Chinese Navy Working Toward Aircraft Carrier Capabilities
The US Defense Department reported in early 2009 that “Analysts in and out of government project that China will not have an operational, domestically-produced carrier and associated ships before 2015. However, changes in China’s shipbuilding capability and degree of foreign assistance to the program could alter those projections. The PLA Navy is considering building multiple carriers by 2020.”
China’s navy will develop a new generation of warships and aircraft to give it much longer-range capabilities, its commander-in-chief said in comments published Thursday April 16 2009. Admiral Wu Shengli told the state-run China Daily newspaper the Chinese navy wanted to develop hardware such as large combat warships, stealth submarines with abilities to travel further and supersonic cruise aircraft. More accurate long-range missiles, deep-sea torpedoes and a general upgrade of information technology were also in the pipeline, according to Wu.
“The navy will establish a maritime defense system that corresponds with the need to protect China’s maritime security and economic development,” Wu said.
The English-language China Daily, which the government uses to deliver messages to a foreign audience, printed his comments on its front page and said it had obtained a rare interview with such a high-ranking military figure. It quoted other Chinese military figures as saying that Wu’s reference to building large warships referred to highly-publicized plans to build an aircraft carrier, but also other unspecified vessels
The leaked plans include building aircraft carriers, participation in patrols against Somali pirates, harassment of a U.S. Navy surveillance ship, and the 60th anniversary of the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN). The PLAN has 27 destroyers, 48 frigates, 54 diesel attack submarines and six nuclear attack submarines, according to the 2009 Pentagon report on China’s military modernization, making it the Pacific’s largest naval force after the U.S. Seventh Fleet. Announced or hinted at are plans to build aircraft carriers, long-range support ships, and submarines that can launch ballistic and cruise missiles.
The purpose of this growing fleet has been hotly debated. Some fear China will attempt to push the U.S. Navy out of the first island chain, then challenge its dominance of the Pacific. Chinese leaders and PLAN officials say their country’s economic and political power depends on sea access and control.
The report said China appears to be replacing its Offshore Active Defense strategy, which stresses coastal defense within the “first island chain,” with Far Sea Defense, which allows for operations beyond China’s claimed 200-nautical-mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and “multidimensional precision attacks” beyond the island chain.
AIRCRAFT CARRIERS?
Many Western observers say China intends to build one or more aircraft carriers. Reports out of China suggest a carrier build will begin in 2010, with plans to build nuclear-powered carriers in 2020, and justification for the construction of aircraft carriers has increased in the Chinese media over the past six months.
In a recent interview, Adm. Gary Roughead, the U.S. chief of naval operations said he point-blanked asked the head of China’s Navy, Adm. Wu Shengli “So, we’re hearing you’re going to announce an aircraft carrier.” And he replied, “We’re not there.” But according to Roughhead, the US Navy knows the development is going on. The PLAN had an ambition for an aircraft carrier since the ’90s. And they are working down that timeline. They are going to have an aircraft carrier some day. How they elect to use it and where they operate it is the big question.
Andrei Chang, a China military specialist at Kanwa Information Center, said infrastructure and security improvements at the Changxing Island Shipyard in Shanghai suggest plans to build a carrier at the yard’s third dock. Chang said China plans to build a medium-sized aircraft carrier similar to Russia’s 67,000-ton Admiral Kuznetsov, which can carry about 15 fighter aircraft.
That size makes sense to Thomas Kane, a China military specialist at Britain’s University of Hull. “I would liken the big Chinese carrier to the Xia nuclear submarine: impressive in principle, likely to be problematic in practice,” Kane said. “I would liken a smaller Chinese carrier to China’s Kilo submarine: familiar technology but, if used correctly, a definite asset.” He said a large carrier would be most useful for testing and diplomacy. But he cautioned that a rush to build a carrier of any size has risks. “Rushing might also force the PLAN to compromise on things like developing an effective battle group to support the carrier, and procuring the necessary electronic gear to help members of that battle group function effectively,” Kane said.
