Can China Sink A U.S. Aircraft Carrier?
)F _vWbg WASHINGTON 1/23/2012 @ 1:44PM |102 133 views
@bsYJ4-V |2RoDW On January 3, President Obama and his defense team unveiled a new global military posture focused on the Western Pacific. Although the president was circumspect in explaining why the Pentagon is pivoting to the Pacific, it’s pretty clear the main concern is China‘s rising influence in East Asia — the industrial heartland of the new global economy. A document released at the January 3 event stressed that America must maintain its economic and military access to the region.
}% e"A4v For America, access to the area around China is mainly about sea power. The U.S. can use satellites and long-range aircraft to overcome the tyranny of distance, but it has relatively few bases in the region and virtually no ground-force presence outside South Korea and Okinawa. Since bases near China would probably be targeted early in any future war, U.S. military presence depends mainly on warships at sea.
HURr k~[ That raises the question of how vulnerable U.S. aircraft carriers might be to attack by the Chinese air force and navy. The United States has built its maritime force structure around a handful of giant supercarriers, which have been deployed repeatedly to deter Chinese military action against Taiwan. But with China’s double-digit economic growth fueling a rapid buildup of long-range weapons, many experts have begun to doubt the wisdom of deploying U.S. carriers anywhere near the Middle Kingdom in wartime.
z= m Dd Obviously, there are many reasons why China would want to avoid a war, especially one involving use of nuclear weapons. But accidents happen, and the credibility of U.S. security guarantees to regional allies hinge on how effective naval forces might be in a future conflict. Since all the geographical advantages lie with China, it is crucial to know whether the six or seven carriers that America could deploy quickly to the Western Pacific would survive a Chinese onslaught. If they are vulnerable, the war might be over very soon.
W5 l)mAv The first thing to understand about U.S. aircraft carriers is that they are very big and very well defended. They displace 100,000 tons of water, making them the biggest warships ever constructed, and their four-acre decks hold dozens of multi-role fighters superior to anything operated by China’s air force or navy. They typically are escorted by cruisers or destroyers carrying the Aegis combat system — the world’s most sophisticated air defense system — and nuclear-powered attack submarines. Since the carriers themselves are nuclear-powered, they are always moving and unconstrained by logistical needs.
5e)2Jt: However, it is precisely because the carriers are so big and capable that they constitute such “lucrative” targets. Loss of a single carrier would reduce U.S. naval air power by nearly ten percent, and might entail thousands of U.S. casualties (over 5,000 personnel are typically on board). It’s a lot easier to see a metal vessel that is twenty stories high and three football fields long in the middle of an ocean than it is to find a ground force hiding in the Ardennes. And if one actually were destroyed, the psychological impact would be profound: the United States hasn’t lost a carrier since the Hornet was sunk by Japanese dive bombers in 1942.
*[XVkt`H Carriers are much easier to disable than sink, since they have thousands of watertight compartments and a typical bomb or torpedo lacks the punch to send such a big ship to the bottom. But it is the complete loss of a carrier that would devastate military capability and morale, so that’s where the question of vulnerability is most critical. With China gradually pushing its maritime defensive perimeter out into the Pacific and deploying everything from nuclear-powered attack subs to anti-ship ballistic missiles, isn’t it just a matter of time before U.S. carriers have to retreat to a distance where their planes can no longer reach China?
W=QT-4 The answer to that question, it appears, is “no,” for at least four reasons. First, whatever weapons China may be buying, it lacks the sensors and command system to track and promptly target a carrier. Second, U.S. forces have multiple options for actively and passively impeding the effectiveness of any attack, including targeting forces ashore. Third, if a carrier actually were hit by anything less powerful than a nuclear weapon, it could absorb the damage and continue operating in some diminished capacity; it almost certainly would not be sunk. Finally, the U.S. Navy is taking numerous steps to enhance the flexibility and effectiveness of its aircraft carriers, enabling them to cope with whatever new capabilities the Chinese field.
-@*[ With regard to tracking and targeting a carrier, it is important to understand what a big place the Western Pacific is. The hotly contested South China Sea measures over a million square miles, and it constitutes only a small portion of the waters adjacent to Chinese territory. While it might be possible for Chinese satellites, aircraft, warships or land-based radars to detect a carrier there, it is quite another thing to continuously track and precisely target the constantly moving vessel. Satellites close enough to distinguish the carrier will quickly disappear over the horizon, planes will run out of fuel or be scared off by the carrier’s fighters, and other approaches produce similarly spotty results. China will need to invest billions of dollars over a period of many years before it has the assured capacity to find and track U.S. carriers.
1#nR$ دەرەك كوزى:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/lorenthompson/2012/01/23/can-china-sink-a-u-s-aircraft-carrier/ o`tOnwt 
