Latest news with #SamuelPaparo
Newsweek
5 days ago
- Business
- Newsweek
China Challenges Trump's US Shipbuilding Dream
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. China's top two shipbuilders are finalizing a merger that began in 2019, creating the world's biggest shipbuilding company. The $16 billion deal is expected to further widen China's lead over the United States, as President Donald Trump pushes to revive the nation's stagnant shipbuilding industry. Newsweek reached out to the White House via email for comment. Why It Matters China has vaulted to the forefront of global shipbuilding over the past two decades. The country's largest state-owned shipbuilder, China State Shipbuilding (CSSC), delivered more commercial vessels by tonnage in 2024 than the entire U.S. shipbuilding industry has produced since the end of World War II, according to Washington, D.C., think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies. China's shipbuilding capacity also increasingly extends to sea power. The People's Liberation Army Navy now boasts the world's largest fleet by hull count and is producing nearly three ships for every one launched by the U.S. Navy, according to Admiral Samuel Paparo, head of the Indo-Pacific Command. What To Know This week, the CSSC is absorbing the country's second-largest shipbuilder, China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, with trading in both companies' shares suspended on Tuesday. Together, the two companies accounted for nearly 17 percent of the global market in 2024, according to data on new orders from maritime analysis firm Clarksons Research. Originally part of the same organization, the two firms were split in 1999 under Chinese Communist Party reforms aimed at introducing limited competition among state-owned enterprises. Beijing hopes the merger will reduce costs and cushion the blow of U.S. trade actions. The world's largest containership, built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, in Rotterdam harbor, Netherlands, on August 12, 2022. The world's largest containership, built by Hudong-Zhonghua Shipbuilding Group, in Rotterdam harbor, Netherlands, on August 12, media have hailed the deal as a step to eliminate inefficiencies, optimize resource allocation, and strengthen China's prospects in the global shipbuilding market amid geopolitical tensions and competition from competitors such as South Korea and Japan. "In recent years, the U.S. has launched crackdowns against China's shipbuilding industry, such as the so-called Section 301 action targeting China's maritime, logistics, and shipbuilding sectors, and the port fee plan," said the Global Times. This Trump administration has begun phasing in new port fees on Chinese vessels, claiming unfair trade practices and state subsidies. These measures appear to be having an effect. According to global trade association the Baltic and International Maritime Council, China's share of new shipbuilding orders declined to 52 percent from 72 percent in the first half of this year. What People Are Saying Tom Shugart, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, told Newsweek: "China's already massive shipbuilding capacity remains under a single, state-controlled enterprise. "That scale, coupled with the integration of military and commercial production, will remain a central enabler of China's naval expansion—and a key factor in the eroding U.S.–China maritime balance." Xu Yi, an analyst at Shanghai-based risk management firm Haitong Futures, told the South China Morning Post: "This merger marks the largest strategic restructuring in China's shipbuilding history, aimed at optimising resource allocation and enhancing competitiveness in the global market." President Donald Trump said in his March 6 address to Congress: "We used to make so many ships. We don't make them anymore very much, but we're going to make them very fast, very soon. It will have a huge impact." What Happens Next Trump has pledged to "resurrect" both commercial and military shipbuilding in the United States, lamenting that only 0.2 percent of the world's ships are built domestically compared with nearly three-quarters in China.
