China’s Aircraft Carrier Ambitions (original) (raw)

Role of the Aircraft Carrier in a Twenty-First Century Navy

Despite the current significance of aircraft carriers, I believe that in the near future they will be pushed into a marginal role because of new military innovations that jeopardize their safety defensively or obsolete their capabilities offensively. There are three main areas of inadequacy that make the aircraft carrier defensively obsolete: missile defense, submarine attacks, and protection against new offensive military technologies. Similarly, there are three major reasons why the carrier is offensively obsolete: the development of new military technologies that obsolete the carrier’s air wing, the possibility of moving command, control and communications (C3) capabilities to other naval vessels, and the development of other military systems that can replace the modern carrier group’s role as a quickly mobilized first response force. In this paper, I will analyze the effects of each innovation listed and also examine the reasons why countries continue to build new aircraft carriers despite their modern military shortcomings.

China Rising and the Emerging Carrier Arms Race in the Indo-Pacific: Strategic Competition and Balance of Power

Korean Journal of Defense Analysis 35(2), 2023

The geopolitical context that has emerged in the Indo-Pacific brings considerations for the development of maritime power to the forefront, especially the aircraft carrier. The projection capability of the aircraft carrier entails that a carrier group can play an active role in deterrence and regional balance of power. This article discusses the emerging maritime arms race in the region centered on the aircraft carrier, and contends that the developing race holds important geopolitical implications for the Indo-Pacific. This article examines the acquisition of aircraft carriers by the United States, China, Japan, India, Australia, South Korea and Russia, and proposes that tensions in the Indo-Pacific may be greatly increased by 2030 if current expansions continue.

Strategic Direction of the Chinese Navy: Capability

2016

Rarely do naval practitioners combine capability and strategy cogently. They are good at explaining technical terminology and its applicability, but insufficient in expounding strategy and analysis. They consider capability in terms of war-oriented applicability, rather than the intention, motivation and strategic outreach of such capability. But if a naval practitioner focuses on strategy and its commensurate capability, he can relatively predict the impact of such capability. At the same time, if the book is about China, then most Indian analysts opt to rely on American analysts who are Mandarin experts and have access to firsthand information from the government sources. However, for an Indian analyst, it will be a cumbersome effort to analyse the Chinese Navy and its capabilities as the Americans do. The book, Strategic Direction of the Chinese Navy: Capability and Intent Assessment, by Kamlesh K. Agnihotri, who researched for half a decade on Chinese Navy at a premier maritime ...