Beijing’s Nightmare: How the U.S. Navy Could Sink Its Prized Aircraft Carriers – The National Interest

Here's What You Need to Know:Weaponeers are working at helter-skelter speed to remedy the U.S. Navys range shortfall.

Ah, yes, the carrier-killer. China is forevertoutingthe array of guided missiles its weaponeers have devised to pummel U.S. Navy nuclear-powered aircraft carriers (CVNs). Most prominent among them are its DF-21D and DF-26 antiship ballistic missiles (ASBMs), which the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) has made a mainstay of Chinasanti-access/area-denial(A2/AD) defenses.

Beijing has made believers of important audiences, including the scribes who toil away at the Pentagon producing estimates of Chinese martial might. Indeed, the most recent annual report on Chinese military powerstatesmatter-of-factly that the PLA can now use DF-21Ds to attack ships, including aircraft carriers, more than nine hundred statute miles from Chinas shorelines.

Scary. But the U.S. Navy has carrier-killers of its own. Or, more accurately, it hasshipkillers of its own: what can disable or sink a flattop can make short work of lesser warships. And antiship weaponry is multiplying in numbers, range, and lethality as the navy reawakens from itspost-Cold War holiday from history. Whose carrier-killer trumps whose will hinge in large part on where a sea fight takes place.

Thatcarrier-killer imageryresonates with Western audiences comes as little surprise. It implies that Chinese rocketeers can send the pride of the U.S. Navy to the bottom from a distance, and sink U.S. efforts to succor Asian allies in the process. Worse, it implies that PLA commanders could pull off such a world-historical feat without deigning to send ships to sea or warplanes into thecentral blue. Close the firing key on the ASBM launcher, andpresto!, it happens.

Well, maybe.Why obsess over technical minutiae like firing range? For one thing, the nine-hundred-mile range cited for the DF-21D far exceeds the reach of carrier-based aircraft. A carrier task force, consequently, could take a heckuva beating just arriving on Asian battlegrounds. And the range mismatch could get worse. Unveiled at the PLAs military parade through Beijing last fall, the DF-26 will reportedlysporta maximum firing range of 1,800-2,500 miles.

If the technology pans out, PLA ballistic missiles could menace U.S. and allied warships plying the seas anywhere within Asias second island chain. The upper figure for DF-26 range, moreover, would extend ASBMs reach substantially beyond the island chain.

From an Atlantic perspective, striking a ship east of Guam from coastal China is like smiting a ship cruising east of Greenland from a missile battery in downtown Washington, DC. Reaching Guam would become a hazardous prospect for task forces steaming westward from Hawaii or the American west coast, while shipping based at Guam, Japan, or other Western Pacific outposts would live under the constant shadow of missile attack.

Now, its worth noting that the PLA hasnever testedthe DF-21D over water, five-plus years afterinitially deployingit. Still less has the DF-26 undergone testing under battle conditions. Thats cause to pause and reflect. As the immortalMurphymight counsel, technology not perfected in peacetime tends to disappoint its user in wartime.

Still, an ASBM will be a useful piece of kit if Chinese engineers have made it work. The U.S. military boasts no counterpart to Chinas family of ASBMs. Nor is it likely to. The United States isbound by treatynot to develop mid-range ballistic missiles comparable to the DF-21D or DF-26. Even if Washington canceled its treaty commitments today, it would take years if not decades for weapons engineers to design, test, and field a shipkilling ballistic missile from a cold start.

Still, the U.S. Navy isnt without options in naval war. Far from it. How would American mariners would dispatch an enemy flattop in combat? The answer is the default answer we give in my department in Newport: it depends.

It would depend, that is, on where the encounter took place. A fleet duel involving carriers would take a far different trajectory on the open searemote from fire support from Fortress China, the PLAs unsinkable aircraft carrierthan if it unfolded within range of ASBMs, cruise missiles, or aircraft emplaced along seacoasts or offshore islands.

The former would be a fleet-on-fleet affair: whatever firepower each force totes to the scene of action decides the outcome, seamanship, tactical acumen, and lan being equal. The latter would let PLA commanders hurl land-based weaponry into the fray. But at the same time, the U.S. Navy would probably fight alongside allied naviesfrom the likes of Japan, South Korea or Australiain near-shore combat. And, like China, the allies couldharness Asias congested offshore geography,using land-based armamentsto augment their fleets innate combat punch.

