China’s Project 022 Fast Attack Craft

The Chinese Navy's Project 022 class is, despite its innovative hull design, a classic missile-armed fast attack craft. It is designed for the sole purpose of delivering eight anti-ship missiles to a specified naval target and has virtually no capability outside that area. Its design makes it unsuitable for patrol duties, while its short operational radius limits its applicability to maritime policing work.

In military roles, it is virtually defenseless against air attack and would have to rely on speed and agility to survive in a hostile environment. Craft in this general category were once in great vogue, but experience has shown that they are not an effective military unit outside very limited and specific areas. However, the Chinese Navy happens to have one of those limited and specific areas as a primary operational requirement. Thus, in its specific geostrategic situation, the Project 022 is a viable and effective craft.

The Chinese Navy has gone to significant lengths to reduce the investment in any single Project 022 class FAC-M to a minimum. This does not just apply to equipment standards, austere though they are, but to manpower. The Project 022 has a crew of 12 to 14 sailors, less than half that of similar craft. At a unit cost of an estimated $50 million each, the Chinese could afford both the financial and manpower commitment needed to operate a very large fleet of these craft. Construction is expected to exceed 100 hulls and may well go beyond that point.

The catamaran hull form used by the Project 022 appears to be successful, and films of the class at sea show the craft handle well. This raises the possibility that variants of the design might well be evolved to handle a wider spectrum of operational requirements. Stripping out the bulky and heavy missile tubes would provide space and weight for the equipment needed to handle rigid inflatable boats and the other equipment necessary for maritime policing operations. This would allow the Chinese to offer a low-cost and effective competitor in the offshore patrol craft sector.

Over the years, the Chinese have sold large numbers of attack and patrol craft around the world. At present some 40 coastal patrol craft and 70 missile-armed fast attack craft built in China remain in service. The Project 022 would be in an excellent position to replace the latter as they begin to wear and need to be replaced. The postulated maritime patrol craft variant of the design would be well placed to replace the former group. The export market for the Project 022 and derivatives thereof certainly exists; it is up to the Chinese to turn a potential into reality.

Ukraine reportedly helping China build aircraft carrier

Hong Kong, Jan. 25 (CNA) Ukraine has been providing China with the technics to build an aircraft carrier, according to the latest issue of the Canada-based Kanwa Asian Defense magazine.

In addition, Ukraine experts are also involved in the restoration of Varyag, an derelict carrier that China bought from Ukraine in 1999, Kanwa said.

"The restoration of Varyag has been completed, and the vessel has been equipped with Ukraine developed power systems, " the monthly said.

China bought the Kuznetsov-class Varyag, minus any power, radar or battle systems, and towed it via the Black Sea to the northern port of Dalian under the pretext of transforming it into a tourism attraction.

But many military observers believed that China is turning Varyag into a training ground for its pilots on the soon-to-be established fighter fleets on the carrier.

Andri Pinkov, founder and editor-of-chief of the monthly, said that Ukraine also helped China's Harbin boiler plant manufacture military boilers and steam machines as part of efforts to adopt the "catapult assisted take off and arrested recovery system" that is used by Russian carrier aircraft.

Second Round in Future US Anti-Ship Missile Programme

The LRASM is planned to provide a stand-off strike capability in 2013

Lockheed Martin Receives Contracts Worth $218 Million for Demonstration Phase

Despite the currently improving ties between the US and China, it can be expected that China will be the determining factor in US military development during the foreseeable future. As those military operations, which urged western Armed Forces to refocus on so-called asymmetric warfare, are being considered more or less under control and probably achievable in a rather predictable time frame, other potential conflict areas that had been neglected during the past decade begin to slide back to the centre of attention. As if awakening from a nightmare of dirty wars in dusty countries, recently increased tensions on the Korean Peninsula and China’s military build-up have urged the US military leadership and defence analysts to rediscover the necessities of conventional warfare in order to sustain the United States’ superpower status in the future.* 

China is very much helping to cement this reasoning: The J-20 fifth-generation fighter aircraft made its maiden flight while US Defense Secretary Gates was in the country, and reports of China’s tangible efforts to build an aircraft carrier emerged just as Chinese President Hu Jintao prepared to meet Barack Obama in Washington ... coincidences? Further, reports of an ominous Chinese anti-ship missile, capable of sinking US aircraft carriers, spooked through the media during the past months. 

In this context, the US Navy in 2009 asked the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) to support its effort to speedily develop a next-generation stand-off anti-ship weapons system. As current systems, such as the Harpoon RGM-84, are ageing and may not meet future requirements in terms of range, lethality and resistance against defensive measures, the US Navy and DARPA established the Long-Range Anti-Ship Missile (LRASM) programme. Within the framework of this programme, two different missile solutions will be developed and have to demonstrate their worth to be quickly introduced into service with the US Navy’s vessels.