Former U.S. Navy Rear Adm. Eric McVadon, a consultant on East Asia security affairs, predicted that China’s first carrier would most likely be a medium-sized test vessel. Judging by previous Chinese Navy shipbuilding programs, he said, China will “use and evaluate it, then build about two more.” However, operating a carrier will be difficult and expensive, and PLAN is not expected to project force with a carrier in the near future.
“Operating a carrier will be harder than expected – and more expensive,” said McVadon, now the director of Asia-Pacific Studies at the Washington-based Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis. “Progress toward a real operational capability will be slow, if China’s pace with assimilation of major weapon systems is the model. For example, it will likely be a long time before a carrier is ready to send armed airplanes in quantity on a complex mission, to be recovered at night in bad weather and high seas while needing to defend against enemy missiles,” he said.
One or two destroyers and a frigate operating in the Indian Ocean or the Pacific are “largely blind and without reach.” However, with an aircraft carrier, China can provide sea-lane security a great distance from its shores, McVadon said. “Add a small carrier, and it becomes a formidable force that has ‘eyes,’ ‘legs,’ and the ability to defend the force and deliver weapons distant from the main force.”
There also is the issue of national pride. China sees India and Japan operating aircraft and helicopter-borne carriers, and there is a “prestige” factor that could be motivating China’s carrier build program, McVadon said. In addition, Chang said China is developing a carrier-based fighter jet based on the Sukhoi Su-33. China has built a copy of the Su-27 fighter in violation of an agreement with Sukhoi, the Russian aircraft maker. Attempts by Beijing to procure the Su-33 have been denied by Moscow until the Su-27 clone issue is resolved.
The question of China’s plans to build aircraft carriers are important for several reasons. Many other countries have aircraft carriers, and little thought is given to Brazil’s aircraft carrier, or Argentina’s aircraft carrier, when it had one. Unlike other major maritime powers, Japan does not have aircraft carriers, and the Japanese government has regarded this class of ships as being an “offensive” weapon precluded by Japan’s peace constitution. Should China acquire aircraft carriers, Japan might reconsider this position, and this might mark the start of a larger reconsideration of Japan’s military posture.
The United States has twice as many aircraft carriers as the rest of humanity combined, each of which is larger than other country’s carriers. China’s acquisition of aircraft carriers might be seen as a step towards challenging American pre-eminence on the high seas. At a minimum, it would mark the acquisition of a power projection capability that would move further afield than the Taiwan scenario, and into the South China Sea and beyond.
US Department of Defense Releases Fiscal 2010 Budget Proposal
Last week, President Barack Obama sent to Congress a proposed defense budget of $663.8 billion for fiscal 2010. The budget request for the Department of Defense (DoD) includes $533.8 billion in discretionary budget authority to fund base defense programs and $130 billion to support overseas contingency operations, primarily in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The proposed DoD base budget represents an increase of $20.5 billion over the $513.3 billion enacted for fiscal 2009. This is an increase of 4 percent, or 2.1 percent real growth after adjusting for inflation.
The fiscal 2010 budget proposal will end the planned use of supplemental requests to fund overseas operations, including Operation Iraqi Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom. The inclusion of these expenses as a separate category in the department’s annual budget request will ensure greater transparency and accountability to Congress and the American people. The budget will also request funds in the base that were previously supplemental for programs such as those supporting our military families and providing long-term medical care to injured service members.
“This budget provides the balance necessary to institutionalize and finance our capabilities to fight the wars we are in today and the scenarios we are most likely to face in the years ahead, while at the same time providing a hedge against other risks and contingencies,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates.
Naval highlights of the budget include:
Naval Power
The healthy margin of dominance at sea provided by America’s existing battle fleet makes it possible and prudent to slow production of several shipbuilding programs. Accordingly, the fiscal 2010 budget will shift the Navy Aircraft Carrier Program to a five-year build cycle, placing it on a more fiscally sustainable path. This plan will result in a fleet of 10 carriers after 2040. The Navy CG-X next generation cruiser program will be delayed to reconsider the requirements and acquisition strategy. Amphibious ship and sea-basing programs such as the 11th Landing Platform Dock ship and the Mobile Landing Platform Ship will be delayed in order to assess costs and to analyze the need for these capabilities.
