CONTEMPORARY EURASIA VOLUME VII (1, 2) Contemporary-Eurasia-3new | Page 13

ARTSRUN HOVHANNISYAN
in combat, particularly with cruise missiles. The Chinese fl eet has neither
these ships nor, which is more important, the experience in their coordi-
nated operation. Сontrary to that, the US Navy in this region can concen-
trate up to 8 aircraft carriers, apart from amphibious ships.
Chinese Navy doesn’t have cruisers and in quantity and quality of
destroyers they are inferior even to the Japanese Navy. Chinese “Type
052D” destroyer warships, total number of which doesn’t reach 20, by
almost all its fi ghting qualities are inferior to Japanese “Atago class” and
partly “Akizuki-class destroyer”, number of which exceeds 30. Moreover,
pointless is even to compare it with American “Arleigh Burke” class war-
ship, as they are almost unanimously accepted by all experts to be the
best of their type in the world. Chinese submarines also can have trouble
even with Japanese fl eet only, not including South Korean one.
Chinese surface fl eet has 1400-1500 anti-ship and anti-air missiles in
total, 10 percent of which are able to hit only coastal targets or surface
ships that are in the distance of 250km and more. In the meantime, Japa-
nese warships have missiles of the similar amount and almost of the same
type, not including South Korean warships. It is true, general launching
range of Japanese anti-ship missiles is partly inferior to the armament
of recent Chinese destroyers, but compared with other warships it even
surpasses them. American Pacifi c fl eet for short-term duration can con-
centrate from 40 to 45 out of its 60 destroyers, thus providing more than
4,000 anti-ship, SAM and other missiles that are able to deliver strikes
to coastal areas, and surpassing Chinese fl eet missiles by all their techni-
cal characteristics. This number does not include about 1400-1500 similar
missiles, that can be launched from American cruisers and about 1,000
long-range cruise missiles launched from submarines.
Thus China in response to its 1400-1500 sea-based and about the same
number of ground-based missiles can expect to get about 6,000 American
only marine platform-based missiles, from which cruise and long-range
surface-to-air missiles have an absolute advantage in all types of techni-
cal performance. To this, you need to add about 2000-3000 “AGM-86”,
“AGM-158 JASSM” and “AGM-84E SLAM” cruise missiles that can be
launched from American bombers and some fi ghters. Thus the ratio ac-
tually becomes three to four. The US air force and navy can counter 400
Chinese fi ghters which will operate without aerial refuelers and airborne
control systems with 900 fi ghters and about 40 airborne control systems
and aerial refuelers. Chinese airborne control systems are very few and
air refuelers are old, with short-range fl ight capability as well as no expe-
rience in this kind of operations.
13