China Deploys Nuke Subs Amid Growing
Maritime Tensions - Bill Gertz - http://freebeacon.com/national-security/three-chinese-nuclear-missile-submarines-photographed-in-south-china-sea/
China has deployed three nuclear-armed ballistic missile submarines to a naval base in the South China Sea, according to a recent photo of the vessels that appeared on the Internet.
The three Type 094 missile submarines were photographed at the Yalong Bay naval base on Hainan Island, located at the northern end of the South China Sea.
The submarines appear to be part of China's plan to begin the first regular sea patrols of nuclear missile submarines.
Adm. Samuel Locklear, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, voiced concerns about Chinese missile submarines in testimony to the House Armed Services Committee in March.
"China's advance in submarine capabilities is significant," Locklear said. "They possess a large and increasingly capable submarine force. China continues the production of ballistic missile submarines. ... This will give China its first credible sea-based nuclear deterrent, probably before the end of 2014."
Disclosure of the strategic submarine deployment comes as China sharply increased tensions over the weekend after one of its naval vessels rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in disputed waters claimed by both countries in the region.
Meanwhile, China on Tuesday called recent Japanese military aircraft incursions during joint Chinese-Russian war games in the East China Sea both dangerous and provocative, further escalating tensions between Beijing and Tokyo.
The photograph of the three missile submarines is the latest example of state-controlled media signaling new strategic nuclear capabilities by China.
The submarines, also called the Jin-class, are equipped with 12 multiple-warhead JL-2 submarine launched ballistic missiles that have a range of up to 4,900 miles.
Meanwhile, one of the U.S. Navy's nuclear-powered attack submarines based in Guam last week deployed for missions in the Asia Pacific and likely will conduct surveillance of China's submarine forces in the region.
The submarine was monitoring a large Chinese-Russian joint naval exercise in the northern East China Sea that ended this week.
The Air Force also has begun long-range Global Hawk drone flights over Asia as part of a summer deployment of two of the unmanned surveillance aircraft to Japan.
On Tuesday, a Chinese general called the intrusion into military exercises by Japanese warplanes "dangerous" and "provocative."
"Japan unilaterally stirred up the military jets' encounter over the East China Sea," Sun Jianguo, deputy chief of general staff of the People's Liberation Army, told Xinhua, referring to the Japanese jets' confrontation by Chinese jets.
The jets flew in the unilaterally declared Chinese air defense identification zone that Tokyo, Washington and other Asia states do not recognize.
The incident occurred as Chinese and Russian warships were engaged in naval maneuvers.
"Japan's move, like its decision to purchase the Diaoyu [Senkaku] Islands in 2012 so as to change the status quo, is very dangerous and provocative," Sun said
The encounter between Japanese and Chinese jet fighters took place May 24 over open waters as the Japanese sought to monitor the military exercises.
The Vietnamese fishing boat sank Monday after colliding with a Chinese patrol vessel near the disputed Paracel Islands, in the South China Sea, where China raised tensions by beginning undersea oil drilling.
State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters the vessel sinking is troubling.
"We remain concerned about dangerous conduct and intimidation by vessels operating in this area by the Chinese," she said. "We continue to call on all parties to exercise restraint and take steps to lower the tensions and conduct themselves in a safe and, of course, professional manner."
Relations between Hanoi and Beijing remain tense over the maritime dispute. Protests were held recently in communist Vietnam against communist China.
There have been unconfirmed reports that Chinese military forces were massing near the Chinese border with Vietnam. The two nations fought a brief conflict early 1979, after Chinese forces invaded and captured several cities before retreating.
Regarding the missile submarines, Andrei Pinkov, a military analyst with Kanwa Defense who reported on the submarines May 1, said the three submarines at Hainan are a sign Beijing is speeding up the pace of deployments. Also, a review of the photo indicates that one of the three submarines could be a more advanced missile submarine called the Type 096, based on an analysis of the length of missile submarines, he stated in his journal Kanwa Defense Review.
