CV-18 Fujian/003 CATOBAR carrier thread

[Blitzo]

Too much singular fixation on "asymmetry" and "A2AD". "Thinktankland" tries to approach China strategy from the standpoint of where and how a technically and economically inferior opponent can leverage and exploit weaknesses to stay competitive. While there's nothing inherently faulty about this approach, I think they often develop myopia being too impressed with themselves about novel concepts, and forget to look at China's military development holistically. Specifically, I think what the US common defense analysis on China often misses is that: 1) Asymmetry is most useful for resource constrained adversaries, and China is no longer resource constrained. 2) For adversaries that aren't resource constrained strategic choices aren't diametrically exclusive, and asymmetric approaches that stem from pursuit of cost efficiency, by virtue of their cost effective nature, can be *layered* onto other approaches. 3) China is not the Soviet Union, even though many treat the two as substitutes of one another in their thinking.

The US defense community primarily tries to understand China's strategy for a potential China-US conflict through the standpoint of how China tries to deter the US, but China primarily thinks about a potential conflict with the US from the standpoint of how it can beat and supplant the US decisively in the entirety of the Pacific theater, which requires a lot more than beating US naval groups. There's a misunderstanding of doctrine and strategic objectives on the part of many US observers that skews and misleads their analysis. While maybe not an entirely fair characterization, one could maybe simplify the reason for this as China respecting their potential adversary a lot more than vice versa. China's answer to US CVGs probably shouldn't be symmetrical, but that doesn't mean that's all China should or is aiming to build for.

Yes, I agree with much of this, although one part I don't fully agree with is the underlined part.

I think the two types of thought are not necessarily incompatible -- i.e.: for China to seek to attain its own military capabilities as one of being able to beat and supplant the US in the pacific and aiming to achieve those capabilities, can and should be seen as a fundamental form of deterrence in of itself.

I do agree however, that much of the US defense community's analyses of China's goal for deterrence/strategic capabilities are constrained by other biases which you've described, such as always viewing Chinese capabilities in a purely asymmetrical manner, with assumptions of broad technological inferiority which may no longer be the case in many domains, and a general lack of "respect" or an insufficient honouring of the threat so to speak, in a more cultural and psychosocial way which then may lead to underestimates of the kind of technological capabilities that China may seek to field as well as underestimating the ambition and creativity of China's military on a strategic level as well.
The J-20 is an excellent case of this, where much "professional" commentary about J-20 seems almost head-in-sand blind to even the possibility that J-20 may have been designed with a logical but also "ambitious" purpose like air superiority, as that would threaten the much vaunted exclusivity of the aircraft F-22 and result in some uncomfortable insinuations about what the state of advancement of China's military aviation industry (but also military industry at large) is really at, not to mention what the ambition and scale of China's overall military strategy may actually be.


I can sort of understand how that kind of perspective and blindness comes about, because after all only two decades or so ago such a view would've been quite accurate to sum up China's immediate goals for that period. But things have changed and it's no longer the 90s, and if defense commentators, thinktanks and defense media had paid proper attention to the shifting winds in the last decade or so like one would think they are paid to do, then that perspective might have been rectified quite a while ago.

 

[latenlazy]

Yes, I agree with much of this, although one part I don't fully agree with is the underlined part.

I think the two types of thought are not necessarily incompatible -- i.e.: for China to seek to attain its own military capabilities as one of being able to beat and supplant the US in the pacific and aiming to achieve those capabilities, can and should be seen as a fundamental form of deterrence in of itself.

I do agree however, that much of the US defense community's analyses of China's goal for deterrence/strategic capabilities are constrained by other biases which you've described, such as always viewing Chinese capabilities in a purely asymmetrical manner, with assumptions of broad technological inferiority which may no longer be the case in many domains, and a general lack of "respect" or an insufficient honouring of the threat so to speak, in a more cultural and psychosocial way which then may lead to underestimates of the kind of technological capabilities that China may seek to field as well as underestimating the ambition and creativity of China's military on a strategic level as well.

I didn't mean to say that the two ideas in the underlined portion are mutually exclusive, merely that by implicitly framing their thinking along the first idea many in the US defense community miss important details and insights that become more naturally obvious in the second idea.

 

[antiterror13]

Because in the next 20 years, the US will deploy substantially larger number of carriers with larger air wings in any conflict with china. Hence Chinese carriers operating outside of effective range of land based fighter cover is unlikely to operate effectively, and also unlikely to survive for that matter, to say nothing of their chances if they were indeed to operate inside the range of American land based air cover. I think it will take china 30-40 years to match the US navy.

