Carriers no longer have the deterrent effect they did just a few short decades ago.
Commentary
Since World War II, aircraft carriers have been the primary vehicle used by the United States to project naval power into other countries and regions. However, with a growing threat from anti-ship missiles and submarines, the use of carriers against
competitors such as China is becoming increasingly risky.
On the one hand, anti-submarine warfare (ASW) advances haven’t kept up with the threat that submarines pose. This means going forward, the United States should be looking at its submarines as a key deterrent to China’s aggression against Taiwan, as carriers no longer have the deterrent effect they did just a few short decades ago.
Case in point, in December 1995, in response to China firing missiles toward Taiwan, the U.S. supercarrier USS Nimitz transited the Taiwan Strait. This infuriated China. Consequently, in March 1996, when the United States sent two U.S. carriers to Taiwan, the Nimitz and the Independence, to show U.S. support for Taiwan in the face of Chinese threats, China told the Clinton administration any carrier entering the strait would be entering “a sea of fire.” While the two supercarriers didn’t transit the Taiwan Strait, they did remain in Taiwanese waters, including waters that China claimed for its own, as a prominent display of U.S. naval power that China could not match at that time.
According to a
Naval War College paper, the deployment of two U.S. carriers to the Taiwan Strait area embarrassed China and inspired it to develop Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) systems. A more recent article in the
Asian Military Review notes: “The ability of the US Navy to operate unrestrained in China’s back yard was an affront to China’s national pride, and there was an emotionally-driven desire to be able to push US forces out of the maritime areas surrounded by
the Nine Dash Line.”
So, in 1995 and 1996, the United States could confidently project naval carrier power right into China’s backyard. But that was then, and this is now. Since 1996, China has vastly expanded
its anti-ship missile capabilities well beyond the 1st Island Chain containing Taiwan, the Northern Philippines, the Japanese Archipelago, and others.
Indeed, with land-based, long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles such as the DF-21 and DF-26 being provided with real-time targeting information by China’s
new AI-enabled satellites, the threat to U.S. carriers stretches well over 1,000 miles past Taiwan’s east coast.
While this capability has been questioned by some, the United States would be unlikely to put any of its carriers at risk to test China’s claims. Consequently, the ability of U.S. carrier planes to support Taiwan will be severely curtailed for the foreseeable future as China appears to have made great strides in its A2/AD strategy.
This brings us to the
other key element of U.S. naval power: its nuclear-powered attack submarines.
While China does have a lot of submarines, including diesel-electric submarines, for the time being, the average U.S. submarine is
significantly more capable than the average Chinese sub. This, in combination with the fact that the world’s naval powers, including China, have underinvested in ASW, means that if the United States had the will, it could use sea-denial tactics in the Taiwan Strait that could act as a deterrent to China launching any major sea-based invasion.
But before discussing how U.S. submarines could be used, it’s important to understand how dangerous even one submarine under the control of a skilled crew is to any surface ship. There is no better illustration of just how lethal a lone submarine can be than that of U.S. naval exercises conducted in 2005 through 2007 that pitted the USS Ronald Reagan’s entire
carrier strike group (CSG) against the
HSMS Gotland, a small Swedish diesel-powered submarine.
To make a long and painful story short, in 2005, the Gotland successfully penetrated the submarine defenses of the Reagan’s CSG, which included destroyers, cruisers, and ASW helicopters, and managed to launch enough virtual torpedoes to sink the USS Reagan, and exit undetected.
Shocked by the results, the U.S. Navy leased the Gotland for two years, during which it defeated the best ASW the Navy had to offer over and over, as it continued to penetrate the defense of CSGs to launch successful attacks on the carriers. The highly respected naval historian and analyst Norman Polmar
observed that the Gotland “ran rings” around the U.S. carrier task force, while another source described to The National Interest that U.S. anti-submarine specialists were “demoralized” by the experience.
To be fair, the success of the relatively slow Gotland was inflated due to the CSG not being allowed to use one of its greatest defensive assets: the ability to rapidly maneuver to new locations at speeds the Gotland couldn’t match.
Sadly, Navy ASW capabilities
haven’t significantly improved since 2005, and the U.S. Navy is facing increasingly
sophisticated adversaries whose submarines can threaten even our supercarriers. This is especially true of supercarriers operating in constrained spaces such as the Taiwan Strait, the Red Sea, etc. However, while the U.S. ASW capabilities are not where they should be, neither are those of China, which over the past 20 years has
underinvested in ASW capabilities. Consequently, properly employed Navy attack submarines could provide a very significant deterrent to a large-scale invasion by employing them as sea-denial assets.
A sea-denial strategy wouldn’t be about trying to engage and destroy Chinese surface warships and submarines, but instead would be about lurking silently in the strait as a threat to Chinese transports carrying soldiers to invade Taiwan. Opportunities for attacks on high-value surface warships could also be part of this strategy.
While such a strategy could be effective, our inventory of nuclear attack submarines has been in decline, hence, executing such a strategy would require redeploying submarines from other important strategic locations to China. Even after redeploying as many submarines as possible to the Taiwan region, its success would hinge on just how willing China is to lose ships in order to invade Taiwan.
An analysis published by the U.S. Naval Institute’s Proceedings Magazine conducted by retired Navy Capt. William Toti shows that if China was willing to lose a lot of ships, the U.S. Navy doesn’t have enough submarines to stop China from invading Taiwan.
That China would be willing to lose a whole lot of ships is by no means certain, and deploying a whole bunch of mines could augment any sea-denial strategy, making the cost to China even higher. However, that our submarine fleet has shrunk to the point that China could power through them is just another reason the United States must make adding
additional shipyards a priority, so we can rapidly build new submarines while repairing and overhauling our existing submarines.
Our current submarine deficit could also be alleviated by building far less expensive, easier-to-maintain, super-quiet, high-endurance
diesel-electric submarines. Such submarines could be forward deployed and would allow our nuclear submarines to maximize the advantages their speed and endurance give them.
Despite all the saber rattling, we don’t really know how likely China is to invade Taiwan. And, we don’t know that the United States would be willing to go to war with China to prevent such an invasion. What we do know is that submarines will continue to play an increasingly important role in projecting naval power.
Moreover, we know that if the United States had enough submarines to execute a long-term sea-denial operation in the Taiwan Strait, China would be less likely to invade and the United States would be less likely to have to execute such a strategy. That would be a positive development for Taiwan and the United States.
Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
