USS Carl Vinson receives fuel and supplies from USNS Yukon during a replenishment at sea in the Pacific Ocean, December 8, 2010

President Barack Obama’s planned reductions in defense spending have earned him considerable criticism from the right. One of his potential Republican challengers, Mitt Romney, laments that the United States Navy “is smaller than it’s been since 1917.” Other conservatives claim that the cuts in military spending will put the nation at risk.

The “cuts,” worth nearly $900 billion over the next ten years, won’t necessarily reduce spending from today’s $671 billion defense budget. Rather, they will reduce projected increases in spending. Part of the reduction will happen if America winds down its engagement in Afghanistan in 2014. For 2012, the Pentagon has requested $118 billion for overseas military operation, the bulk of which is to finance the Afghan war.

Former defense secretary Robert Gates identified some $400 billion more in savings, largely in organization and procurement. He capped production of the new F-22 fighter jet for instance, much to the dismay of national security hawks in Congress.

Yet it’s because of Congress’ failure to find cuts elsewhere that the Defense Department faces an additional half a trillion dollars worth of reductions.

In budget negotiations last year, Democrats and Republicans failed to agree on a plan for long term fiscal consolidation. As a result, some $500 billion in automated cuts was enacted.

Defense secretary Leon Panetta, Gates’ successor, had forecast “doomsday” if the sequester cuts were to come into effect. The American military would be reduced to a “paper tiger,” he said, one that “invites aggression.”

Whatever the effect on the military’s ability to project power, even with the $500 billion in additional savings, the defense budget will not shrink in real terms but remain stagnant for the next ten years.

Since September 11, 2001, defense spending has increased by almost 7 percent a year, up from $291 billion ten years ago. The Congressional Budget Office estimated last year that in order for the military to execute its base budget plans for this decade, it needed a total of $597 billion or 11 percent more than if funding was held at the 2011 level. Military spending would thus rise by almost $60 billion a year on average unless entire weapons programs were reconsidered or pay and benefits for servicemen and -women was reduced.

As procurement costs rise because weapons system are ever more sophisticated, there will have to be reductions in the force to accommodate the budget squeeze. Army and Marine Corps will lose troops as the strategic emphasis shifts to the Pacific realm where air and sea power are deemed critical.

It’s because of this “Asia pivot” that the conservative Heritage Foundation’s Brian Slattery questions the wisdom of not having a more robust navy. “The US fleet, amid a host of defense issues in need of attention, cannot atrophy any further,” he believes. Among those issues; China’s “increasing efforts to assert its ‘indisputable sovereignty’ over the South China Sea.”

If President Obama wishes to follow through on pledges of a greater Pacific presence, he must either somehow overturn much of the defense slashing he has implemented or attempt to loot other defense accounts to fund a sustainable blue water navy.

In real terms, the US Navy has diminished in size from nearly six hundred ships at the end of the Cold War in 1989 to 283 in 2009. Under current plans, the force could approach the number of 245 ships that were in service before the United States joined the First World War in 1916.

Before it faced the $500 billion in sequestered cuts, the Pentagon envisioned buying 275 new ships over the next thirty years at a total cost of $465 billion—although the Congressional Budget Office estimated that the cost would be closer to $539 billion through 2041, about 16 percent more.

More than two hundred of those ships would be for combat with seventy for logistics and support missions. Given the rate at which the Navy planned to retire ships from the fleet, the total number in service would remain over three hundred throughout the thirty years period.

It’s unclear how the additional $500 billion in reductions will impact long term procurement although the Pentagon announced Wednesday that it plans to cut sixteen ships from its five year budget plans which would reduce the number of new ships funded in fiscal 2013 by three, from thirteen down to ten.

Secretary Panetta, moreover, insists that whatever the size of the cuts, the navy will maintain its eleven carrier strike groups with the newest aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford, scheduled to replace the USS Enterprise in 2015.

It seems altogether unlikely that the fleet will approach 1917 levels. Even if it did, it must be noted that simply counting the number of ships gives one a poor indication of American naval power. The vessels that are in service with the US Navy today are among the most sophisticated (and most expensive) in the world. Numbers matter less than capacity and in this regard, the United States military is—and will for decades remain—unparalleled.

HMS Montrose comes along side the Nimitz class aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt, December 10, 2005

In the first week of January, defense secretaries Philip Hammond and Leon Panetta signed a statement of intent on aircraft carrier cooperation that, according to a Pentagon spokesman, will “provide the basis for the US to assist the UK Royal Navy in developing its next generation of aircraft carriers. This cooperation is a cutting edge example of close allies working together in a time of fiscal austerity to deliver a capability needed to maintain our global military edge.”

