Source: Bloomberg

• Seeks 38 vessels through 2021, 10 Fewer Than Earlier Plan
• Delayed $13 billion aircraft carrier to be delivered in Sept.

Ford Carrier Delay

Ohio-Class Replacement

Source:- Times of India

South Korean shipbuilder Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering (DSME) has launched the first of three Type 209/1400 diesel-electric submarines (SSK) on order for the Indonesian Navy (Tentara Nasional Indonesia – Angkatan Laut, or TNI-AL).
The boat was launched on 24 March at DSME’s Okpo shipyard in a ceremony attended by Indonesian defence minister Ryamizard Ryacudu and TNI-AL chief Admiral Ade Supandi. TNI-AL sources have confirmed to IHS Jane’s that the submarine has been given the pennant number 403.
The vessel is part of a KRW1.3 trillion (USD1.1 billion) contract signed between DSME and the Indonesian Defence Ministry in December 2011. Under the contract the first and second vessels are to be built in South Korea, while the third boat will be produced at Indonesian state-owned shipbuilder PT PAL’s premises in Surabaya in a technology transfer arrangement.
According to specifications provided by DSME the Indonesian Type 209, which displaces 1,400 tonnes dived, has a top speed of 21 kt and a maximum operating range of approximately 10,000 n miles at 10 kt while surfaced. The submarine has been designed for a range of missions, including anti-surface warfare (ASuW), anti-submarine warfare (ASW), mine laying, and special forces operations, said DSME in a statement on the launch.
The first boat will now undergo sea trials in South Korean waters and is currently scheduled for delivery by March 2017.
Work on the second vessel has begun and all three boats are expected to be delivered by the end of 2018.

A total of eight Borey-class submarines are planned to join the Russian Navy by 2020 to be the backbone of Russia's marine nuclear forces. The first three have been launched, and another three are currently under construction.
"The sixth submarine of the Project 855 [Yasen-class] will be laid at down at [Russia's shipbuilding company] Sevmash in December 2016. A new Borey-class submarine will be laid down in July," the spokesman told RIA Novosti.
According to Russia's Naval Doctrine, Yasen-class submarines will become the main multipurpose nuclear-powered subs in the Russian Navy.
By 2020, the Russian Navy also plans to operate a total of eight Borei-class nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines, which will become the mainstay of the naval component of the country's strategic nuclear deterrent.
related report World's Largest Akula-Class Nuclear Submarines to Be Recycled in Russia A total of six Project 941 (NATO reporting name Typhoon) submarines were built in the Soviet era. The remaining Severstal and Arkhangelsk submarines have been in reserve with the Russian Navy, while the Dmitry Donskoy Project 941UM was upgraded to carry Bulava ballistic missiles.
"A decision has now been made to recycle the Severstal and the Arkhangelsk at the Zvezdochka plant in Severodvinsk [Arkhangelsk Region]," the source said.
The defense industry representative noted that the vessels could have been capable of carrying 300 new Kalibr cruise missiles if they had been upgraded.
The soon-to-be-retired submarines were built in reaction to the US Navy's Ohio class nuclear-powered submarines. They allowed the Soviet Union and the United States to reach parity in terms of marine strategic nuclear forces, confirmed at the second round of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT II) in 1979.

