Nov. 29 2010 - 11:33 am
By RUSSELL FLANNERY
The aircraft carrier has been a symbol of American military power for decades, projecting U.S. air might and ferrying troops to hot spots around the world. This week, the USS George Washington is at the center of war games involving the U.S. and South Korea, exercises designed to show Washington’s support for its Seoul ally following a North Korean attack on Tuesday that left four South Koreans dead.
Yet advancements in anti-ship missile technologies may be rendering the mighty ships obsolete, with China – North Korea’s main military backer — possessing some of the world’s most potent technology. How vulnerable is the USS George Washington as it carries out its mission in the Yellow Sea? To learn more, we exchanged by email with June Teufel Dreyer, a defense specialist in the department of political science at the University of Miami and a former member of the U.S. Economic and Security Review Commission.
Q. How advanced are Chinese anti-ship missiles today? What about Russia’s?
A. Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles are world-class. If one includes PRC work on an anti-ship ballistic missile some experts call revolutionary, China may have the most advanced anti-ship missile program in the world.
Q. How knowledgeable are we about military transfers between China and North Korea? Russia and North Korea?
A. China has been the principle source of new weapons transfer to North Korea over the past two decades. While the details are highly classified, experts can tell quite a bit from open-source surveillance photos. Beijing seems to have escalated its conventional weapons transfers to the North Koreans. To the best of my knowledge, no U.S. official has accused the Chinese on any of this, probably because of the myth that if we are nice to Beijing, Beijing will control Pyongyang. The fact that Beijing either can’t or doesn’t want to doesn’t seem to have changed any minds in the D.C. establishment. Non-administration analysts seem to be of two minds about this. One group sees Beijing as the owner of a pit bull that is constantly trying to slip its leash: Beijing is trying to control it, but doesn’t always succeed. The second group argues that this is what Beijing wants us to think, and that actually Pyongyang, and Tehran as well, are proxies for the Chinese in their effort to overturn American hegemony.
As for Moscow, there is far less transfer than when it was the capital of the USSR. Russia sells a lot to South Korea, and this is the more lucrative markets. The ROK government might be loath to buy Russian weapons if the north was getting the same weapons. Bottom line: the Russians need money, and the north doesn’t have money.
Q. To what extent would you say the George Washington is vulnerable to anti-ship missiles, especially operating as it will be so close to China and North Korea?
A. The USS GW is extremely vulnerable—if — and this is a big if — the Chinese should decide to put together a massed anti-ship missile barrage. As a technology-knowledgeable friend says, after repelling an attack of about a hundred cruise missiles,” the hundred-first could ruin the carrier’s day.” The crucial factor is the missile’s seeker versus the carrier battle group’s electronic countermeasures. We can’t be sure what will happen until, perish forbid, it has happened. A former U.S. government official with experience in this area points out that, if one looks at the espionage cases of the past decade or so, one notices that a prime Chinese target has been U.S. ECM (electronic countermeasure) technology. The cases that make the newspapers are the ones we know about, but are likely to be the tip of the iceberg. The former official quotes Rumsfeld as saying, “we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Q. What do you consider to be the mostly likely outcome of events in the next few days?
A. In my humble opinion, the next few days will be characterized by posturing. The tensions will abate — until the next incident, which is bound to occur. It is as if Pyongyang wants to provoke Seoul into taking some strong form of retaliation. What is Pyongyang’s motive? Some have suggested that it wants to restart the 6-party talks. I’m skeptical. I think that several of the parties must be feeling that, since repeated efforts to talk to the North Koreans have failed, there’s not much point in making yet another try. Perhaps, of course, getting the talks restarted is Pyongyang’s motive, either that or getting some other concession from its neighbors, but that it miscalculated those countries’ reactions.
Yet advancements in anti-ship missile technologies may be rendering the mighty ships obsolete, with China – North Korea’s main military backer — possessing some of the world’s most potent technology. How vulnerable is the USS George Washington as it carries out its mission in the Yellow Sea? To learn more, we exchanged by email with June Teufel Dreyer, a defense specialist in the department of political science at the University of Miami and a former member of the U.S. Economic and Security Review Commission.
Q. How advanced are Chinese anti-ship missiles today? What about Russia’s?
A. Chinese and Russian anti-ship missiles are world-class. If one includes PRC work on an anti-ship ballistic missile some experts call revolutionary, China may have the most advanced anti-ship missile program in the world.
Q. How knowledgeable are we about military transfers between China and North Korea? Russia and North Korea?
A. China has been the principle source of new weapons transfer to North Korea over the past two decades. While the details are highly classified, experts can tell quite a bit from open-source surveillance photos. Beijing seems to have escalated its conventional weapons transfers to the North Koreans. To the best of my knowledge, no U.S. official has accused the Chinese on any of this, probably because of the myth that if we are nice to Beijing, Beijing will control Pyongyang. The fact that Beijing either can’t or doesn’t want to doesn’t seem to have changed any minds in the D.C. establishment. Non-administration analysts seem to be of two minds about this. One group sees Beijing as the owner of a pit bull that is constantly trying to slip its leash: Beijing is trying to control it, but doesn’t always succeed. The second group argues that this is what Beijing wants us to think, and that actually Pyongyang, and Tehran as well, are proxies for the Chinese in their effort to overturn American hegemony.
As for Moscow, there is far less transfer than when it was the capital of the USSR. Russia sells a lot to South Korea, and this is the more lucrative markets. The ROK government might be loath to buy Russian weapons if the north was getting the same weapons. Bottom line: the Russians need money, and the north doesn’t have money.
Q. To what extent would you say the George Washington is vulnerable to anti-ship missiles, especially operating as it will be so close to China and North Korea?
A. The USS GW is extremely vulnerable—if — and this is a big if — the Chinese should decide to put together a massed anti-ship missile barrage. As a technology-knowledgeable friend says, after repelling an attack of about a hundred cruise missiles,” the hundred-first could ruin the carrier’s day.” The crucial factor is the missile’s seeker versus the carrier battle group’s electronic countermeasures. We can’t be sure what will happen until, perish forbid, it has happened. A former U.S. government official with experience in this area points out that, if one looks at the espionage cases of the past decade or so, one notices that a prime Chinese target has been U.S. ECM (electronic countermeasure) technology. The cases that make the newspapers are the ones we know about, but are likely to be the tip of the iceberg. The former official quotes Rumsfeld as saying, “we don’t know what we don’t know.”
Q. What do you consider to be the mostly likely outcome of events in the next few days?
A. In my humble opinion, the next few days will be characterized by posturing. The tensions will abate — until the next incident, which is bound to occur. It is as if Pyongyang wants to provoke Seoul into taking some strong form of retaliation. What is Pyongyang’s motive? Some have suggested that it wants to restart the 6-party talks. I’m skeptical. I think that several of the parties must be feeling that, since repeated efforts to talk to the North Koreans have failed, there’s not much point in making yet another try. Perhaps, of course, getting the talks restarted is Pyongyang’s motive, either that or getting some other concession from its neighbors, but that it miscalculated those countries’ reactions.
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