AllAfrica
06-08-2025
- Politics
- AllAfrica
Dark Eagle: US hypersonic deployment has China squawking
US deployment of its Dark Eagle hypersonic missile system to Australia's Northern Territory for the 2025 Talisman Sabre joint military drills has reshaped deterrence dynamics vis-à-vis China in the Indo-Pacific. Capable of striking targets up to 2,700 kilometers away, Dark Eagle is operated via a battery of four launchers and command vehicles, allowing precision strikes at hypersonic speeds. The deployment, conducted by the Hawaii-based 3rd Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF) represented the weapon's first operational use west of the International Date Line, USNI reported. Admiral Samuel Paparo, commander of US Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), stated that the military exercise, held from July 13 to August 4 with over 30,000 personnel from 19 nations, validated the US Army's ability to deploy and operate the system in forward environments. Prior to this, the weapon had only been tested in Florida and integrated into Navy-led command drills. During Talisman Sabre, the MDTF also launched an SM-6 missile from its Mid-Range Capability (MRC) platform against a maritime target—a shot that provoked strong protests from Beijing, which warned that such moves risk destabilizing the region and triggering a new arms race. The US Navy plans to field a variant of the hypersonic missile aboard Virginia-class submarines and Zumwalt-class destroyers by fiscal year 2028, reinforcing the Pentagon's long-range strike architecture aimed at penetrating Chinese and Russian anti-access/area denial (A2/AD) networks. As noted by Ankit Panda in an October 2023 report for the Carnegie Endowment, the US strategy increasingly favors mobile, land-based missile systems whose ability to reposition rapidly complicates adversary targeting and enhances survivability in contested environments. These wheeled launchers, employed in shoot-and-scoot tactics, are seen as effective tools for bolstering deterrence without incurring the diplomatic costs of permanent basing. Panda notes that such systems enable a sustained forward presence while adapting to the demands of a more fragmented and escalation-prone Indo-Pacific theater. This evolving doctrine is embedded within the MDTF concept, which integrates capabilities across land, air, sea, space and cyber to counter enemy A2/AD strategies. According to Wilson Beaver and Anna Gustafson in an April 2025 article for the Heritage Foundation, MDTFs are uniquely designed to deliver tailored, theater-specific strikes that degrade adversary capabilities while restoring US freedom of maneuver. Their agility and domain integration make them ideal for operating long-range precision fires in environments where fixed installations are highly vulnerable. At the operational level, forward-deployed missile forces also serve broader strategic goals. In testimony before the US Senate in April 2025, Admiral Paparo stressed that defending Taiwan and preserving Indo-Pacific stability demands forward-deployed missile, sensor and command systems across allied territories, including Japan, the Philippines, Guam and Palau. He described this posture as essential to denying adversaries their strategic objectives, emphasizing that geographic dispersion, allied interoperability and resilient early warning and precision-strike capabilities form the backbone of a combat-credible deterrent embedded across the region's front-line archipelagos. These capabilities have triggered deeper strategic concerns. Aaron Shiffler, writing for the Joint Air Power Competence Center in an October 2023 article, notes that hypersonic weapons compress decision timelines and complicate traditional defense postures. Their extreme speed and maneuverability reduce early-warning windows, increasing the risk of miscalculation. Shiffler argues that these systems could undermine mutual vulnerability—the bedrock of nuclear deterrence—by enabling rapid, precise strikes against high-value targets. In his view, this shift raises the prospect of crisis instability if adversaries perceive a first-strike advantage. While advocates tout the deterrent value of hypersonic weapons, Shiffler warns that without arms control frameworks, proliferation of these weapons may erode both nuclear and conventional strategic balances. But the growing momentum behind hypersonics has met stiff resistance from skeptics, such as David Wright and Cameron Tracy, who argue in a March 2024 article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the systems offer little advantage over legacy missiles. They cite intense heating and aerodynamic drag during low-altitude flight as limiting factors that degrade speed, range and survivability. Unlike ballistic missiles, which briefly heat during reentry, boost-glide vehicles face sustained thermal stress during their glide phase—up to 30 minutes—making faster, longer-range designs difficult. They need large rocket boosters and emit bright infrared signatures, making them visible to early-warning satellites despite claims of stealth. Wright and Tracy contend that the technology suffers from fundamental design compromises and may be more about optics than operational advantage. Shawn Rostker echoes this skepticism in a February 2025 RealClear Defense article, where he critiques the growing political pressure in the US to match Chinese and Russian hypersonic deployments. Rostker argues that recent calls for expanded hypersonic funding rest on inflated threat assessments and that many technical hurdles remain unresolved. He states that both glide vehicles and cruise-type hypersonics lack a compelling strategic rationale beyond symbolic parity. Despite the limited operational success of China's DF-ZF or Russia's Tsirkon, Avangard and Kinzhal, their existence fuels anxiety in Washington, creating a momentum that may not be justified by battlefield utility. Rostker warns that absent clear strategic value, hypersonics risk becoming expensive distractions rather than game-changing deterrents. Yet China's response indicates that it takes these developments seriously. Veerle Nouwens and others, in a January 2024 report for the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), state that Chinese analysts view US plans to deploy land-based missiles across the First and Second Island Chains as a direct threat to China's strategic mobility and posture. According to Nouwens and others, Beijing sees these forward deployments as a deliberate effort to undermine its A2/AD systems and target inland facilities. In response, Chinese strategists anticipate a surge in their land-based missile deployments—including conventional and nuclear systems—to break out of perceived encirclement. Nouwens and others caution that such dynamics risk spiraling into a full-blown arms competition and destabilizing the region's already fragile security architecture. That concern has deepened with a June 2025 report by Kyle Balzer and Dan Blumenthal for the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) think tank showing that Chinese strategists now view these long-range precision missile deployments as existential threats to China's regional deterrence and national survival. They say Chinese analysts believe these systems could enable decapitation strikes on the PLA Rocket Force (PLARF) in a crisis, prompting accelerated efforts to modernize the force. This line of effort includes expanding mobile and silo-based platforms to ensure mission survivability and retaliatory capability. Balzer and Blumenthal argue that this shift reflects a broader consensus in China that survivable, land-based nuclear forces are vital to counter US denial strategies and preserve credible deterrence. The US bet on forward-deployed hypersonics aims to fracture China's A2/AD bubbles before they harden—but the payoff hinges on credibility, not just capability. As China accelerates countermeasures, the strategic equation is shifting toward a high-stakes contest of precision, survivability and political will.
