Thread: China launches largest dock landing ship

China launches largest dock landing ship

by Staff Writers
Beijing (UPI) Jul 22, 2011

China has launched its largest amphibious dock landing warship, the 19,000 metric ton Jinggangshan, in Shanghai.

The 689-foot-long warship can carry 1,000 soldiers, helicopters, armored fighting vehicles, boats and landing craft, a report in the China Daily said.

The vessel is the second Type 071 dock landing ship built by Shanghai's Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding.

The first Type 071 dock landing ship, Kunlunshan, which has no helicopter capacity, was launched in December 2006 and commissioned into the Chinese navy in 2007.

By definition, the U.S. Navy says, an amphibious dock landing ship has a well deck and a ballast system that raises and lowers the vessel in the water. This allows small ships to move into the well and be dry-docked within the ship's well when the vessel is raised in the water.

Analysts said the introduction of both ships gives the Chinese navy a global reach that it hasn't had before. The ships can handle large troop accommodation as well as maintain smaller vessels in far off seas away from China's traditional closer-to-home waters.

In particular, a large helicopter flight deck at the stern of the Jinggangshan is enough to support the operation of two medium-size helicopters such as Z-8/AS-321 Super Frelon, analysts at GlobalSecurity.org said.

A vessel such as the Jinggangshan can be very useful in the South China Sea where China has been flexing its naval muscles this year over its territorial claims to the Spratly Island group.

The Spratly Islands -- the largest group -- lie off the southwestern coast of the Philippines as well as near the coasts of Brunei and Malaysia. China is one of the claimants, which include Vietnam and Taiwan. Philippines and Vietnam in recent months have complained of Chinese vessels encroaching upon their territorial waters near disputed islands.

The belief that the Jinggangshan might be used in the South China Sea is based on the fact that the home port of the first ship, the Kunlunshan, is at China's South Sea Fleet's headquarters at Zhanjiang Naval Base in Guangdong Province, GlobalSecurity.org said.

Analysts also have said the Jinggangshan looks similar to the U.S. San Antonio-class landing platform dock vessel. The Jinggangshan's cargo capacity is possibly as large of the U.S. Navy's Austin-class LPD.

"If this estimation was correct, the Type 071 LPD can carry a marine corps battalion, including 400-800 troops, 15-20 amphibious armored vehicles and their associated logistic supplies," GlobalSecurity.org said.

The consortium China State Shipbuilding and Trading Corp. reportedly has offered to build a modified version of the 071 LPD for the Malaysian navy.

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/China_l ... p_999.html

China boosts naval power with carrier program: sources

By Ben Blanchard and Benjamin Lim

BEIJING | Wed Jul 27, 2011 6:11pm EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China is building two aircraft carriers as part of a military modernization program that is causing concern among other Asian countries, sources said on Wednesday.

President Hu Jintao has made the navy a keystone of China's defense upgrade, and the carriers will be among the most visible signs of its rising military prowess.

China is ramping up its military spending as the United States considers cutting its defense budget, although Washington still far outspends China on security and is much more technologically advanced.

"Two aircraft carriers are being built at the Jiangnan shipyard in Shanghai," a source with ties to China's Communist Party leadership told Reuters, requesting anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the program.

China's Defense Ministry has confirmed the existence of one carrier, a former Soviet vessel that was bought from Ukraine in 1998 and was once destined to become a floating casino.

That vessel, the Shi Lang, will be used for training and research purposes, ministry spokesman Geng Yansheng said, seeking to reassure other countries that China would stick to its defensive military policy.

But he said it had a right to protect its extensive maritime territory and coast.

"This is the sacred responsibility of China's armed forces," Geng said in a statement.

"Building a carrier is extremely complex. We are currently refitting an old aircraft carrier, to be used for research and testing."

"An aircraft carrier is a weapons platform; it can be used for offensive or defensive purposes. It can also be used to maintain global peace and for rescue and relief work," he added.

Geng gave no timetable for starting sea trials but said pilots were being trained to operate from the carrier.