About 7,700 kilometers away from Beijing, in Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, China's first overseas installation for naval vessels is under construction.
Scheduled to be completed in 2017, the base is set to resupply Chinese warships, according to government statements.
But despite Beijing's insistence that the facility will simply help with escort missions, peacekeeping and humanitarian rescues in the Gulf of Aden and the waters off Somalia, many have argued this move represents Chinese "military expansion" beyond the Asia-Pacific region.
"Through exaggerating or distorting, they attempt to hype the 'threat of China' and tarnish China's image, so as to suppress China's efforts to build maritime power," Li Jie, a Beijing-based maritime expert, told the Global Times.
"The base is far less than a military base in its scale and function," said Zhang Junshe, a researcher from PLA Naval Military Studies Research Institute.
"The base will be a logistic hub for Chinese vessels to get replenishment and temporary rest. It differs from U.S.-style military bases, which have become bridgeheads for the country to easily and quickly wield military deterrence or intervention to other territories," Li noted.
The Republic of Djibouti, located in a strategically important position between the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea, hosts the military facilities of several countries, including the U.S., Japan and France, the country's former colonial ruler. Italy and Spain also have permanent military installations in the country, according to a recent report by Hong Kong-based Phoenix TV.
These countries have stationed a variety of assets in these bases, including personnel, ships, UAVs and surveillance aircraft which are used for anti-terror and anti-piracy operations in Africa and the Middle East.
International obligations
The news that China will build a "military base" in Djibouti was first revealed in May last year, when Djiboutian President Ismail Omar Guelleh told AFP that "discussions are ongoing," and China's presence would be "welcome."
Since then, it has aroused wide attention and concern. The U.S. even reportedly protested against it.
At a regular press briefing on November 26, 2015, China's foreign ministry first confirmed that China was negotiating with Djibouti over the construction of a "logistics facility." Spokesman Hong Lei citied the need to resolve resupply difficulties for Chinese escort vessels, adding "[The facility] will be significant for Chinese army to fulfill its international obligations and safeguard global and regional peace and stability."
Three months later at a press briefing by Chinese defense ministry on February 25, spokesman Wu Qian told media that China had reached an agreement with Djibouti to build a facility and construction had already begun.
According to official figures, China has deployed more than 30,000 personnel on peacekeeping missions, the most of any of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council.
Since 2008, China has sent 22 escort fleets, a total of more than 60 vessels, to the Gulf of Aden and Somali waters, escorting more than 6,000 ships from home and abroad.
In March last year, hundreds of Chinese nationals threatened by escalating violence in Yemen were evacuated to Djibouti by their government.
But currently, these fleets need to dock in the ports of other countries to get rest and food supplies. "They need to organize people to purchase food locally. Besides, due to different types of fuels, refueling is also a problem," Zhang said.
The new base will help China save money. Yang Huawen, a captain from China's Northern Theater Command who joined a 10-month peacekeeping operation in Mali in 2014, is happy this facility is being built.
"In those tropical areas, the food goes bad quickly. The cost of mending equipment and maintenance is high," Yang told the Global Times. "Building a logistic hub in the region can provide stable supplies efficiently and economically."
Djibouti, with a landmass of 23,200 square kilometers of which 90 percent is volcanic desert, is poor in natural resources. Its ability to produce fruits, vegetables, and seafood is limited, according to a Chinese national who has spent time in the country. "Most of its vegetables are imported from its neighbor Ethiopia. Vegetables sell for there as much as five to 10 times what they do on the domestic market in China," said the person.
Zhang also cited another advantage of the new facility - the Chinese government needn't conduct diplomatic negotiations with the host country each time its vessels dock in their port.
Regional deterrence
The base will be part of the Doraleh Multipurpose Port which is being constructed by China State Construction Engineering Corp with a total investment of $590 million, according to Phoenix TV.
The port, about a 20-minute drive from Djbouti City, the capital, covers an area of 2.27 million square meters and 1,375 meters of coastline. It will have six berths after completion, one of which will be used for Chinese military vessels, according to the report.
"Many countries have military installations in Djibouti. Djibouti is a sovereign state. If China wants to build a naval base here, the government will also support it," Omar, a media worker from La Nation, a Djiboutian French-language weekly newspaper, told Phoenix TV. "As long as it is to fight against the terrorisms and piracy."
Djibouti also hopes the Chinese outpost can help empower its military.
In a statement titled "Will the Chinese army move to Djibouti quickly?" posted on its official website, the Embassy of the Republic of Djibouti in China implies the answer is "yes" by quoting its president Ismail Omar Guelleh and defense minister Hassan Darar Houffaneh.
"We hope to have more military cooperation with China, so as to strengthen the muscles of Djbouti's armed forces," said Houffaneh was quoted as saying.
In addition to rent paid to the government and the jobs created at the port, the logistic hub will also bring locals other benefits. Several Chinese who work in Djibouti revealed that not only the Chinese but also the locals welcome the Chinese military presence.
"The foreign military presence has deterred the country away from wars or riots," a Chinese who works in Djibouti told the Global Times on condition of anonymity. "The Chinese lease agreement will bring the country a large amount of funds."
Beijing hasn't disclosed how much exactly. A report by International Business Times says China will pay $100 million per year in rent for the base.
In 2014, the U.S. renewed its 10-year lease with Djibouti for its military base, agreeing to pay $63 million annually, which was nearly double the annual rent the country paid in its first 10-year-lease, according to a report by Qatar-based news portal aljazeera.
Djibouti has a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of some $1.58 billion, so rent from military installations is highly important.
"The country is still generally poor and it is thirsty for investment and development opportunities," said the Chinese working in Djibouti. The per capita GDP of Djibouti was $1,229 in 2014, a tenth of the world average, according to tradingeconomics, a website that provides economic data.
Expanding interests
China is also building other infrastructure in Djibouti, including an international airport, a water supply project and $4 billion railway line linking Addis Ababa, capital of Ethiopia, to Djibouti's new port.
China is the largest trade partner of landlocked Ethiopia, one of the world's fastest-growing economies, with almost 90 percent of its imports going through Djibouti.
Besides, POLY-GCL Petroleum Group, a Chinese enterprise, announced in early March that it will fund a liquid national gas (LNG) facility in Djibouti.
According to LNG World News Staff, the terminal is part of the group's $4 billion gas project which will allow Ethiopia to export gas to China via a pipeline from Ethiopia to Djibouti.
Building this logistic hub will be a new way for China to protect its rising interests overseas while sharing more obligations to maintain international security, Chinese foreign affairs minister Wang Yi told press conference on March 8.
He said that more than 30,000 Chinese enterprises have expanded their presence overseas with millions of Chinese workers going abroad. Non-financial foreign investment reached $118 billion last year, and overseas assets total trillions of U.S. dollars.
"I would like to tell you explicitly that China will never repeat the expansion road of traditional powers, nor play power politics," Wang said.
Military expert Li Jie said as China's maritime interests expand overseas, he doesn't rule out the possibility that the country will increase the military component of the Djibouti base.
The U.S. maintains about 800 military bases in around 160 countries, which cost approximately $156 billion annually, according to military scholar David Vine, MintPress News Desk reported on March 7.
"But we will always stick to an 'active defense' strategy and commitment to peace," Li stated.
According to a white paper issued by China's Ministry of National Defense in May last year, "active defense" means "will not attack unless we are attacked, but we will surely counterattack if attacked."
In its annual report in May last year, the U.S. Department of Defense predicted that Beijing will "establish several access points" in the Indian Ocean within a decade.
Li said such predictions are not groundless. "China is actively promoting the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, and such facilities will help shield the routes along the road," he said.
The 21st Century Maritime Silk Road will stretch from China to the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Aden and on to the Mediterranean.
In 2013, Chinese President Xi Jinping proposed to jointly build the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road, which have received support from many countries.
"If the Maritime Silk Road unfolds as planned, increased trade through the Gulf of Aden and Red Sea will mean more need for anti-piracy missions - which makes it even more crucial for China to have resupply facilities nearby," The Diplomat said in an article in January.
-ends-