AllAfrica
01-08-2025
- Business
- AllAfrica
US going all in on sea drones to deter Taiwan war
The US is betting on swarming unmanned surface vessels (USVs) to harass China and delay a Taiwan or South China Sea conflict, wagering that drones and allied self‑defense can deter Beijing without triggering a war. By all accounts, the US Navy is moving fast in that direction. Breaking Defense reported in July 2025 that the service has issued a formal call for industry proposals to rapidly prototype modular USVs, following an industry day earlier this summer. Led by the US Navy's unmanned maritime systems office, the solicitation seeks designs that can carry containerized payloads, integrate with existing naval assets and be fielded within 18 months of contract award. It identifies three vessel concepts, prioritizing one capable of carrying two 40‑foot containers—each weighing 36.3 metric tons and drawing 75 kilowatts—over 2,500 nautical miles at 25 knots in NATO Sea State 4. The US Navy emphasizes affordability and scalability, favoring commercial‑standard, non‑exquisite designs to enable construction across multiple shipyards. Though no award timeline has been specified, the service plans to use Other Transaction Authorities (OTAs) to accelerate the contracting process. Rear Admiral William Daly has highlighted the need for a simplified, mass‑producible USV, moving away from earlier bespoke Medium and Large USV programs. The shift underscores the US Navy's urgency to operationalize distributed lethality and containerized modular warfare on affordable, scalable platforms. US planners see USVs as tools to delay or disrupt Chinese operations in a Taiwan contingency. Admiral Samuel Paparo told The Washington Post in June 2024 that the US has adopted a 'hellscape' US strategy that aims to saturate the Taiwan Strait with thousands of unmanned systems—submarines, surface vessels, and aerial drones— the moment China's invasion fleet mobilizes. Paparo said this mass deployment is designed to harass and paralyze People's Liberation Army (PLA) forces for about a month, creating a window for US, Taiwanese and allied forces to mobilize a full defense and deny Beijing a rapid 'fait accompli.' The strategy extends to the Philippine theater. USNI News reported in June 2025 that the US is upgrading Naval Detachment Oyster Bay on the Philippine island of Palawan to support USVs, enhancing Manila's South China Sea capabilities. A US‑funded facility there will maintain Devil Ray T‑38 USVs already transferred to the Philippine Navy, alongside conventional boats, enabling rapid deployment to Philippine outposts near disputed waters. The US Department of Defense (DoD) anticipates issuing construction contracts within two months, reinforcing bilateral maritime cooperation. Yet this unmanned push faces technical and operational constraints. Steven Wills wrote in April 2025 for Breaking Defense that USVs have short range, power limitations, and high vulnerability in contested environments. He noted that small platforms require frequent servicing, struggle to endure transoceanic deployments and impose logistical strain on the fleet. He also warned that AI‑driven USV control systems are vulnerable under electronic attack, with long‑range operations susceptible to delay or interception. Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander Admiral James Stavridis echoed those concerns in an October 2024 Washington Post article. While acknowledging USVs' disruptive potential, he cautioned against prematurely sidelining conventional warships, which provide endurance, force projection and layered defenses that drones cannot match. Stavridis advocates a high‑low mix: cost‑effective swarms of USVs augmenting—but not replacing—large, manned platforms. He emphasized that in contested environments, human decision‑making and survivability remain essential, demanding a balanced modernization strategy. Geography and strategy would compound these limits in a Taiwan or South China Sea war. Unlike Ukraine, Taiwan and the Philippines cannot rely on overland resupply. China can blockade Taiwan and potentially cut off Philippine access to US reinforcements from Guam using carrier battlegroups in the Philippine Sea. A firm US combat commitment to Taiwan risks eroding the strategic ambiguity that has helped maintain peace in the Taiwan Strait, while unambiguous support for Philippine claims in the South China Sea risks pulling Washington into a wider