Recently, the Chinese People's Liberation Army conducted a large-scale combat exercise in the Western Pacific, demonstrating their progress in ocean-going combat capabilities. The operation attracted the attention of Western intelligence, who began a new round of assessments of the PLA's combat capabilities.
We all know that while the PLA has gradually developed into a blue-water navy with ocean-going capabilities over the past decade, it has been short of aircraft carriers, a key combat vessel. Therefore, it is widely believed in the West that the PLA can only exert an advantage in the waters around China when fighting against the US Navy with aircraft carrier battle groups. Once the battlefield is expanded beyond the ocean-going waters or the first island chain, the US military will take the lead and the PLA's chances of victory will be greatly reduced.
One of the main reasons for this conclusion is that modern naval warfare is getting farther and farther apart, and the range and accuracy of anti-ship weapons are getting higher and higher, reaching the level of hundreds of kilometers. At the same time, the "soft defense" defense system adopted by modern warships means that once hit, even if the ship does not sink, it will lose its combat capability.
As a result, modern naval warfare is returning to the "sniper showdown" mode based on who can spot and strike the other first. Aircraft carriers, due to the carrying of various carrier-based fighters and AWACS aircraft, can extend the detection and strike range to a range of 600 km or more. In this new type of naval warfare, aircraft carriers are far more efficient than traditional destroyers. Thus, the number of aircraft carriers and their combat capabilities will largely determine the outcome of the battle.
However, in recent years, the PLA has continuously improved its military strength and technical level, and publicly displayed various new types of weapons and equipment. This has caused concern in many countries, who have found that the PLA's carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missiles have great deterrent power and pose a challenge to the supremacy of aircraft carriers.
The aircraft carrier is powerful mainly because it carries a variety of carrier-based fighters and AWACS aircraft, which have super surface situational awareness and strike capabilities. However, when the party without the aircraft carrier gains the same tactical advantage by other means, the battlefield advantage brought by the aircraft carrier will also be weakened. The PLA is currently building a combat system around carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missiles based on this.
Through the development of satellite reconnaissance technology and UAV technology, the PLA can use low-orbit satellites and high-altitude UAVs to collect intelligence and continuously track US aircraft carrier battle groups. This largely compensates for the lack of situational awareness of PLA aircraft carriers. In addition, the PLA's satellite and UAV systems are stronger than the AWACS reconnaissance systems of aircraft carriers.
Considering that the aircraft carrier needs to allow AWACS aircraft to go further forward in order to expand the search range, and the risk of AWACS being shot down increases with distance. The flight performance of the PLA's UAV-8 reaches the performance line of the vast majority of shipborne anti-aircraft missiles, and its survivability is relatively high even at a distance of more than 100 kilometers from the US aircraft carrier battle group.
In addition, the loss of one UAV does not bring serious consequences, and the loss of the crew if the AWACS is shot down.
In addition, the range of carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missiles carried by the 055 destroyers and H-6N bombers armed by the PLA has been widely suspected to exceed 1,000 kilometers. In comparison, the F/A-18E/F fighters on the US aircraft carrier have a maximum combat radius of about 800 kilometers, and need to add air-launched Harpoon missiles with a range of 200 kilometers to barely hit targets 1,000 kilometers away.
From these real-world data, it can be seen that the PLA's carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missiles make the aircraft carrier's strike range advantage no longer available.
This is also why many military experts refer to the PLA's carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missiles as the reason. What we want to change is the rules set in the Western Pacific and around China. In addition, although the PLA's carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missile system is purely naval combat and does not have the multipurpose combat capabilities that aircraft carriers have, it is fatal for the need to build maritime superiority around aircraft carriers. In addition, in addition to developing carrier-based/air-launched hypersonic missile systems, China is also actively building its own aircraft carrier combat system. When both develop and mature at the same time, they will lose their hegemony.