Key Points and Summary – Senior officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) have openly expressed concerns that their submarine force is vulnerable to the U.S. Navy’s “integrated, three-dimensional surveillance system” in the Pacific
-In a surprisingly candid article published in the military journal Military Art, the officers detailed how the American network of undersea, surface, air, and space-based sensors threatens the effectiveness of China’s growing submarine fleet.
-They argue that the only way for the PLAN to counter this “powerful enemy” is to develop and acquire new weapons specifically designed to neutralize and destroy these U.S. surveillance nodes.
How China Plans to Counter the US Navy’s Undersea ‘All-Seeing Eye’
Most defense analysts watching the growth of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) naval capabilities are almost entirely fixated on the size of Beijing’s rapidly expanding surface fleet. They see these as the most important assets of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). But what receives far less examination is the effort that the PRC is putting into creating a submarine force that will equal the power that the service can project above the surface.
By the end of 2025, the PLAN’s submarine fleet may boast as many as 25 Yuan-class submarines, which are some of the most advanced diesel-electric boats in the world.
These subs are supplemented by a small fleet of nuclear-powered attack (SSN), guided missile (SSGN), and ballistic missile (SSBN) submarines.
Those boats in the latter category have received some significant technological upgrades. Additionally, the PLAN’s establishment of a production facility in Huludao may lead to a significant increase in the size of this fleet.
The PLAN is expending significant resources in growing its submarine force because of just how much of modern – and future–warfare depends on the stealth, surprise, and combat power that can be delivered by an undersea naval force rather than surface combatants
Silent Service
What the PLAN also understands is that what makes a submarine force most effective is its ability to be undetected by the tracking and undersea sensing devices of the present day.
However, Chinese naval experts are increasingly concerned that this goal may be increasingly unattainable in the present.
In the November 2023 issue of Military Art, a well-known journal published by the Chinese Academy of Military Science, three PLAN officers reveal in detail that the peacetime operations of PLAN submarines remain vulnerable to the US Navy’s Pacific undersea surveillance system.
This has prompted PLAN naval planners to raise questions about the utility and vulnerability of their submarine force.
The article entitled “Effectively Responding to the Threat to China’s Undersea Space Posed by the Powerful Enemy’s Three-Dimensional Surveillance System,” is also unusually detailed for a publicly available document.
The article, as PRC naval analysts have pointed out, is not an official, government-sanctioned assessment of a kind that might appear in a “white paper” or a traditional Communist Party military-dominated “five-year plan.” It also features unusually candid remarks by PLAN experts who usually do not allow themselves to be quoted for publication.
The findings of these authors are based on observations from individuals who have had daily access to classified intelligence data and have also undergone peer review. That they have been permitted to air their concerns in public means that they have been backed by their superiors at the highest levels, despite the sensitivity of the subject.
Assessment of the Authors
The “first author” of this article, who in the PRC Soviet-style is the individual considered to have agreed with and validated all the conclusions, was Senior Captain Zhang Ning. He is a faculty member at the Naval University of Engineering, College of Weapons Engineering.
Zhang’s co-authors were Commander Zhang Tongjianof the 3rd Destroyer Flotilla (Unit 91257), and Lieutenant Fan Zhaopeng of the PLAN Oceanographic and Meteorological Center (Unit 91001). These are individuals who are among the most experienced technical specialists in fields directly linked to the science and design of undersea detection technology.
The author’s main thrust is that the United States, referred to euphemistically as the “powerful enemy,” has deployed an “integrated, three-dimensional surveillance system” within and around the First Island Chain. (This is the region of the Pacific which is referred to by the authors as China’s “Near Seas”).
This multi-node system combines sensors and platforms that are located ashore, on and below the ocean, and in the air and space. In the underwater realm, the system comprises both fixed and mobile surveillance equipment. This also includes unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) capable of carrying a range of payloads, similar to those used by the Ukrainians to such effectiveness against the Russian Black Sea Fleet.
The authors of this PLA article argue that, despite their sophistication, US undersea surveillance capabilities nonetheless suffer from numerous vulnerabilities. These are shortcomings, they say, that are augmented by the immense size and distances of the Western Pacific battlespace. Their position is that if enough of these nodes can be neutralized and/or degraded, the system as a whole may lose its functionality.
In conclusion, the PLAN authors assert that the PLAN needs to engage in highly focused and specialized training regimes to exploit the vulnerabilities of this US undersea surveillance system. The only path to achieving that goal, they say, is to accelerate the acquisition of equipment and devices that can destroy and disrupt the US space-based, sea-based, and underwater surveillance nodes.
About the Author: Reuben F. Johnson
Reuben F. Johnson is a survivor of the February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine and is an Expert on Foreign Military Affairs and Director of the Asian Research Centre with the Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego in Warsaw. He has been a consultant to the Pentagon, several NATO governments and the Australian government in the fields of defense technology and weapon systems design. Over the past 30 years he has resided in and reported from Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Brazil, the People’s Republic of China and Australia.
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