【Military Subplane】Author: Sky Wolf
On June 27, 2024, the "Rim of the Pacific 2024" multinational maritime exercise, known as the "world's largest", officially kicked off. One of the highlights of the exercise was the sinking of a 40,000-ton decommissioned amphibious assault ship with live ammunition. There is speculation that the exercise is a preparation for the United States and its allies to respond to a possible armed "attack on Taiwan" by Chinese mainland through amphibious assault ships.
RIMPAC 2024, hosted by the U.S. Pacific Fleet, was held around the Hawaiian Islands and Pearl Harbor from June 27 to Aug. 1, according to the U.S. Naval Institute's website. 40 surface ships, 3 submarines, army units from 14 countries, more than 150 aircraft and 25,000 officers and soldiers from 29 countries participated in the exercise. As the host, the US military will take part in the exercise led by the USS Carl Vinson, which has just arrived from the US mainland, and will also dispatch F-35 stealth fighters, P-8A maritime patrol planes, and V-22 transport planes.
Despite the large number of countries participating in the exercise, most of them only participate in basic humanitarian assistance and disaster relief exercises, and only closer allies with the United States can participate in more in-depth joint combat operations, such as anti-submarine warfare, multi-ship surface warfare, multinational amphibious landings, and "multi-axis defense" of aircraft carrier strike groups against live-fire forces. In the past, only a few core US allies, such as Japan and Australia, were able to follow the US military in launching live-fire attacks on target ships.
▲ Amphibious assault ship "Tarawa".
According to the information disclosed by the US media, the target ship for the "RIMPAC 2024" exercise is the 40,000-ton retired amphibious assault ship "Tarawa", which will also be the largest tonnage ship sunk by the US Navy in the live-fire exercise in the past 20 years. Foreign media said that China is currently building and equipping a number of large amphibious assault ships, so the intention of this "sinking" exercise is to "demonstrate to China" and verify the US military's attack capability against such large ships.
In response to this move by the US military, Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian responded at a regular news conference that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China's territory, and resolving the Taiwan issue is the matter of the more than 1.4 billion Chinese themselves, and no foreign interference is tolerated. Wu Qian stressed that it is completely impossible for the US side to try to scare the Chinese military through the so-called military exercises.
In fact, RIMPAC is the world's largest multinational maritime exercise, held every two years and hosted by the US Pacific Fleet. Some foreign think tanks pointed out that the sinking target of the "Tarawa" in this year's RIMPAC military exercise is to deal with the eight amphibious landing ships with large landing platforms of more than 20,000 tons built and owned by China in recent years, namely the Type 071 amphibious dock landing ship and the Type 075 amphibious assault ship, and the fourth 40,000-ton Type 075 attack ship is also about to be equipped. The Tarawa is about the same size as China's Type 075 attack ship, so the central message of the exercise to China is that the United States can quickly sink China's Type 075 amphibious assault ship.
However, the fact is that the main anti-ship weapons used by the US Navy at present are the "Harpoon" and "Rasmus" anti-ship missiles and a small number of anti-ship models of the "Tomahawk" cruise missiles. However, the US military currently does not have hypersonic missiles or anti-ship ballistic missiles in its hands, so it lacks the means to "kill with one hit" against surface giants such as aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships at long distances.
▲AGM-84鱼叉反舰导弹
In previous years, in the "sinking" exercise of the RIMPAC military exercise, the target ships were usually very small, such as the 4,000-ton Perry-class frigate and small amphibious warships. Even in the "RIMPAC 2020" exercise, the displacement of the sunken amphibious transport ship "Durham" is less than 20,000 tons, and only less than half of the displacement of the amphibious assault ship "Tarawa", which is the target ship this year.
As a large landing ship commissioned in 1976 and participated in many wars, the "Tarawa" amphibious assault ship can carry 6 vertical take-off and landing fighters and 26 helicopters, 1,700 marines and 4 landing craft. Therefore, as the largest target ship that the United States can find at present, it seems that it has made a lot of determination to sink it directly in this exercise.
However, it is clear that with the rapid development of the Chinese Navy, the growing scale of warships, and the continuous application of new technologies, such as the more advanced 076 amphibious assault ships, the Chinese Navy's regional naval and air combat capabilities and amphibious combat capabilities will be raised to an unprecedented height.
Although RIMPAC is a stage for the United States to demonstrate its military strength and cooperation with its allies, it is also an important occasion for China and the United States to wrestle in the military field. Although the United States has put pressure on China through various military exercises, China will not waver in its determination to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.