China's maturing navy

Naval War College Review, Spring, 2006 by Eric A. McVadon

* What strategic dilemmas might Washington encounter as a result of China's new nuclear submarine force? Beijing's smug confidence that Washington must always keep in mind China's status as a nuclear power will be reinforced if the PLAN is successful with its ongoing program to build several modern Jin-class (Project 094) nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs). Its sequential construction of Shang-class (Project 093) nuclear-powered attack submarines (SSNs) adds the component of reach (range and speed) to the existing qualities of numbers of its nuclear and conventional submarines, as well as quietness for a growing portion of that force and potency of weapons for a similar portion--especially for the new Kilo-class diesel submarines from Russia, with their long-range, supersonic, sea-skimming antiship cruise missiles (ASCMs). A "new PLAN" with these new nuclear-powered submarines and stunning array of other new and modern platforms and weapons is highly likely to view itself in a different strategic light, as yet unrevealed, than has the "old PLAN."

A MATURING BUT STILL ADOLESCENT NAVY

Harking back to the title of this article, the PLA Navy might best be described as an adolescent rather than mature navy, with the caution that adolescents can exhibit qualities across the range from juvenile to adult, often commit crimes that warrant treatment as adults, and mature unpredictably. To extend the adolescence analogy a bit more, the PLAN is growing remarkably in size and strength, even "bulking up" (in the American vernacular); all observers remark how it has grown since the last time they saw it. (3)

Simply fielding more modern units does not make the PLAN a truly modern operational force. The limits on how China's and the navy's leaders are able to employ their new capabilities represent significant shortcomings, and success in the effort to overcome them is far from assured. Put another way, the PLAN has matured remarkably insofar as acquiring platforms and equipment (ships, submarines, aircraft, radars, and so on) and weapons (antiship cruise missiles, air defense missiles, torpedoes, and the like) is concerned, but this "new PLA Navy" has not matured fully in exercising its forces and developing the command and control capabilities, coordination means, and intelligence and targeting support needed to make that force fully operational--especially in comparison with its most important and most capable potential adversary, the U.S. Navy. (4)

Better officers are on the way up--if they make it. The PLAN recognizes that to conduct complex joint operations, exercise greatly enhanced command and control, and effectively employ modern weapons it needs a better-educated, more worldly officer corps, and it is striving to do that, or so it says. (5) PLAN officers are taking more prominent positions in institutions that do strategic thinking; for example, in two recent firsts for naval officers, Admiral Zhang Dingfa headed the Academy of Military Science (he now serves as the commander of the PLAN), and Rear Admiral Yang Yi is still director of the Institute of Strategic Studies at the National Defense University in Beijing. The PLA Navy seeks officers educated in first-rate civilian universities. (6) The emphasis, however, appears to be on specific technical and scientific education; (7) this approach neglects, it seems, the parallel need for specialists in operations, security issues, strategic studies, and international affairs. (8)