Cruisin' for a Bruisin'

So, an ominous but not really unexpected development in the naval balance in the Pacific:
China has evidently assembled a stockpile of weapons specifically intended to destroy aircraft carriers.

The range of the modified Dong Feng 21 missile is significant in that it covers the areas that are likely hot zones for future confrontations between U.S. and Chinese surface forces.

The size of the missile enables it to carry a warhead big enough to inflict significant damage on a large vessel, providing the Chinese the capability of destroying a U.S. supercarrier in one strike.

Now, that's not particularly surprising. Any rational individual would expect a globally significant economic and military power with long-standing regional territorial claims to begin working on ways to control those areas.
That naturally means first disabling our carriers, which can project force over a significant area, and have served as a deterrent to China's ambitions for decades.

The frightening part is not that they have these weapons, but the Navy's reaction, as described in this excellent article:

The Navy’s reaction is telling, because it essentially equals a radical change in direction based on information that has created a panic inside the bubble. For a major military service to panic due to a new weapon system, clearly a mission kill weapon system, either suggests the threat is legitimate or the leadership of the Navy is legitimately unqualified.

That the Chinese would have come up with a solution to our carriers is hardly surprising; that our Navy has been caught totally off guard by it is frankly terrifying.




Another troubling portion of this report comes in as a remark in passing in the first article:

While the ASBM has been a topic of discussion within national defense circles for quite some time, the fact that information is now coming from Chinese sources indicates that the weapon system is operational. The Chinese rarely mention weapons projects unless they are well beyond the test stages.

This approach stands in stark contrast to our own. Examples might include our highly publicized and agonizingly slow development of an effective ICBM shield...

Couple this with a few related facts, the discovery of a new Chinese submarine base on Google Earth, the scandalous reduction of our human intelligence resources, etc. It boils down to that we have much less idea of what China is up to than we ought to.

The situation in some ways mirrors our relationship with Japan before the Second World War.
Our resources increasingly diverted by other conflicts, we had less and less force with which to counter Japan, traditionally not seen as a naval threat, but continued to adjure them to abide by previous policies and agreements.

"Peace through Superior Firepower" is not just a great t-shirt slogan, it's a truism.

Do not believe that China will sit idly by as their growing naval capabilities are met at best with remonstrative statements from Washington about unnecessary build up.

If we allow this situation to continue, one day we will quickly and simply lose any control over that area of the Pacific. Officials will claim that they could not have expected it, heads will roll, public outcry against China will rage, but the truth is that, as with so, so many "sudden catastrophes", it was seen coming, and could have been avoided.

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