Is the Navy talking up China's nuclear submarine threat?

The Federal Government is currently in the process of drawing up a defence white paper, due to be released early next year. A number of interesting leaks have appeared providing some insight into internal deliberations, perhaps the most revealing thus far being the airing of Navy concerns about the modernisation of China's Navy, especially its strategic nuclear submarines. This class of submarine, known affectionately as boomers, is generally designed to launch strategic nuclear warheads while on patrol at sea. The author freely admits that Crimson Tide is his favourite movie so let us stick with the term boomers.

The Australian reported:

… concern in Australian defence circles about China's naval expansion is real and rising but it is also kept firmly behind closed doors. While politicians and diplomats speak glowingly about Australia's relations with China, the burgeoning trade links and shared interests, a small team of defence planners in Canberra is planning how best to handle China's naval challenge to the region. The new defence white paper to be released at the end of the year will be framed with China's naval expansion prominent in the minds of the authors.

Comments by the Prime Minister on the ABC's Lateline (September 10, 2008) about protecting Australia's sea lanes of communication tend to confirm this sentiment.

The article demonstrates that a key concern is Chinese boomer modernisation:

… at present China's submarine fleet is used almost exclusively as a coastal defence force but Washington suspects the ultimate aim is to develop a near-continuous sea-based force of nuclear-armed submarines that would pose serious dangers for the US Pacific fleet.

This debate is of the utmost significance for Australia. At its heart lies competing visions for the future of Australia's role in the region for the logical corollary of these arguments is to enmesh Australia more closely into an incipient strategy directed at the containment of China. In other words, should the Australian Defence Force be structured and sized for going to war against China as an appendage of US Pacific Command?

Whatever one feels is the appropriate answer to this question we all surely would agree that this debate should not be "kept firmly behind closed doors". Towards this end, it will help to put China's boomer modernisation in context by focusing on two questions. First, what capability do China's new boomers, the Jin-class, possess? Second, why should Beijing be interested in sending its strategic deterrent to sea?

Hitherto the capabilities of China's strategic nuclear missiles have been rudimentary, with its deterrent force mostly focused on land-based nuclear missiles. In fact China's older boomer, the Xia-class, never conducted a deterrent patrol given its limitations, nor was deployed with operational missiles. China's leaders never calculated the Xia-class as a real part of its nuclear deterrent.

A patrol is an extended voyage at sea well away from home port. Last year China only conducted six patrols for all classes of submarine. To have a continuous nuclear patrol capability, as the above article alleges China desires, would require multiple Jin-class submarines (China only had one Xia-class boomer). US naval intelligence alleges that China seeks to develop five Jin-class boomers in order to have one boat continuously at sea, but the latest Pentagon report on Chinese military power does not include this assertion. China has three Jin-class boomers. Thus far no Jin-class submarine has conducted a patrol, although China has constructed a de-magnetisation facility that suggests that such a capability may be desired by planners.

China's land based missiles, which are of vintage design, are currently being modernised by developing more capable solid fuelled and road mobile missiles such as the DF-31. Beijing's modernisation of its boomer force is the sea leg basis of this program of modernisation. This modernisation is focused on developing a new class of submarine, the Jin-class as noted above, and a new sea launched ballistic missile, the JL-2. The JL-2 is roughly comparable to the US Trident C-4, not the more capable Trident II D-5 and is actually a variant of the DF-31. Thus far no JL-2 missile has been test launched from a Jin-class boomer.

This concurrent modernisation suggests to us that this modernisation might not be a reflection of a strategy of regional dominance backed up by nuclear firepower but an upgrade of vintage and increasingly unreliable technology. Furthermore, even if China does develop a patrol capability a one boomer continuous patrol means that China would have at sea only 12 strategic nuclear warheads, assuming (shared by US intelligence) that China will not employ multiple warheads on the JL-2.

China's nuclear modernisation thus far displays little to no sign of being conducted as a result of Beijing's adoption of a new nuclear strategy. China continues to adopt a minimum deterrent directed toward achieving "the minimum means of reprisal".

If deployed on patrol the Jin-class might not be able to evade US anti-submarine warfare capabilities. The Jin-class boomer would be highly vulnerable to US interdiction if employed deep in the Pacific Ocean, which means it could not really threaten all of the United States. Most likely, the Jin-class is designed for launching missiles from coastal areas thereby only threatening targets at the extreme Western most portions of the US. The Jin-class can only act as a means to deter a US first strike based on a minimum means of reprisal. In no way can it be argued that the Jin-class boomer would represent a counterforce capability against US strategic nuclear forces, in order to back up a strategy of regional dominance.