Figuring out exactly what that means in real, physical results is not easy however because, like any NATO allies, and perhaps more than some, the American and British navies are often working together in a number of ways already, from deployments to individual secondments, to war games and other peacetime training exercises.

Interoperability, then, seems covered by existing practices and furthering of it would seem to suggest more of the same. But the statement really comes into its own when one regards the recent policies of the British defense ministry in procurement issues and in retiring systems.

The October 2010, after the latest Strategic Defense and Security Review had been released, I noted the loss of the Harrier GR9 from the Royal Air Force inventory here at the Atlantic Sentinel which ended over thirty years of British use of the vertical takeoff jet, the first in service being the Royal Navy Sea Harriers in 1978 which saw action in the Falklands War. The construction of the two Queen Elizabeth class carriers remained on the board despite fears that one could be scrapped. It may still be sold.

With the retirement of the Harrier, the Royal Navy was left with two light aircraft carriers of the Invincible class: Illustrious and Ark Royal—Invincible herself being decommission in 2005—with nothing to throw off them, but in the SDSR, Ark Royal too was to be immediately retired and currently only Illustrious remains in the role of a helicopter carrier. It is believed she will remain in service until 2014 from which point there will not be a vessel in service with the Royal Navy capable of operating such fixed wing craft, regardless of the fact that there aren’t any anyway. Considering the Royal Navy was the first to operate aircraft carriers in the First World War, it must certainly be a source of shame and embarrassment for that institution.

This, however, is not surprising. The loss of the last real aircraft carrier fielded by the Royal Navy, HMS Ark Royal in 1978, was a sign of the future as much as the past. The Royal Navy had been reduced in capabilities (but not commitments) since the mid 1950s. The winds of change at that time clearly blew forth the final touches to the fact that the Royal Navy had been relinquishing its two hundred year position of mastery of the seas, and the responsibility of maintaining their peace, since the Second World War.

It really hit home in the Suez crisis when the US Navy demonstrated clearly the new formula of the international system, one in which Britain, and subsequently the Royal Navy, was no longer the arbiter of good conduct on the great common of the seas. The US Navy took that role, that capability and that responsibility.

With the passing of Poseidon’s trident from Britannia to Columbia, the funding also changed hands. It was now the duty of the American taxpayer to finance the world’s largest navy with as many as eight carrier fleets today. Britons could at least sigh in relief that this burden was no longer theirs.

Yet until the 2010 SDSR, British defense reviews maintained the need for global role aims, despite constant reduction in suitable capabilities. The Falklands war of 1982 is an example of this.

The 2010 SDSR said it would reduce commitment yet maintained the decision to continue construction of two new carriers, made by the previous administration, which shows a bolstering of capabilities to support commitments necessitating force projection, an about face compared to previous reviews.

The point of such aircraft is geared toward projecting power from beyond established force conveying infrastructures such as those found in or close by states willing to provide airstrips and other facilities. This is therefore not something vital to the security of Britain as a state but in protecting established and emerging interests beyond the immediate area, to maintain good conduct at sea and in the littoral—a job, we have already established, that is undertaken by the much larger, much more capable United States Navy. Could this then be a minor reversal of the last sixty years of British decline at sea in favor of the United States Navy’s growing presence?

In austere economic times as these, even the Department of Defense has considered force reduction, to the happiness of some pundits and observers who too often fail to realize the importance of the United States Navy to maintaining the current international system and the responsibilities of the United States to that system.

Should the United Kingdom come to assist this task of Atlas, the US Navy would find itself more free to cut down its own forces and perhaps, depending on the burden being taken on by allied forces, reduce the number of its carrier fleets.

This is not to say that is how things will pan out but the American encouragement of British plans to expand capabilities like force projection and sea basing are surely not done out of the goodness of Secretary Panetta’s heart. The United States will surely benefit from a friendly carrier out doing the same job as the US Navy, especially one operating the same aircraft, speaking the same language, with officers and men who have worked with the US Navy and with equipment using similar supply chains to the US Navy and allowing American aircraft to land on a conventional carrier deck.

Furthermore, it may be wondered if this will involve industry assistance of some kind in the development of the carrier itself, which would seem to be mentioned in the statement, but of what kind is not made clear. Both the new Royal Navy carriers and the next generation of American ones are said to feature electromagnetic catapults. No doubt the sharing of other technologies could be agreed upon to increase interoperability.

The Royal Navy faces severe challenges in achieving any kind of position from which to lend credible assistance however. In the summer of 2010 it was thought Britain and France could closely integrate aspects of their defence capabilities, including the use of the French carrier Charles De Gaul, an idea that was later rubbished by Liam Fox, then defense secretary, for good reason, Charles De Gaul being a nuclear powered, conventional CATOBAR carrier. The new British carriers will also facilitate catapult assisted takeoff as opposed to the “ski jump” type used on the Invincible class and optimized for aircraft like Harrier.