Sources with ties to the Communist Party and the military said that the ship would likely be based in the southern island province of Hainan, which sits atop the trade lanes of the sensitive South China Sea.

China has been flexing its muscles more aggressively in those waters, where a territorial dispute with Taiwan and several nearby countries, including Vietnam and the Philippines, has festered for years.

Geng said the timing "had nothing to do" with the tension there though the message will be clear to many in Asia.

"China can now project its power to even further away from its coastline," said Alexander Huang, professor of strategic studies at Taiwan's Tamkang University.

"That will have significant security implications to forces operating in the Western Pacific, including the U.S., Japan and Australia, so this is a watershed development."

The carrier will add to regional concerns about China's military modernization and arms build-up. Defense spending is rising fast and Beijing continues to test new high-tech equipment, including a stealth fighter.

"China's next moves have to be watched carefully, or there eventually could be a negative impact on maritime safety in Asia," said Yoshihiko Yamada, a professor at Japan's Tokai University.

Xinhua news agency said it was the first time the government had confirmed it was pursuing a carrier program.

PENTAGON DOWNPLAYS PROGRAM

The Pentagon declined to say whether it had intelligence confirming the Reuters report but noted that China has publicly acknowledged the existence of one carrier and its intention to build more.

Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan, however, downplayed any immediate leaps that could be expected from China's carrier program.

U.S. officials pointed to a U.S. Navy intelligence estimate that China would still have only "very limited" aircraft carrier proficiency and capability by 2020, even if its carrier program proceeded as expected.

The top U.S. Navy intelligence officer earlier this year told reporters he believed China wanted to start fielding multiple aircraft carriers over the next decade, with the goal of becoming a global naval power capable of projecting power around the world by mid-century.

The official said it would take years for China's navy to learn how to integrate flight deck operations and attain the sophistication needed to use them effectively.

Security analyst Dean Cheng of the Heritage Foundation in Washington said the new carriers squared with a 2011 Pentagon report but also raised many questions.

"Will they be smallish ones like the Shi Lang, with some 30 aircraft? Or USS Midway-sized aircraft carriers, with an airgroup of around 60 aircraft? Or a Forrestal/Kitty Hawk-class with an airgroup of 80-90 aircraft?," he said, referring to China's training vessel and major American carriers.

The old Soviet carrier's refitting has been one of China's worst-kept military secrets. Pictures of it sitting in Dalian harbor have circulated on Chinese websites for months, and it has been widely discussed in state media.

China would be the third Asian country to have a carrier after India and Thailand, but it will take time before it can go to sea in Asian waters that have largely been the domain of the U.S. Navy since World War Two.

"It will be a long while before China develops a fully-fledged carrier capability, it will take a long time to train the necessary crews ... it may be up to decade until China has carrier capability," said Tim Huxley, director for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore.

Beijing's rationale for having an aircraft carrier is more than just about modernizing a navy whose most notable engagements of the past few years have been territorial skirmishes in the South China Sea with other smaller nations.

Sending naval vessels further afield, to the waters off Somalia to fight pirates, and through the southern Japanese islands, has also partly been about ensuring trade routes are protected.

China frets about the powerful U.S. military presence close to its shores, in particular U.S. bases in Japan and South Korea, and Washington's close but unofficial ties with Taiwan, the self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own.

"Aircraft carriers are essential for China primarily to defend its territory and territorial waters and bring a semblance of parity among the world's big powers," Wang Baokun, a defense studies professor at Beijing's Renmin University, wrote in the China Daily earlier this month.

(Additional reporting by Daniel Magnowski in Singapore, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, Christine Lu in Taipei and Phil Stewart and Paul Eckert in Washington; Editing by Angus MacSwan and Paul Simao)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/ ... O420110727

China defends carrier plans, neighbors fret over buildup

A vessel reported to be the Ukrainian-made aircraft carrier ''Varyag'', which China bought in the 1990s, is seen at a port in Dalian, Liaoning province April 17, 2011.

