YOKOSUKA, Japan (AP) — It's getting a bit more crowded under the sea
in Asia, where Andrew Peterson commands one of the world's mightiest
weapons: a $2 billion nuclear submarine with unrivaled stealth and
missiles that can devastate targets hundreds of miles (kilometers) away.
Super
high-tech submarines like Cmdr. Peterson's USS Oklahoma City have long
been the envy of navies all over the globe — and a key component of U.S.
military strategy.
"We really have no peer," Peterson told The Associated Press during a recent port call in Japan.
But
America's submarine dominance in the Pacific is facing its biggest
challenge since the Cold War. Nearly every Asian country with a
coastline is fortifying its submarine fleet amid territorial disputes
stirred up by an increasingly assertive China and the promise of
bountiful natural resources. Submarines are difficult to find and
hard to destroy. Even fairly crude submarine forces can attack surface
ships or other targets with a great deal of stealth, making them perfect
for countries with limited resources. The threat of such an attack is a
powerful deterrent in Asia, where coastal defenses are vital.
"This
is shaping up as an intense arms race," said Lyle Goldstein, an
associate professor at the China Maritime Studies Institute of the U.S.
Naval War College. "This arms race is not simply China versus the rest —
though that explains much of it — because there are other rivalries
here as well." China is pouring money into enlarging and
modernizing its fleet, and India is planning to get a nuclear-powered
attack submarine — the INS Chakra — on a 10-year lease from Russia as
early as this month.
Australia is debating its most-expensive
defense project ever — a submarine upgrade that could cost more than 36
billion dollars.
Japan is adding another eight to its 16-boat
fleet. South Korea is selling them to Indonesia. Malaysia, Pakistan, the
Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore, Taiwan and even Bangladesh
either now have or are planning to acquire subs.
North Korea,
which has a large fleet of mini-subs, allegedly put them to deadly use
in 2010 — killing 46 South Korean sailors in the worst clash since their
war ended in 1953.
The trend has a momentum of its own — once one
country gets submarines, its neighbors are under pressure to follow
suit, lest they give up a strategic advantage. But the rush to build up
submarine forces also underscores a growing awareness of the region's
potential riches.
Roughly half of the goods transported between
continents by ship go through the South China Sea, accounting for $1.2
trillion in U.S. trade annually. The area has vast, largely untapped
natural resources — including oil reserves of seven billion barrels and
an estimated 900 trillion cubic feet of natural gas. "The
geostrategic significance of the South China Sea is difficult to
overstate," said a report this month by the Center for a New American
Security, a private think tank based in Washington DC. "To the extent
that the world economy has a geographical center, it is in the South
China Sea."
With the decline of Russia, the U.S. remains the top
nation with a significant capability to operate submarines in the open
seas — a crucial advantage if Washington wants to maintain its role in
keeping key sea lanes and chokepoints like the Malacca Strait, which
connects the Indian Ocean to the western Pacific, free for commercial
trade.
The U.S. Navy's blue water superiority is likely to
continue for the foreseeable future. Peterson, the Oklahoma City
skipper, said the Navy's workhorse Los Angeles-class subs remain a cut
above the rest. "The beauty is that they are still the state of the
art." But, closer to shore, China is challenging the status quo.
"China
has put a major emphasis on submarines, with the result that the PLA
Navy submarine force is now, along with the Chinese missile forces, one
of the sharpest arrows in China's quiver of military capabilities,"
Goldstein said. China now has more than 60 subs in its navy,
including nine that are nuclear-powered, according to the Pentagon's
annual overview last year.
Its mainstay boats are diesel-powered
Song-class vessels, but it also is developing more advanced
nuclear-powered attack and ballistic submarines, including the Jin class
that would carry missiles with a range of 4,600 miles (7,400
kilometers). Nuclear-powered subs can operate longer submerged than
their diesel counterparts.
China has a long way to go to match the
U.S. Navy — the advanced Jin subs, for example, would have to be well
into the Japan Sea for the continental United States to be within their
range — and Goldstein said that Beijing's threat has been overblown.
To
keep its edge, however, the United States now has more submarines in
the Pacific than in the Atlantic. With the military missions in Iraq and
Afghanistan wrapping up, the Obama administration has also announced a
"pivot to the Pacific" strategy that will likely further boost U.S.
naval resources in the region.
Even so, China is just one player in an increasingly complicated game.
"Everybody's buying subs, but not for the same reasons," said Owen Cote, associate director of MIT's Security Studies Program.
The
Pacific is dotted by scores of disputed islands, and who controls what
part of the seas is a potentially explosive question. Japan has rival
claims with China, South Korea and Russia. A half dozen countries claim
rights to the remote Spratly Islands.
"Vietnam and the other
states abutting the South China Sea want to have the option to contest a
Chinese decision to resolve the various boundary issues that divide
them by force," Cote said. "The Chinese have an interest in using
submarines in preventing U.S. surface ships from intervening on behalf
of one of these neighbors in such a conflict."
As regional navies get stronger, so does the potential for armed clashes.
"It
poses the prospect of changing the balance of power across the
Asia-Pacific — in fact it already has," said Hugh White, Australian
National University's professor of strategic and defense studies. "This
is a very maritime part of the world. Anyone with a submarine has a
clear capability of disrupting commercial shipping."
White said
the development of submarine forces by multiple Asian nations is already
inhibiting the ability of China and the United States to project their
naval power, and posing new issues for smaller navies caught in the
middle.
"There are questions about whether the U.S. will continue
to assume its security role," he said. "This is a big debate in
Australia right now. Do we aim to be able to act independently of the
U.S.? To what extent do we want to be able to operate against a major
player like China, or more locally against Indonesia?"
* Article publicat per Associated Press a Google News. Us el pengem com a bona síntesi de l'escalada en matèria de submarins a la regió de l'Àsia-Pacífic.
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