I don't think China needs to match the US navy .. it is just a huge waste in my opinion ... just 60% of the USN capability is more than enough for China ... and yes it will be achieved within 20 years

 

[Blitzo]

I didn't mean to say that the two ideas in the underlined portion are mutually exclusive, merely that by implicitly framing their thinking along the first idea many in the US defense community miss important details and insights that become more naturally obvious in the second idea.

I would say that thinking only along the lines of "deterrence," if deterrence was conceived of in a sufficiently accurate manner, could lead to an accurate appraisal.

I think the problem is that "deterrence" becomes constrained by the other factors that you mentioned and which I added on in my last post, causing the appraisal of it to become much more limited and un-ambitious.
Although I understand what you're getting at -- the word "deterrence" when thought about in terms of the word's definition, conveys a far less ambitious level of military capability compared to the alternative idea of "being able to contest with and beat a foe outright," as the minimum threshold of capability for seeking to achieve either goal is much lower for deterrence than for the latter.

 

[Pmichael]

China basically gets the opposite treatment of the SU or even Russia today. Whatever the Soviets did it was something that would easily destroy the NATO Bomber Gap, Missile Gap, MIG-25 all their tanks from the IS-3 to the T-80 despite their design flaws and subpar performance in any conflicts.

China is still "decades behind" or something like that.

 

[latenlazy]

the word "deterrence" when thought about in terms of the word's definition, conveys a far less ambitious level of military capability compared to the alternative idea of "being able to contest with and beat a foe outright," as the minimum threshold of capability for seeking to achieve either goal is much lower for deterrence than for the latter.

Bingo. Deterrence is "how do they make it not worth our while" and not "how do they beat us". The former evades explicitly considering the possibility that your adversary may prove to be superior, but within China's regional theater that is explicitly what they are building towards.

 

[SinoSoldier]

You don't need a large navy to provide sufficient deterrence if you have lots of area denial weaponry. And a couple of "trump cards" like the DF-21D or YJ-12.

 

[Blitzo]

Bingo. Deterrence is "how do they make it not worth our while" and not "how do they beat us". The former evades explicitly considering the possibility that your adversary may prove to be superior, but within China's regional theater that is explicitly what they are building towards.

Yes, I think when thinking about it in terms of "minimum capability needed to achieve," the argument makes more sense, as the "minimum capability needed to achieve deterrence" vs "minimum capaiblity needed to contest and defeat" is different.

However, I would maintain that it is also fair to say that there are predisposing factors which cause some commentators and think tanks to tend to think about Chinese deterrence only in terms of "minimum capability" rather than deterrence as a more multi layered and robust capability which may also happen to include the capability to contest and defeat.

 

[latenlazy]

Yes, I think when thinking about it in terms of "minimum capability needed to achieve," the argument makes more sense, as the "minimum capability needed to achieve deterrence" vs "minimum capaiblity needed to contest and defeat" is different.

However, I would maintain that it is also fair to say that there are predisposing factors which cause some commentators and think tanks to tend to think about Chinese deterrence only in terms of "minimum capability" rather than deterrence as a more multi layered and robust capability which may also happen to include the capability to contest and defeat.

And where I have a smidge more to say (though I recognize you're not saying China thinks of security in terms of "minimal capability to achieve x") is I don't think China even thinks about this from the standpoint of "minimal" capabilities of anything. It's probably too extreme to call them maximalists, but I think their thinking is to be better than the US in the Asia Pacific theater by a comfortable margin. They're not interested in leaving the question on the table, because it would be the less safe outcome for them.

 

[Blitzo]

And where I have a smidge more to say (though I recognize you're not saying China thinks of security in terms of "minimal capability to achieve x") is I don't think China even thinks about this from the standpoint of "minimal" capabilities of anything. It's probably too extreme to call them maximalists, but I think their thinking is to be better than the US in the Asia Pacific theater by a comfortable margin. They're not interested in leaving the question on the table, because it would be the less safe outcome for them.

yes, the idea of "minimum capability" in those two contexts are more related to trying to understand how most of the western defence establishment thinks of China's military strategy.

For the Chinese military itself, I imagine their goal is most definitely to try and reach a level of capability where they are quite comfortably the top dog in the western pacific at large. However, I think this has only become a realistic goal for them to seek and achieve in the last five years or so, and of course depending on how the economic fortunes of the world occurs the prospect may or may not be achievable in the medium-long term, as it will of course be a medium-long term process.