For the same reason this could not work, the Royal Navy will struggle to adjust to the new vessels, and hence commitment of the assistance of the United States Navy.

The Royal Navy has no operational memory of such a large vessel, of orchestrating such large air flight groups, or of operating decks or aircraft compatible with catapult assisted takeoff. The US Navy has, and Royal Air Force pilots will no doubt have to learn from American counterparts in the technical difficulties of landing and taking off from aircraft carriers, as much as Royal Navy servicemen will have to learn from their opposite numbers in American service in handling all aspects of carrier operation.

This is quite good news as it will be easier to learn from the Americans than any other power with an aircraft carrier, simply by closeness of relationship and by common language. One also suspects the souring of cordiality between Britain and France surrounding eurozone fiscal policies may have played a part in turning to the United States when just last year the French were heralded as the new partner for interoperability and joint training. Defense diplomacy is alive and well.

Furthermore the Ministry of Defense plans the Royal Air Force to use the F-35C on board the new carriers. Britain is the only Level One designated state involved in the unfortunately slightly troubled Joint Strike Fighter project and, should all creases be ironed out, will benefit greatly from experience of working with the United States, specifically the US Navy which is set to use the same variant.

The scheduling of aircraft production however may seem slow with the F-35 perhaps entering service in 2020. The Queen Elizabeth is due to enter service at some point around 2016. That leaves her without aircraft for four years which by the standards of things at the moment is perfectly fine and sensible. Eight years then until RAF pilots (and one hopes, one day again, Royal Navy ones) as well as Royal Navy sailors will learn everything they can on American ships about carrier operations and duties. Ample time, considering it only took the Royal Navy two years to develop the first true aircraft carrier (HMS Argus, launched in 1918) from scratch and write at least the first few chapters in the book on modern naval aviation.

The only problem which remains then, in theory, is the rest of the Royal Navy fleet which has had its other types cut, a number of destroyers and frigates lost along with the amphibious dock landing ship Largs Bay, now HMAS Choules.

With a smaller fleet the Royal Navy will have a weaker stable with which to create and augment a flotilla based around one of the new carrier. Forming two such flotillas around both of the new British carriers is out of the question so perhaps there again interoperability with the US Navy, and possibly even the French, will be the expected outcome, should the scenario come about where Britain has to deploy two aircraft carriers at the same time. Should it have to go it alone, the Royal Navy force sent may be at increased risk due to lack of support vessels and have limited capability if specialist vessels like the Bay class are unavailable or too far away for whatever reason.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta leaves a press conference at the Pentagon in Washington DC, January 5, 2012

President Barack Obama on Thursday unveiled a new defense strategy that prioritizes air force and navy spending at the expense of the Army and the Marine Corps.

In order to trim military spending by $487 billion over the next decade compared to present budget projections, the Army and Marine Corps between them could lose up to a hundred thousand personnel.

An entire combat brigade is likely be withdrawn from forward deployment in Europe as the focus shifts to the Pacific realm. The Pentagon will lose its theoretical ability to wage two wars simultaneously, instead preparing to win one conflict and deny an enemy victory in another.

How this strategic shift will specifically impact force posture and procurement remains to be seen but with a renewed focus on cyber warfare and unmanned aerial vehicles, there is a clear movement away from counterinsurgency toward a rapidly deployable and flexible air and naval force.

Sea power is certainly critical to American superpower but the era of big naval confrontation, and with it, the era of the supercarrier, may be drawing to a close. Amphibious assault ships, particularly of the landing helicopter dock type, able to deploy fighter jets, helicopters and Marines anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, can project American military force faster and at much lower cost.

Construction of the Nimitz carrier averaged $4.5 billion per ship. The new USS Gerald R. Ford will probably come in over $13 billion. A Wasp class amphibious ship, by contrast, costs $750 million to build while the Navy could buy three America class amphibs for the price of a supercarrier. America is basically a light carrier, the size of France’s Charles de Gaulle.

The recent NATO intervention in Libya was a case in point for the amphibious assault ship. None of the US Navy’s eleven supercarriers was involved in the operation. Instead, the American contribution to Operation Odyssey Dawn was spearheaded by the USS Kearsarge and its four Harrier jump jets. Its capabilities may pale in comparison to the fifty fixed wing aircraft that a carrier brings to the fore but for a military effort that was supposed to be limited in time and scope, it did the job.

Light interventions like Libya are likely to happen again when tumult in failed or failing states threatens regional stability and trade; when nations become a breeding ground for international terrorism; when shipping lanes are menaced.

