Monday, December 30, 2013

Pacific Naval Power Chart via Commander Salamander.


Commander Salamander Blog posted the above pic.  Quite interesting and US cheerleaders (I include myself in that) will note the overwhelming power of the US Navy.

A couple of things though.  First it doesn't count Amphibious Ships in the US roster of firepower even though it credits Japan.  Additionally the chart ignores S. Korea and even Australia in this lineup.  And my final point is that it should be noted that if you only count the power of the US Navy actually assigned to the Pacific then the lead we have shrinks considerably.

It might be time to take a serious look at our foreign policy.  If you defend everything, you defend nothing...its time to prioritize our defense posture as defined by our interests and our interests alone.

24 comments :

  1. I think if you look the two tones of Canada and the us represent their west and east coast fleets

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  2. It doesn't mention that USN equipment actually works. :)

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  3. Based on what the South Koreans term their ships, they have 1 helicopter carrier, 12 cruisers/destroyers, 34 frigates/corvettes, and 12 subs. Plus they have a rather large number of ships planned for the future, but unlike the US, are more likely to see the budget to build said ships.

    What I wonder is would South Korea join us in Chinese war? Or would they only help if the Chinese supported a North Korean invasion of the south?

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    1. The terms of the Mutual Defense Treaty that the US has with Korea dictates that Korea has an obligation to intervene if a US territory(US warship is counted as US territory) is attacked. So that is the trigger, a US warship coming under a Chinese attack. This clause was invoked broadly by the US, both in Vietnam and Afghanistan.

      Japan too had a similar obligation, but until now claimed that Japan couldn't meet this obligation because of the Article 9 of the Peace Constitution. Abe's reintepretation means Japan could now join the fight if a US warship is under attack.

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  4. The darker colour is ships not currently deployed in the Pacific. It says so in the text key for the diagram

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  5. Our naval power here in Canada is...lacking should I say?

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    1. I wouldn't say lacking per se. We are a small country with a declining economic importance and purchase parity. But like the US and AUS our military is severely lacking in management skills, foresight, fiscal responsibility. Couple that with successive governments (Mulroney, Chretien, Harper) that provided poor oversight, inconsistent funding and no vision as to what our military is supposed to do something the military itself is culpable in. A wise government would ignore whatever comes out of the CDS's mouth they are only interested in preserving their self serving hierarchy. Witness the lack of progress and inability to curtail the bloated bureaucracy, successive bungled procurements (with in service allied equipment not meeting our high standards) and utterly incompetent decision making. MGS-LAVIII anyone, oh wait the LAVIII isn't up to snuff on the battlefield, we don't need tanks, oh wait we do and a CCV project cancelled because it took longer to process than the war we were fighting. For Christ's sake our army is only 25,000 strong with 25,000 in reserve. END RANT

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    2. It is silly, if ANZ and Canada spent just 4% of GDP (hardly an unreasonable level) on military that would equate to about 70Bn USD each. But we aren't even spending 2% of GDP, Canada is barely spending 1% (nato requires 2%). Saying that we could get alot more capacity for our dollar, take for example the cancelled Canadian $2bn program for about 100armoured vehicles at 20mn each, or the ludicrous prices australia is paying for her new 48mk41 cell hobart class destroyers (only about 2.5Bn USD each!, compared to say the about 900mn each Sejong the Great class destroyers with about 130mk41 VLS).

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    3. I am obviously not against military spending but I'm not sure giving an organization that can't spend $ 20 billion appropriately a $ 40 billion budget is a good idea. One of the recent problems in Canadian procurement is that many of the amounts being thrown around are not just the acquisition costs. In the CCV example above the $ 2 billion amount is the total all in cost for acquisition and maintenance over 20 years

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  6. Would also be interesting to see how many ships are planned / under construction over next 5 or 10 years - better yet, show the historic graph for 5 years back, 10 years back and 20 years back. That will show how the strategic balance is shifting, and how fast it is shifting.

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    1. Already is, about 20 of those chinese frigates are modern frigates with VLS systems built within the last few years, alot of the 'frigates' from japan and south korea are old, these numbers are very missleading. US forces have withdrawn from the sea arround china because the threat is now too great, the chinese have built powerfull OTH radars like australia and america, they also have a large number of 4th generation multirole planes and submarines which threaten any naval forces in the area.

      In otherwords they have effectively denied US access to the sea arround china (not saying they couldn't push in if they wanted too, but it is too dangerous for a single carrier battlegroup for instance). And they are still modernizing and expanding their fleet and airforce, they are I believe going to build 3 carriers like the US (probably one for each main fleet).

      To counter this the anglosphere in the pacific needs to get their act together, we need affordable cost effective boats and planes (which need the legs to do their job), we need military bases in the phillipines and possibly taiwan/japan to contest chinese airdominance in their surround sea, and to run bombing missions from, and antisubmarine warfare. And we need the ships, and the ability to project land forces.

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    2. Jacobite.NZ

      Japan and Korea have dedicated "away" and "coastal defense" fleets, where the "away" fleets are all ocean-going heavy destroyers while the "coastal defense" fleets consist of frigates that are in the process of being constantly replaced. The reason for this similarity is that the JMSDF is the direct successor of the Imperial Japanese Navy unlike the JASDF and JGSDF that are new organizations unrelated to the old Imperial Japanese Army. The ROK military itself was founded by former Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers, thus was similar to the old Japanese military in practice and structure.

      China by comparison are divided by four independently operated coastal fleets that are individually trying to gain ocean going capabilities. Thus they do not have dedicated "away"/"coastal defense" fleets like their neighbors.

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    3. i SERIOUSLY DOUBT THAT former imperial Japanese officers had ANY PART in the formation of the modern day military.

      show me proof.

