Michael Peck
Submarines are a major part of China’s naval strategy. And U.S. underwater sensors are a major threat to those subs, Chinese experts warn.
Thus, some People’s Liberation Army Navy, or PLAN, officers are advocating a systematic attempt to destroy America’s undersea sensor network in time of war. This includes destroying, sabotaging or spoofing underwater microphones using a variety of countermeasures, from undersea drones to China’s huge fleet of commercial fishing vessels.
Chinese experts believe that “the U.S. undersea surveillance system suffers from a number of vulnerabilities, amplified by the sheer scale of the Western Pacific battlespace,” Ryan Martinson, a professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute at the U.S. Naval War College, wrote in an essay for the Center for International Maritime Security. “If enough nodes are degraded, the system as a whole may lose its functionality.”
Ironically, American and Chinese views of the undersea balance of power seem mirror images. The U.S. and its Pacific allies worry over China’s growing submarine fleet, which the Pentagon predicts will reach 65 units this year and 80 by 2035. China already can deploy six nuclear ballistic and six nuclear attack submarines, plus a large number of conventional subs armed with anti-ship missiles, including 21 advanced Yuan-class diesel-electric boats.
Navy leaders are concerned about increased Russian submarine activity in the North Atlantic and Chinese submarine activity in the Pacific. The U.S. homeland is no longer a sanctuary from such threats, they warn.
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