If numbers mean anything, China will soon rule the seven seas and five oceans. By 2028, at current projections, the People's Liberation Army Navy will have approximately 150 more vessels than the United States.
Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro, in Senate testimony on March 28, said China's navy will have "upward of 440 or so" vessels within five years. The U.S. by then, at current projections, will have about 291.
China already has a larger naval force than the U.S. In 2021, the Congressional Research Service put the number of Chinese ships and submarines at 348, and America's at 296.
Since then, the U.S. has decommissioned vessels and China has added them. The U.S. Navy, as they say in the Pentagon, will continue to "divest to invest"—in other words, take hulls out of service to pay for the fleet of the future.
The U.S. Navy plans to shrink its fleet until 2027, when the U.S. will have 280 ships.
"For the past 30 years, successive American administrations have neglected the importance of having a navy that can fight and win wars at sea," James Fanell of the Switzerland-based Geneva Centre for Security Policy told Newsweek.
America needs, Fanell argues, a vision similar to that of President Ronald Reagan and his secretary of the navy, John Lehman, who announced a goal of a 600-ship force. America's ship-building program almost reached the target, topping out at 594 in 1987.
"Numbers are not everything," James Holmes, the holder of the first J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, said to Newsweek. "The Soviet navy was much more numerous than the U.S. Navy by the late Cold War, but few would say it was the superior contender. We had better technology, better people, and on and on, making up for inferior numbers of hulls."
"The real question with China's navy is whether we command those same technological and human advantages," said Holmes, who also writes at "The Naval Diplomat." "My sense is that China's navy is far more formidable than the Soviet navy on a ship-for-ship, plane-for-plane, sailor-for sailor basis."
The Chinese navy is indeed formidable, and some of its technology looks better than America's. China's missiles, for instance, could sink much of the U.S. surface fleet. It does not appear the U.S. has a reliable defense against Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles.
Moreover, the U.S. Navy's countermeasures against China's anti-ship ballistic missiles, which come in both land-based and air-launched varieties, are "doubtful," Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told this publication.
America's subs will also be vulnerable. Fisher notes that China is "surging production of nuclear-powered submarines that will target U.S. ballistic missile subs."
The state of the U.S. Navy, says Fanell, "is a national disgrace and can have catastrophic implications for defending not just our interest in the Indo-Pacific, but even in defending our homeland if this trend is not reversed."
Unfortunately, the Biden administration's most recent budget request for the Navy does not even cover inflation, meaning the branch's budget, as a practical matter, will shrink if the White House gets its way. The administration's budget includes an increase about 2% below the predicted rate of inflation, which is itself below the current rate of inflation.
"Although Secretary Del Toro correctly points out that America is at an inflection point regarding the size and capability of the Chinese navy—one that demands a renewed commitment to 'navy primacy'—the sad fact is this administration and the Congress are essentially doing 'business as usual' while the U.S. Navy continues to decline," notes Fanell, also a former director of Intelligence and Information Operations of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. "Failure to take action threatens the security of America. In order to stop this decline, we need a Naval Production Act that will restore American sea power today."
"Navies don't just fight navies these days," Holmes further points out. "Joint forces—forces bringing together navies, air forces, and even armies—fight rival joint forces at sea." As the Naval War College professor notes, the U.S. has to put more combat power at the time and place of battle and it does not matter whether that power comes from a ship or shore-based aircraft or missiles.
The unfortunate fact—Holmes uses the word "dismal"—is that China concentrates its forces in East Asia and America's are spread across the globe. "Who wins," asks Holmes, "when part of one force goes in against the whole of another?"
The odds look even worse. American defense planners have to assume Russia will fight alongside China because the two militaries have conducted numerous joint exercises this century. Additionally, the Pentagon can be sure that if Beijing does go on the attack, North Korea, China's only formal military ally, will distract America with provocations of some sort against South Korea. That would stretch the American navy and the rest of its military even further.
The U.S., in response, needs to shore up not only traditional allies Australia and Japan, but also more recent friends like India.
Even in the absence of a war in East Asia, the U.S. Navy is already stretched thin. Unfortunately, the Navy cannot just unilaterally reduce its missions to fit diminished capabilities. The world is becoming ever more complex and dangerous, and the only answer, as Fanell argues, is to build more ships and build them faster than the Biden administration and Congress are now contemplating.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on Twitter: @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
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