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    4. modern day ROK military. show me proof.

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    5. Solomon

      > show me proof.

      Well, look no further than the current sitting president's own father.

      http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/ian-buruma-examines-the-family-history-behind-the-region-s-territorial-disputes

      One of Kishi’s greatest Cold War allies – apart from Nixon – was the South Korean strongman President Park Chung-hee, who came to power in a military coup a year after Kishi resigned as prime minister. Park, too, had a dubious wartime career. Under the Japanese name of Takagi Masao, he served as an officer in the Japanese Imperial Army. He graduated from a military academy in Manchuria, where Kishi had once ruled over an industrial empire that was built on Chinese slave labor.

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hong_Sa-ik

      Hong Sa-ik (4 March 1889 – 26 September 1946)[1] was a lieutenant general in the Imperial Japanese Army, and the top-ranking ethnic Korean in Japan to be charged with war crimes relating to the conduct of the Empire of Japan in World War II.

      There were hundreds of Koreans prosecuted as war criminals during the Tokyo trial, and the Yasukuni Shrine has some 20K Korean soldiers who gave their lives to the emperor. The dirty secret is that the ROK military was founded by ex-Imperial Army and Navy officers, because the US administrators couldn't find anyone who were experienced enough to run a competent military otherwise. On the other hand, the general who had the most successes against the PLA was a former KMT army officer.

      This is why North Korea accuses the South of being founded by traitors, because North Korea was founded by former Soviet and Chinese 8th Red Army officers and veterans and was free of the Imperial Japanese military remnants.

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    6. lets unpack this. you said....

      " The ROK military itself was founded by former Imperial Japanese Army and Navy officers, thus was similar to the old Japanese military in practice and structure."

      what you presented as proof is more of the conspiratorial talk that i've occasionally heard from Japanese supremacist.

      sorry Slowman. i'm not buying it. the ROK military is a proud organization and the Marine Corps are legendary fighters. additionally that type of "kinship" would not explain the tensions between the Japanese and Koreans.

      again. i'm not buying it.

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    7. Thanks SlowMan, I dont really understand this distinction, I mean I understand having low-end frigates to patroling doing anti-submarine work (in range of your aircover), or small missile boats like the Skjold fast attack ships (or the ones china/ROK have) operating in swarm tactics like small mobile coastal anti-ship missile batteries, especially in waterways like japan/indonesia/phillipines.

      But apart from that I think countries shouldn't mess around with silly little ships, 40+VLS, oceangoing frigates loaded with ASMs/SAMs/ESSMs and potentially ABMs is where it is at, that bassically describes the chinese fleet. Look at all the complaints by people who think the LCSs are underarmed, I think most of these people think that the LCSs should have been frigates with 32+cell vls.

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    8. Solomon

      Well, I am simply presenting the facts. Yes, original ex-Imperial Japanese Army and Navy founders of the ROK military are gone, but their legacy still lingers around to this day in the form of military culture, structure, and tactics.

      Jacobite.NZ

      When the enemy is so close, numbers to matter. And it is not economical to replace all those coastal defense frigates and corvettes with destroyers, altough the new replacements are at least 50~100% bigger then the ships they replace.

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  7. Currently there are zero US carrier groups active in the Pacific, and that's not unusual. So much for Salamander's Pacific Power Chart.

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  8. Somethings not accounted for is the massive Houbei 22 fleets and other coastal craft of the PRC. Peeps been talking about air-sea battle, but where are the submarines at here? I'm wanting 30-40 more attack submarines. We need to get our MK48 CBASS on. Instead of building 50 different kinds of aerial drones we should be fielding a couple hundred quality RUVs.

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    1. Isn't that just part of their layered defenisve doctrine, bassically using OTH radar to provide overview/early warning in conjuction with aerial assets [AEWC, and anti-sea] (like the USA does) and naval reconaisance. Then upon detection they can redirect large ammounts of forces, coastal batteries, missile boats, submarines, aeroplanes and soon carrier battlegroups depending upon how close they are.

      Bassically making a big kill zone with dozens of submarines in ambush, hundreds of planes ready to launch with stand-off munitions, huge swarms of fast missile attack ships

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  9. Got to say that with China racial signoriage matters. So the USofA corp has an exposure in Korea, Singapore et al. Do not count on them. Unexpectedly the US might get more traction out of Vietnam.

    At my place I have written several times that USN needs to place all remaining assets in the Pacific. The light coloured ships in the above graphic will be damned near ALL the USN will have by the time the Maosits in the White House are finished. US needs to under stand that its Armada days are over, think Spain circa 1750 not UKplc circa 1805 for your current predicament.

    As for the ChiComms, They are getting invited to come get the Mid East oil fields, forget Siberia for the moment, so a great deal of their fleet will be engaged in the hyper littoral war from Hong Kong to Gwadar. Ergo one needs to factor in the Indian Navy to the equation.

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    1. what does China racial signoriage mean?

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    2. THAT HAS GOT TO BE THE ABSOLUTE WORST NAVAL STRATEGY FOR THE US I'VE EVER HEARD IN MY LIFETIME. Come closer, come closer, bring everything......get in my coastal artillery range, don't make my air force use tankers and fight in the sky before they can unload, come closer, come on, bring everything....ok now lets fight.

      SCREW THAT.
      Its nice having allies or whatever but na I'm not all in. Asia is not the whole picture. and I refuse to have our Navy playing entirely into the dynamic of a single region, its just stupid. We have to have aces in the hole.
      We either get a bomb truck out of Asian allies or not. If we can't play half our cards in Asia and that be enough we can go with isolation lest we have to nuke that continent.

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