| Submit your comments on this article | |
| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| U.S. Tomahawk Missiles Deployed Near China Send Message | |
| 2010-07-09 | |
If China's satellites and spies were working properly, there would have been a flood of unsettling intelligence flowing into the Beijing headquarters of the Chinese navy last week. A new class of U.S. superweapon had suddenly surfaced nearby. It was an Ohio-class submarine, which for decades carried only nuclear missiles targeted against the Soviet Union, and then Russia. But this one was different: for nearly three years, the U.S. Navy has been dispatching modified "boomers" to who knows where (they do travel underwater, after all). Four of the 18 ballistic-missile subs no longer carry nuclear-tipped Trident missiles. Instead, they hold up to 154 Tomahawk cruise missiles each, capable of hitting anything within 1,000 miles with non-nuclear warheads.
That's why alarm bells would have sounded in Beijing on June 28 when the Tomahawk-laden 560-ft. U.S.S. Ohio popped up in the Philippines' Subic Bay. More alarms were likely sounded when the U.S.S. Michigan arrived in Pusan, South Korea, on the same day. And the Klaxons would have maxed out as the U.S.S. Florida surfaced, also on the same day, at the joint U.S.-British naval base on Diego Garcia, a flyspeck of an island in the Indian Ocean. In all, the Chinese military awoke to find as many as 462 new Tomahawks deployed by the U.S. in its neighborhood. "There's been a decision to bolster our forces in the Pacific," says Bonnie Glaser, a China expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "There is no doubt that China will stand up and take notice." U.S. officials deny that any message is being directed at Beijing, saying the Tomahawk triple play was a coincidence. But they did make sure that news of the deployments appeared in the Hong Kong--based South China Morning Post - on July 4, no less. The Chinese took notice quietly. "At present, common aspirations of countries in the Asian and Pacific regions are seeking for peace, stability and regional security," Wang Baodong, spokesman for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said on Wednesday. "We hope the relevant U.S. military activities will serve for the regional peace, stability and security, and not the contrary." Last month, the Navy announced that all four of the Tomahawk-carrying subs were operationally deployed away from their home ports for the first time. Each vessel packs "the firepower of multiple surface ships," says Captain Tracy Howard of Submarine Squadron 16 in Kings Bay, Ga., and can "respond to diverse threats on short notice." The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century. Reduced tensions since the end of the Cold War have seen the U.S. scale back its deployment of nuclear weapons, allowing the Navy to reduce its Trident fleet from 18 to 14. Sure, the Navy could have retired the four additional subs and saved the Pentagon some money, but that's not how bureaucracies operate. Instead, it spent about $4 billion replacing the Tridents with Tomahawks and making room for 60 special-ops troops to live aboard each sub and operate stealthily around the globe. "We're there for weeks, we have the situational awareness of being there, of being part of the environment," Navy Rear Admiral Mark Kenny explained after the first Tomahawk-carrying former Trident sub set sail in 2008. "We can detect, classify and locate targets and, if need be, hit them from the same platform." The submarines aren't the only new potential issue of concern for the Chinese. Two major military exercises involving the U.S. and its allies in the region are now under way. More than three dozen naval ships and subs began participating in the "Rim of the Pacific" war games off Hawaii on Wednesday. Some 20,000 personnel from 14 nations are involved in the biennial exercise, which includes missile drills and the sinking of three abandoned vessels playing the role of enemy ships. Nations joining the U.S. in what is billed as the world's largest-ever naval war game are Australia, Canada, Chile, Colombia, France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, the Netherlands, Peru, Singapore and Thailand. Closer to China, CARAT 2010 - for Cooperation