PHASE 2 – DEMONSTRATION OF BOTH MISSILE VARIANTS

Having successfully completed Phase 1, which resulted in two preliminary system designs that will be further explored, DARPA has recently awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin for the programme’s next phase. As Lockheed Martin announced yesterday, it received two contracts worth $218 million for the demonstration of the LRASM-A and LRASM-B concepts. The second phase of the programme aims at achieving successful flight demonstrations of tactically relevant prototypes of both missiles.

Lockheed Martin’s Missiles and Fire Control Strike Weapons division received a $60.3 million contract for two air-launched demonstrations of the LRASM-A, which is largely based on the company’s experience with the Joint Air to Surface Standoff Missile Extended Range (JASSM-ER) airframe. Further, under a $157.7 million contract, the Missile and Fire Control Tactical Missiles division will demonstrate the LRASM-B prototype, comprising four Vertical Launch System (VLS) launches. According to DARPA, the LRASM-B leverages Lockheed Martin’s prior ramjet development activities and a suite of supporting sensors and avionics. It is expected to provide a “supersonic cruise missile with balanced speed and stealth for robust performance.”

Despite being matched with the VLS, used on the US Navy’s destroyers and cruisers to launch state-of-the-art surface-to-air and surface-to-surface missiles (SAM/SSM), both missile solutions are also designed to be launched by aircraft. Thus, it will replace the air-launched Harpoon variant (AGM-84), which is deployed by various fixed-wing aircraft in the US inventory. 

BAE Systems will provide a common sensor system for all missile variants. In addition to multiple sensors, allowing the missile to autonomously select targets even in a cluttered sea lane and in a GPS-denied environment, AviationWeek predicts that the core of the sensor suite will be based on passive radio-frequency technology.

Rick Edwards, vice president of Tactical Missiles and Combat Maneuver Systems at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control, explained: “Both of our LRASM solutions will deliver extraordinary range, willful penetration of ship self-defense systems and precise lethality in denied combat environments.”

“The maturity of these weapons and technologies allows near-term transition to Navy magazines at an affordable price. These are low risk, practical options with the Navy initiating studies of anti-surface warfare capability,” Edwards continued.

A CHALLENGING UNDERTAKING – TIME, CAPABILITIES, TECHNOLOGY

As its current anti-ship capabilities are limited in the face of today’s potential conventional threats, the Navy is anxious to introduce its next-generation anti-ship missile system as soon as possible. As yet, this is expected to be achieved as early as 2013. However, many challenges remain before a truly operational system will be available.

The Navy made high demands with regard to the systems’ capabilities. Currently deployed systems require a considerable amount of planning, as well as reliable data and precision guidance, to successfully strike their targets. Thus, the Navy needs a solution that allows its vessels to engage targets well outside their striking range while also providing a significantly increased flexibility and independence. 

When the programme was initiated in 2009, Rob McHenry, programme manager in DARPA’s Tactical Technology Office, summarised the requirements as follows: “Once the missile flies that far, it has a requirement to be able to independently detect and validate the target that it was shot at. Once it finds that target, then it has to be able to penetrate the air defenses. The standard of maritime integrated air defenses has risen dramatically over the past few years.”

Missile Defense Plays A Significant Role In Secretary Gates' North Korea Concern

Gates reviews the PLA Honor Guard during arrival ceremony in Beijing. (USAF Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison)

WASHINGTON | Riki Ellison, Chairman and Founder of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (MDAA), has analyzed the statements made by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates this week regarding North Koreas' threat to the U.S. and offered his analysis. Ellison is one of the top lay experts in the field of missile defense in the world. His comments are outlined below:

In Beijing, China this week Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stated that two things have changed in the status quo on the Korean Peninsula, one of them in a worrying way:

"The first is, with North Korean's continuing development of nuclear weapons, and their development of intercontinental ballistic missiles, North Korea is becoming a direct threat to the United States, and we have to take that into account."

"And the second is clearly a sea change in the attitude of the South Korean public in their willingness to tolerate the kind of provocations the North Koreans have engaged in for many years, but with two just this past year- the Cheonan and the artillery shelling- that their tolerance for not responding has changed. And clearly if there is another provocation, there will be pressure on the South Korean government to react."

Both of these changes have implications on the national security requirements for missile defense; both strategically for homeland defense and tactically for our allies and troops deployed in and around the Korean Peninsula. These national security requirements require more confidence in our technical capability, more integration of the system and more numerical deployed missile defense assets to create higher confidence that our homeland, armed forces and allies are adequately protected. Having a robust, layered and fully integrated missile defense system with high confidence would help stabilize the region, providing extended deterrence to our allies that would curb proliferation and protect their populations.

