American Enterprise Institute

May 8, 2006

[Edited transcript from audio tapes]

2:45 p.m.	Registration
3:00	Speakers:	Andrew Erickson, Naval War College
		Lyle Goldstein, Naval War College
	Moderator:	Dan Blumenthal, AEI
4:30	Adjournment

Proceedings:

Dan Blumenthal:  I want to welcome everybody.  My name is Dan Blumenthal, and I am a resident fellow in Asian Studies here at the American Enterprise Institute.  And we are very pleased today to have two very distinguished scholars to speak about the important subject of Chinese undersea warfare in the context of China's military modernization and more specifically, China's naval modernization. 

To my far right, I have Andrew Erickson who is a research fellow, and I was told recently a professor as well at the Strategic Research Department at the Naval War College.   And he has published widely on issues of China's Navy and China's military modernization.  I think you have some of his publications and his more extended bio in your packets so I will not go into too much detail. 

And right next to me I have Dr. Lyle Goldstein who is an Associate Professor of Strategic Studies at the Naval War College who has written also some groundbreaking work on China’s submarine fleet and undersea warfare strategy.  He also writes a lot about China’s relationship with Central Asia, Eurasia and Russia as well.  So we are very pleased to have two very fine experts on this important topic today.

Let me say that Dr. Goldstein and Dr. Erickson are kind enough to speak to us today on the record, but they are speaking in their capacities as professors, and they are not speaking for the Department of Defense, the US Naval War College or the US Navy, and it is very important to keep that in mind.  They are generous enough to speak openly but they are speaking for themselves. 

Lyle Goldstein:  Dan, thank you so much for the kind introduction and for inviting us here today.  I might just mention that Dan and I were childhood friends, so it is particularly exciting to see a friend of mine has made such great career in the China field and having so much success for American Enterprise Institute in working on Asia. 

Today, we will speak broadly of undersea warfare development in China, where there is an impressive amount of activity.  Let me just weigh in on the record here again and say these are the views of two war college professors and emphatically not any kind of an official assessment so please do take that into account. 

I think I will begin by relating a very brief anecdote from a recent trip to Shanghai.  We are in a meeting with a Chinese maritime expert professor Ji Baocheng at Shanghai Jiaotong University and we believe that Shanghai Jiaotong is one of the most prestigious universities in China, and indeed we think often of it as a kind of maritime MIT if you will, doing a lot of exciting work.  And in discussing China’s naval development with Professor Ji, I said, “Well, isn’t this the process of this development is really quite rapid now, is it not?”  And he turned to me and said, “bu kuai, bu kuai,” meaning “No, not at all.  It is really not."  And I think certainly one interpretation of his … also given the context of his thinking was that essentially is, you have not seen much yet.  In other words, we should look for maybe even more accelerated and greater results coming soon from this ongoing process.  My point, of course, is that this is an extremely dynamic process that we are seeing now.  I thought I would just begin by telling sort of what our research team is about, what areas we have been studying.  Dan kindly mentioned some of our work. 

Much of our work is concerning submarine force development, but here we will be relating some new material that we have now on Chinese mine warfare which we think is an important area that has not been covered enough.  But we are pleased to be able to not just publish in naval-oriented publications but also academic publications because we feel it is important to spread this knowledge beyond the Navy, and also that we have been cited recently and many of you I’m sure know Ron O'Rourke - great work on naval analyses and recently in the RAND report which I’m sure many of you have looked at as well, so I think that the word is getting out. 

Let us say, go ahead.  All right.  I am going to come back to you and talk about an exciting initiative, a conference that we ran at Naval War College last fall, and I will be talking about some of the results of that.  Andrew is going to begin the presentation by discussing these mine warfare developments, but let me just give you a word on how we go about conducting this research before we go into some of the specifics, that is, a word about methodology. 

As it turns out, the Chinese - and many of you will know this - publish an incredible amount of material about military affairs.  If any of you I’m sure have been to China recently, just walking down the street next to beauty magazines and the sports and auto magazines, you will see a very large section of military publications.  And if you look at these seriously, and I began to several years ago as a grad student, you will discover that these are quality publications, quality analyses that deserved to be taken seriously, and that is exactly what we have done here. 

These are sort of our top six, seven, if you add in Renmin Haijun there in the bottom which is their sort of their Navy Times.  I think our favorite probably is Dangai Haijun, which is down in the far bottom left where you see it is really not that different from Proceedings, if many of you are familiar with that publication where admirals will discuss their latest initiatives and why they should be promoted, and this is an important material that needs to be looked at carefully and that is just exactly what we are doing.  Go ahead, Andrew.  Now you take over.

Andrew Erickson:  All right.  Well, just first a couple of words of explanation as to how we got into the field of Chinese mine warfare, why we thought this was a worthy topic for our research.  We started together with a third colleague, Professor William Murray at the War College, doing more research involving the development of China’s submarine force.  But in doing so and in coming through many different articles on various aspects of China’s Navy, we came across more and more articles on sea mines. 

We found that there was not a lot of English language analyses on this topic and we thought it was worth a closer look.  Furthermore, as we examined China’s naval development in general, we thought that mine warfare was a logical area for China to go into for some reasons that I will explore in greater detail further on in this presentation, including the so-called ‘Chinese strategic culture,’ I use the term loosely here but historical trends in the ways that China has tended to use force tended to think about the utility of military force.  And of course, this tends to mesh well with the various missions that China’s Navy might be called on in the near future several years from now to fulfill; namely, various maritime, perhaps territorial related contingencies on China’s continental periphery. 

Finally, as I alluded to you before, this field just has not really been studied enough we think, and have not been covered well enough in the English language.  It has been covered to a smaller degree, and here we give credit to Michael Glosny, an academic who has published in International Security.  However, we strongly disagree with the conclusions of his article on the subject, namely, that he thought that Chinese mine warfare would not be a significant threat to Taiwan or to US forces that might intervene in a related conflict. 

In going through hundreds of articles on Chinese mine warfare development and also Chinese analyses of historical naval missions involving mine warfare, several themes kept popping up again and again.  One of the major themes involves Chinese's assessments of US mine sweeping in Desert Storm.  Now, of course, many of you who focus on China’s security issues are familiar with David Chamba’s analysis of the Gulf War, which has become conventional wisdom, namely that the PLA was overwhelmed by how technologically advanced the US was and realized how far behind they were in many ways. 

But in the specific area of mine warfare, we think different lessons have been drawn by Chinese analysts.  They saw how difficult it was for the US forces and the allied forces to conduct mine sweeping.  They realized that Iraq had a lot of shortcomings in how it conducted its mining campaign and yet even so, it was difficult for the allies to clear the mines right away.  Here is a picture from a Chinese naval textbook, sort of a very simple text book but it shows here of a picture of The Princeton and the damage that a mine caused to that vessel.  Now, of course, just as they have analyzed the other military conflicts, Chinese analysts have turned their attention to Operation Iraqi Freedom.  In this case, of course, Saddam did not elect to make major use of mines, only a few were sown.  Even so, the Chinese analysts noted how difficult it was, and how much time it took to sweep those few mines. 

