2020: JMSDF & PLAN Surface Combatant strength

Jeff Head said:

Actually...not.

The arms race that Reagan instituted in the 1980s that finally got the job done was not the tank vs tank, aircraft vs. aircraft variety that had already been going on for 30 years. It was high tech and strategic initiatives. Star Wars, for all the fun that was made of it, was producing results, and the Russian intelligence knew it, so in addition to the normal Russian, my ten thousand inferior tanks vs your four thousand better tanks race, they had to come up with something equally cutting edge to dfefeat what 1st American labs were discovering and experimenting with, and then later American manufacturers were protoyping...and they bankrupted themselves trying to do that.

Now Star Wars technology has come of age in so many respects. BMD is not only poissible, but deployed. Space based systems are equally [ossible...just not deployed. The Lasers and Rail Guns will be joining the US fleet soon, and particle beam efforts are ongoing and also producing fruit.

There was a tremendous technological and qualitative edge that the US enjoyed and enabled them to do what they did to Russia once it was applied to those strategic areas in a defensive mode.

The Chinese do not enjoy such an edge on the United States. Many, if not mmost, of their systems are 2-3 generation behind. But they are closing that gap. But not to the extent that they can start an arms race tomorrow with the hopes of bankrupting America in the hopes that she could "keep up." It would be the PRC sending trillions trying to "catch up," in that regard, and then get ahead enough where such a thing could happen.

I do not see that happening in my life time, and probably not that of my children.

Does this mean the PRC will not get strong enough to challenge the US in that time frame? Far from it. I expect they almost certainly will. In the next ten years the PLAN and PLAAF will be strong enough to exert challenges to the US in the Western Pacific...and short of the two sides aligning their ideological differneces, they probably will. Hopefully not to the point of open conflict, but more like the cold war.

I am just saying that they will not get so far that they can do to the US what the US did to Russia in the forseeable future. If America suffered a tremendous economic crash...it is likely the entire world would go with it. Same is true of the whole European Union, of Japan (to a lesser extnet) and certainly to China as well. Everyone knows this and wants to avoid it if they can.

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The Soviet's did it to them selfs. In the end all nations rise and fall due to the decisions they make. Star Wars was in no way a threat to Soviet nuclear deterrence. They had about 10,000 nuclear warheads mounted on thousands of missile's that can be launched from land, air and sea. There was no system in the world that can neutralize a force like that. Had the leaders in the Kremlin just sat tight and did nothing they may have lasted much longer. It was a war of attricion that the US and the USSR was engaged in and in the end the resources of the Soviet ran out before the American's did. In 1983 at the height of the cold war the Soviet Union had a economy of about 1 trillion dollars. The US had a economy that was more than 3 times bigger. Their was no way for the Soviet Union to keep up with the US economically so there was no chance for them to win the arms race. Had they pulled back and focus on their economy and let there nuclear deterrence protect them and let the Americans spendt them selfs in to a obliviance would have been the smart thing to do. But they didn't and instead rampt up the spending, some say up to 20% to 30% of their GDP went to the armed forces. And we all know what happened.

China has learned from the Soviet Union even today scholars in China can easily get grants if they say that they are studying the Soviet Union. China has studied the Soviet Union more closely than any other country in the world. So they will most likely not make the same mistake as the Soviets did.

This is something i posted earlier in another thread. This is the starting point as of now between the Chinese and Japanese navies.

This list is a rough comparison between the Japanese and Chinese naval forces. The list doesn't take into account training and technology. List include only major surface combatants AC, LHP, LPD, DDG, FFG and corvettes. But excludes subs and auxiliary ships.

Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force surface fleet

Hyūga class LHD (19000 ton) (2)
Atago class DDG (10000 ton) (2)
Kongō class DDG (9500 ton) (4)
Shirane class DDG (7620 ton) (2)
Hatakaze class DDG (4725 ton) (2)
Akizuki class DDG (6800 ton) (1)
Takanami class DDG (6400 ton) (5)
Murasame class DDG (6200 ton) (9)
Asagiri class DDG (4900 ton) (8)
Hatsuyuki class DDG (3100 ton) (10)
Abukuma class DDG (2550 ton) (6)

Japan total (300790 ton) (51 ships) (exclude 19 subs)

People's Liberation Army Navy surface fleet

CV-16 Liaoning AC (67500 ton) (1)
Type 071 class LPD (20000 ton) (3)
Type 052C class DDG (7000 ton) (3)
Type 051C class DDG (7100 ton) (2)
Type 052B class DDG (6500 ton) (2)
Type 052 class DDG (4800 ton) (2)
Type 051B class DDG (6100 ton) (1)
Sovremenny class DDG (7940 ton) (4)
Type 051 class DDG (3670 ton) (10)
Type 054A class FFG (4053 ton) (13)
Type 054 class FFG (4300 ton) (2)
Type 053 Jiangwei class FFG (2400 ton) (14)
Type 053 Jianghu class FFG (1900 ton) (17)

China total (387029 ton) (74 ships) (exclude 60 subs)

useful force (250529 ton) (46 ships) (exclude Luda, Jianghu and the carrier but includes the 14 Type 053 Jiangwei class)

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Blackstone said:

No chance! China will probably not exceed about 2% GDP for defense for a long, long time. They've made massive advances and pulled about 300 million of her citizens out of poverty, but that still leaves about a billion poor people.