Nearly all of America’s wars since the end of World War II have been of the light intervention kind or they started out that way. Vietnam and Iraq escalated and became prolonged ground wars. President Obama himself intensified the battle in Afghanistan to wage a deadly counterinsurgency campaign there. Does it make sense to shed the ability to do what used to be called guerilla in favor of a massive Pacific war that’s unlikely to happen?

After Vietnam, the armed forces dismantled their counterinsurgency capabilities. Humanitarian interventions in Somalia and the Balkans in the 1990s were handled relatively well in spite of reductions but when the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq morphed into protracted ground campaigns during the middle of the last decade, the Army and Marines had to learn on the job and invest massively in training and rapid procurement to turn the tide of the war.

There is a real danger that if these investments are now discarded to prepare for a war with China that will not happen, they will have to be made again, at far greater expense, if ever an intervention takes longer than expected.

The Ronald Reagan Carrier Strike Group sails in formation with Indian warships during Exercise Malabar, October 22, 2008 (US Navy)

AirSea Battle is taking center stage in the emerging American Pacific regional military strategy. Now that the concept has acquired newfound fame, it has also similarly acquired enemies. Marine Corps War College Professor James Lacey is the latest to attack AirSea Battle as a operational concept elevated to strategy. Bryan McGrath of Information Dissemination has counterattacked in a recent blog post. But there’s the thing: what is AirSea Battle?

Unlike AirLand Battle, its Cold War namesake, AirSea Battle is not clearly defined in a doctrinal publication. There is no equivalent of FM 100-5: Blueprint for the AirLand Battle. AirSea Battle is a nebulous joint concept promoted in military journals, a paper by the Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessments looking at an operational solution for access problems in the Pacific, and a multiservice office. There’s also a Joint Operational Access Concept, which is not necessarily the same thing as an AirSea Battle concept.

So what is AirSea Battle? In the absence of any further information it is probably what its proponents say it is—a military operational concept for dealing with the ability of certain states and groups to prevent the United States from entering conflict areas. These groups use a variety of forms of standoff weaponry in both land, sea and air. While it is strongly suggestive that this concept does, in fact, refer to China, it should be observed that there are other maritime areas in which anti-access and area denial threats exist. AirSea Battle is not a strategy, and it is hard to find anyone who has referred to it as such.

There is, somewhat of a similarity to AirLand Battle in that putting both into operation puts some incongruities of policy into sharp relief. AirLand Battle leveraged emerging military capabilities for deep attack, such as the Assault Breaker and Follow-On Forces Attack, just as AirSea Battle would presumably benefit from increased investment in long range strike across longer operational distances.

But lost in AirLand Battle nostalgia is the fact that it was necessitated by two unpleasant facts: overwhelming Soviet conventional superiority and the political (not necessarily military) desirability of a forward defense. And there was also the dicey matter of engaging in a massive conventional war with a nuclear power, a power that knew that we had previously refused to rule out first use of nuclear weapons to offset conventional weakness. AirLand Battle was the lynchpin of a potential military strategy of conventional defense in northeast Europe and a policy that Western Europe would be maintained free of Soviet expansion. But that military strategy was always precarious.

Similarly, AirSea Battle, at least in the Pacific, is part of an overall military strategy that supports the US policy goals of maintaining its own access to the maritime commons of East Asia and maintaining the balance that has allows the structured ambiguity of American, Chinese and Taiwanese understandings of the One China Policy to continue. Of course, given that the anti-ship missiles are themselves located deep inland and supported by C4ISR battle networks, the crux of AirSea Battle could hinge on striking both. It remains uncertain whether the United States would be realistically commit to such an escalation, or whether it would be wise.

Either way, much of the current debate about AirSea Battle is at this point either speculation or a proxy for a more existential battle in Washington: the Pentagon budget wars. The parameters of the concept will continue to evolve, unfortunately dating most writing on it (including this post, perhaps).

This article originally appeared at Asia Security Watch, December 22, 2011.

HMS Vanguard arrives back at Naval Base Clyde, Faslane, Scotland following a patrol, November 29, 2010

The British Government on Wednesday warned that there should be no doubt about its commitment to supporting the Falklands Islands after Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay banned ships that fly the islands’ “illegal” flag from their ports.

Admiral Alan William John West, a former Royal Navy chief and security minister in the last cabinet, suggested that Britain dispatch a nuclear submarine to the South Atlantic and stage military exercises there to express its displeasure at the “outrageous behavior” of Argentina and its neighbors.

“Far from trying to settle in a grownup way and having better and better relationships with the Falkland islanders, they are upping the ante and becoming very confrontational,” he told the London Evening Standard.

