February 2, 2025: Russia is at war in Ukraine and China is making moves against Taiwan and in the South China Sea. In both cases the U.S. Navy is expected to deal with these situations if they escalate to the point where they threaten American interests. Currently the U.S. Navy consists of 475 ships. China has 400 and Russia 370. While the Chinese fleet is new and growing, China has no experience or tradition of naval warfare beyond its own coast. China did not start a modern, oceanic fleet until the 1980s. While China has not fought a major naval war with modern ships, between 1949, when the communist took control of China and the late 1980s, Chinese forces destroyed over 600 hostile ships and aircraft. Two thirds of those losses were ships, albeit small ones. While the U.S. Navy has for decades maintained a force of at least a dozen large aircraft carriers, China only began introducing carriers in the last decade. China currently has three carriers, none of them as capable as the American carriers. China is working towards U.S. style large nuclear powered carriers but not expected to reach that goal until the 2030s or 40s.

The Americans also lead the world in submarine warfare with a current force of 51 nuclear attack submarines and fourteen SSBNs or nuclear powered ballistic missile carrying subs. Eventually there will be more than 60 Virginia-class nuclear attack submarines.

The U.S. Navy is having problems deciding what types of weapons their Virginia class SSN attack submarines should carry. The most favored weapons are launched from torpedo tubes. It’s not just torpedoes. You can put a Harpoon anti-ship missile into a torpedo casing and launch that torpedo towards the surface target the sonar detected. When that torpedo reaches the surface it launches the Harpoon missile, which has a much longer range of 280 kilometers than any torpedo. The Mark 48 torpedo has a 70 kilometer range. One advantage torpedoes have over missiles is that the target cannot easily detect an approaching torpedo. Navies say they have all manner of torpedo detection systems, but sailors doubt that any of those detectors will work. The detectors have not performed well in tests when the targets knew an unarmed test torpedo was headed their way. In actual combat there is little or no warning. In contrast an incoming missile is spotted by radar and these missiles have been shot down by the 20mm autocannon of the Phalanx system. Other nations have weapons similar to Phalanx.

The Navy has also developed accessories for its air-launched torpedoes, the lightweight Mk 54 which enables the torpedo to glide long distances before entering the water. The new accessory enables a maritime patrol aircraft to launch the torpedo from high altitude. The modified Mk 54 has pop-out wings, so the high-altitude torpedo can still be stored inside the aircraft bomb bay. When dropped, the wings pop out, an onboard computer uses GPS and tiny electric motors, to operate the wings and fins to guide the torpedo to a preprogrammed location, at which point the glide kit falls away as the torpedo enters the water and starts searching for the submarine. The glide kit can also be used with air dropped naval mines. It took contractor Lockheed Martin a year, and three million dollars, to develop the system.

Normally, aircraft or helicopters have to come down to a hundred meters altitude to launch torpedoes. That takes time and makes them vulnerable to anti-aircraft weapons. Some subs have systems that can release a small anti-aircraft missile while submerged, when they pick up the sound of a low flying aircraft or helicopter. By staying at a higher altitude, the sub won't know it is being tracked, and that makes it more vulnerable to the torpedo attack. Finally, the U.S. Navy’s new maritime patrol aircraft, the P-8, is a jet, and does not operate as effectively at low altitudes as the current prop-driven P-3. Same with the jet propelled drones the navy is developing for maritime patrol work.

The Chinese Navy has 78 submarines but 90 percent of them are conventional diesel-electric designs. China has some nuclear powered attack subs and SSBNs. What is more difficult to create are proficient crews. The U.S. Navy has established and maintains very high standards for officers and sailors on its nuclear subs. American submarines remain at sea much longer than Chinese submarines. China is trying to catch up but is finding that serving on submarines is not a popular career choice for Chinese Naval officers. As a result the submarines’ officers are low quality and would rather not be serving on submarines.

Because of this China has had a lot of problems with its submarines. Their submarines are poorly designed and built. The crews are often poorly trained and supervised. Back in 2003 this led to an incident where 70 officers and sailors aboard a Chinese submarine suffocated and died. The sub did not sink, it just drifted for weeks until the Chinese Navy searchers found it and all the dead personnel on board. To remedy this situation the Chinese Navy was ordered to improve crew training and demonstrate the success of that by keeping the subs at sea longer while operating as they would in wartime. That is still a work in progress.

This means the U.S. Navy is encountering Chinese submarines in areas of the central Pacific where Chinese subs had rarely been seen. This has put a strain on Chinese submarines and their crews because neither has operated this far into the Pacific before. The Chinese government ordered its submarines to regularly patrol the central Pacific, and not just along the Chinese coast as they had in the past. The Chinese are new to operating on the high seas, otherwise known as far out in the open ocean. The Americans have long been out there because the United States has not had local enemies on the north and south American continents for more than a hundred years.

The Americans and Chinese are both dependent on seaborne imports and exports. Thousands of ships regularly operate out of American and Chinese ports because these two countries are the largest importers and exporters in the world. Keeping those ocean sea routes safe is important for both countries. Enemy submarines are the major threat to those commercial transports and it’s been eighty years since there has been a threat to commercial sea lanes. The U.S. Navy exists to, among many other things, protect American seagoing trade and threaten that of its enemies. The only potential enemy now is China but the Chinese are far more dependent on trade by sea, both for imports to keep the Chinese population fed and supplied with the raw materials to manufacture the exports to keep its population employed, plus all manner of goods they have become accustomed to consuming. The U.S. is the largest exporter in the world and the American economy is dependent on that trade to maintain the high standards of living Americans have become accustomed to.

For both China and the United States, control of seaborne trade is essential in wartime. American submarines have operated off the Chinese coast since World War II when the Americans began mining the waters around Japan to block essential food imports from Japanese occupied northern China. In the 21st century China is dependent on imports of food and other goods. So are the Americans, but not to the extent the Chinese are. America can survive without seaborne trade but modern China cannot. Before the 20th century China used seaborne trade to bring in luxuries, not essentials. That has changed and China is scrambling to build a navy that can protect its trade routes.

Currently the Americans are easily able to threaten those trade routes and China is having a difficult time coping, particularly as the Americans have local friends and even allies with significant navies and air forces, all of whom the Chinese have unwisely antagonized bigtime. Chinese submarines in the central Pacific and even along the American West coast are a possible solution but one that is very difficult to achieve. At the moment China is trying to build submarines and train crews that can operate on the high seas and threaten U.S. Navy operations in the western Pacific and off the Chinese coast. At the same time. Both navies are increasingly arming their submarines with missiles that can be launched from torpedo tubes or Vertical Launch System tubes built into the hull. In the Far East South Korea is doing this with its new submarines.