Post by flycookie on Sept 10, 2007 15:16:36 GMT 12
Posting this in the Oz section due to the multiple mentions of the RAAF and the RAN. I would hope that HMNZS Canterbury, et al, are part of the admiral's 1,000 ship fantasy.
One or to very minor solecisms in this, but none to get excited about. Although it stretches claims to credence to suggest that the Thai carrier is anything but the world's biggest and priciest gin palace.
It seems those who have denied the importance of safeguarding the air and seas in the wider Pacific and Asian waters are about to be met by millions of tonnes of other people's grey yacht clubs and airshows which suggest the opposite.
Sunday New York Post
PACIFIC ARMADAS
By ARTHUR HERMAN
September 9, 2007 -- SOMETHING new and menacing has entered the blue
waters of the Pacific Ocean, and it's not the great white shark.
On Aug. 23, Japan launched its first aircraft carrier since World War
Two. The Hyuga only displaces 13,500 tons, compared to the 100,000
tons of an American Nimitz-class behemoth, and it will only carry 11
or so SH-60 anti-submarine helicopters instead of the 90 aircraft and
choppers on the USS Nimitz or Eisenhower - at least for now. But as
Richard Dorn, naval analyst at the U.S.-based AMI International,
notes, "it cannot be denied that the launch of Hyuga is targeted at
carrying Harriers [vertical-take-off fighters] or F-35's in the
future" - and Japan is planning to build another three just like it.
In fact, the Hyuga marks a growing trend among Asia's navies - a trend
that Americans need to monitor closely.
* India plans to have no less than four operational aircraft carriers by
2017.
* Thailand already has one, the Chakri Naruebet.
* Singapore's navy has four amphibious transport docks that can be
converted into homes for anti-sub helicopters or vertical-take-off
aircraft like the Harrier.
* Australia has no plans for a new carrier (its last one was
decommissioned in 1982). But this month Royal Australian Air Force
instructors will start learning to land their F/A-18s on American
carrier decks - a major step toward making the RAAF a power at sea as
well as on land.
Many analysts see all this taking to the air as countermeasures to the
alarming growth of China's navy over the last decade, especially its
submarine fleet (which is now nearly equal in number, if not in
quality, to our own). They note that the navies of four Asian powers -
Japan, Singapore, India and Australia - have joined the Americans in
anti-submarine exercises off India's Malabar coast this week to send a
clear signal to Asia's fast-growing naval power.
But this is by no means the full story. Two years ago, naval experts
agreed that the Chinese were concentrating on building subs and had no
interest in aircraft carriers. But now China has announced it will
build two carriers by 2015 in cooperation with the Russians - who in
turn announced in June that in 2010 they'll start building a new
nuclear-powered carrier of 50,000 tons to join their existing carrier,
the Admiral Kuznetzov.
WHAT we are seeing are Asian navies taking to heart the lessons of
seapower - and of the aircraft carrier, even a diminutive one, as the
power projector par excellence. Fed by a resurgent nationalism that
had been suppressed during the Cold War, the struggle for the mastery
of the Pacific is underway.
Like continental Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, Asia's economies
are growing, many (like China and India) at 8 percent a year or more.
And their middle classes are growing - producing and using an
ever-larger share of the world's GDP. These nations not only have
money to spend on projecting national power through their navies
(seven of the world's 12 biggest navies face onto the Pacific), but
they have vital interests to protect.
As in 19th century Europe, these trends will summon up huge creative
energies but also the potential for great destruction - and America
will have to help to make sure the first doesn't set the stage for the
other.
CHINA now has the world's second- larg est navy - but it also has big
interests to protect. By 2020, it will need more than 900 million tons
of rice a year to feed its billion-plus population, yet even the most
optimistic forecasts see its domestic production as rising to no more
than 615 million tons. There is also China's growing thirst for
natural gas and oil, which gives it a huge stake in protecting the
vital sea lanes through which Asia gets its fossil fuels.
The same is true of India and Japan. With Japan's economy now second
only to the United States' in size, its navy has increasingly had to
drop the fiction that it is merely a Maritime Self-Defense Force (the
official name), in favor of creating a "blue water" capacity - that
is, an ability to operate trans-oceanically in cooperation with the
United States or even (as the Hyuga indicates) on its own.