But the biggest point I want to leave you with here in terms of the recent history is this article down at the bottom left here, a quotation from China’s Navy Times Renmin Haijun.  Basically, looking at some of the Gulf War legacy but saying, "Look, if they came down to a Taiwan straight scenario, China is no Iraq.  China would be far more capable in this area, would not make the same mistakes without far better resources and could thereby actually constitute a significant challenge to US forces should they intervene in such a conflict."  Now I will not dwell on the older history too much, but many Chinese accounts show a certain pride and the Chinese claim that mines were developed in China. 

Here we see some pictures of the very early models here.  When coupled with Chinese feelings of recapturing past glory, it does suggest that Chinese strategists and military experts could take particular pride in regaining some sort of high level in the area of mine warfare.  Now, of course, as many of you know China does not have much of a modern naval history or at least a very successful modern naval history.  And so as in so many technological areas, I like to say China has been seeking foreign sources, transferring them and reverse engineering them if you will, producing very detailed and sophisticated assessments, trying to learn what they can from these different historical mine campaigns in great detail. 

Also looking at more recent capabilities, it is just a vacuum cleaner approach that I find sometimes I’m learning about the Western and the US capabilities just from continuing to pore through these Chinese sources here.  As with so many other aspects of Chinese weapons development, there is a huge Russian influence both historically from the beginning of the cold war, but also today as Russia continues to offer more weapons on the international market.  Chinese analysts tend to refer to Russia as the shuileiluo wangguo or the sea mine kingdom, noting that the Soviet Union and now Russia have developed some of the most advanced types of sea mines. 

But Chinese analysts are not just looking for the hardware.  It seems like the military is not just looking for the hardware but also the software and the corporate knowledge.  This chart up here on the top right is from a Russian company that produces advanced sea mines.  China is looking at all these documents, translating them, and we believe purchasing some of the weapons.  We have seen Chinese sources that say China has purchased advanced Russian sea mines, technology, and also has had Russian engineers helping out with the development of advanced rocket rising mines.  And then, of course, at the bottom here, we can see that the Chinese analysts have an appreciation for the history of how Russia developed the sea mines, what different ones were used for that kind of thing - so, a lot of the know-why as well as the know-how if you will. 

Now, as Lyle had said before we look at a variety of Chinese publications all the time.  Again, Renmin Haijun or People's Navy is one of our favorites being an official Chinese Navy Publication.  It tends to have good articles concerning what sort of military exercises China has had and occasionally -- you will see this fairly detailed articles on exercises involving sea mines.  This is from the December 27, 2005 issue.  It was describing I believe a North Sea Fleet exercise.  The caption says, "Hoisting a new type of sea mine".  They are discussing a lot about practicing with new types of sea mines, and we think this indicates a real effort to not only develop these more advanced mines but to make them operationally useful, actually useful in combat and we are concerned that this could be a growing threat to the US Navy in some respects. 

Now what does this all add up to in terms of an overall inventory?  We have seen a couple of citations in Chinese sources discussing a fairly large inventory of 50,000 to 70,000 and perhaps as many as 100,000 sea mines, many different types.  The bulk tends to be older Soviet copies, but these are being retrofitted with modern fuses that would make them very hard to sweep. 

Then as with China submarine force, as Professor Goldstein will discuss later, there is a small tip of the pyramid but a growing tip of several types of more advanced sea mines that we are seeing here.  Down on the bottom left here, you can see what is actually the extreme left, that sort of pin-striped color.  That is supposedly an EM52 rocket rising mine, one of China's very early types of rocket rising mines and we are interested to see it, and what is supposedly a Romeo submarine torpedo room because we think of a Romeo submarine were to be loaded with these, not cutting edge but fairly capable rocket rising mines, it could create a rational war time mission for an otherwise rather obsolescent submarine platform. 

Now as I said before, there is a huge Russian heritage and a huge Russian interest.  Here, we have what is reportedly a picture of Russia's advance PMK2 rocket rising mine.  We have seen some Chinese citations saying that China has acquired that.  It is hard to know exactly what the details are on that, but the bottom line is China is pursuing a multi-prong strategy.  Clearly, China is not satisfied to just acquire Russian weapons but in parallel is developing its own weapons and is trying to take as much technology as possible from the Russian weapons and incorporate that into its own indigenous weapon systems. 

Now as I alluded to before, there is vacuum cleaner approach looking at all different types of Western technologies such as this.  On the left hand side, it is an Italian Marina influenced mine. [Just trying to find out how the various advance systems work and in some cases, it seems how to thwart them or how to counter them.]  At the same time as China is engaged in a fairly robust overall science and technology revolution, there is a lot of research that applies specifically to sea mines. 

We have looked through many technological articles in this area.  As I have said before, upgrading the sea mine fuses with better electronics as a major area or zhinenghua, “making them intelligize” as the Chinese sources say.  This preserves the relevance of what otherwise may be a very large arsenal of obsolescent sea mines.  Major efforts in rocket rising sea mines, China has been reportedly developing this since 1981 and produced the first version that had enough technological bugs worked up to be tested by the fleets reportedly in 1989.  So this has been a long-term project for China and there has been a lot of emphasis. 

We have even seen some Chinese reports and I should stress that there is really no way to corroborate this.  Research of mines such as you can see depicted on the top right portion here from a Chinese naval encyclopedia of a sea mine that would actually go above the water surface and could potentially attack low flying mine counter measures such as vessels, such as MCM helicopters.  We have seen some sources that say that the PLA has been developing this very seriously.  It is based on some previous European, Russian, and even American efforts.  There have been some technological problems but the PLA is determined to persevere with this.  We have not seen reports that this has actually been deployed, not even in Chinese I should hasten to add. 

And finally, great interest in Western UUVs, but also I was actually just reading a master's dissertation of one of the technological schools in China last night, and it was describing quite a bit about the different Chinese UUVs that are in development.  So it is hard to tell exactly how advanced some of these platforms are, but there are clearly multi-pronged efforts to develop some capability in all these areas.  We see numerous reports of China practicing to lay sea mines using all these different delivery platforms. 

One of our big debates with Michael Glosny in his analysis, he severely limits what he thinks could actually participate on the Chinese side in terms of a Taiwan blockades scenario, basically down to East sea fleets submarines.  We do not think these other platforms can be ruled out.  Certainly, that aspect has not perhaps been practiced with as robustly as the submarines from what we can see.  But we would ask if China did not intend to be able to use these on an operational context, then why would they be spending the time, the effort and the manpower to actually practice with all of these? 

In terms of the training, I have looked through a 10-year cross section in the last 10 years of Renmin Haijun, People's Navy, and other Chinese publications, and it is really like night and day in terms of where China appears to reportedly has come in terms of its naval training in general, military training in general, but especially with the sea mines.  I think as recently as five years ago, based on these articles, it did not seem like the exercises were very realistic.  The red team tended to win all the time.  It seemed like the exercises were very scripted and predictable in advance.  There was no out-of- on-the-spot decision-making. 

In the last few years, however, I would say even the last two years or the last one year, there appears to be a great acceleration in both the number, the diversity, and how realistic the exercises are.  I like to call your attention to two particular types of exercises that interested us.  One is a so-called wumatou or a non-wharf exercise that it presumes that early on a conflict, some of China’s major port facilities may have been taken out by precision-guided ammunition and therefore, China has to improvise, work out of small civilian ports, do various types of improvised fueling, loading, that sort of thing.  Also, we see reports of training with multiple navigation systems, seeming to presume that one or more of those might not be available in the event of conflicts and therefore, that it would be necessary to be able to hedge the bets [sounds like] and use different ones. 