confrontation over features of marginal strategic value to US interests. This situation has pushed Washington toward ally self‑defense models, in which USVs feature as part of a broader denial strategy. Charles Glaser proposed in an April 2025 Washington Quarterly article a US‑supported 'self‑defense' model for Taiwan: arms sales, training and financing without US combat intervention. He urged Taipei to embrace a porcupine strategy, relying on mobile, survivable systems—coastal defense missiles, naval mines, drones and fast attack craft—to raise the cost of a Chinese invasion. According to Glaser, US support would include Foreign Military Financing (FMF), US$1 billion in drawdown authority and Harpoon and Stinger missile transfers, complementing Taiwan's domestic Hsiung Feng missile production. A parallel logic applies to the Philippines. Sarang Shidore, in a February 2025 Quincy Institute report, argued for a restrained, US‑supported self‑defense posture, with aid, intelligence and training rather than direct combat. He noted that the US has pledged $500 million to modernize the Philippine Navy and Coast Guard, expanded Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) sites, increased joint exercises and deployed surveillance and mid‑range missile capabilities—building deterrence without co‑production or combat entanglement. Reflecting an indigenous turn, the Philippine Daily Inquirer reported in July 2025 that Philippine engineers have proposed a USV concept for maritime interdiction or suicide strikes against enemy warships. In sum, Washington's unmanned gamble is to field swarms of USVs to buy time, blunt China's advance and reinforce allies under a self‑defense framework—all while avoiding a direct slide into full‑scale war. But as Wills and Stavridis make clear, USVs are still more complements than war‑winners. They are fragile in rough seas, maintenance‑intensive and dependent on manned ships and logistics networks. The US Navy's shift to commercial standards, mass production and OTAs reflects urgency over perfection: getting drones in the water within 18 months to enable Paparo's 'hellscape' could buy the month of breathing room that US strategy requires. Whether that month is enough will depend on how fast Taiwan and the Philippines can convert US financing, training and technology transfer into resilient self‑defense—and on Washington's ability to deter China without igniting the war it hopes to prevent and ultimately not lose.
New York Times
14-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Times
Pentagon Abruptly Pulls Out of Annual Aspen Conference
Every summer for years, Republican and Democratic administrations have dispatched senior civilian Pentagon officials and military commanders to participate in the Aspen Security Forum, a national security and foreign policy conference in Colorado. This year appeared to be no exception, with John Phelan, the Navy secretary, and Adm. Samuel Paparo, the head of the military's Indo-Pacific Command, among the speakers scheduled to address the gathering that begins on Tuesday. But on Monday morning, the Pentagon abruptly canceled its participation in the four-day event, saying the forum's values did not align with the Pentagon's. 'Senior representatives of the Department of Defense will no longer be participating in an event that promotes the evil of globalism, disdain for our great country and hatred for the president of the United States,' Kingsley Wilson, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said in a statement. Sean Parnell, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said in a separate statement: 'The department will remain strong in its focus to increase the lethality of our war fighters, revitalize the warrior ethos and project peace through strength on the world stage. It is clear the A.S.F. is not in alignment with these goals.' It was unclear what precipitated the Pentagon's decision to withdrawal its speakers, all of whom had been approved to participate. Mrs. Wilson declined to comment on the timing of the decision. 'It is unfortunate that the Pentagon has chosen not to participate, but our invitations remain open,' the security forum said in a statement. 'For more than a decade, the Aspen Security Forum has welcomed senior officials — Republican and Democrat, civilian and military — as well as senior foreign officials and experts, who bring experience and diverse perspectives on matters of national security.'
