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China’s vast fleet is tipping the balance in the Pacific The Chinese navy, which is growing faster than any other major fleet, now controls the seas off its coast. Once dominant, the United States and its allies sail warily in these waters. A former U.S. naval officer says China's advances have caught America napping. Read the full article Sources: Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS); International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Sources: Federation of American Scientists (FAS); U.S. Navy; United States Forces Japan; United States Forces Korea; U.S Department of Defense; Marine Regions, Flanders Marine Institute; Natural Earth Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) A fleet of Chinese vessels escorts the aircraft carrier Liaoning, a refurbished former Soviet-era vessel, in the South China Sea in March last year. Planet Labs/Handout via REUTERS Aircraft carriers The U.S. fleet of nuclear powered aircraft carriers are the backbone of America's naval power. China's navy is in the early stages of building and deploying an effective carrier force, with one carrier deployed and a second soon to come. Amphibious assault ships These vessels, in reality smaller aircraft carriers with fighters and helicopters, allow the United States to deploy marines with their heavy equipment and support them with air power. Missile submarines The role of these big, nuclear-powered submarines is to patrol undetected in the ocean depths. They can launch nuclear attacks with their ballistic missiles. The U.S. has converted four of these vessels so they can fire conventionally armed cruise missiles against land targets. Attack submarines These versatile vessels are designed to attack surface ships and other submarines with torpedoes or missiles. The entire U.S. fleet is nuclear powered while most of China's rapidly expanding force is made up of smaller, stealthy diesel-electric submarines. Cruisers China is poised to begin commissioning the first four of its Type 055 cruisers, powerful surface warships that will boost its fleet. The first of these vessels has completed most of its sea trials. Destroyers These are fast and maneuverable warships that perform multiple roles including escorting aircraft carriers, surface warfare, air and missile defense and anti-submarine warfare. China is expanding its fleet. Frigates China has a monopoly on this class of smaller, versatile warship that can be used for escorting other ships, air defense and anti-submarine warfare. Chinese shipyards are launching these ships at a rapid rate. Corvettes China has an expanding fleet of these smaller, missile-armed warships designed for operations closer to the mainland coast. The U.S. Navy's fleet of littoral combat ships is designed to perform a similar role. Fast attack craft These small, fast vessels are each armed with multiple potent anti-ship missiles. They are designed to operate in coastal waters where they could swarm adversaries and launch waves of missiles.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Iran could carry out "provocative actions" in the Strait of Hormuz and elsewhere in that region in the future despite a period of relative calm, acting U.S. Navy Secretary Thomas Modly said on Friday. Tensions in the Gulf have mounted since attacks on oil tankers this summer, including off the coast of the United Arab Emirates, and a major strike on oil facilities in Saudi Arabia. Washington has blamed Iran, which has denied being behind the attacks. "I think they're going to continue to perform provocative actions over there... and I think they'll look at every opportunity they can to do that," Modly told Reuters, without giving a timeline or details. "There's nothing that suggests to me, short of a regime change there, that you have a different tone set from the leadership, that would suggest to me that they're going to stop doing what they've been doing," he added. Since May, the Pentagon has sent 14,000 additional troops to the region to deter Iran, including an aircraft carrier. Modly suggested that U.S. reactions to Iranian actions could take away from the Pentagon's focus towards priorities like countering China. "As they start creating mischief over there... our reaction is we send an aircraft carrier over there for 10 months," he said. "What does that do to our carrier readiness? It degrades readiness the longer it's over there." Modly's warning on future actions coincides with China, Iran and Russia beginning joint naval drills in the Indian Ocean and Gulf of Oman. Waters around Iran have become a locus of international tension, with the United States exerting pressure for Iranian crude oil sales and other trade ties to be cut off, mainly through extensive sanctions. The Gulf of Oman is a particularly sensitive waterway as it connects to the Strait of Hormuz - through which about a fifth of the world’s oil passes - which in turn connects to the Gulf. Asked if he expected Iran to lash out in the region as a result of internal protests, Modly said he had not seen intelligence on that. Demonstrations against a hike in fuel prices turned political last month in Iran, sparking the bloodiest crackdown in the 40-year history of the Islamic Republic. About 1,500 people were killed during less than two weeks of unrest, three Iranian interior ministry officials told Reuters. (Reporting by Idrees Ali; Editing by Mary Milliken and David Gregorio) reuters.com