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Be patient...300 million Chinese citizens at a time will eventually lead to NO MORE hunger and thirst in China and hopefully the world as well.

Franklin said:

The Soviet's did it to them selfs. In the end all nations rise and fall due to the decisions they make. Star Wars was in no way a threat to Soviet nuclear deterrence. They had about 10,000 nuclear warheads mounted on thousands of missile's that can be launched from land, air and sea. There was no system in the world that can neutralize a force like that. .

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You may say that it didn;t matter now 30 years later, but I lived through the time period and was a part of the defense industry at the time. And it did have a significant impact on the Soviets actions and spending at the time.

It is clear from documents revealed after the Soviet UNion failed that the Soviet leadership did in fact fear what the United States was doing with Star Wars and the technologies it was developing and where they would lead. Much of which has been verifide now that those technologies are maturing. Heck, in 1990-1991 we were on the verge of being able to field the THAADS program (I worked on that project), which was a hit-to-kill system at the theater level which was capable of knocking down incoming rentry vehicles...which was then canceled when Clinton took office, then revived again when Bush took office and has now produced a deployable system.

The Soviets bankrupted themselves in an effort to try and stay ahead of all of that...even though now we find that even back then their technology and accuracy was woeful in terms of its reliability and maintainability. But still far more than enough to get the job done in saturation attacks across the entire nation. The US was just going to be able to defend some selected sites and maintain a very credible "left over force," which the Soviets feared and could not hope to match after the big exchanges. As a result, they were afraid the US was going to, over time, be able to get the upperhand and they spent themselves into oblivion trying to do something about it...on an economy that was failing in any case and could not possibly hope to afford or sustain it.

As I am sure you are aware, it is likely it would have ultimately faied anyway...but it would have taken longer.

But that is history and behind us now.

As to your figures...that's a very fair and accurate description of the two naval forces, and mine are very similar, once you get down to the effective force as you have it listed in that last paragraph or two.

One note.....since you are including the PLAN LPDs, you are leaving out Japan's:


...which they have three of and which displace 9-10,000 tons each. I do not include either the Type 071s or the Osumis because they would not "fight" the other nation's naval vessels so did not match what I was contemplating. They dio Project force though in the since that put boots on the ground.

Soon the Japanese will have two larger carriers than the Hyuga class. The Type 22DDH and 24DDH (27,000 tons each) which could operate fixed wing STOVL aircraft if they choose. They will probably be opertional in terms of their being able to head up large ASW task forces in the same time frame that the Liaoning gets its airwing operational. So you might want to consider including them too since they are fully funded projects that are both in advanced stages of construction and will launch in the next year or two.

Jeff Head said:

By missiles, I presume you mean ICBMs or some such? Because a VLS, of course, houses missiles...some of them very long range cruise missiles.

Anyhow, I have no problem with your disagreement. It is just out of context. This thread is specifically about the PLAN and JMSDF, and their relative strengths up to 2020...which are naval forces, which means ships and missiles, and potentially naval aviation.

The strategic teir weapons are not a part of the discussion...on the naval side we are not including the SSBNs by definition. Such weapons would not be used to solve a regional conflict over a few islands in the China Sea.

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I don't quite agree with you Jeff, imagine if JMSDF managed to sink 10 or more Chinese DDG and Frigates over Diaoyudao war, and the Chinese casualties let's say over 10,000 sailors. It would be almost certain the PLA would exercise all available options, including IRBM, ICBM, SLBM and nukes

antiterror13 said:

I don't quite agree with you Jeff, imagine if JMSDF managed to sink 10 or more Chinese DDG and Frigates over Diaoyudao war, and the Chinese casualties let's say over 10,000 sailors. It would be almost certain the PLA would exercise all available options, including IRBM, ICBM, SLBM and nukes

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True but then we are only looking at navy vs navy only

Nevertheless Jeff what's the capacity of the Osumi Class how many helos, troops, tanks and vehicles can it take?