Now in terms of a concept of operations or something that approaches a Chinese mine warfare doctrine, out of the multiple sources we have tested out 13 points, but these are just our ideas based on terms that appear frequently and appear to be taken very seriously by the analyst that write about them.  The ones in quotes appear as exact Chinese phrases.  The ones that are not in quotes appear in different ways but the overall concept comes up again and again.  I just like to briefly walk you through a couple of these to give you a sense of what the Chinese strategists seem to think would be China's way of waging mine warfare. 

The foundational principle here is easy to lay and hard to sweep.  It comes up again and again and seems to explain one reason why China would be interested in sea mining.  It is just inherently based on laws of physics, I would argue, much easier to lay the mines than to sweep them, especially the more advanced variance with the modernized fuses. 

In terms of the second point here, were China to suddenly deploy a large fleet of aircraft carriers, I think that would send a message politically that would seem to have to fly on the face to some extent with China's constant assurances that it is engaged in, well, initially [speaks in Chinese], peaceful rise.  When that became too controversial, the new buzzword seems to be [speaks in Chinese] or peaceful development.  But sea mines are very hard to spot even by foreign military, so that is an area in which China can develop a lot more capabilities without really having taxpayers and foreign countries who might think about funding an arms race get all excited or even have the military experts really be able to follow it easily. 

This final point on the slide here speaks to the attention to details in which Chinese analysts look at the various capabilities of their different platforms for laying the sea mines, the relative advantages and disadvantages. 

Now for the US Navy, I think these are very fairly basic concepts but for the Chinese Navy which had to develop very rapidly from the low baseline over the past two decades and which still has a very varied set of platforms from which to lay, I think it is irrelevant discourse for them.  This top point comes up again and again.  The Chinese analysts realized they cannot easily achieve sea control against a large power like the US Navy but if they can just achieve enough in certain places at a specific time, that might be enough to accomplish certain operational goals. 

Large numbers of sea mines give China a wide variety of options in terms of putting the most capable mines in certain areas, creating psychological effects.  [speaks in Chinese] or first control speaks to the idea of achieving a surprise through a first strike.  Again, this comes up in Chinese strategic culture quite a bit.  Undersea sentry speaks to the idea that China has been assessed by many analysts not to have very robust anti-submarine warfare capabilities using many platforms, so, advanced sea mines could be one of the ways to threaten foreign submarines that would not be economically feasible in any other way at this point. 

High- and low-technology, again, earlier I referred to a very diverse arsenal technologically by putting the most capable mines in the most operationally demanding places, China could make the most of what it has.  This Chinese saying speaks to sea mines as a force multiplier being able to do a lot with a little, something as small as a sea mine could threaten the US or other foreign submarine potentially. 

A very interesting point here jun-min jiehe or Civil Military Integration.  We see a fair number of reports talking about exercises using civilian vessels to lay mines.  This picture at the bottom right here is just about the only photograph we have been able to find but we have quite a lot of Chinese reports that discussed those exercises in detail at various naval bases.  Basically, this is talking about, on the left hand side, using IT.  We have seen a lot of articles saying China is managing its arsenals more effectively, getting rid of the obsolete weapons, moving things better.  Again, for a navy that has come along way but was starting from a low baseline, say 20 years ago, this is an important way to get towards net-center type warfare. 

Mutual support here, a lot of the Chinese minesweepers and their crews also practice in the laying of mines and in the Chinese writings, they seem to think that they are gaining insights into the full spectrum of mine laying and mine sweeping from that.  It seems to enhance their knowledge in their view. 

Last point in terms of CONOPS here, satellite navigation.  Again, hedging the bets and making quite a bit of use of that.  We think it is possible that this could be something that allows non-professionals to actually engage in laying sea mines reasonably accurately, and this could be where using civilian vessels actually becomes practicable in a certain context.  Now this does not come from the Chinese sources at all.  We were just trying to think what scenarios beyond Taiwan could China use sea mines.  We thought maybe a statement of support for North Korea and some respect, perhaps to stake out certain territory in the South China Sea. 

These are just some big thoughts we had.  Of course, the most realistic scenario we think involves Taiwan, and here we threw up the 200 [sounds like]-meter curve because the majority of China's sea mines are reported capable of being laid in waters there and to the west.  The 200-meter curve is both in western publications like Janes and in Chinese sources, the reported maximum laying depths of some of the rocket rising mines from Russia whether or not China has those exact ones or not.  So this would be… perhaps more to the west of this would be more of an outer limit for where China might think of using sea mines, just some approximate ideas they based on the dosimetry. 

Coming back to Michael Glosny's analysis briefly, we just do not think his assumptions are realistic.  We respect his mathematical model but when you crank all these numbers through, it is essentially saying that China could lay fewer mines than North Korea and China laid in the Korean War than Iraq laid.  We think since China is a much more advanced military, that is just not a realistic ballpark thinking here.  We are surprised that this article does not really address the potential Chinese MIW threat to the US Navy should it become involved in certain contingencies.  I can talk more about this in detail in the Q&A.

 We are frankly concerned in some ways about the ability of the US to sweep mines should it be called to do so rapidly in a conflict in the East Asian Littoral.  We see the source that Lyle mentioned before [speaks in Chinese] specifically saying, calling attention to some US potential challenges in this area and let me stress, these crews are very professional and the equipment is very good but because of physics, this is a hard thing to do.  We are worried that some of the assets might be far from the fight, far from an East Asian Littoral context. 

We are also concerned about the various US mine sweeping assets.  If China were able to develop sea mines or just other capabilities that could actually threaten US slow moving rotary-winged aircraft, this could create a very different context, mine sweeping in a hot environment where I do not think there is enough experience.  It is a tough thing to do. 

And we are much, much more concerned, even more concerned about Taiwan's capabilities in this area.  We think the equipment is not as modern as it could be.  We are also concerned that it is based in ports that China knows the location of which the Chinese sources essentially is saying “Look, we know where these things are.  They would be priority kills in the event of air strikes with capable Chinese missiles.  A lot of this would not go to sea.”  We are concerned about that. 

Drawing this together in terms of some general conclusions, we think very clearly mine warfare has become a dynamic sector in terms of the development of China's Navy.  We think at least in some respects, China is on the cutting edge of the related technologies and the concept development and we think the training has not been very realistic in the past, but it is getting better very quickly and we think China is taking this very seriously, being able to train as the forces would expect to actually fight, maybe in a very different way from the US or other western navies would expect to fight. 

In terms of some overall implications, these were just some larger ideas we were trying to tease out of this very preliminary here.  Specifically, the US Navy now is in the potential transition to a more organic means of mine counter measures and we think we know people are working very hard on this with great expertise, and we are just trying to say based on where China is going, it is important to make that we have a smooth transition and that it is very capable and we are factoring this in. 

Also, I think just a paradigm shift in terms of thinking, in terms of mine counter-measures, perhaps having to be able to operate in contested waters as the Chinese capabilities to fight back get stronger in these areas.  Again, I can refer to more of this in the Q&A but let me have Professor Goldstein talk to you about China's submarine force here.