Britain has claimed sovereignty over the Falklands since the eighteenth century and asserted its control over the archipelago in 1833 and 1982. On both occasions, it was challenged by the Argentinians. Admiral West commanded a frigate that was sunk by Argentine forces during the latter conflict. Twenty-two of his crew died in the attack.

The island dispute has escalated in recent years after British companies began exploring for oil in waters surrounding the Falklands which lie four hundred nautical miles off the Argentine coast. President Cristina Kirchner accused Britain of plundering her country’s resources this week.

“Malvinas is not an Argentine cause, it is a global cause, because in the Malvinas they are taking our oil and fishing resources,” she told a summit of Latin American leaders in Montevideo, the Uruguayan capital. She’s previously labeled Britain a “crude colonial power in decline” and vowed to “reclaim” the Falklands.

There appears to be little chance of Argentina staging another invasion attempt however. Its naval capacity, for one thing, has barely improved since the 1980s when the South American country most recently tried to conquer the islands. Fearful of a military coup, Argentina’s civilian government has consistently underfunded the armed forces.

The country is gathering international support to open the issue up to negotiation, not just from its neighbors but from the Americans as well.

This summer, the United States voted in favor of a “draft declaration on the question of the Malvinas Islands” that was subsequently adopted by the Organization of American States by unanimous consent. Rather than siding with its Atlantic ally, the Obama Administration implicitly legitimized efforts to Argentinize the islands, urging the United Kingdom to enter into negotiations with Buenos Aires.

Prime Minister David Cameron rejected calls to negotiate, telling parliament this summer, “as long as the Falkland Islands want to be sovereign British territory, they should remain sovereign British territory. Full stop, end of story.”

No matter Argentine pretensions, the Falklanders appear to have no desire to be part of their eastern neighbor, rather they are steadfast in their willingness to remain subjects of the British Crown. Of the three thousand islanders, some 20 percent are British.

The Rajput class destroyer INS Rana leads a formation of American and Indian warships during Exercise Malabar, October 22, 2008 (US Navy)

Five hundred years ago this year, the Portuguese admiral Afonso de Albuquerque captured the Strait of Malacca and established supremacy for his country in the East Indies. Although Portugal couldn’t project power into the Asian hinterland with its limited military resources, it was strong enough to dominate a number of active trading outposts, including Goa in India and Macau in China. From these positions, the Portuguese managed, for a while, to control the European trade with South and East Asia. Today, a greater power may aim to do the same.

In Monsoon, Robert Kaplan characterizes the area between the Gulf of Aden in the west and Malacca in the east as the center stage of the twenty-first century. If India is to graduate from being a regional power in South Asia to a greater power in the Asia Pacific, it is this pivotal ocean with its vital waterways that it should seek to control—whether directly, through hard power, or indirectly, with a soft power approach. Whatever its choices, India needs a clear naval diplomacy.

India is among few nations with the potential of being a continental and a maritime power simultaneously. Its policy makers have long concentrated on their hinterland where Pakistan loomed since independence as a natural rival. But as India’s economy is growing and its place in the world increasingly secure, it has to revive its maritime focus.

With a distinctive “Look East” policy, India boosted its trade relations with Southeast Asia. Indian naval officers regularly visited Southeast Asian countries as part of its naval diplomacy. Now, it has to extend that aim into the South Pacific if not beyond.

Nearly all major powers of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were either continental or naval powers. France, Germany and Soviet Union belonged in the first category whereas the ascendancy of Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States was largely based on the maritime strength of these nations. Kaplan stresses in Monsoon that a sea power’s fleet—military and commercial—is instrumental to its rise.

India, however, has apparently failed to capitalize on its peninsular basis to achieve strategic objectives overseas. Its relations with countries as Cambodia, Myanmar, Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam are historically linked but remain largely unexploited today. If New Delhi is to successfully implement a naval diplomacy, it should revisit its cultural ties across South and Southeast Asia.

An Indian naval diplomacy will also act as a counterweight to China’s “string of pearls” strategy. India would not be alone in such an endeavor. China, too, is both a continental and a maritime nation and emerging as a Pacific superpower. Few other countries in East Asia welcome its military rise. Especially in the South China Sea, China’s revisionist border policy concerns neighbors and the United States. In fostering allies and building bases across the Indian Ocean, it may seem as though Beijing aims to encircle India to check its ambitions. New Delhi could certainly rival a Chinese supremacy on the high seas.

Slumbering as usual, India finally came to understand China’s intentions recently and it embarked on a counteroffensive. It improved its bilateral relations with the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and started to court other littoral states likes the Maldives which could be of strategic importance to India. It is also sending naval officers on routine trips to these countries while regular exchanges at the officer’s level now take place.

