Could China's Navy Avoid U.S.-Style Fleet Aging Issues?

It has been a rare helter-skelter summer at the Holmes compound somewhere along the shores of the Narragansett Bay. Road trip to State College, Pennsylvania, and onward to Pittsburgh—via one of America’s incomparable architectural marvels—to give a talk about China and maritime strategy. Short-notice invitation to write and deliver a lecture series on sea-power theory at the Naval War College in Goa, India. (Not in person for that one, sadly.) Summer seminar for rising scholars on the China challenge, convened by the Hattendorf Center for Maritime Historical Research here on campus.

And this busy stretch was worth every bit of the time and effort that went into it. The opportunity to interact with smart, knowledgeable, impassioned folk always is.

Exhibit A: During the Q&A following one lecture in Goa, I got into a pleasant exchange with an Indian Navy student regarding the future trajectory of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLA Navy) fleet. The lecture explored Geoffrey Till’s writings, in particular his indispensable handbook on Seapower. Geoff makes “readiness” one referendum on a navy’s fitness for its duties, alongside such parameters as its missions and geographic scope, the number, type, and characteristics of platforms and armaments that comprise its material panoply, and the quality of the naval professionals who make up the service.

When I came to readiness I made an offhand comment that China’s navy is a youthful force, that elements of it will soon start growing old, and that this could bode ill for fleet readiness. It has for America’s navy. How the PLA Navy handled those problems would provide clues to its future prospects. Think about it. The Chinese Communist Party launched its bid for maritime might in earnest only about a quarter-century ago. Only in recent years have the PLA Navy’s premier fighting ships—Type 055 guided-missile destroyers, for instance—gone into mass production. All new kit demands regular preventive maintenance and occasional upkeep. Only later in its service life do major overhauls and unexpected repairs become a readiness hurdle.

As the PLA Navy stabilizes at some ship count—maybe 400 hulls?—it will start to experience the readiness problems currently plaguing an aging, shrinking U.S. Navy. It is not exempt from the laws of physics, chemistry, and engineering that make operating metal ships in a saltwater environment so vexing. The U.S. Navy constructs ships of war to serve somewhere between a quarter and half a century, depending on the ship type. Major combatants like destroyers and aircraft carriers skew toward the rightward end of that time horizon. They serve a long time. How well the PLA Navy navigates the problems that beset an elderly fleet will say much about its health and its long-term fortunes as a fighting force.

Or so I told the NWC Goa class. During the Q&A my Indian Navy interlocutor espied a different and intriguing alterative future, and it’s one worth pondering and holding up to gauge the future of Chinese naval development. He pointed to the colossal shipbuilding infrastructure Chinese engineers have constructed over the decades to support burgeoning naval and mercantile fleets. That infrastructure affords the PLA Navy leadership options. Rather than nurse aging warships into their dotage, navy chieftains could scrap or replace them relatively early in their service lives—before they started encountering major maintenance woes. Or, conceivably, they could demote older assets to a reserve force, laying them up should some national emergency demand additional numbers—even if they were second-tier ships.

In so doing China could bypass the readiness conundrum. Its fleet would be forever young. It would measure up by Geoff Till’s readiness standard by mostly avoiding the dilemmas intrinsic to maintenance, upkeep, and overhaul. A disposable fleet, moreover, would be easier to upgrade as new technology and tactics came along. Shipwrights would simply incorporate newfangled tech into new hulls rather than go through the pain of backfitting it into old.

Such an approach has precedent. The Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) long pursued similar practices with its submarine fleet, replacing boats before they started wearing out. (It has moderated this practice, operating subs longer to build up numbers in the inventory.) That’s an advantage that goes to a seafaring state that boasts a thriving maritime industrial base, including not just the material dimension but a cadre of specialists in nautical pursuits.

And then there’s the Soviet example. The Soviet Navy hurled itself into fleet-building with abandon in the early 1960s, putting to sea a youthful navy of its own by the early 1970s. By the 1980s, though, it became apparent that Soviet mariners were not tending to the routine maintenance even a whippersnapper fleet demands. It is possible to squander readiness advantages through a culture of neglect.

So there are three potential futures for the PLA Navy, deriving from nautical history, and with them a yardstick to track its progress along a key axis. It could emulate the U.S. model, operating ships for decades while trying to manage or work around the readiness hassles inevitable late in a vessel’s life. It might fare better than the U.S. Navy in this department, worse, or about the same. Or China’s navy could follow the path blazed by the JMSDF submarine force, opting for a disposable fleet that needs minimal care amid continual turnover. Discarding platforms at midlife or placing them in reserve might hold down the ship count in the frontline inventory, but it would ensure that a greater share of the fleet was battleworthy at any given time. Or the PLA Navy could embrace the expendable approach yet suffer the Soviet Navy’s dismal fate, oblivious to the rigors of keeping up even a youthful seagoing force.

Outreach beyond the ivory tower of American professional military education is about entertaining me. So, thanks, NWC Goa! I am entertained. And better attuned to the future of sea power in Asia.

About the Author: Dr. James Holmes

Dr. James Holmes is J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the Naval War College and a Distinguished Fellow at the Brute Krulak Center for Innovation & Future Warfare, Marine Corps University. The views voiced here are his alone.