China must buy jets, train aviators, build support vessels and learn the skills required to conduct air operations at sea. One such battle group costs about $10 billion, U.S. Naval War College researchers estimate.
While China’s commission of an aircraft carrier may cause consternation in Washington, it will not change the military balance between the nations because of the U.S. lead in numbers of carrier battle groups and platforms such as ultra-silent cruise-missile-carrying nuclear submarines, says Robert Ross, a professor at Boston College in Massachusetts who specializes in U.S.-China relations.
That reality may be lost amid alarm in Congress and among allies, including the Philippines, which came to the brink of conflict with China in 1995 over Chinese military installations on a South China Sea reef and will look for reassurance from Washington that defense ties remain strong.
“The carrier is a symbol of power projection, which will simply resonate in other countries as it resonates in China,” Mr. Ross said.
That's rather an odd ordering of paragraphs; I suspect that the Philippines is concerned that the carrier program will be more than a symbol of power projection. In any case, it was a banner day for naval analysis in the NYT, as there was also a short piece on Admiral Robert F. Willard, new PACCOM chief:
In the 1980s, Willard was the executive officer at the Navy Fighter Weapons School, also known as ''TOPGUN.''
Willard was a consultant and flight choreographer on the 1986 film ''Top Gun.'' He also portrayed a Soviet MiG-28 pilot who wore a black helmet and took on Cruise, who famously gave Willard's character ''the bird'' while flying upside-down above him.
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