Most of the greater powers that aspired to control of the Indian Ocean sought a base at the Maldives. The southernmost of islands in the archipelago, Gan in the Addu Atoll, was a Royal Navy base during World War II. It was originally set up in response to the Japanese advance against Singapore. Follow the British departure in the early 1970s, Iran, Muammar Gaddafi’s Libya and the Soviet Union each tried to secure the island as a base to counter the American presence in Diego Garcia.

A further necessary step would be for India to establish a permanent diplomatic presence in the littoral Indian Ocean states it seeks keep in its orbit. It could also initiate additional bilateral and multilateral initiatives in South Asia to bolster its status as a regional hegemon. What it cannot afford to do is ignore the imperative of formulating a decisive naval policy now and be overtaken by events instead.

China is ramping up defense spending as the United States consider cutting their military budget though Washington still far outspends Beijing. The latter also spends as much on internal security as it does on external defenses and lacks years behind the Americans in terms of naval and missile technology.

The Chinese carrier now under construction is emblematic of the huge divergence between American and Chinese defense capabilities. According to War is Boring‘s David Axe, it’s nothing short of a piece of junk. To China’s closest neighbors, the prospect of a carrier speeding heavily armed Chinese fighter jets across the world’s oceans may be an alarming one but the US Navy seems oddly unaffected. “A close study of the 990 foot long vessel—plus the warships and airplanes she’ll sail with—reveals a modestly sized carrier lacking many of the elements that make US flattops so powerful,” writes Axe. Moreover, she will sail into a Pacific Ocean teeming with carriers.

Five nuclear powered American supercarriers are home ported in California, Washington and Japan, as are six assault ships. Between them, these ships carry six hundred aircraft compared to forty for the Chinese.

Japan operates two assault ships with another on the way that can carry helicopters and possibly vertical takeoff and landing Joint Strike Fighters in the near future. The same applies to South Korea’s four planned carriers and two Australian flattops under construction. Then there are Indian, Thai and Russian carriers able to match China’s.

Of the twenty-two flattops already plying the Pacific or coming soon, none belongs to a country that China can consider a close ally. Today it’s not uncommon to see American carriers sailing in mixed formations with carriers from Japan, South Korea, Thailand and India. Beijing can only dream of assembling that kind of international sea power.

There’s a further discrepancy in terms of cruisers and destroyers that sail alongside a carrier to protect it. America’s escorting warships boast incredibly sophisticated radars and air defense systems. “An American carrier battle group possesses more high powered radars and at sea missiles than most other countries’ entire naval fleets,” according to Axe. The Chinese have just two destroyers with comparable capabilities, although more are under construction.

“Underwater, the situation is even worse.” American carriers travel with at least one nuclear powered attack submarine of which the Navy has dozens. The Chinese operate just two subs capable of long range patrols.

In general, Americans shouldn’t worry too much about China’s burgeoning fleet. In a recent paper (PDF), British naval historian Geoffrey Till argues that the real strength of the US Navy should not be measured by its size in ships but by its tonnage. In that regard, the American fleet has a 2.6 to one advantage over a combined Chinese-Russian armada. When also considering the advantage in vertical launch magazines (actual strike power), the United States enjoy an enormous superiority. And that’s not the end of it.

Its fifty-six SSN/SSGN nuclear power submarine fleet might on the face of it seem overpowered by the world’s other 220 SSNs and SSKs but the qualitative advantages of the US submarine force are huge. It is much the same story with regard to the US Navy’s amphibious and critical support fleets, in its capacity to support special forces operations, in its broad area maritime surveillance capabilities, in its US Coast Guard (the equivalent of many of the world’s navies) and in the enormous advantage conferred by the experience of many decades of 24/7 oceanic operations.

In short, it deserves reiteration what James Pritchett wrote here last year—that “in terms of global seapower,” China is likely to remain “in the second band of naval powers for some time to come.”

Sailors watch from a landing craft as they pull away from the amphibious assault ship USS Essex off the coast of Cambodia in the Gulf of Thailand, March 2

In the battle for increasingly tight defense budgets, the US Navy may be hard pressed to continue to operate almost a dozen supercarriers well into this century whereas smaller and cheaper amphibious assault ships could actually expand America’s strategic presence around the world. So much argued Marine Corps Commandant General James Amos this week when he warned against cutting “amphibs” in favor of more expensive shipbuilding programs like destroyers, submarines and especially aircraft carriers.

Amphibious ships, particularly of the landing helicopter dock type like the Wasp class, are able to deploy fighter jets, helicopters and Marines anywhere in the world at a moment’s notice, said Amos. They can project American military force faster and at much lower cost. Whereas total cost of construction for each Nimitz carrier was around $4.5 billion, it takes just $750 million to build a Wasp.