The deployment is "intended to give the new SSBN better protection in the deep waters of the South China Sea," Pinkov stated, using the military acronym for ballistic missile submarine.
Hans M. Kristensen, an analyst with the Federation of American Scientists, said China now has three or four Type-094s.
China over the past decade has built an extensive naval infrastructure for its underwater forces, including upgraded naval bases, submarine hull demagnetization facilities, underground facilities and high-bay buildings for missile storage and handling, and covered tunnels and railways to conceal the activities from prying eyes in the sky.
It is not known if the Chinese will deploy actual nuclear warheads with the submarines or continue the past Chinese practice of keeping warheads in central storage sites for deployment in a crisis.
"The South Sea Fleet naval facilities on Hainan Island are under significant expansion," Kristensen stated in a recent blog post. "The nuclear submarine base at Longpo has been upgraded to serve as the first nuclear submarine base in the South China Sea."
The base also includes a submarine tunnel that is part of an underwater complex of nuclear facilities on Hainan.
The Washington Free Beacon first reported in July that China would begin the first sea patrols of the Type 094 sometime this year.
China conducted a test flight of the JL-2 missile, the system to be deployed on the Type 094, in August 2012.
A report by the National Air and Space Intelligence Center last year stated that the JL-2 "will, for the first time, allow Chinese SSBNs to target portions of the United States from operating areas located near the Chinese coast."
China's jingoistic Global Times on Oct. 28 published an unprecedented report that revealed a nuclear missile strike on the western United States with JL-2 missiles could kill up to 12 million Americans.
The Obama administration and senior Navy officials were silent regarding the nuclear attack threat, which included graphics showing nuclear plumes and collateral damage caused by radiation.
The congressional U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated in a report several years ago that China is planning to deploy an anti-satellite missile on its missile submarines.
Anti-satellite missiles are key elements of China's anti-access, area denial capabilities designed to drive the U.S. Navy out of Asia.
China only recently began publicizing its nuclear missile submarine forces, mainly through semi-official disclosures on so-called military enthusiast websites.
China's Leader, Seeking to Build Its
Muscle, Pushes Overhaul of the Military - Jane Perlez and Chris
Buckley - http://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/25/world/asia/chinas-leader-seeking-to-build-its-muscle-pushes-overhaul-of-the-military.html?src=twr&_r=1
Driven by ambitions to make China a great power, President Xi Jinping is staking his political authority on a huge task: overhauling the Chinese military, which is still largely organized as it was when a million peasant soldiers mustered under Mao Zedong.
Mr. Xi wants a military that can project power across the Pacific and face regional rivals like Japan in defense of Chinese interests. To get it, he means to strengthen China's naval and air forces, which have been subordinate to the People's Liberation Army's land forces, and to get the military branches to work in close coordination, the way advanced Western militaries do.
China's military budget has grown to be the second largest in the world, behind that of the United States, and the country has acquired sophisticated weapons systems. But Mr. Xi has told his commanders that is not enough.
"There cannot be modernization of national defense and the military without modernization of the military's forms of organization," Mr. Xi told a committee of party leaders studying military reform at its first meeting in March, Xinhua, the official Chinese news agency, reported. "There has to be thoroughgoing reform of leadership and command systems, force structure and policy institutions," he was quoted as saying.
It will not be easy. Reorganizing the People's Liberation Army, or P.L.A., will pit Mr. Xi's ambitions against the entrenched power of the land forces, with about 1.4 million troops, and he will have to manage the overhaul while ensuring that the military remains a reliable guardian of the Communist Party's hold on political power, experts said.
"Military reform is part of the larger program that Xi Jinping is putting in place to put his imprimatur on the Chinese party-state," said David M. Finkelstein, vice president and director of China studies at CNA Corporation, a research organization in Alexandria, Va., concentrating on security and military affairs.
" 'This time, we're serious' - that should be the subtext of this new tranche of reform," he said. "It will be five years before you see the fruits of it. But 10 years from now, you might see a very different P.L.A."