I think these are very good ships but never get enough attention

antiterror13 said:

I don't quite agree with you Jeff, imagine if JMSDF managed to sink 10 or more Chinese DDG and Frigates over Diaoyudao war, and the Chinese casualties let's say over 10,000 sailors. It would be almost certain the PLA would exercise all available options, including IRBM, ICBM, SLBM and nukes

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Extermely unlikely, that even is such a scenario that the Chinese would resort to nuclear attack against Japan.

That would be playing into their own weakness in the global nuclear areana...very un-Sun Tsu-like.

If the Chinese attacked Japan with nuclear weapons, they would be receiving the same in kind from the US which is a very strong strength relative to the US.

Simply not going to happen over a small conventional war that the Chinese happen to lose...even if they lose badly.

My guess is that in such an event, you would probably see the Chinese ramp up production and have a continuing circumstance where the Chinese would put increasing pressure on the Japanese,

But, short of an absolute unbelievable failing on the Chinese command, I cannot imagine the PLAN losing ten DDGs without exacting at least a significant loss on the JMSDF.

The Japanese Navy dislike using the frigate classification. If we were to simply classify ships under a certain tonnage as frigates for comparison (i.e. Hatsuyuki-class destroyers), then the same argument could be used to bump the 056 up as "light frigates". IMO it'd be easier if we simply included all major surface warships over 1,000 tonnes, which would exclude the smaller missile boats.

For all existing PLAN ships that were designed prior to the 052D, their VLS system is probably inferior to the MK-41. The MK-41 VLS system provides the Japanese Navy with great flexibility in its load-outs, from quad packing ESSM to ASROC and variety of Standard Missiles. 32 VLS cells on a Japanese ASW DDG means potentially 96 x ESSM and 8 x ASROC, versus 32 VLS cells on the 054A means 32 x HQ-16's. In a comparison of VLS cells, we cannot compare them on 1:1 ratio at this time.

Also, each of the FCS-3 system on Japanese Navy ships is said to be capable of directing up to 16 missiles against 10 targets simultaneously (The Naval Institute Guide to World Naval Weapons Systems, 1997-1998, pp 313). In terms of defense against saturated attacks, the Japanese FCS-3/3A + ESSM has an edge -- for now. I have little doubt that the new Chinese VLS on 052D will rival the MK-41's capabilities in the future.

Jeff Head said:

Extermely unlikely, that even is such a scenario that the Chinese would resort to nuclear attack against Japan.

That would be playing into their own weakness in the global nuclear areana...very Sun Sun Tsu-like.

If the Chinese attacked Japan with nuclear weapons, they wou,lbe receiving the same in kind from the US which is a very strong strength relative to the US.

Simpkly not going to happen over a conventional war that the Chinese heppen to lose...even if they lose badly.

My guess is that in such an event, you would probably see the Chinese ramp up and gave a continuing circumstance where the Chinese would continue to put pressure on the Japanese,

I cannot imagine the PLAN losing ten DDGs without exacting a similar loss on the JMSDF.

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I'm having difficulty seeing us tradig nukes with China over the Diaoyu islands. Yes, there's the alliance and all that, but Shanghai for Los Angeles and Beijing for Washington D.C. in the name of Japan is a bridge too far.

Blackstone said:

I'm having difficulty seeing us tradig nukes with China over the Diaoyu islands. Yes, there's the alliance and all that, but Shanghai for Los Angeles and Beijing for Washington D.C. in the name of Japan is a bridge too far.

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The experience with Georgia is something I'd consider instructive on possible US actions in similar situations.

As for fleet estimates, I would say that the current baseline of PLAN strength would for the future constitute forces necessary to counter the JMSDF independent of units assigned to carrier groups (which i estimate would be around 3 carriers total), as carrier groups would be necessary for long range deployments and not necessarily immediately available for operations in the First Island Chain. I'd view that the PLAN numbers after 2020 would be of necessity larger than what the more conservative estimates presume.

If, in 2020, China & Japan did come to blows, you would, as others have pointed out, have two fairly evenly-matched opponents. It would be interesting to see what Taiwan would do in such a situation. Bearing in mind Taiwan has essentially the same maritime claims as China (Not to mention a common language & culture.), would she simply sit on the sidelines & watch, hoping to pounce & pick up some tasty tid-bits that drop from the mouths of our two scrapping terriers? Or would Taiwan give her whole-hearted support for one side or the other? This would have dire implications for Taiwan if she backed Japan... & Japan lost. A very one-sided reunification with the mainland for one. (Hey, I live in Taoyuan, Taiwan & I certainly do not want to give 'first-hand, eye-witness' reports on how well China's missiles work...)

Then again, by 2020, Japan & China may decide to work together, if only to give the coup de gras to the dredful regeime in North Korea.