Lyle Goldstein:  Okay, we purposely put our materials on mines first because on the one hand, it is very fresh.  We just finish these studies but also because I think China's submarine force is getting now quite a bit of attention in national security circles here.  So I will move a little bit more rapidly through this material, although we are happy to interface if people have questions.  I will not be covering every point here but it seems like mine warfare often gets the short end of the stick so we wanted to make sure that people understand this potential threat. 

You can see from this table that appeared in one of our Janes articles in 2004, we see this increased pace of Chinese submarine development, no question there.  To give you a statistic that came out at the New York Times, so we think it is quite accurate.  This was actually about a year ago, and it said that between 2002 and 2004 that China had launched 13 submarines, which is quite extraordinary.  Let me emphasize that it does not include the imports from Russia, so that is I would say an increased pace.  Just so you understand, the building on the left was primarily during the cultural revolution when there was a, let us say, they were building basically a lot of old and almost obsolete platforms but we see a dip during the era of Deng Xiaoping when he clamped down on defense spending and now this increased pace. 

All right, of course, perhaps the first submarine which we have mentioned are these very capable platforms coming from Russia.  Various sources say acoustically that this is comparable to Los Angeles class submarines in some respect.  That is just how quiet some of these Russian diesel submarines are and the delivery of the eight submarines is right on time.  Eight brand new kilo submarines.  The weaponry on this is really fearsome.  We cannot say that enough, especially this weapon system on the right, the club system comes in several different variants including even a land attack variant which I think is a relatively new capability for China although it looks like they will have an indigenous set of those.  But my colleagues at Naval War College have explained to the experts, including experts on cruise missiles, that these are some of the most fearsome cruise missiles in the world, a major threat. 

In the bottom left, the Test-71 Torpedo also gives China a new capability - torpedoes that are optimized for ASW, anti-submarine warfare.  That is a new capability for China and something we expect to see more of.  Okay, we can talk about the [indiscernible] in the Q&A.  I know that has been in the news lately, I do not want to focus on it here though.  We do not have especially great information on that. 

Okay, the Song, this platform, this is an indigenous Chinese platform.  When this first appeared and, subsequently, it was really written off I think by the defense analytical community here, thought of as something of a loser and therefore that is why they are buying the kilos.  In fact, this went into serial production and they have been really cranking this out.  Now it is said to be a mix of different systems but we have seen various improvements.  We have got some internal shots and my colleagues are quite impressed with these.  It is very hard to evaluate submarines looking just on these sets of pictures but I think there is at least a growing possibility that this is a decent platform. 

Of course, the most significant, and this was put together by a Chinese analyst but it does show the different types of Songs, and what it really does is verify the large numbers of platforms that have come out because each of the submarines have slight differences.  Our thought now is there are about probably 11 of this that had been produced, so the pace picked up considerably.  The most significant thing about this submarine is that it can shoot the cruise missiles from underwater, which was a new capability for their indigenous platforms but this is not the newest Chinese submarine. 

The last word I will say on this is it is quite interesting to note that the background photo is HO1 produced in 1994.  Like Andrew said, the third fellow on our research team is a submariner and he will tell you that it is very interesting that this latest kilo photo which is in the foreground looks very much like the background photo which shows that already in 1994, they had very sophisticated propellers.  It is a seven-blade skewed propeller with a vortex dissipator so this is a very advanced propeller already in 1994.  It testifies to the extraordinary nature of the data dump, which has come from Russia, sophisticated under sea warfare technology.

Male voice:  In terms of the direction the photograph just got reversed so we can come back to that.

Lyle Goldstein:  Yes, right.  But what is quite interesting is that is not the most advanced Chinese platform.  This is, of course, and we do not have a lot fresh analyses on this.  Not much is known really about this platform.  It is quite interesting.  It has the same torpedo layout as a kilo but it does show some characteristics that are more Chinese as it were and there is a lot of speculation regarding this submarine. 

I think most of it is speculation and indeed, probably the biggest question is does this platform have air-independent propulsion or my submarine colleague Bill Murray here will tell you, he is very skeptical.  I am a little less skeptical.  We see incredible amount of attention to air-independent propulsion technology in their press. 

Bill Murray thinks it would require a larger plug than this has, that is a larger space built into extra space built in.  I am not so sure.  The latest German submarines, for example, their plug is not very large and those are some of the best AIP submarines out there.  And Bill Murray's analysis is that really what this AIP gives you is, it allows your submarine to be much more survivable.  Not only does it have the speed and power to get to the target area but it also can sprint away because it has probably enough power, whereas other diesel submarines are deeply constrained in that sense.  And as we will see, the Chinese strategists are discussing these characteristics. 

Of course, the human factor is a huge question mark and people fall on different sides of this question.  We certainly have not made up our mind but we are sort of tracking data points here and there, and I will relate some of those to you.  There is [indiscernible], a very famous Chinese submarine who has been on all over their news.  There was a terrible accident in China where the entire crew of Ming 361 was killed.  In fact, the submarine was found bobbing on the surface.  A certain valve did not close properly and the crew was asphyxiated.  Certainly, this can be taken as a data point to say "Hey, these guys and their training is way off base and they are not nearly as professional as other submarine plates." 

But I think we have to put this in a larger context where, really, all the submarine powers have had major accidents and we see that their response to this, the response the professional navies would have, that is they cashiered the whole chain of command I should say, even the CNO was fired in the aftermath of this.  So this was a very big deal in the Chinese Navy.  The submarine force stood down.  It was interesting, and so I think certainly we have to take this into account but we have to put it on a context as well. 

And we see other data points that indicate a lot of progress on this.  Their training is much more sophisticated.  Andrew got at this with the mines, but particularly the red blue orientation has become very standard and we see some very innovative exercises including similar to what we see on the mine site just as an example of this kind.  It is important that they assess that maybe their bases will be hit early on, and they will have to do this remote load outs, and that I think is a rather sophisticated exercise.  They are taking history seriously. 

Andrew mentioned they do not have a modern naval history so they have to borrow, and this is, for example, a Chinese rendering of Gunther Prien.  But it is not just a paragraph.  This is really very detailed and sophisticated analysis in just a volume.  It is rather stunning if you were to look at some of these publications.  And, of course, they are actually firing the weapons, which is a big deal and not all navies do certainly - tremendous influence from outside sources.

I will not go in to all these but just to give you an example, the piping on this photo on the left is from a Collins class Australian submarine and because these are marketed, a lot of this technology over the web and just widely marketed, trade shows and whatnot.  A lot of it is fair to be had, and it is all out there and the Chinese look at this and reproduce it and circulate this knowledge.  But in this photo, for example, you can learn how to set up the joints to make the submarine much quieter the joints between various systems, and you can learn some from these photos. 

Interestingly, in both our mine work and our submarine work we found that in what I consider a leading journal in the field, some notions, which we think are really way off base in considering the balance in the straits.  Michael O'Hanlin wrote a piece in 2000, a very good piece, academically solid but again, we disagree with a lot of the assumptions and find that his conclusions again do not correspond to the actual balance of power in the straits.  It was his analysis that maybe a ship or two in an extreme case would be lost, and that does not fit with our analysis at all.