The recent intervention in Libya proved Amos’ point. None of the Navy’s eleven supercarriers were involved in the operation. Instead, the American contribution to Operation Odyssey Dawn was spearheaded by the USS Kearsarge and its four Harrier jump jets. The ship was on a routine deployment to the Indian Ocean when orders came to sail for the Mediterranean.

Of course, Kearsarge‘s capabilities pale in comparison to the fifty fixed wing aircraft that a carrier brings to the fore but for a military effort that was supposed to be limited in time and scope, it did the job.

There’s good reason to question the future role of the supercarrier on its own merits. As Navy Captain Henry J. Hendrix and retired Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel J. Noel Williams pointed out in Proceedings this May, improved long range strike and increasingly sophisticated area denial capabilities undermine the carrier’s effectiveness. “The march of technology,” they believe, “is bringing the supercarrier era to an end, just as the new long range strike capabilities of carrier aviation brought on the demise of the battleship era in the 1940s.”

Construction and development of the newest supercarrier, the USS Gerald R. Ford, is estimated to cost some $12.5 billion although the Navy reckons that there’s a good change that it will end up costing at least a billion more.

For comparison, the Congressional Budget Office estimated last month that the cost for new ship construction under the Navy’s current planning would average about $18 billion per year, or a total of $539 billion through 2041. The expense of refueling aircraft carriers as well as outfitting new ships raises that average to about $19.8 billion per year.

While the era of the supercarrier draws to a close, the United States will probably soon be challenged, for the first time in nearly a generation, for control of the seas. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, no single power has come close to matching America’s naval supremacy. China may now seek to.

To balance sea control and power projection capabilities requires an updated fleet composition, according to Hendrix and Williams; one that relies more heavily on large amphibious assault ships that are practically light aircraft carriers. The America class, currently in development, could fill that role.

At 45,000 tons’ displacement, she will slide into the water larger than her World War II predecessors and larger even than the modern French aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. Designed without an amphibious well deck, she will put to sea with a Marine Air Combat Element and key elements of a Marine Expeditionary Unit.

Stripped of her rotorcraft, the America could hold up to thirty F-35B short takeoff vertical landing (STOVL) attack aircraft compared to the four that are standard aboard the Wasp—a more appropriate capacity for engagement missions. That and the fact that the Navy could buy three America ships for the price of a supercarrier makes the amphib option a very attractive one. “Those ships would be the utility infielders of the fleet, providing a tremendous platform for engagement missions and humanitarian assistance/disaster relief response at one end and amphibious operations and sea control at the other.”

The effectiveness of the America hinges on the availability of the F-35B for vertical takeoff and landing. The Marines want more than four hundred of these plans to replace the Harrier but delays and design failures cast doubt upon the prospect. Before retiring last month, defense secretary Robert Gates even warned that the STOVL version could be canceled unless Lockheed Martin manages to deliver the plane by 2014.

General Amos, for his part, remains “absolutely confident” that the STOVL plane will be fixed and he chose personally oversee the new warplane’s development. It’s worth the investment, he says. “With a fully fielded fleet of F-35Bs, the nation will maintain twenty-two capital ships—eleven carrier and eleven amphibious assault—with fifth generation strike assets aboard.”

Pakistan is weak and not getting any better. It is an artificial polity and much of its problems stem from that very fact. It lacks a cohesive core ethnicity, it lacks geographical coherence (the Indus valley having never been an easily defensible position without strategic depth) and its demographic-raw materials proportion is worsening due to population growth.

What Pakistan has in abundance is geostrategic relevance. All those interested in counterbalancing India (China), Iran (Saudi Arabia) and Russia (the West) have a permanent and vested interest in propping up Pakistan.

For this reason, Pakistan’s military apparatus always has been and always will be powerful. While the Pakistani army and air force have made the difference in their wars with India and in small deployments to the Middle East (against Israel and later in support of Saudi Arabia in Yemen), Pakistan’s navy has long been the weaker branch. India always managed to control the sea lanes when in conflict with its rival.

The Pakistani navy however, has had another role to play—that of anti-Indian ambassador in the Indian Ocean. Islamabad’s navy is the only one in the Indian Ocean armed with air independent propulsion submarines and has been known to make port calls to Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia.

In other words, the maintenance of an alternative sphere of influence to that of New Delhi’s in the Indian Ocean requires Islamabad. Throughout the Cold War, India’s partnership with the Soviets threw America into the arms of Pakistan but as the relationship between America and India warms up in this century, those in the Indian Ocean rim who seek an alternative to India are running out of options.

