The aircraft will greatly improve China’s ability to hit distant targets, such as those in Australia.

Part of the solution for dealing with the H-20 is to a large degree Australian: skywave over-the-horizon radar technology.

The People’s Liberation Army Air Force has shown teasing renderings of the bomber in a recruitment video, highlighted by Joseph Trevithick of The War Zone. Trevithick judges that the video is official, and I agree.

Having written in late 2018 that China would probably reveal the H-20 in the flesh in 2019 (it didn’t), and in late 2019 that the event should be ‘close’ (it wasn’t), I hesitate to be so bold again. But I will be anyway, because the teasing by the PLAAF with images is a good hint that the aircraft’s unveiling is near. There’s at least a fair chance that we’ll see the bomber rolled out in 2021 in preparation for its first flight, and I would lay money on it appearing by the end of 2022.

Judging from the six years between the first appearance of AVIC’s Chengdu J-20 and that fighter’s entry into service in 2016, a PLAAF bomber squadron should have its first H-20s by the late 2020s. If so, the type should be operational in useful numbers in the early 2030s.

What will we see when it appears? Almost certainly an all-wing or blended-wing-body aircraft, maybe without stealth-degrading vertical surfaces. It should remind us much of the US Northrop Grumman B-2 bomber, though Trevithick sensibly points out that the H-20’s planform could be simpler (and better) than the B-2’s. The PLAAF’s rendering of an H-20 under wraps shows no sign of the winglets that appeared in another apparently official hint at the configuration in 2018; that depiction may have been intended to confuse us (but, then again, so could the latest). The image in the video does, however, show curious pairs of bumps near the tips of each side of the upper wing surface. Whatever they are, they will degrade stealth—if the H-20 really has them.

In 2016, PLAAF commander General Ma Xiaotian described the forthcoming type as a long-range bomber, which must mean it will fly a good deal further than the AVIC Xian H-6, officially said to have medium range. The H-6 is a derivative of the Soviet Tupolev Tu-16. In its H-6K version, it has a strike radius without refuelling of more than 2,000 kilometres, depending on payload, and a gross weight of 95 tonnes. Since the US Air Force says the 153-tonne B-2 has an intercontinental range (conventionally, 5,500 kilometres for a ballistic missile, which could be taken as the minimum likely radius for the B-2), it would not be surprising to see a strike radius of at least 4,000 kilometres for the H-20.

That reach can be extended with cruise missiles—but H-20s will rely less on such weapons, because the bombers will be able to pass closer to opponents’ radars without detection.

It can’t be repeated too often: preparation for and conduct of war is economic, an allocation of finite resources. Militaries always (or should always) seek the maximum offensive and defensive effect for the least expenditure. Much of the importance of the H-20 is that it will greatly improve China’s bang-per-buck ratio for defended targets.

Cruise missiles are hard and costly to shoot down; Australia is virtually defenceless against them. Barely discussed is that an unimaginable range of Australian military and civilian facilities and infrastructure can be knocked out by cruise missiles. For example, we endlessly debate the cost of submarine programs, but where, exactly, does the Royal Australian Navy expect to refuel and restock these vessels after each war patrol? Which facilities are expected not to be smoking ruins?

The most optimistic thing that Australia can say about Chinese cruise missiles is that weapons of that category are themselves costly; Tomahawk missiles cost around US$1 million (A$1.3 million) each, even after four decades of production. So China’s stock of cruise missiles is necessarily limited. If Australia were fighting alongside the US, China might not have many rounds to spare to send south. Most high-priority targets for cruise-missile attack would be on Guam and in Japan and Taiwan.

For Australia, these mildly comforting thoughts evaporate if a stealthy enemy can approach targets close enough to lob cheap and abundant free-fall or gliding bombs at them—and that is indeed one of the advantages of a stealth aircraft. Even if a stand-off distance of a few hundred kilometres is needed (say, because the defender has deployed a combat air patrol backed by an air-surveillance aircraft) the economics of the attack are improved by use of cheapish cruise missiles with only moderate range.

So far, so depressing. But H-20s may be tracked despite their stealth. One means may be from space, particularly from a huge constellation of small tracking satellites envisaged under the US’s National Defense Space Architecture. Further, a here-and-now capability is in the Royal Australian Air Force’s Jindalee over-the-horizon radar network, based on technology in which Australia, unusually, is probably the world leader.

