SITREP: China Coup, Navy Nixed 5 Cruisers, New Air Defenses for Ukraine

#chinacoup

MSN, Times of India, and other media outlets are reporting internet rumors that Chinese President Xi Jinping has been put under house arrest, amidst a coup by the military in response to two former ministers being sentenced for corruption last week.

Missing from these rumors is the substantiation of Chinese troops mobilizing to seize key points of the government, like the Xinhua Gate, at the entrance of the Zhongnanhai compound, where the leadership of the Chinese Communist party lives and works. It is also where Xi Jinping lives as well.

The rumors are based on reports of canceled civilian flights in some parts of China and the fact that Xi has not been seen in public since returning from the Shanghai Cooperation Summit last week.

That really isn’t enough to make for a coup in our estimation.  Especially when there aren’t western or even Asian journalists all over China  filing reports of troops in the streets to quell mass demonstrations, mass arrests of Xi loyalists and key government buildings being seized by the military.  You know, the stuff that happens in military coups?

It could be the weather that canceled the flights,  and Xi could just be too busy to make public appearances. He might have COVID, who knows?

The accounts on Twitter spreading this #chinacoup rumor all seem to be anonymous accounts with small followings and not those with any clout or credibility as sources of information inside China, which is where you would expect such reports to originate from.

We think it’s a good example of how news reports are sometimes forcing disparate facts are forced together to satisfy the wish-think of Xi being forced from power.  “Some flights have been canceled in China and Xi has not appeared in public for a week?  This could only mean a military coup has replaced him!”

The sad truth is that Xi seems to have a pretty firm grip on power in his own country and is probably going to be handed another 5 year term in October by the Communist party.

Navy Consigns 5 Aegis Class Cruisers to the Breaking Yard.

In the last 4 months, the US Navy quietly decommission 5 of the most powerful cruisers ever built by the US. The USS Vella Gulf, USS Monterey, USS Anzio, USS Hue City, and USS Port Royal. These Aegis class Cruisers were built as floating anti-aircraft and anti-missile platforms able to protect Carrier Strike Groups from aircraft and cruise missile threats.

The ships were basically built around the Aegis Combat System which is comprised of the Aegis Combat System, the anti-air warfare system, the Phalanx Close in Weapons System, and the Mark 41 Vertical Launch Missile System. The Mk-41 can launch various types of Standard Missiles like the Rim-66, Rim-67, and the RIM-161.  The missile variants are able to hit ships, ground targets, and even ballistic missiles in flight. An Aegis class Cruiser can carry as many as 122 precision strike missiles aboard.

An Aegis cruiser was also networked with the Guided Missile Destroyers in the Carrier Strike Group and could remotely launch their missiles as well with targeting and guidance information fed to them by the cruiser.

These ships were intended to be in service for 30 years and are currently in year 35.  Attempts to modernize them and extend their life have encountered not only delays but huge cost overruns that in some cases are double the projected costs.

Plans to for the next generation of missile cruiser were scrapped due to the high cost more than 10 years ago.  Instead, the navy modified the existing  Arleigh Burke-class destroyer into a Flight III variant that has the sensor system meant for the new cruiser class but only carries about 2/3rds the number of missiles that the Aegis Cruiser carried.  The navy is planning to build 20 of these Flight III Burkes to replace the remaining 16 Aegis Cruisers following the decommissioning of the 5 mentioned above.

It remains to be seen whether the Flight III ships will have the endurance for long voyages that a large cruiser has. While the Burke Destroyers and Ticonderoga Cruisers are only about 1,000 tons different in displacement it means something in terms of long ocean voyages and missile loads when it comes to persistence in a battle.  China is putting ship to sea like the Type 55 Guided Missile Destroyer which carries more missiles than the Burke but less than an Aegis Cruiser.

As it stands right now, In the next ten years there will not be a NATO navy with any cruisers in service.  This could end up being a problem in a future conflict. In future naval battles, two ships in a fight will attempt to salvo enough missiles at each other to overwhelm the defenses of the other ship and get a solid hit.  The ship carrying more missiles has an advantage in such a fight.

In a conflict with China, their navy could bait our ships into launching their limited number of missiles on the way to the actual conflict zone, leaving them short of missiles when they actually arrive to try and stop an invasion of Taiwan or do battle in the South China Sea.

The navy could solve this problem by looking at building a class of ships that they could add hull modules to in order to accommodate more missiles and launch tubes.

NASAMS in Ukraine and Operational

In a CBS interview today, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed that it had received two NASAMS from Norway.  NASAMS, or the Norwegian Advanced Surface to Air Missile System was developed by Kongsberg Defence and Raytheon jointly.  Rather than firing huge, telephone pole sized missiles like the Russian S-300 and 400 air defense systems, NASAMs fire the AIM-9 Sidewinder, IRIS T SLS, and AMRAAm-ER missiles typically found on fighter jet aircraft.

As a result, is it very compact, mobile, and can even be mounted on vehicles like Humvees and light trucks.

Of the two new launchers now deployed in Ukraine, Zelensky told CBS, “I want to thank President Biden for a positive decision that has been already made. And to the US Congress, we received NASAMS. It’s the air defense systems. But believe me, it’s not even nearly enough to cover the civilian infrastructure, schools, hospitals, universities, homes of Ukrainians,”

This may or may not be related but yesterday in the Kherson area Ukraine’s General Staff  claims it shot down “4 aircraft (Su-25, two Su-30 and one Su-34), 5 UAVs and a cruise missile of the invaders.”

That is a very impressive tally for one day, maybe the best of the entire war so far.  Not a good day at all for the Russian army air forces to be sure.

The Ukrainians also claimed that their own air forces conducted 41 air raids on Russian positions in the past 24 hours. The attacks hit 21 targets of Russian troop and equipment concentrations, 4 strongholds, and most interestingly 15 strikes on anti-aircraft missile systems. The volume of the attacks given Ukraine’s limited number of aircraft suggests they were operating numerous aircraft in these strike packages.  The first wave of planes would attack the air defense systems and clear the way for the ground attack aircraft to come in.  Given the large area the Russians are trying to protect they are spread pretty thin on air defense systems. We recently reported on Russia stripping the air defenses of cities inside Russia to make up for shortages in these systems in occupied areas of Ukraine.