Destroyers
Funds from fiscal 2010 will be used to complete the third DDG 1000 Destroyer and build one DDG 51 Destroyer. Current plans call for building all three DDG 1000 class ships at Bath Iron Works in Maine. The DDG 51 class ship will be restarted at Ingalls shipyard in Mississippi, and this type ship will eventually be built at both yards.
Littoral Combat Ships
Plans call for increasing the buy of Littoral Combat Ships (LCS) from two to three in fiscal 2010. LCS provide a key capability for operations in coastal regions. The goal is eventually to acquire 55 of these ships.
Joint High Speed Vessels
The fiscal 2010 budget will enable the Department to improve its intra-theatre lift capacity by increasing the charter of Joint High Speed Vessels (JHSV) from two to four. This arrangement will continue until the DoD’s own production program begins deliveries in 2011.
North Atlantic shrimp fishery may be vulnerable to climate change
About 150,000 tonnes of northern shrimp are caught each year by Canadian trawlers, mostly off Newfoundland.
The $500 million North Atlantic shrimp fishery may be vulnerable to climate change that could disrupt the crustaceans’ life cycle and mislead them into hatching when food is scarce, scientists said.
Any damage to stocks of the northern shrimp — a small, sweet-tasting variety popular in salads — could have knock-on effects in the ocean food chain ranging from algae to cod, according to a Canadian-led team of experts.
“Shrimp can provide valuable insight into broad changes in the marine ecosystem. They are the marine equivalent of the canary in the mine shaft – an indicator of climate change,” said Peter Koeller, the lead author of the study at the Bedford Institute of Oceanography in Canada.
“Shrimp are very sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, be they global warming-driven or otherwise,” Koeller said. “So they can be used as indicators of ecosystem change and may show changes in their populations.”
Writing in last week’s edition of the journal Science, the scientists said that the shrimp timed mating so that their eggs hatch when algae that shrimp larvae feed on are most abundant.
“They have evolved to mate the previous year at just the right time to take advantage of spring blooms,” said Koeller. Eggs carried by the females take between 6 and 10 months to incubate over the winter.
But climate change could decouple the match between seabed temperatures and food, he said of findings with colleagues in the United States, Britain, Denmark, Iceland and Norway.
The scientists found that the crustaceans, which live from the Gulf of Maine to Arctic waters north of Norway, time their mating according to water temperatures on the seabed where the adults live. Warmer waters could disrupt that timing.
He said that’s why the shrimp population exploded off Newfoundland in the late ’80s as cod stocks — which feed on shrimp — plummeted and water temperatures cooled. That allowed the shrimp eggs to hatch closer to when phytoplankton blooms occur and when surface water warms up. The danger is that if water temperatures rise as a result of global warming, the shrimp’s mating cycles could be thrown off, and algae might not be as plentiful.
The scientists said a drop in shrimp populations could be the first sign of fundamental changes to the marine environment and that fisheries managers need to consider ecosystem conditions when assessing stocks.
The shrimp make up about 70 percent of the 500,000 tons of cold-water shrimp harvested annually from the world’s oceans. The shrimp fishery is estimated to be worth about $500 million.
Koeller said shrimp were an important link in the food chain — they feed on algae and are in turn eaten by fish. Overfishing of cod has helped a sharp rise in shrimp populations.
The U.N. Climate Panel says that a build-up of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, caused mainly by mankind’s use of fossil fuels, could push up world temperatures and cause more heat waves, more powerful storms and rising ocean levels.
New map of Arctic could point to offshore gas, minerals
The map was completed in 2008 after a two-year collaboration by seven nations, including Canada. (Geological Survey of Canada/Natural Resources Canada)
A recently completed map of Arctic geology across Canada, Greenland, Norway, Russia and other polar nations offers new hints about energy and mineral deposits across its vast north, says the geologist who co-led the mapping project.
“The Europeans, the Russians, they’ve been at it much longer than we have in terms of mineral and energy exploration in their Arctic,” said Marc St-Onge, a research scientist with the Geological Survey of Canada in an interview Thursday. “Knowing where they have their mineral deposits and gas and oil fields, we can use the geology of this consistent map … to see where else we should be looking Canada.”
Similar geological features often yield similar mineral, oil and gas deposits, St-Onge explained to Canadian government officials last week.