INDIA'S naval buildup - pushed by its ultra-na tional Hindu Bharatiya
Janata Party - has been based on the lessons it learned about seapower
from its original teacher, Britain's Royal Navy. The Indian Navy's
motto even has distinct echoes of the age of Drake and Nelson: "He who
controls the sea is all-powerful." Since 97 percent of India's foreign
trade is seaborne, it is no surprise that by 2020 its navy will have
grown to 185 ships, including at least four aircraft carriers.
RUSSIA, too, faces the same push for national self-assertion combined
with the need to protect its interests in the Pacific. Next year,
nearly a quarter of of its $192 billion defense budget will go for new
ships. Its naval commander-in-chief, Adm. Vladimir Masorin,
confidently predicts Russia will have the world's second-largest fleet
in 20 years' time - just as it did in the Cold War.
Will the new national energies in Asia help to build a new world
order, or will they trigger a ruthless competition for resources and
empire, much as those of 19th century Europe triggered World War One?
To a large extent, the answer is up to the U.S. Navy, which is still
the largest but also the most flexible and versatile in the world.
THIS is why Adm. Mi chael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and
former Chief of Naval Operations, has been a steady champion of the
concept of a "1,000-ship navy" - that is, a U.S. fleet effectively
enlarged by close cooperation with allied navies like Japan and India
and Australia, and even potential rivals like China.
The goal is not only a force multiplier for our own navy in a time of
shrinking naval budgets. The 1,000-ship navy will also have to become
the glue that holds the global economic system together - both by
protecting the world's sea lanes (over which 95 percent of the weight
of international trade still travels) and by preventing the clash of
interests (including our own) in places like the Pacific from
triggering a world crisis involving nuclear-armed powers like Russia,
China, and India.
Americans may not like being globocops. As we see in Iraq, the costs
can be severe. But the alternatives are even riskier. And as the
struggle for mastery of the Pacific heats up, we will need a strong,
flexible Navy more than ever.
Arthur Herman's most recent book is "To Rule the Waves: How the
British Navy Shaped the Modern World."
One or to very minor solecisms in this, but none to get excited about. Although it stretches claims to credence to suggest that the Thai carrier is anything but the world's biggest and priciest gin palace.
It seems those who have denied the importance of safeguarding the air and seas in the wider Pacific and Asian waters are about to be met by millions of tonnes of other people's grey yacht clubs and airshows which suggest the opposite.
Sunday New York Post
PACIFIC ARMADAS
By ARTHUR HERMAN
September 9, 2007 -- SOMETHING new and menacing has entered the blue
waters of the Pacific Ocean, and it's not the great white shark.
On Aug. 23, Japan launched its first aircraft carrier since World War
Two. The Hyuga only displaces 13,500 tons, compared to the 100,000
tons of an American Nimitz-class behemoth, and it will only carry 11
or so SH-60 anti-submarine helicopters instead of the 90 aircraft and
choppers on the USS Nimitz or Eisenhower - at least for now. But as
Richard Dorn, naval analyst at the U.S.-based AMI International,
notes, "it cannot be denied that the launch of Hyuga is targeted at
carrying Harriers [vertical-take-off fighters] or F-35's in the
future" - and Japan is planning to build another three just like it.
In fact, the Hyuga marks a growing trend among Asia's navies - a trend
that Americans need to monitor closely.
* India plans to have no less than four operational aircraft carriers by
2017.
* Thailand already has one, the Chakri Naruebet.
* Singapore's navy has four amphibious transport docks that can be
converted into homes for anti-sub helicopters or vertical-take-off
aircraft like the Harrier.
* Australia has no plans for a new carrier (its last one was
decommissioned in 1982). But this month Royal Australian Air Force
instructors will start learning to land their F/A-18s on American
carrier decks - a major step toward making the RAAF a power at sea as
well as on land.
