Many thanks to Paralus for pointing out this article to me.
Sidenote: I've publicly questioned Feng's motives. He's a constant over at ID, and I've wondered if he was a Chinese sympathizer. I was wrong. Its more like he's simply informing us all of the strides that the Chinese are making in becoming a military as well as economic superpower. Additionally Mike at New Wars caught alot of grief from me when he was writing. I was wrong too. He was into smaller, simpler and more plentiful ships before it was cool. He was right. And we all were so wrong. Let me also add that I'm into small arms and armor. But I will be focusing on China with a bit more gusto now. They're the 800 pound gorilla that's a real threat to the US.
Things aren't looking good for the home team. We MUST get our shipbuilding plan and designs for smaller combatants going again!
These corvettes, combined with the Type-022 Houbei, aren't going to go very far, but they would sweep everything out of the way in the South China Seas.
ReplyDeleteAt the rate the Chinese are building these, no single nation in the Pacific could afford to go up against the PLAN.
If they built four every year for six years, they'd be putting to sea more tonnage than some neighboring nations even have in existence.
Even with the impressive ship buys among their neighbors in recent years, the PLAN building schedule is amazing.
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ReplyDeleteIt's a patrol corvette. They're building them for various tasks including asw. Exactly why do we want to counter these with small combatants of our own? Ships and smaller vessels are best dealt with by aircraft and submarines. When we start seeing reports that Chinese ASW is first class and an actual threat to our SSN's then we've got issues.
ReplyDeleteChina is a serious player and threat and this trend is increasing. That said one needs to keep some perspective. They've got about 25 destroyers of which maybe half are modern and about 46 frigates less than half are modern. Japan has a far more capable destroyer and escort force. China has about 36 modern SSK's and about 9 SSN's of which the first 5 seem to not really work. Personally I worry about their long term submarine and aerial capabilities as their surface ships are likely still a meal for our SSN's.
Lane,
Deletethat frigate thing is my fault since my post in the other thread called them frigates rather than corvettes.
Still the point isn't what the PLAN has now, it's what it will look like in six to ten years from now. If they built 5 corvettes each year for ten years, nobody could keep up.
The PLAN could have these corvettes patrol up and down the Chinese coast with air cover while their carriers, frigates and destroyers sortie out past the 1st Island Chain to show the flag on the other side the Philippines.
lane.
ReplyDeleteits not about countering their small boats, its about why are we building LCS? why do we only have top end ships and no middle and low range? why we're about to bastardize a couple of missions just so that we can follow a multi-mission mindset that is improperly conducted.
the perspective is there, its not a call to duplicate their efforts, its a call to engage in some common sense reform of what we're doing when it comes to ship building.
Sol I'm with you there as I can neither explain the convoluted thinking that led to LCS nor Navy leadership deciding we don't need general purpose frigates and thus everything has to be escorted by a DDG-51 since LCS can't escort itself.
ReplyDelete