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Sosok.ID – Studies assess that China now has the largest navy in the world and even plans to double its nuclear arsenal.
Quoted from The Diplomat, on Thursday (4/9/2020), the Pentagon released a 2020 report on China’s military strength this week.
The latest trend in a report ordered by Congress tracks the explosive growth of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) over the past two decades.
Especially in the naval sector and the latest sophisticated long-range missile systems.
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The report examines China’s strategy and ambitions, evaluating its navy as now the largest in the world.
China is considered to have made great strides in conventional and nuclear missile arsenals.
This reminds the US that in 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping set two main goals for the PLA.
That is, completing modernization in 2035 and becoming a “world-class” army by mid-century, perhaps before the 100th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 2049.
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The Pentagon isn’t sure what “world class” really means in practice, but it believes China isn’t building its military to show off.
“PKT [Partai Komunis Tiongkok] wants the PLA to become a practical instrument for its state with an active role in advancing the foreign policy of the People’s Republic of China, especially with regard to China’s increasingly global interests and its aim to review aspects of the order international. “
Part of building global influence is being able to support your military forces away from home.
It is known that China already has open military bases in Djibouti, as well as many civil infrastructure projects in the Indian Ocean region, which may have multiple uses to support the future footprint of the PLA.
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The Pentagon assessed that China could have considered additional military logistics facilities in Myanmar, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates, Kenya, Seychelles, Tanzania, Angola and Tajikistan.
But with growing international concern over China’s intentions and behavior, other experts are skeptical that many of these countries are willing to host even dual-use facilities, notably neighboring Singapore, Indonesia and Myanmar.
But the PRC’s most visible attempt to project military influence into East Asia and the world is its navy, which is reportedly now the world’s largest by hull count, with around 350 ships and submarines.
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Although they outnumber the current US fleet of 293 ships, the modernization power of the PLA Navy varies widely in capacity, size, and ship mix.
This limits the value of direct numerical comparisons of the two fleets and even some Chinese naval analysts are skeptical that the PLA Navy could establish a more temporary local advantage over the US Navy in the Western Pacific.
However, the PLA Navy now offers 130 major surface warships. The growth of China’s navy is supported by the world’s largest shipbuilding capabilities and increasingly modern weapons and sensors.
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China’s second homegrown aircraft carrier is expected to be ready by 2023 and it has just launched its first large amphibious assault ship with significant flight capabilities.
The PLA Navy will likely maintain a fleet of between 65 and 70 submarines, mostly diesel-powered, but increasingly capable as older hulls are replaced by newer and more sophisticated ones.
Together with an ever-increasing number of modern Renhai cruisers and a new variant of the Luyang III destroyer, China’s surface and submarine fleets can project a large number of long-range missiles for use against ground targets and for space control. maritime air.
The battle between the United States Navy and China’s surface fleet remains mixed.
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China commissioned the Renhai cruiser even as the United States Navy struggled to find a replacement for its aging Ticonderoga-class cruise fleet.
The more advanced Luyang destroyers, however, carry only about two-thirds the number of generic missile launch tubes compared to equivalent US Arleigh Burke-class destroyers.
To project regional power and avoid intervention from outside powers like the United States, China is expanding its arsenal of conventional land-based cruise and ballistic missiles that can hit targets in its maritime neighbors and even the Guam region in the US Pacific. .
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The report counted more than 1,250 ground-launched cruise and ballistic missiles, the most capable with a range of up to 5,500 kilometers.
This includes at least 600 short-range missiles, 150 medium-range missiles, and 200 conventional medium-range missiles.
Some of China’s medium-range missiles, such as the advanced DF-26, are believed to be capable of rapidly switching between conventional and nuclear warheads, a capability that complicates targeting for adversaries who wish to eliminate the threat of a DF attack. 26 conventional, but they do not threaten China’s nuclear deterrence and potentially trigger it. nuclear exchange.
To complement a wide range of conventional attack and deterrence capabilities, China is working to modernize and grow its relatively modest nuclear arsenal.
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Last spring, the director of the US Defense Intelligence Service revealed that the United States judged that China intended to roughly double the number of its nuclear weapons this decade, which it considers to be “several hundred” warheads.
A Chinese Pentagon report this year put the figure for that estimate below 200, substantially less than the public open source estimate of China’s arsenal of around 300 weapons.
The report also revealed that China’s nuclear arsenal, while still significantly smaller than the United States’ arsenal of some 4,000 nuclear weapons, will grow over the next five years to include some 200 ground-launched ICBMs capable of striking at U.S.
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China is also making significant progress toward a diverse and triad-structured nuclear deterrent to ensure that enough of its arsenal survive a potential pre-emptive strike to retaliate.
The rise of bomber-based weapons and the development of nuclear-capable air-launched ballistic missiles coincided with significant advances in the power of ground-launched mobile missiles.
Deterrence based on the China Sea is also becoming more capable.
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Its four Jin-class nuclear ballistic missile submarines could threaten the United States only by operating in the depths of the Pacific near Hawaii, but new Type 096-class submarines are expected to enter construction in the mid-2020s, coupled to a new generation of missile submarines. Ballistics launched, it would be able to target the United States from its own waters.
The Pentagon report also includes an examination of China’s defense economy, the modernization of the PLA’s bureaucracy and organization, and efforts to synchronize its civilian economy to support and supplement its defense requirements that complicate educational, technological and international economic.