The war conducted in Afghanistan by the United States and their allies has greatly destabilized the region. Pakistan is now fighting a war of its own on its western border and is failing to keep up with the growth of India’s armed forces. Recent earthquakes and India’s military lead has only exacerbated the equation.

For all these reasons, one might have predicted that Beijing would sooner or later move to rebalance the situation and this month it was revealed just how it decided to do so. India’s Force magazine reported that Pakistan may soon add to its arsenal Chinese diesel submarines carrying nuclear cruise missiles.

It is not a first in Asia for Israel has had them for some time as deterrence. Has this worked? To a certain extent. Jerusalem’s threat is enough for regional hegemons such as Iran to tread carefully. Confined only to a land based ballistic deterrence, Israel would have had little in the way of second strike capability. The range of its deterrence would be limited moreover.

Thus Pakistan’s threat to India would be considerably upgraded—especially considering that India is developing a ballistic missile submarine class and that Pakistan can only afford so much in terms of submarines (having previously canceled a contract with German shipyards for a conventional diesel class of submersibles).

Pakistan’s weakness may now have been plugged by an influx of technology from its patron but this is a temporary solution at best. China trusts its ally to bounce back once the Westerners leave Afghanistan alone.

This development speaks of the growing competition for this very important ocean but let there be no sense of triumphalism for power monopolies are unstable. Either China will be forced to keep a naval detachment in the southern seas or America’s alliance with fellow democratic India is not meant to be. Time now to ponder which of those two possibilities is worse.

British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President Nicolas Sarkozy in London, June 18, 2010

While armed forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi retook major cities along the Mediterranean coast, pushing the rebels eastward, the West is still contemplating whether or not to intervene in Libya.

Britain and France are in favor of enforcing a no-fly zone to prevent Gaddafi’s air forces from bombing cities, infrastructure and anti-government militias. France has been the first nation to recognize the rebels’ transitional council as Libya’s legitimate government. But other NATO partners are less enthusiastic.

The United States, already militarily involved in two Muslim countries, are reluctant to commit to an intervention. Influential American senators have publicly endorsed plans for a no-fly zone but the defense department warned that if such an operation were to be sustained for a prolonged period of time, it could require more resources than are currently available.

Several US Navy warships are deployed in the Mediterranean while an aircraft carrier is on standby in the Red Sea.

A no-fly zone could not prevent conflagration on the ground, the Pentagon added, nor necessarily stop helicopter gunships from harassing demonstrating crowds as happened during the early weeks of Libya’s revolt.

Nevertheless, France and the United Kingdom called upon the other members of the G8 to support a no-fly zone on Tuesday—to little avail. Canada, Germany and Russia all remained adamantly opposed to military intervention without at least a mandate from the United Nations. China and Russia have so far blocked a resolution from the Security Council.

After the G8 meeting in Paris, Atlantic Sentinel contributor Daniel DePetris, who earlier outlined the difficulties of intervening in Libya, wondered why Britain and France wouldn’t take the lead. “Since the end of the Cold War, Europe has been complaining about America’s preference for unilateralism,” he noted. “France and Britain can change this calculus by acting in a joint fashion, especially when the entire world is debating its response.”

Joint Anglo-French military action in the Mediterranean would not be unprecedented. After years of transatlanticism, the United Kingdom, forced by deep defense spending cuts, is now pooling resources with France. Prime Minister David Cameron and President Nicolas Sarkozy agreed in November of last year that ten years from now, their countries should be able to field an integrated carrier strike group, incorporating assets from both their armed forces.

As of now, there is reason to be skeptical however. From Britain, James Pritchett reckons that it would be difficult for France and his home country to go it alone—though not impossible.

British jets based in Malta would be able to fly out, refuel in the air and carry out certain patrols. The French, with their aircraft carrier, would be much better suited to this as we no longer have a carrier or aircraft to fly off from them so our best bet would be Malta or a similar air base in Italy, Spain, perhaps Cyprus.

The allies might even establish a forward operating base at Tobruk near the Egyptian border where rebels have secured an airfield. In any case, Pritchett warns that the Royal Air Force could not operate easily without air to air refueling. “The French carrier air compliment would find it a lot easier.” Their Charles de Gaulle returned from the Indian Ocean in late February and is currently stationed in Toulon in the south of France.

Combined, the British and the French wouldn’t be able to project the amount of power a US Navy fleet could. It might not even be enough for a total lockdown, according to Pritchett. “It’s possible,” he suggests, “but maybe not possible enough for them to bother attempting it.”

Gaddafi’s forces were already preparing to march on the rebel stronghold of Benghazi on Tuesday. The French alone could need up to three days to prepare the Charles de Gaulle for mission by which point it might be too late. The Security Council was scheduled to vote on a no-fly zone resolution Tuesday afternoon.