For example, an area that has yielded zinc deposits in Norway is geologically similar to an area on Bathurst Island in Canada that has not yet been explored for zinc, St-Onge said.
The geological map of the Arctic that he was explaining was completed in November 2008 as part of a two-year, seven-nation collaboration. The map, which uses data from a variety of sources, such as geophysical surveys, satellite images and isotopic dating, has already been presented at mining industry forums in Yellowknife and Whitehorse, St-Onge said.
While the international map is complete, Canada’s section of it will be maintained and updated as more data is gathered, St-Onge said. Other Geological Survey of Canada projects are currently underway to map the geology of Canada’s North in more detail, partly to help companies that work in the resource sector.
“For them, the more detail, the better,” St-Onge said.”The North is so big that they need all the help they can get in knowing where to start looking for something.”
Arctic sovereignty role
Another purpose of the Arctic mapping project was to help northern nations gather data needed to assert their sovereignty over the Arctic.
For example, Canada and Denmark are both trying to claim part of the underwater Lomonosov ridge that stretches between northern Ellesmere Island and Greenland from Siberia, and which is outside the standard 200 nautical mile range of their coasts. Russia has laid claim to much of the ridge, which has the potential to produce gas, oil, methane and other resources. Under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, both Canada and Denmark could claim a section if they can prove before 2013 that it is part of their land mass.
Data from the geological map of the Arctic suggests that the ridge is part of the North American plate and is therefore attached to Canada. However, more detailed surveys will provide more information by mapping the sea floor and the rock beneath it at 50-kilometre intervals using techniques such as sonar and seismic reflection. “That’s the level of detail required to say yea or nay,” St-Onge told a member of the audience who asked him about the claim.
Canada’a Conservative government announced in August 2008 that it will spend $100 million over five years on a geo-mapping program targeted at providing tools to find energy and mineral deposits. The program to map Canada’s Arctic waters began in 2006 and is ongoing.
Chief of Naval Operations: US Navy Decisions Based on Costs
The costs of both weapons programs and manpower dominate future thinking at the top of the Navy, according to Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral Gary Roughead.
“When I look at some cost projections, we need to have a fundamentally different way of acquiring things,” he said May 4 at the first event of the Navy League’s three-day Sea-Air-Space Exposition outside Washington. He added, “We don’t take into account the cost of people. At the end of the day, it’s all about people.”
He noted that the personnel picture is further complicated today by the poor economy, which has pushed retention “off the scale,” by sailors trying to stay in.
Roughead, who spoke during a panel discussion on “Seapower and America’s Security,” noted that costs were behind the decision last year to cancel the third and fourth littoral combat ships. “In my view,” he said, “the costs were taking off at an uncontrollable rate.”
Also on the panel was Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. Jim Conway, Commandant of the Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen and the acting head of the Maritime Administration, James Caponiti. The panelists covered a range of topics, from countering commercial ship hijackings to retrofitting icebreakers.
With piracy off Somalia in global headlines, Allen and Caponiti talked about the safety of merchant ships transiting the waters off the Horn of Africa.
Allen said a code of conduct for civilian mariners is being developed. Caponiti said his agency is firmly opposed to arming civilian crews to fend off pirates because of legal and liability implications. “We do not want to arm mariners in any event,” he said. “The issues are very, very significant before we go down that path.”
Conway spoke of the Corps’ loss off its seagoing nature because of land wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. He said only 10 to 15 percent of Marines today have done a traditional embark in the naval fleet. “For the U.S. Marines, that’s almost unheard of,” he said. “That’s where we are, that’s what’s taking place, and we’re concerned about it.” Conway also said that as the military goes through the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review and assesses what kind of fleet is needed, the question should be “how much amphibious capability becomes too little,” not too much.
The Navy League’s three-day Sea-Air-Space Exposition is an annual event that shows off the latest in naval and military hardware and technology, and provides a podium for defense leadership.
Marport Congratulates Hvalnes P/F on arrival of Nordborg
Marport Deep Sea Technologies extends congratulations and best wishes to Hvalnes P/F upon the arrival of their newest vessel, the F/V Nordborg to the Faroe Islands.