Counterstealth radars use longer wavelengths (lower frequencies) than are ideal for precision, because the radar cross-section (reflectivity) of a stealth aircraft generally rises rapidly with wavelength. So such radars use not the X band typical of a fire-control radar (with wavelengths of 3.75–7.5 centimetres) but the L (15–30 centimetres) or even VHF (1–10 metres) band. VHF approaches the ideal: a wavelength equal to the dimensions of the target, a condition at which stealth designers run short of answers.

Well, the three Jindalee radars reach that ideal. To achieve the ionospheric bounce that allows them to see beyond the horizon, they operate in the HF band, with wavelengths of 10–100 metres. It’s safe to say that they can easily track B-2s (wingspan 52 metres, length 21 metres) and that they would pick up H-20s with no more difficulty.

The precision of Jindalee is an extraordinarily important but secret issue. We can at least say that, if these high-frequency radars cannot directly cue fighters or surface-to-air systems, they can cue other sensors; these, being closer to the target, might achieve a precision track and complete the kill chain.

So the Jindalee system, already crucial for observing Australia’s continental approaches, will become even more important in the age of the H-20. And knocking out Jindalee becomes correspondingly important to Chinese planners.

Sad to say, the surveillance system looks vulnerable. The arrays, emplaced in remote sites in the outback, appear to be modular and may be hard to shut down by knocking out segments, but they send their data to a hub that controls them at RAAF Edinburgh near Adelaide. That’s a single point of failure if ever there was one. Yes, cruise missiles are expensive, but there’s good value for money in firing a few from a submarine in the Great Australian Bight after dialling in the coordinates of that facility.

Australia must attend to this vulnerability.

The US Navy needs to admit it can’t outbuild China

The most often quoted line of the ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu is that ‘supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting’. By that measure, the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army have shown themselves to be excellent by winning a bloodless battle with the US. China’s anti-access/area-denial strategy has already broken the US’s willingness to operate close to China’s coast in a conflict. It won that first battle through asymmetric means when it couldn’t match the US military in conventional might.

Now it appears China is moving to win a second bloodless battle by using its industrial strength to outbuild the US Navy in conventional military power and push the US further away from the western Pacific and its allies there. The goal of these two battles is to win a bloodless war by making the cost to the US of intervening to counter an invasion of Taiwan too high.

The Chinese strategy has put the US military in a bind, perhaps best illustrated by the US Navy’s struggles to develop an achievable force structure that can deter or defeat Chinese ambitions at an acceptable cost in treasure and, if necessary, blood.

US presidents, congresspeople and the navy have held a view that 355 ships was the magic number. It’s debatable in world of growing Chinese power and evolving technology whether that was the right number, but the reality was the navy couldn’t have gotten there anyway. The cost of new ships has spiralled upwards, driven by the need for the sort of exquisitely complex, multirole vessels that can defeat the broadening range of threats posed by Chinese systems. Independent analysis indicated that achieving the 355 goal would require around 60% more spending on shipbuilding than the US had averaged. Consequently, ship numbers fell as the retirement of old vessels outran the launch of new ones, reaching a low of around 280.

Failed attempts to break out of the cycle, either by deploying advanced new technologies, in the case of the Zumwalt destroyer, or by building cheaper ships, in the case of the littoral combat ship, only exacerbated the problem by siphoning resources away from other programs in return for little or no useful capability. Moreover, they destroyed the navy’s credibility with Congress. The result was that the navy was losing capabilities such as vertical launch cells, a key metric of naval power, much faster than it could replace them.

Other ways to break out of the cycle are being explored, but so far remain largely conceptual. Whether under the name of mosaic warfare, distributed lethality or some other term, they involve disaggregating capabilities such as weapons, sensors, processing power and communications systems into smaller vessels and vehicles, some manned, some unmanned. The individual components would be cheaper, but when linked into a resilient network or mesh enabled by artificial intelligence, together they would provide greater, more responsive lethality while being able to suffer attrition. Such concepts have made some progress towards reality, but overall have struggled to gain traction.

