The Chinese are building the largest navy in the world: what to do with it?

(To Tiziano Ciocchetti)
09/03/21

In 2015, the (life) President of the People's Republic of China, Xi Jinping, embarked on a broad program aimed at transforming the Zhōngguó Rénmín Jiěfàngjūn Hǎijūn (Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy) into the largest naval force in the world, able to outperform the US Navy. All this thanks to large allocations in the shipbuilding and weapon systems sector (especially as regards research in the hypersonic field).

Having surpassed the US Navy in terms of number of units (360 vs 297), now the aim is to make the Chinese Navy capable of operating at great distances from the national territory.

According to the forecasts of the ONI (Office of Naval Intelligence) in 2025, the PLAN will be able to deploy a fleet of about 400 ships (including combat units, transport, logistics).

According to the Pentagon, China is building modern surface combat units, missile submarines (equipped with JL-3 ICBMs), amphibious assault ships but also nuclear-powered icebreakers to operate in the North Sea.

Some of these units, from a qualitative point of view, will be better than what the US Navy will be able to field in the near future.

The Chinese shipbuilding industry has reached a very high level, and is capable of launching technologically advanced units such as the new class of destroyers Type 055 (16 units planned) of 13.000 tons of displacement (they are equipped with missiles country attack CJ-10, credited with a maximum range exceeding 1.500 km). Such ships are considered by ONI analysts to be superior to their class Ticonderoga, currently serving in the US Navy.

It remains to ask what the United States is doing to maintain its naval supremacy, especially in the Pacific area.

While, as previously mentioned, the Chinese Navy should be able to deploy a fleet of 2025 ships by 400, the US Navy has set itself - without a time limit - the goal of reaching 355 units, this would represent a significant numerical disadvantage. .

However, this does not mean that the American fleet is in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis the Chinese.

First of all, at present, the US Navy can count on a force of 330.000 sailors on active duty against 250.000 in China.

As for the overall displacement, the US Navy boasts a higher tonnage, i.e. it deploys larger ships (as well as 11 groups of nuclear-powered aircraft carriers), capable of carrying a greater number of cruise missiles. In this regard, the US Navy has about 9.000 vertical launch cells (Mk-41 VLS) on the surface units for the launch of anti-ship missiles /country attack, while the PLAN has only 1.000 available.

In addition, the United States underwater fleet is equipped with 50 nuclear-powered boats, a significant advantage in terms of autonomy over the Chinese fleet which can only deploy seven nuclear-powered submarines (6 JIN class and 1 XIA class), on one force. total of 62 boats.

The situation is reversed in favor of China when the focus is shifted to coastal defense, in fact the People's Liberation Army Navy Coastal Defense Force is in charge of defending the national territory (including the archipelagos of disputed islands in the South China Sea, including Taiwan) from amphibious landings and air strikes. For this task, the coastal defense has very sophisticated defensive systems, such as the anti-ship cruise missiles YJ-62 (maximum range of 400 km), the supersonic YJ-12B (maximum range of 250 km and a speed equal to mach 4) and YJ-18 (550 km).

This means that if the XNUMXth Pacific Fleet were to intervene to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion, its naval units would be seriously threatened by the missile systems deployed in mainland China.

Photo: Ministry of National Defense of the People's Republic of China