Afloat Readiness and Training - just got under way off Singapore. The operation involves 17,000 personnel and 73 ships from the U.S., Singapore, Bangladesh, Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. China is absent from both exercises, and that's no oversight. Many nations in the eastern Pacific, including Australia, Japan, Indonesia, South Korea and Vietnam, have been encouraging the U.S. to push back against what they see as China's increasingly aggressive actions in the South China Sea. And the U.S. military remains concerned over China's growing missile force - now more than 1,000 - near the Taiwan Strait. The Tomahawks' arrival "is part of a larger effort to bolster our capabilities in the region," Glaser says. "It sends a signal that nobody should rule out our determination to be the balancer in the region that many countries there want us to be." No doubt Beijing got the signal. | |
| Posted by:lotp |
| #22 Russia outside of Moscow and St. p is a complete shambles. What, all of it, lex? That seems an awful lot of territory to shamble through, although I haven't been paying attention. As far as I know, Mr. Wife hasn't been to that part of the world since about '96. |
| Posted by: trailing wife 2010-07-09 21:51 |
| #21 the Russians are already a little edgey about the Chinese Chinese traders and businessmen are very rapidly taking over the Russian Far East. In many Russian towns, the Chinese |
| Posted by: lex 2010-07-09 19:30 |
| #20 hey now! /Flyash Liberation Army |
| Posted by: Frank G 2010-07-09 18:42 |
| #19 Hey lex, from a couple of articles I've read in http://www.strategypage.com/ the Russians are already a little edgey about the Chinese. |
| Posted by: miscellaneous 2010-07-09 17:43 |
| #18 That many Tomahawks will saturate the Chinese air defenses, and allow major targets to be killed. One that springs to mind is the Three Gorges Dam, that is already developing problems from bad construction practices. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2010-07-09 17:40 |
| #17 The move forms part of a policy by the U.S. government to shift firepower from the Atlantic to the Pacific theater, which Washington sees as the military focus of the 21st century What took so long? More like this, please. Now shift NATO eastward: swap out Turkey for Russia. Play the Russia card against China. |
| Posted by: lex 2010-07-09 13:00 |
| #16 Since when is Diego Garcia in the Pacific, or anywhere near China for that matter? I mean, by ballistic missile standards, yes, it is strategically close - but the whole article is about how the Tridents carry cruise missiles these days. Unless it's about being a threat to the "String of Pearls", and really, if any of our assets anywhere near one of China's painted whores is now an implied threat against China itself, just wrap it all up & go home. Why the hell would we have *any* boomers in the Atlantic these days? Russia can be deterred from the Pacific quite nicely, in so far as we bother to deter them at all anymore. |
| Posted by: Mitch H. 2010-07-09 12:52 |
| #15 I'm thinking 'moose means it would be pretty easy to kill a sub with a tactical nuke missile, once you know where it is. Sure, if you have a tactical nuke ASW weapon, if you have an ASW platform so equipped with said weapon within range, and if you know where the sub is. Then you gotta worry about the other three* subs. * Only three appeared, remember? |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-07-09 12:02 |
| #14 Perhaps Mr. McGruder, but then, most things are. However, a long-range, nuclear armed, ASW weapon is a rare creature. The Soviets may or may not have kept a few around, but the PLA does not have the luxury of excess strategic launchers, which, it is assumed the Soviets had (theoretically) tasked for this mission. |
| Posted by: Black Bart Shick7973 2010-07-09 11:41 |
| #13 Im sure the Chinese enjoy the challenge of ratcheting up things a little .. Nothing like live training to keep you on the game . |
| Posted by: Oscar 2010-07-09 10:42 |
| #12 I'm thinking 'moose means it would be pretty easy to kill a sub with a tactical nuke missile, once you know where it is. |
| Posted by: Scooter McGruder 2010-07-09 10:33 |
| #11 Sure the Chinese noticed, but I'll bet the North Koreans noticed more. 462 properly targeted Tomahawks would probably decimate their infrastructure. |