Credit: Reuters/Stringer

By Ben Blanchard and Chris Buckley

BEIJING | Thu Jul 28, 2011 8:43am EDT

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's neighbors are worried its aircraft carrier program may in time intimidate regional rivals but its military on Thursday defended the plan as vital for maritime security.

A day after China confirmed it was refitting an old Soviet vessel, and sources told Reuters it was building two of its own carriers, the official Liberation Army Daily stressed the mix of patriotic glory-seeking and future security worries behind the decision.

China's humiliations at the hands of Western powers in the past centuries "left the Chinese people with the deep pain of having seas they could not defend, helplessly eating the bitter fruit of being beaten for being backward," said a front-page editorial in the paper.

That trend is changing as Beijing ramps up its military spending while Washington discusses cutting its much larger defense budget. Growing Chinese military reach is triggering regional jitters that have fed into longstanding territorial disputes, and could speed up military expansion across Asia.

In the past year, China has had run-ins at sea with Japan, Vietnam and the Philippines. The incidents -- boat crashes and charges of territorial incursions -- have been minor, but the diplomatic reaction often heated.

"The issue of transparency regarding China's defense policy and its military expansion itself are concerns not only for Japan but for the region and the international community," Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said on Thursday.

In the 2012 budget submitted to Congress this week, the Philippines wants to raise military spending to 8 billion pesos ($190 million) per year from a previous 5 billion.

"(China's military modernization) serves as a clarion call for the Philippines to also upgrade its military capability to patrol its waters," said Rommel Banlaoi, executive director at the Philippine Institute for Peace, Violence and Terrorism Research.

The Chinese carrier program could fuel the drive for submarines in Southeast Asia, said Rory Medcalf, program director of International Security at the Lowy Institute for International Policy in Sydney.

"There is already a submarine race, or submarine capability competition, in the region. This could add to that dynamic but I do not think it will be fundamental driver of it," he said.

COUNTERMEASURES

Japan's plan to boost the number of its submarines to 22 from 16, announced last year, was mainly a response to China's naval buildup, said Narushige Michishita, associate professor at Japan's National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies.

"Japan is already taking some countermeasures," he said.

As well as refitting the old Soviet-era carrier bought from Ukraine in 1998, China is building two indigenous aircraft carriers as part of a broad modernization program, sources told Reuters on Wednesday.

"Putting it in the overall context of China's expanding and modernizing military, there is some cause for concern," said Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group in Seoul.

South Korea disputes territory with China, which is the major backer of the principal threat to security on the Korean peninsula, the North.

Taiwan, the self-ruled island China claims as its own and has never renounced the use of force to recover, will also be watching closely. It warned again last week about Beijing's growing military threat.

"In the previous 60 years, the threat to Taiwan was all from the west," said Alexander Huang, professor of strategic studies at Taipei's Tamkang University. "But with a moving platform, China can pose a threat to Taiwan from the eastern side, which means that Taiwan is threatened from all directions."

Others point to India, China's great rival as an emerging Asian economic and military powerhouse.

"If the Chinese leave the west Pacific, there's only one areas they're interested in, the Indian Ocean. In that sense, competition with (India) is inevitable," said Raja Menon, a former rear admiral in the Indian navy.

China's Liberation Army Daily identified future risks as a rationale for the carrier program, which will take many years to create an operational carrier force.

"The struggle to win maritime interests is increasingly intense," the editorial added. A powerful navy is "an inevitable choice for protecting China's increasingly globalised national interests," said the paper.

President Hu Jintao has made the navy a keystone of China's military ramp-up, and the carriers will be among the most visible signs of the country's rising military prowess.

China has repeatedly denied its military modernization is for anything other than defensive purposes, pointing out it that it spend far less than the United States on its military. ($1 = 42.110 Philippine Pesos)

(Additional reporting by Jeremy Laurence in Seoul, Kiyoshi Takenaka in Tokyo, Michael Perry in Sydney, C.J. Kuncheria in New Delhi, Manuel Mogato in Manila and Christine Lu in Taipei; Editing by Daniel Magnowski and Jonathan Thatcher)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/07/ ... O420110728