Chinese Shocked: The True Reasons Why China Can't Target U S Aircraft Carriers.

Chinese Shocked: The True Reasons Why China Can't Target U S Aircraft Carriers.


Critics of U.S. aircraft carriers have been arguing for decades that the survival of the world’s biggest warships will increasingly be at risk in an era of long-range, precision-guided anti-ship missiles. In recent years, China has typically been identified as the military power most likely to drive U.S. carriers from the sea.

But the U.S. Navy seems much less worried about carrier attacks than observers who lack military credentials and clearances. In fact, the outgoing Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral John Richardson, told an audience earlier this year that “we’re less vulnerable now than we have been since and including World War II.”

One reason the Navy is not alarmed is that it has invested heavily in new technologies aimed at bolstering the defenses of carrier strike groups. It also has changed its tactics for operating near China. But the biggest reason for confidence about the future resides in the difficulties China would face in trying to find and track U.S. carriers.

Large-deck, nuclear-powered aircraft carriers of the type the U.S. Navy operates seem like they would be easy to target. They are over a thousand feet long, they are 25 decks high, and they are made of steel that reflects radar signals. They have distinctive optical, infrared and radio-frequency signatures.

So what can be so hard about targeting them, using the extensive arsenal of anti-ship missiles that China has accumulated? Well for starters, there are the huge distances within which carriers operating in the Western Pacific can hide. The South China Sea alone measures 1.4 million square miles, and is only one of four marginal seas from which carrier air wings could launch attacks against China.

If a carrier is conducting sea control operations—keeping the sea lanes open to key allies such as Japan—it will likely be beyond the first island chain that parallels the Chinese coast, and thus able to hide in the vastness of the Western Pacific. It is hard to find anything in millions of square miles of open ocean, and in the case of U.S. carriers the target will be moving constantly.

The bottom line is that China is nowhere near overcoming the hurdles required for successful attacks against U.S. aircraft carriers. Whether those carriers are engaged in projecting air power ashore or maintaining control of sea lanes, Beijing will be hard-pressed to impede their operation in wartime. And it’s a safe bet that whatever assets China may have for executing such a mission on the first day of war will be quickly reduced by the combined efforts of the U.S. joint force, whether they be deployed on land, at sea, or in orbit.