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 While most attention has been on the power projection China would
get from its new islands in the Spratly archipelago, China could
also use them to hunt rival submarines in and beyond the strategic
waterway, they said.
Possessing three airstrips more than 1,400 km (870 miles) from the
Chinese mainland would enable Beijing to extend the reach of Y-9
surveillance planes and Ka-28 helicopters that are being re-equipped
to track submarines, the experts added.
A Pentagon report in May noted China lacked a robust anti-submarine
warfare capability off its coastline and in deep water.
Strengthened anti-submarine capabilities could also help China
protect the movements of its Jin-class submarines, capable of
carrying nuclear-armed ballistic missiles and which are at the core
of China's nuclear deterrence strategy, said Zhang Baohui, a
mainland security specialist at Hong Kong's Lingnan University.
"That would provide greater security for China's nuclear submarines
to survive ... and if necessary to execute their orders in wartime,"
Zhang told Reuters.
"They would be safer than in open oceans where China cannot provide
adequate support."
The artificial islands, built on seven reefs over the last two
years, will be high on the agenda when Chinese President Xi Jinping
has talks with President Barack Obama in Washington next week.
Washington has criticized the reclamation and construction.
China, increasingly confident about its military firepower, has
repeatedly stressed it has "indisputable sovereignty" over the
entire Spratlys, saying the islands would be used for civilian and
undefined military purposes.
Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Wednesday said "necessary" construction
work would improve conditions on the islands.
TRIANGLE OF AIRSTRIPS
Satellite photographs show construction is almost finished on a
3,000-metre-long (10,000-foot) airstrip on Fiery Cross Reef..
Recent images showed Subi Reef would also have a 3,000-metre
airstrip, Greg Poling, director of the Asia Maritime Transparency
Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies
think tank in Washington, said on Monday.
Poling, citing images taken last week, said China also appeared to
be doing preparatory work for an airstrip on Mischief Reef.
Together, the three islands form a rough triangle in the heart of
the Spratlys, where the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and
Taiwan all have competing claims.
While a noisy and relatively shallow operating environment for
submarines, the South China Sea has several deep water channels
giving access to the Indian and Pacific oceans.
Asked if Washington was concerned the airstrips would enhance
China's anti-submarine capabilities, a Pentagon spokesman, Commander
Bill Urban, said the United States was monitoring events in the
South China Sea.
In a speech on Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said the
United States would "fly, sail, and operate wherever international
law allows".
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"Turning an underwater rock into an airfield simply does not afford
the rights of sovereignty or permit restrictions on international
air or maritime transit," Carter told a U.S. Air Force conference.
One mainland-based naval analyst said China was trying to improve
sonar and other detection equipment carried aboard its Y-9 patrol
planes and Ka-28 helicopters.
China was also expected to put detection devices on the seabed
around the new islands, creating "an electronic gateway", he added.
NUCLEAR DETERRENCE
Zhang has previously said ballistic missile submarines are more
important for China's nuclear deterrent than other powers given
Beijing's policy, dating back to the 1960s, of only using nuclear
weapons if attacked with them first.
This means China's land-based weapons would be vulnerable to a first
strike if Beijing stuck to its "no first use" policy in a conflict.
Chinese media and international military blogs this year have shown
photographs of Jin-class submarines operating from a naval base on
Hainan Island off southern China.
It's unclear if they have been armed with long-range JL-2 nuclear
ballistic missiles.
The Pentagon report said four Jin-class submarines were operational,
with a fifth expected to be added.
"China will likely conduct its first (submarine) nuclear deterrence
patrol sometime in 2015," the report said.
The importance of that deterrence means China is likely to
eventually impose an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ) over
part of the South China Sea, security experts say, mirroring its
declaration of such a zone over the East China Sea in late 2013.
In a return to Cold War-style cat-and-mouse operations undersea,
rival submarines were already trying to track each other, said
Western and Asian naval officers with experience of anti-submarine
warfare.
They said the United States would be trying to identify and track
individual Chinese submarines, just as it stalked then-Soviet Union
missile submarines across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans during the
Cold War.
Japan's ultra-quiet diesel-electric submarines were also
increasingly active while, over time, Vietnam's emerging fleet of
advanced Russian-built Kilo-class submarines would be another
headache for China.
"We're looking at them, and now increasingly they are looking at
us," one retired Asian-based naval officer said of China's growing
undersea operations.
(Reporting by Greg Torode in HONG KONG; Additional reporting by
David Brunnstrom and Andrea Shalal in WASHINGTON; Editing by Dean
Yates)
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