There has been a lot of talk lately by senior Pentagon officials that the U.S. military is losing its long-held advantages in high-end warfighting capabilities. If one accepted uncritically statements by the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary and Under Secretary for Acquisition, Technology & Logistics about how well our prospective adversaries are inventing and deploying new capabilities that undermine areas of U.S. military advantage, it is possible to conclude, as some in the media and the think tank class have, that the United States is in decline as a military power.
One can understand the efforts by the Department of Defense’s (DoD) leadership to paint a fairly dire picture of how the global military balance is in danger of changing against this country. If uninformed about the growing danger, the American people and their representatives in Congress would be rightly reluctant to spend more on national defense. The Pentagon would like to see sequestration ended and more money made available for defense.
Moreover, DoD wants support for its various plans to re-establish its erstwhile military-technical superiority, including by investing in a host of gee whiz capabilities, the so-called Third Offset Strategy, relying more on Silicon Valley and other non-traditional suppliers of advanced technologies and doing more experimentation and prototyping.
Without question, the militaries of our prospective adversaries, most notably Russia and China, are getting better. It should not be surprising that after the U.S. demonstrated the wonders of stealth, precision weapons, unmanned aerial systems and advanced networks some 25 years ago that other countries would make similar investments. Nor that these same countries would focus their efforts, in particular, at arranging these new capabilities in ways to counter erstwhile U.S. capability advantages, for example by creating anti-access/area denial forces and investing in domains such as cyber, electronic warfare and space that the U.S. neglected.
This does not mean that the situation is hopeless or that the U.S. military does not have a host of capabilities on which it can rely, perhaps with deliberate and phased upgrades, to restore a position of advantage. Indeed, the U.S. military is starting its military-technical renaissance with a very strong base of highly capable platforms and systems.
One of the most significant of these are the 11 U.S. nuclear powered aircraft carriers, or CVNs. With their ability to move globally, project power against the land from a sovereign base at sea, act as the centerpiece for the organization of naval forces to exert sea control and to deploy a wide and changing array of aerial platforms, the CVN force may be this nation’s number one asymmetric military advantage. Our prospective adversaries have acknowledged as much by their extensive and expensive efforts to place the CVN at risk.
A new class of CVNs, the Ford, multiplies the advantage provided by the older ships. Its electromagnetic launch system, advanced arresting gear, the placement of the tower, state-of-the art power generation system and new radar will allow the Ford to generate some 25 percent more sorties than its older brethren. Its defensive system and stealth features will provide improved protection against a range of threats. Investments in Information Technology and automation will enable Ford-class CVNs to operate more effectively and efficiently with a smaller crew.
Since its inception, the CVN force has been able to reinvent itself, its roles and missions, operating concepts and even tactics as new aircraft and aerial systems became available. It is no different for the emergent Ford-class and its older brethren. The addition of the F-35C Joint Strike Fighter, the E2-D Advanced Hawkeye, and carrier-based unmanned aerial systems promises a significant, potentially even revolutionary, improvement in the performance of the air wing.
The replacement of the C-2 Greyhound aircraft with a variant of the V-22 Osprey for the carrier onboard delivery mission will enhance carrier battlegroup operations. When capabilities such as the Next Generation Jammer for the EA-18 Growler and longer-range, more sophisticated air-delivered weapons are included, the CVNs will be able to challenge efforts by prospective adversaries to deny the U.S. Navy the ability to operate at and from the sea.
The CVNs have proven themselves among the most operationally responsive, tactically flexible and technologically advanced platforms in the U.S. arsenal. From the start, they have played a central role in the global war on terror. At the same time, they have held resident in their design and functions the ability to respond to changes in potential conflict scenarios.
Across the conflict spectrum, CVNs have and will continue to make a unique and potentially decisive contribution to U.S. military superiority.
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