As it is now, the army is structured around seven powerful regional commands, originally set up to defend the country against invasion from the Soviet Union and to uphold the party's domestic control. A recasting of those military regions is at the heart of Mr. Xi's plans. The Chinese military that emerges is likely to be much more focused on confronting Japan, whose navy is generally considered to have an edge over China's, and on enforcing Beijing's territorial claims in the East and South China Seas.
That will inevitably mean transferring or decommissioning significant numbers of soldiers and bureaucrats, who can be expected to argue against Mr. Xi's plans. Underemployed or unemployed former soldiers are already a persistent source of protests in the country.
"Forces for inertia are making real military reform more difficult," said Andrew Scobell, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation in Washington who studies the Chinese military. "You've got a lot of fiefdoms, and there's the strong, disproportionate influence and power of the ground forces."
Money does not appear to be an issue, Western analysts said. "I'm not sure there would be much cost savings" from the overhaul, said Roy D. Kamphausen, a former military attaché at the United States Embassy in Beijing who is now a senior adviser to the National Bureau of Asian Research in Washington. "There seems to be a comfort level with current spending."
China spends about 2.5 percent of its gross domestic product on its military; the United States spends about 4.5 percent, Mr. Kamphausen said.
The Chinese military was already trying to accomplish a lot by 2020, at which point it hopes to have completed its mechanization and made major progress in spreading the use of information technology, said Dennis J. Blasko, another former American military attaché in Beijing.
"I see the P.L.A. undertaking a much more complex modernization process, with more components than the U.S. military after Vietnam - but without the recent combat experience, Reagan-era defense budgets, and N.C.O. corps the U.S. military had," Mr. Blasko said, referring to noncommissioned officers.
Japan and its alliance with the United States have become prime strategic interests for China, whose commanders have been referring to their country's defeat at Japanese hands in 1895 and using that humiliation as a prod for change.
"Japan's victory was a victory of its institutions," Gen. Liu Yazhou of the Chinese Army's National Defense University said in an interview with the Chinese news media last month. "The defeat of the Qing empire was a defeat of its institutions."
Mr. Xi appears well positioned to take on the obstacles to the overhaul, analysts said. Unlike his weaker predecessor Hu Jintao, Mr. Xi became chairman of the Central Military Commission at the same time he became party leader. And Phillip C. Saunders, director of the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University in Washington, said it was clear he had the backing of the six other members of the country's most powerful body, the Politburo Standing Committee.
Mr. Xi's efforts may be helped by the impending trial of Gu Junshan, a general whose charge sheet reads like a list of the army's most flagrant corruption problems. Mr. Kamphausen of the National Bureau of Asian Research said the selling of promotions became so widespread that General Gu's case appeared to be an especially lurid example of widespread graft.
Now, by campaigning against corruption, Mr. Xi has military commanders "so scared, they can't even park their cars in a restaurant parking lot - they send the driver somewhere else," Mr. Saunders said.
Besides the senior leadership group Mr. Xi convened in March to oversee reform, five task forces have been set up to examine specific issues, Mr. Saunders said: on training, force reduction, political indoctrination, rooting out corruption and improving the way the military manages its infrastructure.
But the biggest challenge may be loosening the grip of the ground forces.
"That's the key to everything, because at this point, if you analyze the structure of the P.L.A., the army dominates," said Nan Li, an expert on the Chinese military who teaches at the United States Naval War College in Newport, R.I. "All these services other than the ground force, their officers are marginal in the regional command structure. They are not integrated. They are on the sidelines."
Mr. Li said solving that problem would require creating separate headquarters and shifting personnel and resources to the navy, air force and missile forces, which are better able to project power abroad than the land forces are.
One basic tenet will remain: There are no signs that China's military commanders will challenge the party's control over the army, even if they privately blanch at some of Mr. Xi's demands, analysts said.
"Defense of the party is always Mission No. 1," said Mr. Finkelstein of CNA. "The officers of the P.L.A. are party members who happen to wear uniforms."
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