The 83.5m long purse seiner/pelagic trawler is one of the most advanced fishing vessels in the world. The vessel is arranged with RSW hold capacity of 1.230m3 and two freezing holds optimised for pallets with a capacity of 2,500m3. The design is optimised for onboard production with a freezing capacity of more than 200 tonnes of herring fillet per day. All of the waste is utilized in a separate fishmeal factory. The hull is designed to achieve good sea characteristics, and limiting the noise onboard the vessel has been an important factor, giving a better working environment and comfort for the crew.
Accommodation is arranged for 30 people, and the vessel has been fitted with the most modern electronics, communication and fish-finding equipment – including Marport sensors.
The vessel is arranged to fish for herring, mackerel, capelin and blue whiting and is equipped with separate deck equipment for trawling and for purse seining. It will operate mainly on the fishing grounds around the Faroe Islands, the North Sea, the Atlantic Ocean as well as the maritime zones around Iceland and the Barents Sea.
Australia Reveals Naval Expansion Plans
Three Hobart Class Air Warfare Destroyers are under construction for the Australian Defence Force.
Australia’s defense budget will continue to grow beyond 2030 to sustain a significant increase in the size of the Royal Australian Navy as well as an overhaul of the rest of Australia’s combat equipment. This was one of the key messages from Australia’s long-awaited defense white paper, which was released by Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on May 2.
The paper revealed plans to double the Navy’s submarine fleet from six boats to 12 over the next 30 years. These new submarines, along with the planned replacement for the eight Anzac-class frigates and the three Hobart-class Air Warfare Destroyers, which are already under construction, will be armed with sea-launched, land-attack cruise missiles. And the Australian Defence Force (ADF) will acquire what the white paper terms “a satellite with a remote sensing capability, most likely to be based on a high-resolution … synthetic aperture radar.”
The paper also confirms the Air Force’s commitment to purchase “around 100″ F-35A Joint Strike Fighters.
Underpinning these and other planned purchases, the government has promised to continue increasing the defense budget by an average of 3 percent per year in real terms, out to the 2017-18 fiscal year. This is on top of the annual inflation index of 2.5 percent, which will be maintained to 2030, and amounts to 107 billion Australian dollars ($78.23 billion) in defense spending over the next four fiscal years alone. The 2008-09 defense budget is 22 billion Australian dollars.
“The truth is we are seeing a period of significant military and naval expansion in the wider Asia-Pacific region, and it’s important, therefore, that Australia makes proper provision for that in our own planning horizon,” Rudd told reporters here at a press conference May 2. The 140-page white paper, “Defending Australia in the Asia-Pacific Century: Force 2030,” highlights the importance of Australia’s alliance with the U.S., as well as the growth of China and India.
“Within the Asia-Pacific region, economic growth should help foster stability and security,” Rudd said at the paper’s release. “But there are likely to be tensions between the major powers where the interests of the United States, China, Japan, India and Russia intersect. While the chance of direct confrontation between any of these major powers is small, there is always the possibility of miscalculation.”
But he predicted the U.S. will remain the most powerful and influential global and regional power out to at least 2030. “No other power will have the military, economic or strategic capacity to challenge U.S. primacy over the period covered by this white paper,” Rudd said. “Furthermore, our alliance with the United States will remain the bedrock on which Australia’s national security is built. This alliance is enduring and remains vital to Australia’s future defense.”
While the white paper doesn’t point to a more powerful China as a military threat to Australia or the wider region, it states, “The pace, scope and structure of China’s military modernization have the potential to give its neighbours cause for concern if not carefully explained, and if China doesn’t reach out to others to build confidence regarding its military plans.”
However, the paper also notes that Australia is one of the most secure countries in the world by virtue of its geography. To keep it that way, the country’s strategic priorities are to help maintain a secure immediate neighbourhood; help contribute to strategic stability in the Asia-Pacific region; and help promote and contribute to a stable, rules-based global security order.
To address these priorities, the ADF will remain structured to meet a hierarchy of tasks, Rudd said. “This means we need to have the capacity to act independently where we have unique interests at stake and do not wish to be reliant on the combat forces of others, lead military coalitions where we have shared strategic interests at stake with others, and make tailored contributions to military coalitions where we share wider strategic interests with others.”