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First Post
04-07-2025
- Business
- First Post
America @249: From chips to jets, how US-China rivalry is reshaping the world
President Donald Trump's second presidency has brought the rivalry with China to the surface, so much so that their tensions are practically reshaping the world. Since January, Washington and Beijing have been engaged in backdoor politics, trying to get ahead in key sectors like technology and defence read more The US has entered its 249th year as an independent nation today. With over two centuries gone by, China remains America's greatest threat despite its economic and geopolitical prowess. President Donald Trump's second presidency has brought the rivalry with China to the surface, so much so that their tensions are practically reshaping the world. Since January, Washington and Beijing have been engaged in backdoor politics, trying to get ahead in key sectors like technology and defence. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD As the world's two largest economies compete for strategic dominance, their tensions are spilling into key regions, from the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait to Africa, Latin America, and cyberspace. The two countries are trying to get ahead in several races at once. Let's take a look at some of them: The tech race In January this year, China unveiled its flagship artificial intelligence model, DeepSeek, unnerving observers and stakeholders across the world. Dubbed as the 'biggest dark horse', DeepSeek sent shockwaves through Wall Street and Silicon Valley by creating AI models at a fraction of the cost incurred by OpenAI and Meta Platforms. Its grand reveal made some experts jump to the conclusion that Beijing is going to 'win' the AI war against the US. Part of the reason why DeepSeek sent jitters down US-based AI-makers' spines was its free-of-cost business model, which made its R1 version free for users, a key differentiator from OpenAI's o1 models, which cost $200 monthly for unlimited access. Three key events in May 2025 signalled that the US–China rivalry over artificial intelligence has escalated into a more intense phase. The first was a Senate hearing titled 'Winning the AI Race,' where American lawmakers voiced growing alarm that the United States' technological edge over China was rapidly diminishing. Then followed a ban on sales of critical software tools used to design semiconductors to Beijing, a move that was seen as nipping the bud of the problem of China getting ahead in the race. The chip software restriction marked a sharp, though brief, escalation in the ongoing US campaign to tighten controls on China's access to semiconductor technologies. These measures were intended to block Beijing from using American innovations to advance its military and artificial intelligence capabilities. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD However, the ban was lifted yesterday (July 3). The defence race China's defence spending on fighter jets has increased manifold in recent years. Admiral Samuel Paparo, the head of US Indo-Pacific Command, during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, warned that China is 'outproducing' America in furthering its defence systems. 'China's unprecedented aggression and military modernisation poses a serious threat to the homeland, our allies, and our partners (in the Indo-Pacific). China is outproducing the United States in air, missile, maritime, and space capability and accelerating these,' he said in April. China is making significant investments in advanced combat aircraft. It already operates more than 200 J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighters and, last year, unveiled its second stealth jet of the same class—the J-35. In addition, Beijing is developing two sixth-generation fighters, the J-36 and J-50, both of which are currently in the flight testing phase. The economic race China overtook the United States in GDP measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), which adjusts for local cost of living, in the mid-2010s, with most estimates pinpointing the crossover around 2014–2016. By 2016, China's PPP‑adjusted GDP reached approximately $21 trillion, surpassing the US, while its share of global economic output increased from under 5 per cent in 1980 to nearly 18 per cent in 2016. This dramatic rise reflects decades of rapid industrialisation, export-led growth, and urbanisation following China's reform era beginning in 1978. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD Today, China's economic and geopolitical influence continues to expand on several fronts. With an estimated PPP‑GDP of nearly $39.4 trillion in 2023, about 20 per cent of the world's total compared to the US's 14.8 per cent, China's economic weight allows it to exert significant influence over global trade, investment, and development patterns. The trade race Like the rest of the world, China, too, faced the wrath of Trump tariffs. In fact, it met with the most harsh trade measures by Washington. Although signs of reset have started to show now, the ripples of the US-China trade war were felt across the globe. The US trade deficit widened more than expected in May, with both imports and exports declining. Trade data published Thursday showed the world's biggest economy logged an overall trade gap of $71.5 billion in the month after Trump imposed a 10 per cent duty on most trading partners before pausing steeper rates for dozens of these economies. US imports were down 0.1 per cent to $350.5 billion, as incoming shipments of goods ticked down. Imports of consumer goods dropped by $4.0 billion, with those of certain apparel and toys both sliding, although imports of autos and parts climbed. STORY CONTINUES BELOW THIS AD US exports, meanwhile, dropped by 4.0 per cent to $279.0 billion, with declines largely seen in industrial supplies and materials, the report showed. With inputs from agencies