For instance, to just knock out the land-based leg of the US strategic triad Beijing would need to hit 500 hardened missile silos. No capability of one continuous at sea Jin-class patrol with 12 JL-2 missiles could do this.

Even assuming three multiple or MIRV warheads per missile (a figure we reach based on the reported throw weight of the JL-2) this equates to only 36 warheads. Even if all five that US Navy intelligence states will be built were on patrol at one time, highly unlikely for that is not how boomer operations work, then that becomes 180 warheads. That's still well below 500. Moreover, if MIRVed the JL-2 warheads would have a reported yield of 90,000 tons of TNT (90Kt). Given the reported accuracy of the JL-2, like the US C-4 armed with the W-76 (100 Kt) initially, this equates to no knock out capability even assuming 500 JL-2 warheads on continuous patrol able to evade US anti-submarine warfare.

The JL-2 Jin-class "threat" has absolutely zero credibility. In fact it is logically exactly the same as the purported "window of vulnerability" Soviet threat of the 1970s, which was fake, known to be fake at the time, confirmed to be fake by Reagan's Scowcroft commission on MX missile basing and recently further confirmed as fake through analysis of Russian documents by the Russian nuclear analyst Pavel Podvig.

Nuclear weapons in a sea based tactical environment in the region would most likely be directed at knocking out aircraft carrier battle groups, but boomers are not designed for such missions hence not terribly relevant.

The Jin-class threat, if the leak to The Australian is accurate, is being over sold by elements in the Australian Defence Force that seek to more deeply integrate Australian maritime power into US regional strategy. This is all very sad for the Army seeks to further integrate the ADF into US Central Command, which covers the Middle East. It is interesting that the ADF should state that the sea-lanes of communication to the Middle East is vital for the defence of Australia but a purported Chinese desire to do the same is an indication of an aggressive intent to dominate.

Why should China be interested in sending its deterrent to sea? From the Eisenhower Administration up until George W Bush the US nuclear war plan was known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP). The main focus of the SIOP was the Soviet Union, but China did figure in the early years. After the Sino-Soviet split and the thawing of relations with Beijing China was placed out of the main attack provisions of the SIOP. Intriguingly, during the Clinton Administration China was brought back into the SIOP. The Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review further alarmed strategic planners in Beijing.

Some reported features of the current US nuclear war plan, OPLAN-8044, are directed at China. Moreover, it is credibly reported that aspects of the Pacific Command's Operational Plan assume the use of nuclear weapons against China. The United States is upgrading its strategic capability, by modernising its warheads (new fuses for the W-76), testing GPS navigation systems for ballistic missiles, developing Ballistic Missile Defense and working on the weaponisation of space.

On top of that the Pentagon seeks to develop replacement warheads for its entire stockpile, to develop new land based missiles, new boomers armed with new missiles and new types of re-entry vehicles made possible by advances in quantum computation.

These programs taken together as a package threaten to undermine China's strategic deterrent, or at the very least appear to do so. This partly acts as a catalyst for China to increasingly shift its deterrent to sea to ensure survivability. This would then reflect not a strategy of regional dominance, but a desire to maintain the credibility of its minimum nuclear deterrent capability given US modernisation.

This should alarm us, but not for the reasons presented. China has little experience of the complex command and control arrangements of sea-based nuclear patrolling. The chances of things going wrong, as in Crimson Tide, in a crisis would be real. In fact, even if the Jin-class was to surge to coastal waters in a crisis, rather than be a patrol force, a sudden surge in a crisis could be de-stabilising. US actions are creating the dynamics that might lead to strategic postures that threaten accidental nuclear war in Asia.

If the Defence Department and Australia's senior commanders were more realistic they would recognise that the primary threat to strategic stability in the Asia-Pacific region arises from the continued US desire to maintain the Pacific as an American lake, not China's boomers nor its Navy for that matter. A true system of co-operative security and arms control in Asia would lead the burden on retrenching military power being faced by Washington.

It seems that planners at Defence Headquarters are aware that integrating Australia's defence capability with US Pacific Command would not be supported by the public, which actually regards the US as a greater threat than China, hence the rather dodgy analysis on Chinese boomer capability.

Spurious threat analysis underlies desires to maintain and increase high defence spending. The "socialist" Minister for Finance, Lindsay Tanner, cannot justify such spending whilst maintaining tight neo-liberal fiscal policies in order to soothe financial markets and the corporate elite without threat exaggerations. Expect to hear more in the coming months.