Many analysts see all this taking to the air as countermeasures to the
alarming growth of China's navy over the last decade, especially its
submarine fleet (which is now nearly equal in number, if not in
quality, to our own). They note that the navies of four Asian powers -
Japan, Singapore, India and Australia - have joined the Americans in
anti-submarine exercises off India's Malabar coast this week to send a
clear signal to Asia's fast-growing naval power.
But this is by no means the full story. Two years ago, naval experts
agreed that the Chinese were concentrating on building subs and had no
interest in aircraft carriers. But now China has announced it will
build two carriers by 2015 in cooperation with the Russians - who in
turn announced in June that in 2010 they'll start building a new
nuclear-powered carrier of 50,000 tons to join their existing carrier,
the Admiral Kuznetzov.
WHAT we are seeing are Asian navies taking to heart the lessons of
seapower - and of the aircraft carrier, even a diminutive one, as the
power projector par excellence. Fed by a resurgent nationalism that
had been suppressed during the Cold War, the struggle for the mastery
of the Pacific is underway.
Like continental Europe after the Napoleonic Wars, Asia's economies
are growing, many (like China and India) at 8 percent a year or more.
And their middle classes are growing - producing and using an
ever-larger share of the world's GDP. These nations not only have
money to spend on projecting national power through their navies
(seven of the world's 12 biggest navies face onto the Pacific), but
they have vital interests to protect.
As in 19th century Europe, these trends will summon up huge creative
energies but also the potential for great destruction - and America
will have to help to make sure the first doesn't set the stage for the
other.
CHINA now has the world's second- larg est navy - but it also has big
interests to protect. By 2020, it will need more than 900 million tons
of rice a year to feed its billion-plus population, yet even the most
optimistic forecasts see its domestic production as rising to no more
than 615 million tons. There is also China's growing thirst for
natural gas and oil, which gives it a huge stake in protecting the
vital sea lanes through which Asia gets its fossil fuels.
The same is true of India and Japan. With Japan's economy now second
only to the United States' in size, its navy has increasingly had to
drop the fiction that it is merely a Maritime Self-Defense Force (the
official name), in favor of creating a "blue water" capacity - that
is, an ability to operate trans-oceanically in cooperation with the
United States or even (as the Hyuga indicates) on its own.
INDIA'S naval buildup - pushed by its ultra-na tional Hindu Bharatiya
Janata Party - has been based on the lessons it learned about seapower
from its original teacher, Britain's Royal Navy. The Indian Navy's
motto even has distinct echoes of the age of Drake and Nelson: "He who
controls the sea is all-powerful." Since 97 percent of India's foreign
trade is seaborne, it is no surprise that by 2020 its navy will have
grown to 185 ships, including at least four aircraft carriers.
RUSSIA, too, faces the same push for national self-assertion combined
with the need to protect its interests in the Pacific. Next year,
nearly a quarter of of its $192 billion defense budget will go for new
ships. Its naval commander-in-chief, Adm. Vladimir Masorin,
confidently predicts Russia will have the world's second-largest fleet
in 20 years' time - just as it did in the Cold War.
Will the new national energies in Asia help to build a new world
order, or will they trigger a ruthless competition for resources and
empire, much as those of 19th century Europe triggered World War One?
To a large extent, the answer is up to the U.S. Navy, which is still
the largest but also the most flexible and versatile in the world.
THIS is why Adm. Mi chael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and
former Chief of Naval Operations, has been a steady champion of the
concept of a "1,000-ship navy" - that is, a U.S. fleet effectively
enlarged by close cooperation with allied navies like Japan and India
and Australia, and even potential rivals like China.
The goal is not only a force multiplier for our own navy in a time of
shrinking naval budgets. The 1,000-ship navy will also have to become
the glue that holds the global economic system together - both by
protecting the world's sea lanes (over which 95 percent of the weight
of international trade still travels) and by preventing the clash of
interests (including our own) in places like the Pacific from
triggering a world crisis involving nuclear-armed powers like Russia,
China, and India.
Americans may not like being globocops. As we see in Iraq, the costs
can be severe. But the alternatives are even riskier. And as the
struggle for mastery of the Pacific heats up, we will need a strong,
flexible Navy more than ever.
Arthur Herman's most recent book is "To Rule the Waves: How the
British Navy Shaped the Modern World."
