If Canuckistan wants to swim with the big dawgs, they need to upgrade their navy.
Russia's defense banks on oil and gas exports
Michael Richardson, Singapore
Russia's naval chief said recently that his fleet would get six new aircraft carriers with nuclear propulsion in the next 20 years as part of a major expansion and modernization of Russian maritime power.
Admiral Vladimir Masorin added that three of these carriers and their naval escorts would be assigned to Russia's Pacific fleet while the remainder would serve with the Northern Fleet in European waters.
While some analysts dismiss such talk of rebuilding a Soviet-type force with global reach as nationalistic bluster ahead of parliamentary elections in Russia later this year and a presidential poll in 2008, Moscow's plans for a stronger navy appear serious. They will have repercussions in Asia, not least in China where debate in high-level political and military circles over whether to go for aircraft carriers -- the most visible and impressive form of maritime power projection -- has been underway for some years.
India, which has history of tension with China over Pakistan and other issues, is building a increasingly advanced naval force of surface combat ships, submarines and associated weapons, just as China is doing. But India already operates a small aircraft carrier and plans to have at least two carriers in service in the next few years.
So the Russian move in this direction could help tip China towards carrier operations, despite the very high costs involved. It would also confirm U.S. and Japanese concerns that Beijing's military ambitions reach well beyond the recovery of Taiwan, by force if necessary. Other East Asian countries are inclined to give China the benefit of the doubt, at least publicly, over the stated purpose of its naval buildup. With carriers joining the Chinese navy, they too would also have to recognize that Beijing was acquiring the capability to enforce territorial and other disputes with Asian neighbors as well as protect its increasingly far-flung interests around the globe.
As the Chinese economy has grown to be one of the biggest in the world, dependence on secure access to markets and natural resources, particularly metals and fossil fuels in short supply in China, has become a key driver of the country's strategic planning.
At present, China can neither protect its foreign energy supplies nor the sea routes on which they travel, including the Malacca and Singapore straits in Southeast Asia through which at least 75 percent of Chinese crude oil imports transit in giant tankers from the Middle East and Africa.
Similar arguments to justify aircraft carrier operations are advanced by the proponents of sea power in Russia and India, as they have been in the U.S., France and Britain. For example, Admiral Masorin, the Russian naval chief, last week called for Russia to establish a permanent naval presence in the Mediterranean to protect its strategic interests in the area. He had earlier announced that Russia was building new bases in its Far East territory for missile-armed submarines and for surface ships.
Russia's oil and gas exports, now fetching record prices, are financing its military modernization, along with arms sales to China, India and other buyers, many of them in Asia. Russia is estimated to be earning over US$1 billion every two days from its energy exports. The bulk of this money goes to the state budget and accounts for more than 60 percent of revenue.
President Vladimir Putin, who comes from a naval family, appointed Admiral Masorin two years ago with instructions to revive the navy, badly neglected since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 2001. The Russian government recently approved a rearmament program to 2015. Of the $192 billion for the project, 25 percent will go into building new ships.
Russia already builds some advanced submarines and surface combatants. Last year, it laid the keel for a new class of frigate intended for long-range operations.
However, Moscow faces a huge task if it is to implement the plans outlined by Admiral Masorin. Its navy has about 300 surface ships, but most are aging vessels designed to operate close to shore. It currently has no shipyard big enough to build the aircraft carriers that are planned. By contrast, the U.S. has about 280 ships in its navy. But their advanced technology, size, range and lethality make America the world's leading maritime power.
The problems facing Russian naval builders were underlined recently with the announcement of a three-year delay in construction of a $1.5 billion aircraft carrier for India. Indeed the naval expansion ambitions of both India and China depend to a significant degree on the success of Russia's modernization. The two emerging Asian giants rely on Russian weapons and technology in key sectors of their navies.
Chinese naval engineers first started their hands-on study of an aircraft carrier in 1985, when China bought the obsolete Australian navy carrier, HMAS Melbourne. However, if China decides to develop a carrier for training and eventual operation, it may use the Varyag, a Kuznetsov-class Soviet carrier that was only 70 percent complete when the Soviet Union broke up.
It was bought by a Macao company in 1998 and is now in the Chinese port of Dalian. China would need help from Russia to bring the Varyag into service and provide deck-based fighters such as the Su-33 Flanker. Just getting the Varyag, or some other carrier design, to sea as an operational warship could cost at least several billion U.S. dollars and take until 2015 or longer.
Although the Russian plan for a new class of six carriers sounds impressive, they would probably be smaller than the 12 aircraft carriers in service with the U.S. Navy today. Most are nuclear-powered Nimitz-class vessels. Each is over 332 metres long and carries 85 aircraft. They are the largest warships in the world, displacing 82,000 tons with a full load.
Their replacements, the CVN-21 class of carrier, will be even bigger when the first of them enters the U.S. navy in seven or eight years. It is a reminder that while China, India and Russia are each building new naval capacity, they have a giant gap to close if they ever hope to match the U.S. in carrier power projection.
The writer, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a security specialist at the Institute of South East Asian Studies in Singapore.
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