Hearing of the House Armed Services Committee - China: Recent Security Developments

Statement

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Just to follow up on Mr. Hunter's questions, General, again, you've a number of times this morning talked about the navy -- the Chinese navy has limited capability because it's somewhat in its infancy, I guess, would be best way to characterize it.

The CRS report which came out this month by Mr. O'Rourke described the 2006 incident with the Kitty Hawk where, again, a Chinese submarine, undetected, surfaced right near one of our aircraft carriers and actually got away undetected. I'm just going to read a very short excerpt: "The ease with which the submarine maneuvered undetected into Japanese waters and evaded U.S. and Japan's Self Defense Force submarine sensors suggests that China's large submarine fleet engages in far more sea patrols than the U.S. has any hope of tracking."

I mean, that seems to suggest a capability that's a little bit more advanced. I mean, we heard a lot from Mr. Hunter about the size of the fleet growing, which I completely concur and agree with him, but it sounds like they're also learning how to drive these boats in a way that certainly caught us by surprise. Again, an event which Mr. Forbes described has happened to us a lot lately. So, I just wonder if you can comment on that incident in terms of your own analysis of their capability.

GEN. BREEDLOVE: Sir, I would agree with you fully in the fact that that was a surprise to us, and I believe we as a military learned a lot more about where the Chinese military is in their capability through that incident.

And I would not argue in any way, shape or form that that is not a huge concern to us, and we have to adapt our tactics, techniques and procedures to meet the fact that we now understand they may have this capability.

If I -- I hope I have not overstated the fact that they have no capability. They do. They have some very sophisticated weaponry. And I think that what I was trying to relate is that this is a military that has not gotten near the capability it can with its current equipment and processes. When it gets to a level closer to ours -- tactics, training, procedure and experience -- it will be a very formidable force. And I think that was the comparison I was trying to draw.

REP. COURTNEY: Thank you. And I guess I would just echo Mr. Hunter's observation that the timeline for us to be able to have a fleet that is even close to the size of the Chinese navy is going to take some planning. And last year this committee led the way in terms of advance procurement in the Virginia class program, moved the building schedule as you know up a year. We'd like to actually keep the momentum going, and our defense authorization bill certainly heads down that path. And we look forward to getting the support of the top level at the Navy and the Pentagon to hit that goal.

Quickly, the election of the new Taiwanese president apparently put into abeyance the purchase of weapons systems by the Taiwanese government, including diesel submarines. And I was wondering, Secretary, if you could sort of comment on the status of that issue. We appeared to have some movement from the Taiwanese parliament last year in terms of stepping up and appropriating for that effort. And where do you see that right now, given the -- I guess they pretty much called a timeout in the wake of the election.

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MR. SHINN: You'll pardon me if I consult my notes very carefully, since anything regarding Taiwan, it gets parsed very carefully, not just here but abroad.

It is true that for a couple years Taiwanese defense expenditures actually decreased in the face of what, in our view, was a significantly expanding PLA force. It appears that that's reversed, that we have a -- that the Taiwanese National Assembly has passed this budget and they're going to be engaged in a -- I think long overdue uptick in acquiring some additional systems.

REP. COURTNEY: So the recent decision to sort of put this on hold is temporary? Is that your view?

MR. SHINN: Actually, I don't believe that we made a decision to put things in abeyance. This was -- this was driven, as far as I understand, by Taiwanese domestic politics.

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