US lawmakers call for action to arrest growing naval gap with China

Chinese shipbuilding capacity far outstrips US as Beijing plots a bold maritime quest

- Bhagyashree Garekar

WASHINGTON - The United States is not acting fast enough to cover its growing naval gap with China even as it turns more wary of Beijing's increasingly ambitious maritime activities.

US lawmakers, military officials and analysts have expressed alarm at the pace of China's naval expansion and shipbuilding efforts that are increasingly surpassing US capacities.

"China is on track to reach 400 or even 500 ships and we're on an opposite trend line that has gone down to 290 and even less," Representative Michael Waltz, a Republican lawmaker from Florida, said during a Feb 5 talk at the conservative Heritage Foundation thinktank.

The foundation's latest Index of Military Strength, released on Jan 24, showed that the US Navy needs a battle force consisting of 400 manned ships to do what is expected of it today. But its current fleet stands at fewer than 300 ships.

The index, now in its 10th edition, has graded the US Navy as too "understrength" to ensure success in combat, notes Mr Brent Sadler, a senior research fellow for naval warfare and advanced technology at Heritage.

China's naval modernisation effort has been under way since the early to mid-1990s. Some time between 2015 and 2020, it surpassed the US Navy in number of battleships, according to US estimates.

The Pentagon now believes that the Chinese navy is the largest in the world, with over 370 vessels, including aircraft carriers, submarines and amphibious ships. This is expected to grow to 395 ships by 2025 and 435 ships by 2030.

The US Navy, by comparison, has 292 battle force ships as at Jan 29, 2024, according to a recently published Congressional Research Service report.

The Navy's budget submission for fiscal year 2024 projects that it will have 290 battle force ships by the end of 2030 after shrinking to 285 ships in 2025, with ships being retired faster than they are replaced.