Male Voice:  If I could I just quickly add, as what our friend Michael Glosny's model, if you take some of these mathematical models and change the assumptions just a little bit, with the mathematical model both with Dr. O'Hanlin and our friend Michael Glosny, we find that the models are very sophisticated.  We are impressed with them.  But if you change the assumption a little bit, if you have different assumptions into the model, the results can change quite significantly and we have typically disagreed with the assumptions.  So that is how we have worked it out and found that we do not agree with the results in some respects.

Andrew Erickson:  I mention we would share some fresh material from our conference that we had last October, so let me dive into that but I will try to be quick here because I think we definitely want to leave some time for Q&A. 

The first set of Chinese nuclear submarines were really troublesome.  They have the reputations of some of the worst submarines ever put to sea really, danger to their crews.  Chinese publications by the way admit that.  So a lot of people I think have been very dismissive.  We do not really ever have to worry about Chinese nuclear submarines.  We are not so sure.  We are concerned that people may be extrapolating from a different era.  After all, these were built in the Cultural Revolution and we all know that the new China is quite a different place today.  So, here was the conference, and the major area of consensus I think was that the new SSN will significantly extend the LA navy's reach, and also that this might be a good indicator of China's future naval intentions because this really is seen as a blue water platform much more so than the diesel submarines.  So this is something to watch to try to understand China's broader strategy. 

Now on the O94 SSBN, there was much more disagreement and really no consensus I would say on whether this was just for prestige, every big power should have one, or whether it was viewed as a really viable component of its newly capable nuclear forces.  Also, the disagreement about the overall trajectory of nuclear propulsion - I think many folks are saying, no, they will stay with the diesels for at least the foreseeable future but others say no.  Certainly, this is a brand new set of capabilities that will do some dramatic things. 

I see by the way several participants from that conference here and I hope they will maybe wait in the Q&A because I think it was a great conference.  In fact, here are some of their views.  In fact maybe I will just steal this, I think great quote from Admiral McVadon, who is seated here.  You can read it for yourself, the fourth bullet down I think, a very insightful view.  We will just present some of the material that we showed at the conference, and what we did was we tried to look at what are the Chinese writing about these different platforms and here you see some of the founding fathers.  Not such a surprise that these people would be proponents as it were of nuclear propulsion but some of the capabilities that they think are that an SSN gives them that they have not have enough really in the past. 

These thoughts I think by [Chinese name] are particularly interesting.  This guy, by the way, in the Cultural Revolution was sentenced to raising pigs, poor guy, but this is a recent interview that we looked at, and I think that the first quote there, [speaks in Chinese], the question is can this fit the requirements and it is not clear and he is arguing AIP is great but it is not that great.  It does not solve all of our problems.

And the second quote, I think very telling there, they are saying, he has this long discussion where he says, “For Sweden it is great and the Gatling [phonetic] class it is a great submarine but it would not necessarily do what we needed to do.  We have these other requirements.”  We are attacking this problem indirectly.  There is a paucity of information on these platforms so looking at their discussions of the French submarine force, which I think is quite interesting.  Sorry to be quick, we got so much material here. 

On Russia, I think the second bullet is worth thinking about.  We found what amounted to a game where they gamed a war between the Russian Navy and the Japanese Navy and found that the Japanese Navy was wiped out by Russian SSNs.  Well, to us that was clearly a coded argument for why China needs SSNs.  I put this in, it was victor three, an Alpha, Yankees.  I put this in so you can get an idea.  In all these Chinese journals, you see tremendous attention to these Russian platforms.  I mean, just one of these profiles of these submarines will go on for 10 pages, extremely detailed.  Now I am not arguing that these are sort of Intel-quality materials but it just testifies to what I think is so crucial.  It is not just the hardware.  We often talk so much about the hardware but the software, the knowledge that goes along with all these platforms I think has had a huge impact on China's development. 

If we turn to the sort of missions that these submarines might undertake, certainly [Chinese word], “great powers they have these,” and they say up front.  They do not hide that.  [speaks in Chinese], that is “sea control makes sense.”  Very interesting, all the American defense analysts called Chinese maritime strategy a sea denial strategy but I will be interested if others see that.  We do not see a lot discussion of sea denials.  Maybe that means that they do have more grandeur ambitions as it were at sea.  I am happy to discuss any of these points with you. 

This is the summary of another paper we have.  Unfortunately, they did not get that one but we can get it to you if you are interested.  Just take the second point there, [speaks in Chinese].  They know that they are lacking air cover.  They know that this is a major weakness for them, and so they see that nuclear submarines have to help them to get around that problem.  I think that is quite interesting.  As far as the SSBN, talking about it as the most survivable weapon, we are not saying these sources are authoritative.  We are just trying to clue you in as to the discourse over there on these subjects and looking toward a balanced force, [speaks in Chinese] and we will see that elsewhere, this emphasis on balance, right?  They do not want to put all their eggs in the land component of nuclear forces but looking for sea basing as well. 

My note on the bottom point there, discussion of sea [speaks in Chinese] that is the third party.  Well, guess who that is?  That is us, of course.  On this point, I would just emphasize in terms of armaments maybe looking for, talking about indigenous supersonic cruise missiles.  Our navy does not field supersonic cruise missiles so when they get their indigenous, we have other capabilities that make up for that but that I think is quite an interesting difference and they are moving ahead in this area, no question. 

On the O94, certainly there is a lot of skepticism here but their publications take it for granted that this will be [indiscernible] as far as we see.  On acoustics, and I would not read too much into these lines down here but I think we should know that Chinese publications say that they are making a lot of progress but if we look at the top set of bullets, we see a lot of technical literature that would seem to suggest that they are taking this very seriously.  And we had a discussion in Shanghai recently with a Chinese political scientist who had just been in with several ship owners.  He said he had just come from a ship-building conference.  He told us that he has just been in with them and they told them that China was making tremendous strides in the field of acoustics, undersea acoustics.  So it is clear to me that they have identified this as the key, and that is I think disturbing. 

And on propulsion, we also find some disturbing material that they are… we find at least I think two or three citations to them having tested a high temperature gas cold reactor for naval propulsion, and we do not want to at all claim that we assessed that they have this.  We are just reporting that some of their publications report testing with this platform.  That is a new type of reactor where China indeed has fielded some new and maybe revolutionary technology.  So, this is just something we think that our side should be looking into the possibilities of whether they could have achieved any of these capabilities. 

Let me just wrap up here by summarizing a little bit.  We see a tremendous amount of activity here.  In the training regimen, yes, but just the variety of platforms is pretty impressive, not just this brand-new Yuan diesel submarine that showed up that some have alleged was a surprise to US intelligence, but also this very large kilo purchased.  Eight submarines came over very rapidly and I think by the end of this year, will all be there.  And at the same time, not instead of but at the same time, in parallel to the Song production which has gone on.  We talked about that.  And then again if that was not enough, how about the development on the nuclear side, also impressive and the CNO for the last few years has been a nuclear submariner so is some of his staff.  Many of you also know the navy now has a seat on the Central Military Commission so this I would say is quite a dynamic area and one we should certainly pay attention to it. 

So, let us take some questions.