In short, the two tactical arenas differ starkly from each other. The latter is messier and more prone to chance, uncertainty, and the fog of warnot to mention the derring-do of an enterprising foe.

Submarine warfare would constitute a common denominator in U.S. maritime strategy for oceanic and near-shore combat. Nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) such as U.S.Virginia- orLos Angeles-class boats can raid surface shipping on the high seas. Or they can slip underneath A2/AD defenses to assault enemy vessels, including flattops, in their coastal redoubts.

In short, SSNs are workhorses in U.S. naval operations. Thats why its a grave mistake for Congress tolet the size of the SSN fleetdwindle from fifty-three today to forty-one in 2029. Thats a 23 percent drop in the number of hulls at a time when China is bulking up its fleet of nuclear- and conventionally propelled substo as many as 78 by 2020and Russia is rejuvenating its silent-running sub force.

American submarines, then, are carrier-killers regardless of the tactical setting. Now, theres a bit of a futurist feel to talk about battling Chinese carrier groups. At present the PLA Navy has just one flattop, a refitted Soviet vessel dubbedLiaoning. That vessel is and will probably remain a training carrier, grooming aviators and ship crews for the operational carriersmost likely improved versions ofLiaoningthat arereportedly undergoing construction.

Lets suppose Chinese shipyards complete the PLAs second carrierChinas first indigenously built carrierat the same clip that Newport News Shipbuilding completed USSForrestal, the nations first supercarrier and a conventionally propelled vessel with roughly the same dimensions and complexity asLiaoning. It tookjust over three yearsto buildForrestal, from the time shipbuilders laid her keel until she was placed in commission.

Lets further suppose that the PLA Navy has made great strides in learning how to operate carrier task forces at sea. If so, the navy will integrate the new flattop seamlessly and speedily into operations, making it a battleworthy addition to Chinas oceangoing fleet. Our hypothetical high-seas clash thus could take place circa 2020.

In 2020, as today, the carrier air wing will remain the surface U.S. Navys chief carrier-killer. U.S. CVNs can carryabout 85 tactical aircraft. While estimates of the size of a future Chinese flattops air wing vary, lets take ahigh-end estimateof 50 fixed-wing planes and helicopters. That means, conservatively speaking, that the U.S. CVNs complement will be 70 percent larger than its PLA Navy opponents.

And in all likelihood, the American complement will be superior to the Chinese on a warbird-for-warbird basis. It appears future PLA Navy flattops will, likeLiaoning, be outfitted with ski jumps on their bows to vault aircraft into the sky. That limits the weightand thus the load of fuel and weaponsthat a Chinese aircraft can haul while still getting off the flight deck.

U.S. CVNs, meanwhile, slingshot heavy-laden fighter/attack jets off their flight decks using steam or electromagnetic catapults. More armaments translates into a heavier-hitting naval air force, more fuel into greater range and time on station.

For example, F-18E/F Super Hornet fighter/attack jets can operate against targetsaround 400 nautical miles distant, not counting the additional distance their weapons travel after firing. Thats roughly comparable to the combat radius advertised for Chinese J-15 carrier planesbut again, a U.S. air wing will outnumber its Chinese counterpart while packing more punch per airframe. Advantage: U.S. Navy.

By 2020, moreover, promising antiship weaponry may have matured and joined the U.S. arsenal. At present the surface navys main antiship armament is the elderly Harpoon cruise missile, a bird of 1970s vintage with arange exceeding 60 miles. That pales in comparison with the latest PLA Navy birdsmost notably the YJ-18,which boasts a range of 290 nautical miles.

Weaponeers are working at helter-skelter speed to remedy the U.S. Navys range shortfall. Boeing, the Harpoons manufacturer, isdoublingthe birds range. The Pentagons Strategic Capabilities Office recentlyrepurposedthe SM-6 surface-to-air missile for antiship missions, doubling or tripling the surface fleets striking range against carrier or surface-action groups. And on it goes. Last year the navytested an antiship variant of the Tomahawk cruise missile, reinventing averyverylong-range capabilitythat existed in the late Cold War. A newlong-range antiship missileis undergoing development.

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Beijing's Nightmare: How the U.S. Navy Could Sink Its Prized Aircraft Carriers - The National Interest