The Report to Congress on the annual long-range plan for construction of naval vessels released by the Office of Secretary of Defense on 9 December reveals the tension at play between these factors. While the report was released after Secretary of Defense Mark Esper was ‘terminated’ by President Donald Trump, it was developed on his watch after he rejected the navy’s previous attempts to develop a viable force structure and a plan to get there.

Crucially, the report doesn’t yield the battlefield to China; it is focused on reasserting the US’s warfighting advantage against China (and Russia). To do so, it breaks out of the shackles of the 355-ship formula. Strikingly, it does this by planning for more ships—around 400 manned vessels teaming with around 140 unmanned.

A key element of the plan is to acquire more smaller ships, both combat and amphibious vessels. The number of small surface combatants will grow from 34 now to 68 by the middle of the century, while large surface combatants will fall from 91 to 74. These aren’t small ships—the small surface combatant will be Fincantieri’s FREMM frigate, which was one of the contenders in Australia’s future-frigate competition. They will be a lot more capable than the littoral combat ships but will have significantly fewer vertical-launch cells than the Ticonderoga-class cruisers that are retiring (and whose replacement is still undecided). The plan also includes the smaller amphibious ships sought by the commandant of the US Marine Corps to allow his forces to operate within range of China’s A2/AD capabilities.

Yet this is far from a wholesale move to mosaic warfare. For one, the plan is still committed to large numbers of extremely expensive manned platforms. In addition to the 74 large surface combatants, it maintains 10 or 11 aircraft carriers, plus it increases the number of nuclear attack submarines—one key area where the US still has a substantial technological advantage over China—from 52 to 80.

The navy’s commitment to unmanned systems, meanwhile, seems a little wobbly. While the plan envisages acquiring eight Orca extra-large unmanned underwater vessels over the next five years, things are not so rosy for unmanned surface vessels (USVs). The navy had been pressing ahead with two unmanned surface ship classes that it is already testing with the fleet at sea: the Sea Hunter medium USV, which was to act as a sensor platform; and a large USV, which would act as an ‘adjunct fires magazine’, that is, a cheap way to get more launch cells to sea.

But while the plan states that ‘significant resources are added to accelerate fielding the full spectrum of unmanned capabilities’, it foresees acquiring only one medium USV over the next five years. And while the plan sought 12 large USVs, a sceptical Congress has intervened, questioning whether the technologies and concepts for their use are sufficiently mature. It wants the navy to explore other affordable ways to get launch cells to sea before committing to an unmanned solution.

The biggest flaw in the plan is that it still hasn’t cracked the nut of affordability. The reduction in large surface combatants is nowhere near enough to offset the additions. The 2021 budget assigned US$20.3 billion to shipbuilding, growing to US$28.2 billion in 2026. Under the new plan, it grows to US$38.4 billion. That’s 89% more than now, and 36% more than the old plan envisaged for 2026. Across the next five years it’s a US$38.8 billion increase over the current plan. And that’s before those numbers are scrutinised by agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office.

The accompanying fiscal planning framework identifies US$45 billion in funding that can be redirected to shipbuilding, but those funds can only be described as illusory: US$35 billion is ‘savings’ in operations funding to be realised by ‘getting the US out of endless wars’. But even if President Joe Biden stops those operations, it’s unlikely that Congress would still appropriate the same level of funding but redirect it to shipbuilding. Other savings come at the expense of the army, which won’t go down without a fight. Meanwhile, the air force is facing exactly the same problem of ageing platforms and massive recapitalisation shortfalls as the navy—and its fighter and bomber programs also have constituencies in Congress.

It may appear to be academic to analyse a shipbuilding plan in the week after the administration that published it left office. But the Biden administration faces the same thorny issues. Simply seeking to outbuild China doesn’t seem to be viable, particularly if it requires massive increases in funding, which likely isn’t a high priority for the new administration. Yet turning mosaic warfighting concepts into an affordable reality will take time, something the US’s ageing fleet doesn’t necessarily have.

If the key threat is the growing Chinese navy, then effective, timely responses will require moving beyond focusing on ships to be built in future decades to planning for joint responses drawing on all US assets. The US Marine Corps’ reconceptualisation of itself as a ship-killing force is one hint towards a different way of thinking. Resuscitating the US Air Force’s bomber fleet’s role as ship-killers is another. Even the US Army can play a role here with its own long-range strike platforms. And that’s before we think about the role the US’s coalition of allies can play.