Daniel Blumenthal:  Thank you very much to both of you for excellent and very informative presentations and I’m just going to use my prerogative to ask the first question.  Both of you give us a lot to be concerned about from a US Navy, US strategy perspective in terms of the mining issue, the ability to really impose cost on an intervention by the US Navy and in terms of submarine force, perhaps even more concerned about shifting or having the option to shift to a sea-control strategy.  If our Chinese counterparts were sitting around in China having a similar conference about the future of American undersea capability, what would their greatest concerns be, just a sort of a show that this is a dynamic process for both sides?

 Lyle Goldstein:  Right.  I think that is a great question, Dan.  I think that they do have a certain respect and just the amount of attention that they give to our submarine force, and none of the attention they pay to the dynamics of the Cold War undersea competition I think shows there is this sort of baseline respect that is there.  Certainly, any of the new platforms that we feel that get incredibly closely covered, I mean I cannot emphasize that enough just how widely our naval press and appropriate scientific institutions, for example, are very quickly becoming part of the Chinese discourse on these issues.  And moreover, I do think that they see the undersea balance as critical to all these equations to these balances. 

Are you asking also about my understanding of the US undersea capabilities?  Is that part of your question, too?

 Daniel Blumenthal:  With respect to what gets the Chinese concerned especially since we have had our latest [indiscernible] and obviously were not just sitting still in terms of what we are doing in the Pacific.  Let’s see, more from a perspective of what you see are Chinese concerns in terms of the future of US undersea welfare capabilities.

 Lyle Goldstein:  Well, I would say they have to me sort of picked out certain critical vulnerabilities there and I think they… we have them on record, saying we see ASW as a potential weakness in the US Navy, and we put up several of those quotes regarding American MCM.  There seems to… particularly in the MCM case, I’m very confident in saying that they have established this as a very critical vulnerability.  No question about that. 

It is a bit more scattered I think on the ASW question, but I think that their perception is that they know, I mean more broadly that they know that we are kind of spread thin, that we are devoting resources to many different national security goals and that forced them some advantage.

 Andrew Erickson:  If I understand your question correctly, you are also asking what do Chinese analysts see as China’s vulnerabilities that the US could.  Just very generally, I think there is a very healthy respect for US aerospace capabilities written large.  This is an area I think where China is making a lot of efforts but the US has so much more capability.  It is really, really an order of magnitude in many ways.  I think this comes out, manifests so often in a couple of ways in terms of the Chinese analysts constantly writing about it. 

As we mentioned earlier, they are concerned that precision-guided ammunitions could take out Chinese facilities in the event of conflict.  There is also quite a bit of writing about how do you actually get the sea mines from the Chinese warehouse to the delivery platforms without being destroyed in the process.  There is a lot of talk of practicing that, practicing how to do it quickly in a concealed fashion, in a dispersed fashion under conditions in which various roads or other things were already taken out so you had to improvise. 

It is interesting.  There does seem to be some confidence that various low-tech concealment methods could be effective in some fashion, and I cannot speak to whether that is realistic or not, but I would say there is a large concern in these areas because I think there is a perception that China could not do a lot about those things and we will have to adapt accordingly.  But certainly, there is no conception that this would hold China back.  China’s forces would just have to work in a different fashion in order to improvise.  And I think if you look back at the history of the People’s Liberation Army, I mean it has been a history of improvisation against sometimes stronger opponents, so certainly and may be a very tall order to actually do some of this in combat, but it is not something that China’s military is shrinking away from and they do seem to be preparing in every way they can.

 Daniel Blumenthal:  Sure.

Lyle Goldstein:  On reflection, I think China does see itself as quite vulnerable to mine warfare.  I mean if you look at the bathymetry, and they have seen it before in that region so that I think is an interesting part of this and does explain part of the energy that they are putting into mine countermeasures, which I think is now considerable.  I would just also note that I think over the last few years, one of the concepts that we have liked in the DOD concerns dissuasion.  And here we would have hoped I think that our undersea prowess, proven in the Cold War after all, would have dissuaded China from investing heavily in this area, but I think, unfortunately, that is really not how it has turned out.

Daniel Blumenthal:  I’m going to open it up to questions starting with Admiral McVadon.  I would just like to set the ground rules, which is please ask a question rather than make a comment and if you do so, you might get awarded with a follow-up so there is some incentive.  Also state your name and affiliation.  Thanks a lot.

Eric McVadon:  I am Eric McVadon from the Institute of Foreign Policy Analysis.  In response to the Dan’s question, let me add a thought.  I think they are still very impressed with the capability of our SSNs. and I would offer evidence and I think the effort to hit shifts with ballistic missiles, which they are up to now, is a way to get around having to cope with the protection that our SSNs they think might offer to closing carrier battle groups, for example.  So I think the SSN is something they are still worried about. 

As far as any submarine warfare, yes, we have a significantly degraded force.  I still think when they compare it with their own ASW, that they do not feel very good about it.  I do have questions.  Mine belt, which subs and how many?  Are they really using those?  I wonder if you see now, Andrew, Chinese mine warfare coming along like we saw the ballistic missile force come along, just a tremendous capability that allowed them to jump ahead and do things that we find very difficult to defend against and cope with. 

The pace of the SSNs, Lyle, I think you probably heard me make a comment before you, you mentioned my article, but let me ask you to what degree do you think that the SSNs might show that they are now thinking beyond Taiwan and looking to protect the sea lanes and the energy flow to China, the oil flow from the Middle East?  Are we seeing with this unexpected pace of sequential SSN production a shift in Chinese strategic thinking to where they are looking to being able to use those in the Indian Ocean or places like that to try to keep the sea lanes open to keep energy coming to China?

Daniel Blumenthal:  Thank you.

Andrew Erickson:  Thank you for those excellent questions.  In terms of mine belts, I have seen several references in the Chinese writings including one very detailed reference claiming that China has already developed them, but it does not specify which submarines they would be used on.  I think the vast majority of this audience is very familiar with this term, but - and Admiral, correct me if I am wrong - but mine belts are essentially external carriers that would allow a Chinese submarine or any other submarines to carry significantly more than its usual allotment of mines, which for the Chinese submarines tends to be reported between 24, 28, 32 in that ball part.  So it could really, really help out.  I have seen it but not enough to give you specifics on that. 

It is one of those very gray areas. and I should emphasize that the Chinese sources sheds some light, but independently they cannot tell us definitively what capabilities China actually has.  So this is some speculation where we are working on.  I do think, Admiral, you are saying is China pursuing mine warfare rapidly as a sort of operational workaround I believe, I could say to address issues that it cannot address otherwise.

Eric McVado:  It really might be difficult for us to cope.

Andrew Erickson:  I think you have more expertise on what is difficult for us to cope with in terms of what they are pursuing.  I do see what seems to be a huge uptake in the mine warfare efforts and based on the Chinese writings, it does seem like something that is inherently hard to deal with in certain context.  So I do think it could be just what you are talking about.

Lyle Goldstein:  With just coming on the mine belt issue, I think you are right to highlight that as a major question and something that needs to be looked after carefully.  Partly because, I mean if submarines fielding mines is extremely a potent platform, but the real weakness, of course, is that it does not… it cannot carry too many.  So if they are able to do that then that would be… you can make that much more trouble as is it were.  One of our concerns, I think Andrew mentioned this in the briefing, is that perhaps you could use older platforms to field…

Eric McVadon:  Field [inaudible].

