I'm a panda hugger, not a panda
slugger. But the Chinese navy is certainly getting my attention this week.
Not only are they going to be steaming off the coast of Africa, now they're talking
about getting themselves a working aircraft carrier. Carriers are great ways of
showing the flag, and for much of the last 100 years, the best way to project
power visibly.
The irony for
the Chinese may be that the era of manned naval aviation appears to be on the
wane. The next
great step for carriers will be switching over to stealthy drone aircraft.
For that matter, the advent of long-range drone aircraft like the Global Hawk
has greatly diminished the significance of carriers. Why put a big fat target
for anti-ship missiles like the Exocet off a
hostile coast when you can fly pilotless planes from bases thousands of miles
away? You really don't even need bases-you could just sling a bunch of the drones under the
wings of a long-range 747 and launch from 30,000 feet. So Beijing's big talk
may be the 21st century equivalent of the Maginot Line.
Photo: KIM JAE-HWAN/AFP/Getty Images
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