“Over the next decade, we will be devoting approximately 30 billion [Australian dollars] to fixing the existing force. This includes approximately 6 billion for more than 50 new projects to fill the crucial gaps that have been left in equipment and protection for our women and men in uniform, approximately 18 billion to top-up existing projects that have been underfunded in the past, and approximately 6 billion to fix systems and infrastructure that support our women and men in uniform.”
Pirates seized after threatening French navy ship
French Navy said they seized 11 pirates Sunday after they apparently mistook a French military vessel for a commercial ship and made a run at it.
A French navy sailor speaks to one of 11 pirates on board the French warship Nivose after their capture.
Two pirate assault boats approached the Nivose “at great speed,” Captain Christophe Prazuck said, but a French helicopter intervened before the attackers had time to fire at the French navy ship. The helicopter fired warning shots, he said.
The pirates, who had a mother ship as well as the two assault boats, are being held for questioning on the Nivose, Prazuck said. The vessels were carrying AK-47 rifles and rocket-propelled grenades, but the pirates did not fire, he said.
In the past three weeks, the Nivose has intercepted 24 suspected pirates as part of a European Union anti-piracy operation off the coast of Somalia, which has become a piracy hotspot.
Over the past year, more than 100 suspected pirates have been picked up, Prazuck said. Of that total, 27 have been released, and more than 70 taken to jail in France, handed to authorities in Somalia or taken to Kenya under an EU agreement with the government in Nairobi.
The Nivose seized three other suspected pirates Thursday morning, the French military spokesman said, but released them the next day for lack of evidence. But a day later, the Seychelles coast guard picked up the same three men. They claimed they were fishermen, but had no license to fish in the Seychelles exclusive economic zone, Prazuck said.
Pirates seized a ship that was carrying wheat and used vehicles to Mogadishu, Somalia, last Saturday, according to NATO, which also patrols the area.
The ship, the Almezaan, now appears to be heading for a Somali village called Harradera, known as a pirate base, Cmdr. Chris Davies told CNN. The ship did not send a distress signal until 4 a.m. Sunday, 18 hours after it was hijacked in the Indian Ocean, he said. No NATO ships were in the area at the time, he added.
The Panamanian-flagged ship had a crew of 18 Indians as of April 2008, the last listing for it on the Web site of the International Transport Workers’ Federation.
Pirates also hijacked a British-owned bulk carrier in the Indian Ocean. The MV Ariana was carrying 35,000 tons of soya about 250 nautical miles (287 miles) northwest of the Seychelles when it was seized around dawn.
The crew members are Ukrainians and they are not believed to be harmed, NATO said. It is unclear how many crew members were aboard the vessel and how it came to be attacked. NATO said it was unaware of ransom demands or any threats against those aboard.
NATO said a European Union Protection Aircraft has been deployed to monitor and track the MV Ariana, which is making its way toward Somalia — the epicenter of the pirate industry.
Piracy has been soaring off the coast of eastern Africa — particularly Somalia, which has not had an effective government since 1991.
Somali pirates have defied foreign navies patrolling the waters and have collected large ransoms from shipping companies. Ransoms started out in the tens of thousands of dollars and have since climbed into the millions.
Gates: We Ignore Threats to the US Navy at Our Peril
NEWPORT, R.I. – Wrapping up a week of visits to military colleges to promote his fiscal 2010 defense budget proposal, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently told officers at the Naval War College in Newport, R.I., that the U.S. blue-water fleet and the overall strategy behind the kinds of ships it buys must be re-examined.
U.S. Defence Secretary Robert Gates recommends that more Arleigh Burke destroyers are built because it is still a workhorse of a ship and it can be upgraded rapidly with new capabilities and technologies. (US Defense Department)
“We cannot allow more ships to go the way of the DDG-1000, where since its inception the projected buy has dwindled from 32 to three as costs per ship have more than doubled,” Gates said. Gates is recommending that more Arleigh Burke destroyers are built because that is still “a best in class ship that has been the workhorse of the U.S. surface fleet for nearly two decades,” and is also a ship that can be upgraded rapidly with new capabilities and technologies.