Lyle Goldstein:  I’m sorry?

Eric McVadon:  [inaudible]

Lyle Goldstein:  Yes, exactly.  That they could use their newest deals to threaten our most advanced forces or any advanced naval force and then use older submarines which they have many of them, potentially more that they can take out a reserve to use.  So I think that is a real disturbing possibility. 

By the way, the thing you mentioned that they also have this what are called “The Noble Minds,” which allow the submarine to stand off of a heavily-guarded port and launch the mine into the port where it goes to the bottom and then make subsequent trouble that allows the submarine to conduct the operations safely. 

On the SSN, I think you are right on.  I agree with your analysis.  I think being in China recently, actually I would say that there is a kind of a hunger to discuss naval strategy over there, but part of I think one of the arguments that Chinese strategies are grappling with is to what extent does the naval development program become linked in effect to the energy question that faces China, the so called “Malacca problem?”  And I found an eagerness on the part of the Chinese strategists to make that link.  So I do think more and more this will be a justification. 

Now, it is hard to, I think it is a complex question I sort of teased out is that, is that really driving objectively the Chinese naval modernization or is it explaining something that they want to do anyway?  It is I think a difficult question.  Certainly, the SSN could be used in the ways that you specify and I see it perhaps in the Indian Ocean in the Eastern Pacific, possibly.  This is a platform that is survivable, that can operate independently and in some ways can be a very dangerous, self-contained power projection tool.

Andrew Erickson:  Just to follow up a little bit.  I think there is a growing body of strategic writings that in effect advocate defending the sea lanes further and further out from China.  And in particular, when you look at the various aircraft carrier debates, you see the rationale of potentially defending supply lines critical in energy resources.  I think it is interesting to know, I have been reading up on this a bit, and one analyst that at CICIR, the Chinese Institute of Contemporary International Relations, Zhang Wenmu, who is one of the major identifiable aircraft carrier proponents among Chinese strategists, in at least one of his articles even he says that, “We must build aircraft carriers to defend China’s larger interest, but even more important our nuclear submarines.” 

So to have that come from a big aircraft carrier proponent I think is interesting, and what I would read into this is, I think there is an ongoing debate about exactly how China will invest its military resources and how far will push out and how fast.  But as it does, I think nuclear-powered submarines would be an important component of that process.

Eric McVadon:  Zhang Wenmu?

Andrew Erickson:  Yes.

Ron O’Rourke:  Hi.  Ron O’Rourke from CRS.  Quick question for each of you.  Andrew, in your mine warfare concept of operations, over 13 concepts or precepts, one of them was mine management informatization, and I did not follow what you were saying what that was, so I wanted to ask for a little bit more elaboration on that because I did not know if you meant inventory management or managing the missile [sounds  like] network in the water.  I was not clear on that.  And then very quickly for Lyle, the Shkval torpedo, I know it is not necessarily the worst thing here but I have heard conflicting things about whether they have it or not and I just want to get your latest sense on what you read about that situation.

Andrew Erickson:  Thank you for that question.  In a way, it is very simple.  It is just saying that China is using IT to better manage its sea mines just as it is better managing its overall navy.  Again, a fairly basic concept that the US Navy has been working on for a long time, but China starting from a low baseline has had a steep learning curve in this area. 

The term “informationalization” is a bit of a mouthful.  In Chinese it is much better, [speaks in Chinese], and it literally means information-alization.  You see this in many Chinese military writings spanning the gamut.  It is not unique to mine warfare.  Where it plays into mine warfare, we have seen a number of articles suggesting that China is paying a lot more attention to managing this large sea mine inventory at the warehouses.  And the articles talk about certain mines going out-of-date, knowing how many you have, managing, organizing them.  If someone is out for an exercise or deployment, how do you know what you had, where and when, and how many you have left?  Again, these are not necessarily earth-shattering concepts.  But for China to get to the point where you can actually use these assets effectively in a conflict, it has to master this organizational backbone.  And inventory management is the major aspect.

Lyle Goldstein:  Ron, great to see you.  I know you very well and respected at [indiscernible] so it is great to finally meet you.  I will just maybe add a little to Andrew’s answer, that is, I mean it seems to me the real challenge with mine warfare is organizing so many small parts and preparing adequately, getting the small parts were they need to be.  One of the major disagreements with Michael Glosny, who centers [sounds like] and discussed to publish this piece in the International Security, we had a small debate with him and he said and says in the article, he says, “Yes, if China uses this fishing fleet and its vast commercial fleet and whatnot, integrated them somehow into a mine warfare plan, of course this would be incredibly potent.”  But he says, “There is no way that they could organize themselves to that degree.” 

But I quite profoundly disagree with him, and I think part of the answer is in these information technologies, this process that is going throughout the Chinese military where they are taking this netcentric warfare concept very seriously.  It also I think is impacted by the fact that the United States is, at any one time, is conducting operations all over the world in a number of intensely… and has so many [indiscernible] missions, whereas China I think enjoys the luxury of great focus on these problems.  That allows them I think to, and has in the past, to do very methodical planning.  So I think we need to take this possibility seriously. 

I forgot your next question.  The Shvkal. I think that like I mentioned, we do not have any new information there that is why I did not bring it up.  But the old information you probably know, in fact I think this may be written about in your report, but there are, I think there was a report that China had acquired some of these via Kazakhstan.  In one of the articles we look at, saw a report that said - and this from our 2004 article in the International Security - we talked about how the Chinese, we found a report that claims that some Asian navies have this.  And I believe I have to check the exact wording again on the quote that China may be working on its own indigenous Shvkal program.  I do not have any more specific information on that.  But to me, is very logical that they would. 

This was a revolutionary technology.  The Russians are pioneered.  I think the Russians are much more willing to share this kind of technologies, undersea warfare and whatnot, because it is not an immediate threat to them.  They do not really have a maritime border with China, whereas they are a little bit hesitant about selling Avionix [phonetic] and tank technology and all that.  Here, I think that this [indiscernible] has been open for a long time as we showed in our discussion of the propeller.  So to me, I will not be at all surprised if China has had its own program in this area for a long time and I think it is a concern.

Yoshi Komori:  I’m Yoshi Komori of the Sankei Shimbun.  Some Japanese observers are still debating the significance of China as our high [sounds like] class nuclear submarine to the Japanese territorial waters just south of Kyushu that happened over a year or even half ago.  A debate raised a question as to whether or not it is or just a purely accidental long time occurs [sounds like] as China compense [sounds like], or was it something that happens much more frequently, but we just do not know whether it signifies any beginning of a new training pattern or anything else.  So could you please address this particular incident by perhaps putting it in a larger context of China’s submarine strategy or training pattern?

Lyle Goldstein:  Right.  I’m afraid I do not have any very specific information for you, but I can tell you we follow the event very closely.  We are talking about the event in November of 2004 when the Hun submarine transited the Ishigaki Strait and the submarine was prosecuted by Japanese ASW forces in a very serious way.  And frankly, I think one simple read of it is that the Japanese forces performed extremely well, and hopefully the Chinese got that message and could see that what they are up against, which I think is Japan has a reputation for being very strong in anti-submarine warfare. 

