Flipping the Script: How to Hold China’s New Carriers at Risk

CSIS  |  Benjamin Jensen, Mackenzie Eaglen, Henry H. Carroll, Harold "Bud" Bishop

China’s expanding aircraft carrier fleet presents a distinct operational vulnerability that the United States and its allies can exploit through a targeted cost-imposition strategy. Because Chinese carriers rely on vulnerable sensor, logistics, and escort networks, routine carrier operations can be rendered prohibitively risky across key maritime chokepoints. This approach integrates five operational mechanisms: forward subsurface ambush forces, distributed land-based maritime strike networks, long-range air and space-enabled fires, offensive cyber and electromagnetic attack capabilities, and unmanned swarm port-denial operations.

Executing this doctrine requires structural U.S. defense reforms, including expanding torpedo inventories, deploying extra undersea drones, and tasking Army and Marine littoral units with chokepoint defense. Furthermore, the U.S. Navy must transition toward a fleet architecture of approximately 300 crewed and 300 uncrewed vessels while initiating joint missile co-production agreements with key regional allies Australia and Japan to transform China’s carrier program into a costly strategic liability.

Comment

Co-producing air-launched munitions such as the Long Range Anti-Ship Missile alongside Australia and Japan directly targets the severe stockpile bottlenecks in Western defence manufacturing. Establishing distributed regional production facilities creates resilient logistics nodes that reduce reliance on long trans-Pacific resupply routes during contested operational scenarios. Joint ordnance fabrication fundamentally alters the industrial sustainment rates required to maintain a persistent blockade of Chinese naval forces.

To read in details click here