China's navy is not only the largest navy in the world, its numerical advantage over the US is getting bigger and bigger, and the US Secretary of the Navy recently warned that US shipyards can't keep up with them. Some experts estimate China could build three warships in the time it takes the US to build one.
Besides China's activities in the coastal area of Taiwan island, this is one of the concerns that weighs heavily on the shoulders of Defense Minister Lloyd Austin when he meets with senior military members in this area at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.
Before the summit began, however, a number of experts had analyzed a possible solution to one of the conundrums facing the United States - the numerical advantage of China's naval fleet - that might be within reach, if the US could think more openly.
According to these experts, Washington possesses an element that the Beijing government does not have: allies in South Korea and Japan, which currently produce the most high-spec and low-cost warships in the world.
These experts also said that buying warships from these countries, or manufacturing US-designed warships in their shipyards would be an effective method to help close the gap with China.
Blake Herzinger, a research fellow at the Institute of American Studies in Australia, asserted that the warships "will certainly be a formidable opponent to their counterparts (from China)", and Carl Schuster, former chief operations officer at the US Pacific Command's Operations Intelligence Center in Hawaii, said the Japanese battleship designers "are among the best in the world".
Both these countries have mutual defense treaties with the US, so why hasn't the US cooperated with them to catch up with China?
The main problem is that current US law prohibits the US navy from buying warships made abroad – even from allies – or building its warships abroad for security reasons as well as a desire to protect the US shipbuilding industry.
Mr. Schuster, Mr. Herzinger and other experts are among a group of experts whose views need to think about changing the law to help the US regain its maritime advantage.
Type 055. Source: Naval Technology.
China's superior Type 055 challenger
The Pentagon estimates that the Chinese navy currently has about 340 warships, compared with less than 300 for the United States. The US Department of Defense believes that China's fleet will reach 400 ships in the next two years, and the US Navy fleet will have to "wait" until 2045 to reach 350.
However, the growing number of China's naval fleet is not the only factor of concern. Some Chinese models of warships are having much greater firepower than their American counterparts.
For example, China's Type 055, in the eyes of many, is the world's leading destroyer.
Weighing between 12000 and 13000 tons, the Type 055 is larger than a conventional destroyer, roughly the same size as the US Navy's Ticonderoga-class cruiser, and carries formidable firepower.
The ship carries 112 vertical launchers (VLS) with the ability to launch anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles, larger than the 96 launchers on the US Navy's latest Arleigh Burke-class destroyer. The vessel is also equipped with advanced anti-submarine weapons and radio systems.
China is mass-producing these warships. They began production of the Type 055 ships in 2014, and recently began production of the eighth vessel, the Xianyang. Progress in the production of US Zumwalt-class destroyers has been much slower, with construction beginning five years earlier, but so far only two ships have been commissioned.
Some Western analysts believe that the Type 055 can meet a formidable opponent against the Korean class destroyer Sejong the Great.
With a weight of 10000 to 12000 tons, the Sejong is smaller in size than the Chinese Type 055, but carries a larger amount of firepower, with 128 VLS platforms and weapons systems including anti-aircraft, anti-submarine and cruise missiles.
Three Sejong ships at a cost of 925 million USD each are the pride of the Korean naval fleet.
"With just this one ship, (the South Korean navy) can deal with multiple situations at the same time - air defense, anti-ship, anti-submarine, land attack - and defense against ballistic missiles," the country's Defense Communications Agency said.
Former South Korean Navy Admiral Duk-ki Kim, who was the first to command a Sejong ship, believes the vessel is capable of taking on China's Type 055.
"China is focusing on quantity and cost competitiveness instead of focusing on the quality of its ships," Kim, deputy director at the Korea Military Research Association, told CNN.
Sejong the Great. Source: DAPA.
High parameters, low cost
According to Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King's College London, Japan also has a number of "world-class" destroyers.
The country's latest Maya-class frigate is equipped with 96 VLS platforms, can launch anti-ballistic missiles as well as anti-submarine missiles, and according to Patalano, "the quality of its sensors and systems is among the best in the world." In November, the Maya ships demonstrated their ability to destroy ballistic missiles en route outside the Earth's atmosphere.
These 96 VLS platforms put the Maya on a par with the American Arleigh Burke class, but the two have an important difference: the Arleigh Burke costs $2,2 billion, the Maya costs $1 billion less than that.
In other words, the Maya ships represent “both quality and quantity”: they are high-spec, low-cost, and can be produced quickly.
“While China is demonstrating incredible mass shipbuilding capabilities, Japan is leading in terms of low cost high quality products at a larger scale than most major naval powers without sacrificing production speed,” said Patalano. That balance, coupled with their experience in ship design, is a respectable advantage.”
