China -v- USA
What risk the US Navy

Is China able to defeat one (yes, just one) US Navy Carrier Strike Group if the Carrier Strike Group is near Chinese coast? Before World War II, the US military establishment was guilty of grossly underestimating the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

Is China able to defeat one (yes, just one) US Navy Carrier Strike Group if the Carrier Strike Group is near Chinese coast? Before World War II, the US military establishment was guilty of grossly underestimating the Imperial Japanese Army and Navy.



China’s current diesel-electric submarine, the Type 039A ‘Yuan’ class, is thought to have an Air-Independent Propulsion (AIP) system, making it a potential stalker and killer of American aircraft carriers. Chinese boats have reportedly surfaced inside US Carrier Strike Groups once or twice to make the point clearly.

I don’t think that’s going to happen toward China’s People’s Liberation Army Navy, despite the goofy name. But then, I suppose it’s no goofier than the US Army Air Corps, the original name for the present US Air Force.

And don’t get me started on the commander-in-chief’s “Space Force.” I believe that idea is probably five or six decades ahead of its time; still, I will support it if the space cadets get to wear Star Trek uniforms.

Where was I going with this? Even I forget. Oh yes - China. Aircraft carriers. Things blowing up.



A CSG is a formidable military formation that would do well in the Korean War. The US often crowed how Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi Army was well-positioned to re-fight World War II. Is the USN guilty of the same mentality by building giant aircraft carriers, aka “targets,” in the age of satellites, drones, and sophisticated self-guided missiles and torpedoes?

In a word, yes, China could wipe out an American Carrier Strike Group if it chose to sail close to the Chinese coast. That is the very scenario for which the current Chinese defense has been designed.

China currently is working on becoming a superior regional power. They don’t yet have the ability to routinely exert significant military pressure halfway around the globe; perhaps they never will, that scenario depends on how stable the country’s economy and government remain in the next half-century.

But such global power projection is not the current goal, regional hegemony is. And the Chinese military is collectively well on its way.



Oh dear, that’s not going to go down well on Fox News. There is an attitude in the USN that supercarriers (this is not one, by the way) are unsinkable. Yet USS Forrestal was nearly lost off Vietnam in 1967 due to an onboard fire not even caused by an enemy strike; it was an “own goal.” The hull may be steel, the damage control teams may be iron, but when the planes are refueling and rearming, the flight deck and hangar are tinderboxes waiting for a match.

Much has been made of the Chinese “carrier killer” ballistic missile in the press. Nobody knows whether or not the kill chain required to put it onto a small bit of sovereign American real estate moving at 25 or 30 miles per hour is sufficient and reliable. But who wants to be the first CSG commander to find out?

Much more should be made of Chinese missile technology, whether launched from Chinese soil or from aircraft, ships, or submarines. China has plenty of missiles and aircraft, a growing number of blue-water missile frigates, and a frightening number of submarines.



China has more than 50 fast missile craft capable of launching Anti-Ship Cruise Missiles (ASCM). Photo from a 2010 anti-carrier drill in the East China Sea.

The Chinese could blanket a US carrier and its escorts with missiles, hundreds of them. As impressive as US missile defenses look in the movies, they can be overwhelmed. And they would be. How many antiship missile strikes could an essentially unarmoured US cruiser or destroyer take before sinking?

American damage control is legendary, but one missile strike could blow a flaming crater in the side of a 7,000-ton warship, potentially igniting shipboard munitions; two such hits would probably be enough to sink her or force her to be abandoned.

And in a melee against the mainland, each US ship might take four or five hits. Patriotism and a “can-do” attitude will not stop 600 or 800 missiles fired at half a dozen ships over three or four hours from finding targets.

An anti-ship cruise missile, launched from a mobile platform, aka a truck. American air power would have a hell of a time attempting to establish air superiority over the Chinese coast in order to find and knock these guys out; this is not Iraq. Personally, I’m pretty sure the US would run out of planes before the Chinese ran out of trucks in anything other than an unthinkable all-out war.

An equally great deterrent to a US carrier group approaching the Chinese mainland is China’s submarine force.

I believe anyone associated with the USN is aware of the danger submarines pose to aircraft carriers. NATO war games have demonstrated as much since at least the 1960’s.

More recently, a major advance in diesel submarine technology has shifted the game much more strongly in favour of the subs: the invention of “Air Independent Propulsion” (AIP.)

The AIP system frees non-nuclear submarines to sail for several weeks underwater at speeds a nuke would not despise. And potentially such boats are even quieter than a nuke, since they do not require the 24/7 operation of water pumps to cool a reactor.

China has operational ballistic missiles dedicated to killing US carriers and other ships approaching within several thousand km of the Chinese mainland. Will they work as planned? Depends on many factors, but one hit would sink a carrier, super or not, forcing American naval planners to account for them.

China’s DF-21D carrier killer missile, now a player in the war space. The USN has possibilities for beating them. Per US Admiral Jon Greenert, 'You want to spoof them, preclude detection, jam them, shoot them down if possible, get them to termination, confuse it,' Greenert said. 'The concept is end-to-end, and the capabilities therein [are] what we're pursuing.'

The USN actually leased Gotland, an AIP-equipped submarine, from Sweden in 2005 in an attempt to develop tactics for dealing with these deadly new subs.

By mid summer of 2005 the Gotland arrived in San Diego and war games immediately commenced. Apparently the Navy got more than they were bargaining for when it came to finding and engaging the stealthy little sub. The Gotland virtually “sunk” many US nuclear fast attack subs, destroyers, frigates, cruisers and even made it into the ‘red zone’ beyond the last ring of anti-submarine defenses within a carrier strike group. Although it was rumored she got many simulated shots off on various US super-carriers, one large-scale training exercise in particular with the then brand new USS Ronald Reagan ended with the little sub making multiple attack runs on the super-carrier, before slithering away without ever being detected.

As others have pointed out, no USN officer is going to order a CSG to sail close to the Chinese coast and make it a sitting duck for one trigger-happy general-admiral (or whatever the “Army Navy” calls the guys in charge), any more than the Chinese are going to stop shipping manufactured goods to America’s big box stores. Either such event would be a huge mistake.

China needs America to buy its goods and keep its potentially restive population employed rather than becoming revolutionary. And America? We just need cheap stuff to buy. How the hell could these two co-dependent nations - so much like a pair of dysfunctional college roommates - go to war?

And if the Chinese actually destroyed a US CSG and also stopped supplying Walmart, it would lead to the end of the world as we know it. Please - stop the madness, China. You’ve already got our entire manufacturing capacity operating out of Shanghai now, at least keep the plastic dishracks and cheap window unit air conditioners coming!