In the backdrop of the Secretary's visit to China, our nation has made meaningful movements recently in the support of missile defense.

-- Two weeks earlier, President Obama's direct statement in a letter to the Russian Federation made clear that the United States will continue to deploy and develop missile defenses. "It is the policy of the United States to continue development and deployment of United States missile defense systems to defend against missile threats from nations such as North Korea and Iran, including qualitative and quantitative improvements to such systems. Such systems include all phases of the Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defenses in Europe, the modernization of the Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, and the continued development of the two-stage Ground-Based Interceptor as a technological and strategic hedge."

-- Last week, Secretary Gates cut of $78 Billion from the Pentagon's future budgets; missile defense was not part of these cuts.

-- This week the new majority of the House of Representatives of the 112th Congress lead by Representative Jon Boehner on a three day retreat to discuss the strategy of the Republican Congress for this year. This new majority is lead by its "Pledge to America", to fully fund missile defense and to ensure critical funding is restored to protect the U.S. homeland and our allies from missile threats from states such as Iran and North Korea. 

These movements will have little value without funding increases in the missile defense budget and a significant increase in support and priority towards the U.S. homeland missile defense system. Without these changes the Secretary of Defense will struggle to address the changing status quo on the Korean Peninsula and Iran's current and future capability in nuclear and ballistic missile proliferation. 

China’s anti-ship ballistic missile operational

Admiral Robert Willard, Commander of the US Pacific Command, says China’s first-of-a-kind DF-21D anti-ship ballistic missile (ASBM) now has a limited operational capability and will soon be fully operational, which he avers is a grave cause for concern to China’s neighbours and the United States.

In late December, Willard told a Japanese newspaper that, “the anti-ship ballistic missile system in China has undergone extensive testing…it has an operational capability now”. In the interview he added that the Chinese are continuing to test and develop the missile and would probably do so for several more years until it becomes fully operational.

The ASBM is based on the D-variant of the Dong Feng-21 medium range ballistic missile, which is known in the West as the CSS-5 Mod 5, according to the US Department of Defence’s 2010 report on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). “The missile has a range of in excess of 1500 km, is armed with a manoeuvrable warhead, and when integrated with appropriate command and control systems, is intended to provide the PLA the capability to attacks ships, including aircraft carriers, in the western Pacific Ocean”, the report said. Supporting the missile is a network of satellites, radar and unmanned aerial vehicles that can locate ships and guide the weapon, allowing it to hit moving targets, a US Naval Institute report in March 2009 stated.

Travelling at roughly ten times the speed of sound, the missile would reach its target in under ten minutes. Combined with kinetic energy, the DF-21D has a big enough warhead to disable or completely destroy a supercarrier, the Department of Defence reported. According to the US Naval Institute, ships currently have no means of defending themselves against a ballistic missile attack. However, the US Navy currently has 21 ships fitted with Aegis missiles capable of intercepting short-range ballistic missiles, according to the US Missile Defence Agency.


Development of the ASBM seems to have begun after the 1995-96 Taiwan Strait Crisis when China fired missiles around Taiwan, prompting the United States to send aircraft carriers to the region, according to China Signpost. Now China has a way of deterring such carrier groups from entering the Strait.

In August 2009 a DF-21D rocket motor factory was completed and in November 2009 a programme on the ASBM was shown on Chinese television, China Signpost noted. Rather than a total blackout of information, a lot of data on ASBMs has been published over the last five years, according to China Signpost. However, no official comment from China has been forthcoming.

Last week Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Ministry of Defence in Beijing, said that China’s military buildup was not a threat to any country and was important in maintaining world peace, Bloomberg reported. China has many reasons to develop an anti-ship ballistic missile, which is a powerful deterrent that could alter the balance of power in a potential conflict. Its greatest use will be in subduing Taiwan and preventing the United States from intervening in case of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait, according to China Signpost.

The ASBM, together with China’s other military developments, threaten more than a dozen countries surrounding China, from Afghanistan to the Philippines, the US Department of Defence says. In September 2010 US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said in a speech that China’s “investments in anti-ship weaponry and ballistic missiles could threaten America’s primary way to project power and help allies in the Pacific -- particularly our forward bases and carrier strike groups.” He reiterated these statements before a visit to China this week, saying he was “concerned about the development of the anti-ship ballistic missile ever since I took this job”, reports the Washington Post.

China’s ASBM is just one more weapon in the country’s burgeoning arsenal. A decade-long surge in defence spending is yield a rash of new missiles, submarines, aircraft and soon an aircraft carrier, said professor Huang Jing Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Diplomacy.