| Posted by: tu3031 2010-07-09 10:32 |
| #10 462 Tomahawks equals 462, 1000-lb bombs. To put it bluntly, that ain't diddly. Perfesser, it's not the payload size that matters. It's the target. And there are a lot of targets. Plus, there's more than one flavor of Tomahawk. And the Chinese are more than able to detect a sea launch via satellite, which would mean one fewer submarine in a hurry. One, there's a time lag. Two, the Chinese would have to know the likely launch area and be monitoring it. As far as I know, they don't have a SOSUS line at the choke points. Three, the Chinese would have to have ASW assets in-area or nearby and ready to move. It also means they have to keep assets out at sea longer, with all that entails. The PLAN is working on it, but they don't have the long-term blue-sea ops down just yet. Four, a sub moves underwater. Having done ASW, it ain't easy, even with a noisy Russian sub. The Ohios are a fairly quiet sub. And I'm not sure if the PLAN has significant ASW experience, particularly deep-water (the USN has lost a lot of theirs, but that's another story). Five, you don't have to use a weapon for it to have an effect. |
| Posted by: Pappy 2010-07-09 10:18 |
| #9 I was under the impression that Tomahawks were nuke-capable. That, at least, was an argument against them by the anti crowd, that a conventional Tomahawk would be indistinguishable from a nuke Tomahawk, thereby bringing about TEOTWAWKI and so on. |
| Posted by: Grunter in Sydney 2010-07-09 10:06 |
| #8 Whether the Tomahawks are sufficient throw weight depends on what you want to use them for. If there is a power in the area that has the habit of making incremental threats that leave allies feeling insecure, then the ability to make tactical, non-WMD responses might be valuable deterrence: cripple a key port deter occupation of an island here and there etc. |
| Posted by: lotp 2010-07-09 09:43 |
| #7 Mr. Anonymoose, I'm in full agreement with your weapons load out critique. The part of your comment that interests me even more is your bit about one less sub, should one of the SSGNs ever launch. How might this happen? Has the PLAN new ASW capabilities unknown? The posited ability of the PLAN to prosecute blue water ASW is a worrisome matter. if your position allows, please share out a fleshy detail. Thank you in advance. |
| Posted by: Black Bart Shick7973 2010-07-09 05:34 |
| #6 Is the message aimed at China? Or is it aimed at North Korea ... or possibly Iran. |
| Posted by: crosspatch 2010-07-09 04:16 |
| #5 U.S. Tomahawk Missiles Deployed Near China Send Message You bet it does: If the US has four subs, we should have eight. We can build them using the manufacturing base that the shortsighted American capitalist clowns so gleefully handed us when we devalued our currency. |
| Posted by: gorb 2010-07-09 02:55 |
| #4 TOPIX > VARIOUS > CHINA STALLS UN EFFORTS TO CONDEMN NORTH KOREA. "Cheonan" affair, |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-07-09 02:20 |
| #3 WAFF > CHINA WARNS AGZ US, SOUTH KOREA WAR GAMES. * SAME > LOADING "PROMPT GLOBAL STRIKE" IN VLS CELLS WILL TRANSFORM US NAVAL POWER [USN changing frm "defensive" force into "offensive" force"] versus * GUAM PDN FORUMS > INSIDE THE RING [WashTimes] > OBAMA ORDERS DOD NOT TO INTERCEPT RUSSIAN STRIKE BOMBERS IN US AIRSPACE | RUSSIAN BOMBER INCURSIONS. ARTIC = NORAD Interceptors do not automatically intercept or respond to RUSS AF STRATEGIC BOMBERS flying close or just inside US airspace. |
| Posted by: JosephMendiola 2010-07-09 02:19 |
| #2 'And the Chinese are more than able to detect a sea launch via satellite, which would mean one fewer submarine in a hurry.' how so? explain |
| Posted by: Mike Hunt 2010-07-09 01:22 |
| #1 462 Tomahawks equals 462, 1000-lb bombs. To put it bluntly, that ain't diddly. And the Chinese are more than able to detect a sea launch via satellite, which would mean one fewer submarine in a hurry. "The launch of the country's fourth Beidou orbiter late on Wednesday (Jun 8, 2010) night signals "a step closer" toward the highly anticipated Chinese-version of the Global Positioning System (GPS), a senior official said on Thursday." |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2010-07-09 00:26 |