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Thursday, January 21, 2010

By the Numbers

Strategypage posts the Navy's assessment of Chinese fleet strength, which was briefly and mistakenly posted on the web:

The strength of the Chinese fleet was listed as;

Submarines- 62 (53 diesel Attack Submarines, six nuclear Attack Submarines, three nuclear Ballistic Missile Submarines). The U.S. has 72 submarines, all nuclear (53 attack and 18 ballistic missile.)

Destroyers-26. The U.S. has 52.

Frigates-48. The U.S. has 32, including two of the new LCS vessels.

Amphibious Ships 58. The U.S. has 30, all much larger and equipped with flight decks and helicopters, plus landing craft.

Coastal Patrol (Missile)- at least 80. The U.S. had a few of these, but got rid of them. China uses these for coastal patrol and defense, a concept they inherited from the Russians.

In addition, the U.S. has eleven aircraft carriers (ten of them nuclear powered) and 22 cruisers.

Not that these numbers are terribly secret as far as I can tell.

The Chinese also lack the quantity and quality of naval air power that we have. Even though only a third of our naval forces directly confront the Chinese (I assume this just means western Pacific forces), we remain superior both in ship quality and in total power (unless China's land-based anti-ship ballistic missiels really work and we really don't have a counter to them) and will for several more decades, at least.