Last week Vice Admiral Jack Dorsett, head of US Navy intelligence, said the Pentagon had underestimated the speed at which China was developing and fielding anti-ship ballistic missiles, reports Bloomberg. Dorsett confirmed that the DF-21D had reached initial combat capability and confirmed it has been tested over land, but that the US had not observed an over-water test. He called the missile ‘competent’ and ‘capable’.

Also of concern to the United States was China’s recently revealed J-20 stealth fighter. “We knew they were working on the stealth aircraft. What we’ve seen is that they maybe are somewhat further ahead in the development of that aircraft than our intelligence had earlier predicted,” he told the Washington Post this week. Regarding Chinese weapons developments, Gates said, “it clearly has the potential to put our capabilities at risk. We have to pay attention to them. We have to respond appropriately in our programs.” As a result, the Pentagon is investing further in weapons technology to counter the Chinese military build-up.

China’s recent armaments developments are also a cause for concern to Africa as China continues to invest in the continent, and the US worries that economic aid will soon lead to military involvement, according to leaked cables released by Wikileaks in November 2010. According to the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, China maintains that its trade is responsible for 20% of Africa’s economic growth. The Asian nation has invested heavily in oil and minerals in countries like Sudan, Congo and Angola - roughly a fifth of China’s oil comes from Africa, the Forum reports. In 2009 alone, Chinese companies invested roughly $56.5 billion in Africa, according to Der Spiegel. China has also extended loans worth hundreds of billions and sent thousands of workers to the continent, which is now home to almost a million Chinese. Massive infrastructure development programmes have seen roads, hospitals, ports, airports, railways and stadiums shoot up all over Africa, Der Spiegel says.

Regarding the Chinese military presence in Africa, China ranked third in weapons sales to the African continent between 2003 and 2006 and continues to supply African countries (notably Namibia, Algeria, Nigeria, Egypt and the Congo) with weapons, according to the Centre for Strategic Leadership (CSL), at the US Army War College. China has supplied Sudan with military equipment in return for oil. It has delivered armoured vehicles (Type 59 and 69 tanks and Type 63 armoured transport vehicles), jet aircraft (FC-1 and J-7 fighters and K-8 trainers) to Zimbabwe in addition to riot control equipment and radio jamming equipment to control the political opposition, the CSL says.

Although China does not have a military presence in Africa, it provides military assistance, training and technical advisers to African clients and its navy occasionally calls at African ports. However, Chinese military influence is expanding with the growing number of Chinese defence attaché officers and dramatically increased participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations in Africa. China maintains attaché offices in Algeria, Congo, Egypt, Ethiopia, Liberia, Libya, Morocco, Mozambique, Nigeria, Namibia, South Africa, Sudan, Tunisia, Zambia and Zimbabwe, the CSL concludes.

China elevates its missile force chief in PLA

BEIJING (PTI): Fearing that US is making inroads into its neighbourhood, China has elevated a General heading its missile strike force to the rank of Deputy Chief of the People's Liberation Army (PLA), the biggest land force in the world.

Lieutenant General Wei Fenghe, 56, chief of staff of Second Artillery Corps, the PLA's strategic missile force, has been named deputy chief of the general staff, China Central Television's military channel reported, signifying the priority the Red Army is laying in building up its missile arsenal.

By his elevation, the General is likely to join the all powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), China's apex defence body currently headed by President Hu Jintao.

It is also seen as an upgrading of the missile force's strategic importance in the PLA.

"Agree or not, there is a considerable disparity in terms of military muscle between America and China. 


"Highlighting the missile force will help in the pursuit of a better balance of strategic weapons between the two countries," Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post quoted Anthony Wong Dong, President of the International Military Association in Macau, as saying.

The missile force was particularly important at a time of territorial disputes in the South China and East China seas, as well as tensions on the Korean Peninsula that have led to a series of military exercises involving US forces coming close to China, he said.

China's missiles programme hit the headlines recently when US military reported that Beijing was fast nearing deployment of a new super-carrier killer missile that could strike its aircraft carriers from long distances.

The latest generation of China's Dong Feng 21D (DF-21D) are considered to be super-carrier killers, as they have the capability to hit aircraft carriers 900 nautical miles away.

China has 11,200 miles of coastline to place its missiles and that fact coupled with the range and accuracy of the new missile could spell doom for any US or allied capability, according to American military strategists.

US has already deployed three aircraft carriers in China's vicinity to deal with any escalation of the military conflict between South and North Korea as well as to be hand in case any build up in the confrontation between China and Japan over the disputed islands.

US has also taken increased role in the maritime disputes involving China and host of South East Asian countries in South China seas.

Also recently the Chinese Defence Minister, Gen. Liang Guanglie, in a rare media interview said "China is preparing for military conflict in every strategic direction" and China would speed up military modernisation and development of equipment