A number of Navy program decisions have been delayed until next year’s Quadrennial Defense Review. Gates said this would allow time to develop a more rigorous analytical framework for U.S. shipbuilding.
“It is important to keep some perspective,” Gates said, pointing out that no country in the world has “anything close to the reach and firepower” to match a U.S. carrier strike group. But he warned against complacency, saying that the loss of even one U.S. ship would be a national catastrophe.
“We know other nations are working on ways to thwart the reach and striking power of the U.S. battle fleet – whether by producing stealthy submarines in quantity or developing anti-ship missiles with increasing range and accuracy. We ignore these developments at our peril.”
Gates knows that the fight to get his shape-shifting 2010 budget proposal approved still lies ahead. Congress will not give up easily, particularly where major program jobs are on the line. However, he said that he was looking forward to having that debate on Capitol Hill. “It’s about explaining it to the military,” he said. “The reason I am doing it at our colleges is not to talk about dollars, but to talk to them about ideas. That’s why I’m going to the war colleges and not the line units.” He said he was encouraged by the reaction so far. “I am seeing a lot of nodding heads – and their eyes are open,” he quipped.
New York-sized Ice Cap Collapses Off Antarctica
An area of an Antarctic ice shelf nearly the size of New York City broke into icebergs last month after the collapse of an ice bridge widely blamed on global warming, a scientist said last week.
“The northern ice front of the Wilkins Ice Shelf has become unstable and the first icebergs have been released,” Angelika Humbert, glaciologist at the University of Muenster in Germany, said of European Space Agency satellite images of the shelf.
Ms. Humbert said about 700 square kilometres of ice, bigger than Singapore or Bahrain and almost the size of New York City, has broken off the Wilkins this month and shattered into a mass of icebergs. She said 370 square kilometres of ice had cracked up in recent days from the Shelf, the latest of about 10 shelves on the Antarctic Peninsula to retreat in a trend linked by the UN Climate Panel to global warming.
The new icebergs added to 330 square kilometres of ice that broke up earlier this month with the shattering of an ice bridge apparently pinning the Wilkins in place between Charcot island and the Antarctic Peninsula. Nine other shelves — ice floating on the sea and linked to the coast — have receded or collapsed around the Antarctic peninsula in the past 50 years, often abruptly like the Larsen A in 1995 or the Larsen B in 2002.
This NASA handout Terra satellite image obtained April 21, 2009 shows The Wilkins Ice Shelf, on the western side of the Antarctic Peninsula, as it experienced multiple disintegration events in 2008. By the beginning of 2009, a narrow ice bridge was all that remained to connect the ice shelf to ice fragments fringing nearby Charcot Island. That bridge gave way in early April 2009. Days after the ice bridge rupture, on April 12, 2009, the Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) on NASA's Terra satellite acquired this image of the southern base of the ice bridge, where it connected with the remnant ice shelf. Although the ice bridge has played a role in stabilizing the ice fragments in the region, its rupture doesn't guarantee the ice will immediately move away. (HO/AFP/Getty Images)
The trend is widely blamed on climate change caused by heat-trapping gases from burning fossil fuels, according to David Vaughan, a British Antarctic Survey scientist who landed by plane on the Wilkins ice bridge in January.
Ms. Humbert said by telephone her estimates were that the Wilkins could lose a total of 800 to 3,000 square kilometres of area after the ice bridge shattered.
The Wilkins shelf has already shrunk by about a third from its original 16,000 square kilometres when first spotted decades ago, its ice so thick it would have taken hundreds of years to form.
Temperatures on the Antarctic Peninsula have warmed by up to three degrees Celsius this century, Mr. Vaughan said, a trend climate scientists blame on global warming from burning fossil fuels in cars, factories and power plants. The loss of ice shelves does not raise sea levels significantly because the ice is floating and already mostly submerged by the ocean. But the big worry is that their loss will allow ice sheets on land to move faster, adding extra water to the seas.
Wilkins has almost no pent-up glaciers behind it, but ice shelves further south hold back vast volumes of ice.
The Arctic Council, grouping nations with territory in the Arctic, is due to meet in Tromsoe, north Norway, on Wednesday to debate the impact of melting ice in the north.