The U.S. Navy has confirmed that "multiple" small Iranian boats running alongside the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln and other ships from her strike group as she sailed through Strait of Hormuz into the Gulf of Oman earlier this month, as seen in commercial satellite imagery. The service has rejected reports that any of the Iranian craft harassed or otherwise acted provocatively toward the carrier, saying the activity was within "normal behavior patterns." Still, the image of 18 small boats in very close proximity to Lincoln and her escorts is eye-opening and a stark reminder of the inherent risks of each transit through the Strait. A PlanetScope satellite belonging to private satellite imagery firm Planet Labs, part of a constellation that takes images of much of the Earth every day, caught Lincoln making the transit out of the Persian Gulf by way of the Strait of Hormuz on Dec. 4, 2019. The image circulated for days in various formats on social media, causing considerable debate within the open-source intelligence community about what exactly was going on in the frame. Some media outlets, including in Iran, picked up on the narrative that the IRGC had "harassed," or at least "escorted," the Carrier Strike Group out of the Strait in a successful challenge to the United States amid a new spike in tensions between the two countries. We can now put this debate to rest. "During the transit, multiple Iranian vessels followed the U.S. ships through the strait," U.S. Navy Commander Joshua Frey, a public affairs officer for U.S. Naval Forces Central Command (NAVCENT), told the War Zone in an Email. "Their activity was within normal behavior patterns for Iran and did not threaten the Abe [Abraham Lincoln] strike group." The satellite image shows what could be as many as 18 boats following Lincoln around 20 miles northwest of Oman's Musandam Peninsula and some 30 miles from Iran's Qeshm Island. Read the full story

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The Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) first domestically designed and built aircraft carrier, the Type 002 Shandong (CV-17), was commissioned on Tuesday at a naval base in Sanya on the southern island of Hainan during a ceremony attended by President Xi Jinping, according to local media reports. Xi inspected an honor guard during the ceremony and met with PLAN personnel aboard the carrier, the Global Times reported on December 17. The Shandong was launched in April 2017 and began sea trials one year later in April 2018. The carrier conducted a total of nine sea trials. During its last sea trial in November, the Shandong passed through the Taiwan Strait and entered the South China Sea. In comparison, the PLAN’s sole operational aircraft carrier, the 60,000-ton Liaoning, a retrofitted Soviet-era Admiral Kuznetsov-class multirole aircraft carrier, completed 10 sea trials before being commissioned in 2012. The Shandong is based on Soviet Navy carrier designs: The 65,ooo-ton Type [002] carrier was launched at the DSIC shipyard in April 2017. The Shandong has been fitted with a so-called ski-jump assisted Short Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (STOBAR) launch system also installed aboard the Liaoning. STOBAR-launched aircraft have a more limited operational range and carry lighter payloads than fighter jets launched from so-called Catapult-Assisted Take-Off But Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) systems used on U.S. Navy carriers. (STOBAR systems put a lot of strain on the airframe of fighter jets during take-off.) The [future] Shandong will be able to carry up to 24 Shenyang J-15 multirole fighter jets and a variant of the fourth-generation Sukhoi Su-33 twin-engines air superiority fighter, as well as around ten rotary wing aircraft including Changshe Z-18, Ka-31, or Harbin Z-9 helicopters. The Shandong will be able to accommodate up to 32 fighter aircraft in total, according to senior PLAN officers. With today’s commissioning, the PLAN is now operating two aircraft carriers, although it will take the Shandong around a decade to be combat-ready, while the Liaoning primarily serves as a training platform for Chinese naval aviation. It may also take a decade or two for a next-generation carrier-based strike aircraft to be deployed aboard the PLAN’s flattops. Chinese pilots and aviation personnel will also need to gain additional experience in operating aircraft from carriers. The Shandong will likely be beset by so-called “first-in-class problems,” technical and engineering issues that will only become apparent once the ship will begin conducting operations, which will impact the carrier’s reliability. Stashwick also noted that China’s future carrier force may be limited to four hulls due to the massive costs associated with building these huge flattops. Additionally, the PLAN will also have to gain further experience operating a carrier strike group (CSG). A future PLAN CSG will most likely be composed of Jiangkai-II-class (Type 054A) frigates, Luyang-III-class (Type 052D) destroyers, Renhai-class Type 055 destroyers, and one to two Yuan-class (Type 039A) or alternatively Song-class (Type 039) submarines in addition to support vessels. Advertisement The Shandong will be homeported in Sanya. for more info.