A submarine arms race is intensifying as China embarks on production of a new generation of nuclear-armed submarines that for the first time are expected to pose a challenge to growing US and allied efforts to track them.
Analysts and regional defense attaches say evidence is mounting that China is on track to have its Type 096 ballistic missile submarine operational before the end of the decade, with breakthroughs in its quietness aided in part by Russian technology.
Research discussed at a conference in May at the US Naval War College and published in August by the college’s China Maritime Studies Institute predicts the new vessels would be far harder to keep tabs on. That conclusion is credible, according to seven analysts and three Asia-based military attaches.
Illustration: Yusha
“The Type 096s are going to be a nightmare,” said one of the researchers, retired submariner and naval technical intelligence analyst Christopher Carlson. “They are going to be very, very hard to detect.”
The discreet effort to track China’s nuclear-powered and armed ballistic missile submarines, known as SSBNs, is one of the core drivers of increased deployments and contingency planning by the US Navy and other militaries across the Indo-Pacific region. That drive is expected to intensify when Type 096s enter service.
The Chinese navy is routinely staging fully armed nuclear deterrence patrols with its older Type 094 boats out of Hainan Island in the South China Sea, the Pentagon said in November last year, much like patrols operated for years by the US, UK, Russia and France.
However the Type 094s, which carry China’s most advanced submarine-launched JL-3 missile, are considered relatively noisy — a major handicap for military submarines.
The paper notes that the Type 096 submarine would compare to state-of-the-art Russian submarines in terms of stealth, sensors and weapons. It said that jump in capabilities would have “profound” implications for the US and its Indo-Pacific allies.
Based partly on Chinese military journals, internal speeches by senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers and patent data, the paper charts more than 50 years of the PLA navy’s often glacial nuclear submarine development.
It contains satellite imagery taken in November at China’s new Huludao shipyard showing pressure hull sections for a large submarine being worked up. That puts construction on schedule to have the boats operational by 2030, the timeline stated in the Pentagon’s annual reports on China’s military.
The research also details potential breakthroughs in specific areas, including pump-jet propulsion and internal quieting devices, based on “imitative innovation” of Russian technology.
Neither the Russian nor the Chinese defense ministries responded to Reuters’ requests for comment.
The vessel is likely to be significantly larger than the Type 094, allowing it to contain an internal “raft” mounted on complex rubber supports to dampen engine noise and other sounds, similar to Russian designs.
Carlson told Reuters he did not believe China had obtained Russia’s “crown jewels” — its very latest technology — but would be producing a submarine stealthy enough to compare to Moscow’s Improved Akula boats.
“We have a hard time finding and tracking the Improved Akulas as it is,” Carlson said.
The research opened a window on discreet research projects to improve China’s SSBNs as well as boosting its anti-submarine warfare capabilities, said Collin Koh, a defense academic from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. “They know they are behind the curve so they are trying to play catch-up in terms of quieting and propulsion.”
Carlson said he believed China’s strategists would, like Russia, keep SSBNs within protective “bastions” close to its coasts, utilizing recently fortified holdings in the disputed South China Sea.
The prospect of advanced SSBNs might significantly complicate an already intense subsurface surveillance battle.
In an echo of the Cold War-era effort to hunt for Soviet “boomers,” the tracking of Chinese submarines is increasingly an international effort, with the Japanese and Indian militaries assisting the US, Australia and Britain, analysts and military attaches say.
Anti-submarine warfare drills are increasing, as are deployments of sub-hunting P-8 Poseidon aircraft around Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean.
The US, Japan, India, South Korea, Australia, the UK and New Zealand operate the advanced plane, which use sonobuoys and other more advanced techniques, such as scanning the ocean surface, to find submarines far below.
The US is also carrying out the biggest overhaul of its top-secret undersea surveillance network since the 1950s to combat China’s growing presence, Reuters reported last month.
The prospect of a quieter Chinese SSBN is driving, in part, the AUKUS deal among Australia, Britain and the US, which would see increased deployments of British and US attack submarines to Western Australia. By the 2030s, Australia expects to launch its first nuclear-powered attack submarines with British technology.
“We are at a fascinating point here,” said Alexander Neill, an adjunct fellow at Hawaii’s Pacific Forum think tank. “China is on track with a new generation of submarine ahead of the first AUKUS boats — even if they are at parity in terms of capability, that is highly significant.”
Even if China’s submarine force reaches technological parity, it would need to train aggressively and intensively over the next decade to match AUKUS capabilities, he added.
Vasily Kashin, a Moscow-based Chinese military academic at HSE University, said it was possible Chinese engineers had made the breakthroughs described in the report.
Although China most likely obtained some key Russian technology in the 1990s after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Kashin said, there was no known sharing agreement between Beijing and Moscow outside of a 2010 nuclear reactor agreement.
He said China might have made progress via adaptations of Russian designs and through other sources, including espionage, but it is unlikely they have the newest-generation Russian systems.
“China is not an adversary of Russia in the naval field,” Kashin said. “It is not creating difficulties for us, it is creating problems for the US.”
US aerospace company Boeing Co has in recent years been involved in numerous safety incidents, including crashes of its 737 Max airliners, which have caused widespread concern about the company’s safety record. It has recently come to light that titanium jet engine parts used by Boeing and its European competitor Airbus SE were sold with falsified documentation. The source of the titanium used in these parts has been traced back to an unknown Chinese company. It is clear that China is trying to sneak questionable titanium materials into the supply chain and use any ensuing problems as an opportunity to
It’s not every month that the US Department of State sends two deputy assistant secretary-level officials to Taiwan, together. Its rarer still that such senior State Department policy officers, once on the ground in Taipei, make a point of huddling with fellow diplomats from “like-minded” NATO, ANZUS and Japanese governments to coordinate their multilateral Taiwan policies. The State Department issued a press release on June 22 admitting that the two American “representatives” had “hosted consultations in Taipei” with their counterparts from the “Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs.” The consultations were blandly dubbed the “US-Taiwan Working Group on International Organizations.” The State
The Chinese Supreme People’s Court and other government agencies released new legal guidelines criminalizing “Taiwan independence diehard separatists.” While mostly symbolic — the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has never had jurisdiction over Taiwan — Tamkang University Graduate Institute of China Studies associate professor Chang Wu-ueh (張五岳), an expert on cross-strait relations, said: “They aim to explain domestically how they are countering ‘Taiwan independence,’ they aim to declare internationally their claimed jurisdiction over Taiwan and they aim to deter Taiwanese.” Analysts do not know for sure why Beijing is propagating these guidelines now. Under Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), deciphering the
Many local news media last week reported that COVID-19 is back, citing doctors’ observations and the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) statistics. The CDC said that cases would peak this month and urged people to take preventive measures. Although COVID-19 has never been eliminated, it has become more manageable, and restrictions were dropped, enabling people to return to their normal way of life due to decreasing hospitalizations and deaths. In Taiwan, mandatory reporting of confirmed cases and home isolation ended in March last year, while the mask mandate at hospitals and healthcare facilities stopped in May. However, the CDC last week said the number