And not just the Maya ship. Take a look at the Japanese Mogami-class frigate: a fast, hard-to-detect warship weighing 5500 tons with 16 vertical launchers that can launch anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles. The vessel is operated by a crew of only 90 people and costs $372 million each.
In contrast, the currently under development US frigate of the Constellation class is expected to cost three times as much and require a crew twice as large. This is not an ideal option, given the US Navy's difficulty in recruiting troops - the US deputy chief of naval operations has said it is very likely that the number of recruits will be 6000 less than the target for this year - however the Constellation ships are expected to be equipped with more than twice as many VLS platforms as the Mogami ships.
It is difficult to compare the cost of these ships with the cost of the Type 055 because of the lack of information. Estimates of the ship's cost range from $925 million to $2.6 billion per vessel.
Mogami. Source: Ministry of Defense of Japan.
The Secret Weapon of the East
What makes Korean and Japanese shipyards so competitive?
According to Schuster, cost overruns, which are inherent in the defense contracting process in the US, are not common in Japan, because unlike the US, the country requires manufacturers to stick to their original cost estimates.
Mr. Schuster said: “The bid for a shipyard in Japan is absolute. If they produce the finished product at a lower cost than estimated, they make a higher profit. If they encounter delays or mistakes, the manufacturer has to fix it at their own expense.”
He believes this method is "much wiser" than the one in the US, citing the problems faced by Zumwalt-class ships as well as coastal warships, costing the Pentagon billions of dollars for warship models. However, many critics say that the US Navy completely does not know in which cases it can be used.
The three US Zumwalt-class destroyers cost $8 billion each, and it's currently unclear how these will work with other ships in the fleet.
At the same time, several US littoral combat ships costing more than $350 million each are slated to be scrapped when they're less than a third of their life in service.
Zumwalt. Source: US Navy.
Time to reconsider
Warships from Japan and South Korea are all designed to feature American technology, weapons, radar, and the Aegis command and control system.
Part of that is to help the two navies work seamlessly with the US navies, as they did during exercises earlier this year.
But if American, Japanese and South Korean warships use similar technology and can operate together, then why does the law prevent the US from building its warships at shipyards in Japan and South Korea?
The bans are not only aimed at countering security concerns, they are also designed to protect jobs and shipbuilding expertise in the United States.
In 2019, economic activity related to the shipbuilding industry in the US accounted for 400 jobs and $42.4 billion in GDP, according to data from the Maritime Administration, with 154 shipyards across 29 different states classified as active shipyards and more
300 workshops operate in ship repair, or are capable of producing ships.
The US military is an important source of demand for these shipyards; Although less than 3% of the total ships produced in 2020 are delivered to US government agencies, 14 of the 15 large ships are delivered to the US Navy and US Coast Guard.
Arleigh Burke. Source: US Navy.
Difficult decisions
Decisions that are supposed to be detrimental to such an important industry are bound to be met with opposition in the political arena. According to USNI News, shipbuilding industry representatives believe that more investment is needed in the domestic industry.
US Navy spokesman Travis Callaghan said: "The Navy currently holds a large number of ships in production or contracted for production at various shipyards. We have been and continue to make significant investments in domestic shipyards to increase and optimize our production capacity. The United States Navy is committed to providing a ready, modern, and robust navy that continues to be the nation's primary maritime control force now and into the future."
Besides that, there are also some analysts who, despite admiring the ability of Japan and South Korea to produce ships, still think that asking them to produce ships for the US is a decision that is going too far.
On the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Nick Childs, senior naval research fellow at IISS, said that the US working with its allies has begun to shift the trajectory of naval power in Asia away from China.
Currently, the region is witnessing "a new phase of maritime balance," he said, gradually shifting the advantage in Washington's favor. However, he does not think that manufacturing US warships in other countries is the right answer.
“I think the answer is to learn how they do it instead of asking them to do it for us,” he said.
Advocates of outsourcing, however, argue that leveraging support from allies provides a quicker answer, and point out that the US already has designs from outside countries. Constellation-class frigates based on Italian and Japanese designs have also been cited as a potential source of future designs.
Mr. Schuster says the design is not enough - he thinks the US needs more warships right now.
“As shipyards are already operating at full capacity in the US, transferring some of that work to Japan could help solve this problem until the US renovates and expands its shipyards, a 10-year process in the opinion of many analysts.”
Former South Korean admiral Kim believes that co-production of ships will bring a "win-win situation" for both countries.
Mr. Herzinger is also one of those who think it's time to rethink the law.
He said Japan and South Korea "both produce high-quality ships on time and with the right budget, two things that (the US) was no longer able to do".
Nguyen Quang Minh (according to CNN)