And so for Chinese admirals, I think this could have been a wake-up call in some sense as far as they are… I mean one thing that is quite interesting, and we should consider very carefully when we consider the Chinese undersea warfare challenges, think about the Soviet Navy in the Cold War.  Those submarines had to come out for a long time during the ‘60s, ‘70s.  They had to come out and patrol off the US Coast because that is the only way they could have a hope of hitting, of striking the continental of the United States.  But Soviet submarines always had that kind of aggressive pattern of operations, and we were able to learn a lot from that.  But China I think has a much more guarded approach, perhaps on purpose.  I think there are number of theories on why they have that approach.  But what was unique about this episode is that you did have this submarine venturing out. 

Now, we have many other citations arguing that China repeatedly sees that as just crossing the first island chain, breaking out as it were to be a major challenge, and something they practice repeatedly.  But I do not have any good information about how often this happens, beyond what is reported in the press.  We know there was a prior incident where a submarine surfaced very close to Japan and that was probably some sort of message.  I mean it is reasonable to expect an increased pattern corresponding to a more sophisticated submarine force, but I wish I had better more specific information.

Andrew Erickson:  You may have already seen it, but in the folder that was distributed we have an article on this subject with some of our more recent research.  So I hope you have a chance to take a look at that.  Thanks for the question.

Rick Fischer:  Thank you.  Rick Fischer [sounds like], IESC.  Andrew, I was just curious if you might explain some more about the PLA’s investment in countermine platforms and capabilities.  Within the last year, they have just launched the first of a new class of minesweeper.  It seems that given their great investment in offensive mining capability, that they would have had a much more appropriate investment in countermine capabilities as well.  And if that countermine capability is thin, then does that point out to us an asymmetric opportunity, such as perhaps developing a cruise missile or missile-delivered mines that could do for them what they hoped to do for us. 

And then secondly, I am just curious, you made one mention of aircraft carriers given the noise that has transpired since the submarine conference last year.  I am just wondering and also given you have just been to China, what are your current reflections on the state of the aircraft carrier, the Variag debate and all that?  Thanks.

Andrew Erickson:  Thanks for those questions, Rick.  In terms of the MCM investment, it is interesting that you are calling attention to these larger patterns because I think it can tell us a lot about of what China’s trying to achieve in these areas.  Starting from the foundation of the People’s Republic in 1949, there were several decades of extreme emphasis on mine countermeasures.  It seemed almost exclusively to be the focus because indeed, China had a very unfortunate naval history of being invaded from the sea from foreign powers in the late 1800s having unsuccessful attempts to create a modern and effective navy.  And then in World War II, not only being having penetration of its territory and even its rivers by Japanese forces, but also having a lot of Japanese mines to clean up at the end of the conflict. 

The Chinese sources talk about this again and again.  And so, that really seems to be context that has informed the early Chinese mine development.  The thought was focused on minesweepers to sweep mines that foreign powers might have laid on China’s periphery.  And again and again, the strategists talked about China’s vulnerability to mining because it is surrounded by shallow water in most of its maritime periphery.  China was developing mines from a very early time, but these were typically characterized as defensive mines and indeed, based on the reported capabilities, it does not really seem like they could be used far beyond China’s rivers or its very shallow coastal waters.  In fact, it was really not until the 1980s with Deng Xiaoping’s reforms and the consequent technological ramp up that we have tended to see talk about sophisticated offensive mines being developed. 

So the way MCM has long been the focus, you have correctly noted what apparently more sophisticated attempts to beef that up.  Based on what the Chinese sources say, and it sounds credible to me, China still has a lot of vulnerability in this area and it is partly because of course their minesweepers are not I think nearly as advanced as the Western counterparts in some respects. I think it is also because, again, getting back to inherent physics-based limitations, which I know you are familiar with, it is just hard thing to do. 

So you are asking, is this a real vulnerability of China, almost an asymmetric vulnerability?  I would argue, yes, absolutely that it is.  And I think China’s working to improve its minesweeping capability.  But I think no matter how rapidly that develops it will still be a vulnerability for China.  I agree with what I think the point you are making there.

Daniel Blumenthal:  Craft carrier, state the play [indiscernible]

Lyle Goldstein:  Can I make one comment on MCM though.  I think, I mean we have to consider the possibility that their approach to MCM philosophically may be somewhat different.  I mean our approach has been to emphasize this organic, that is sending the robot out to find the mine.  And while this I think in certain situations certainly that make sense, and it is the most… it protects the sailors, maximally protects them.  It offers them ability to deal the mines from outside the minefield.  However, China’s approach I think may be if you will more sort of bloody-minded approach - that is, more low-tech, just getting the forces through the mine field.  Of course, they are watching Taiwan, how Taiwan has developed and is using mines.  We see dozens of articles just summarizing sort of Taiwan’s capabilities there. 

So I think that explains a lot of China’s current attention and they do not underestimate what they would have to do.  I just think the approach might be different.  I mean after all, if you look at World War II the relevant histories and even World War I, but often the counter-measures ended up being very crude.  Just send a ship full of mattresses through, ignite the mines, and then get the rest of the ship through.  So, of course, it is a great difficulty.  But I think they are thinking carefully about how to deal with them.  One of your answers that carry a question, Andrew has just published a great paper on this.

Andrew Erickson:  In terms of looking into the aircraft carrier question, Rick.  I’m still working through the Chinese sources on this.  I have not received any brilliant insights, well, actually in China on this.  I think certainly one can point to any number of writings that very cogently make a case for aircraft carrier development in terms of… if a successful carrier could be developed to actually protect the sea lanes. 

What I see China actually doing thus far based on the articles I have been reading through, it is talking about big-deck aviation, but it is starting from the bottom up in a number of unconventional and I think almost a typical Chinese way.  I mean there is the [Chinese name] multi-mission ship.  I do not know the characters.  I do not know the tones on that because they are sometimes different characters used on that.  Just something extremely modest that is not even strictly a Helo carrier by Western standards, but if you reconfigure the various modules that it can carry, it could have up to two kilos or even three if they could get rid of all the modules. 

The readings were not clear to me on whether they would actually do that or not.  A lot of interests in Helo carriers potentially as perhaps based on a lot of analysis of the Moskva and saying, “Okay, this is what the Soviets did with Helo carriers.  Maybe China can gradually do that.”  These intermediate steps that they might feel would be more realistic for them.  The Helos on the carriers are talked about as a means of augmenting their ASW capabilities.  Again, I’m not sure how realistic that would be in the initial stages in terms of providing an actual use for operational capability.  But I guess from looking from the sources in general, I see this is a ground-up approach. 

Certainly, an interest in acquiring the big decks, but based on talking to some aircraft carrier experts and also China, reading between the lines on the Chinese sources, I almost wonder if China does put a big deck like the Variag to sea if it would not be to start getting familiar and testing some systems and practicing going against it, as opposed to thinking that straight off the bat, this would automatically be a capability useful in wartime.  But I’m still working on that so I hope to tell you more when I have more.  Thanks for your question.

Daniel Blumenthal:  Okay.  Well, we have to wrap up now.  I know some of you will be disappointed because this presentation was so informative.  Thank you very much to our presenters for an excellent presentation.

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