Not long ago, some netizens posted some ** on social platforms, which showed that a new frigate in China is undergoing sea trials and has been successfully completed, this ** is the Type 054B frigate,If nothing else, she should become the next main frigate of the People's Navy.
But the protagonist I'm going to talk about today is not her, when she just got into the water, there was such a voice on the Internet: "The coast guard has a new ship!" The "new ship" here does not refer to 054B, but refers to the ships that have been retired from the navy, but still maintain their basic performance, and handed over to the coast guard for use, of course, there are some new ones built specifically for the coast guard, but using the navy frigate type. A typical example is the Coast Guard version of the 056 and 054, and some ** show that the Coast Guard version of the 054 even retains a 76 mm high-level dual-purpose rapid-fire gun.
I am very relieved to see that the Chinese coast guard already has such weapons! As a result, the idea of "**** was born in the minds of some military fans: frigates can enter the coast guard, and the coast guard of 10,000-ton giant ships also has it, so when will the coast guard give the coast guard a whole aircraft carrier? When I saw this question for the first time, I couldn't help but feel a shock: What's the matter? Are ** fans and netizens so crazy these days? 10,000 tons of coast guard ships are not enough, but also aircraft carriers? Who is this trying to enforce the law against?
In any case, this is actually because we hope that the motherland's maritime power will become stronger and stronger, so simple psychology. But,If I say that the future of the Chinese coast guard may be probably ......There will be "aircraft carriers", how should you deal with them? First of all, we need to understand the positioning of the aircraft carrier, which is a large surface of the water, as well as the responsibilities of the coast guard and what risks it may face.
Let's talk about aircraft carriers first, everyone is familiar with this kind of large water surface, and more than 100 years have passed since its birth. The first batch of countries to build aircraft carriers were the industrial powers of Britain, the United States, and Japan at the beginning of the last century, and now, there are four of the five permanent countries in the world that can build aircraft carriers, and the others are Italy, Japan, South Korea, and India, which are basically industrial countries and have relatively developed economies, which directly reflects the difficulty of building aircraft carriers, otherwise it would not be called one of the "three pearls" of the shipbuilding industry.
The positioning of this kind of large-scale surface aircraft is, first, to use various types of carrier-based aircraft to complete long-range strikes, including ground and anti-ship strikes, and the carrier-based aircraft wing mounted on the air superiority can also compete for air supremacy over the target sea area, providing air supremacy support for the fleet itself and the landing force. Second, the aircraft carrier itself is huge, and there are rigid requirements such as aviation dispatch, formation communication, and command of joint naval and air operations, so the aircraft carrier itself is also an intelligence collection and combat command center at sea, integrating a large number of complex and sophisticated electronic equipment.
Of course, there is another key point in this, an aircraft carrier formation that is strong enough to cover the launch position of the underwater ballistic missile nuclear submarine into the waters of the fortress, so the emergence of the aircraft carrier formation will generally be labeled as "nuclear deterrence".
So what does the coast guard do? My blind guess is that some people will rudely understand the coast guard as a police officer who enforces the law at sea, but in fact this is only one of their tasks. I take our coast guard as an example, in accordance with the relevant laws and regulations of our countryThe China Coast Guard performs its duties of maritime rights protection and law enforcement, including carrying out law enforcement tasks in the areas of cracking down on illegal and criminal activities at sea, maintaining maritime law and order, developing and utilizing marine resources, protecting the marine ecological environment, managing marine fisheries, and anti-smuggling at sea, as well as coordinating and guiding local maritime law enforcement work.
Another thing is that the current full name of the China Coast Guard is the Coast Guard Corps of the Chinese People's Armed Police Force, which is under the jurisdiction of the Armed Police Force, and the Armed Police Force is an important part of China's armed forces, so we cannot simply and rudely think that the Coast Guard only assumes the responsibilities of the public security department on the oceanChina's coast guard is subordinate to the armed police, that is, a militarized organization. After all, what country's police department would be equipped with a frigate with naval guns, hey!
In fact, this is also the functional orientation of the coast guard departments of other countries around the world, and our usual understanding of this organization is reflected in the maritime law enforcement mission in peacetimeIn fact, this organization also undertook the tasks of port defense, maritime counterintelligence, and coastal patrols during wartime. The most typical example of this is the U.S. Coast Guard, which the Americans directly define as part of the U.S. armed forces, and the supreme leader is a four-star admiral; in addition to maritime law enforcement tasks, they also assume important responsibilities for homeland defense, and will also cooperate with the U.S. Navy to carry out operations around the waters of other countries in accordance with the expansionist strategy of the United States to "dominate the global seas," and the level of armament they have mastered even exceeds that of the navies of some small and medium-sized countries.
To sum up, we can draw a conclusion:As a paramilitary organization, the coast guard will indeed undertake some militarized equipment, but it is much less than that of the navy, and it will not be equipped with missiles and other powerful offensive **,Its equipment system is mainly built around the tasks of maritime law enforcement, law and order, and wartime assistance to the navy, and the risks they may face are mainly from the resistance of criminal suspects such as smuggling.
In wartime, we will also assume the duties of the armed forces, but the main adversary of the enemy is our navy, not the coast guard. The aircraft carrier, because of its extremely powerful offensive capability, obviously exceeds the equipment requirements for maritime law enforcement and law and order maintenance in peacetimeThis is like the police driving the 99A and J-20, and the air-ground coordination and integration to catch the thief ......What stands out is the great waste of resources!
And the cost of maintaining an aircraft carrier and its supporting equipment is by no means affordable for the coast guard, such as the U.S. Coast Guard, whose latest approved budget for 2024 is 134$500 million, our Liaoning ship costs $3 billion, if you count the supporting equipment, then this budget is not enough at all, the US Coast Guard is like this, we are a developing country, the budget will only be less.
Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to hand over the serious aircraft carrier to the Coast Guard, but! If we broaden the concept of "aircraft carrier" a little more, is that okay? We know that the main means of combat and reconnaissance of aircraft carriers is carrier-based aircraft, and the outermost defense circle of the entire aircraft carrier formation is also the responsibility of the aircraft carrier carrier-based fighter wing.
So can we apply this idea to the mission of the coast guard? I don't think soIn fact, we only need to use large coast guard ships as take-off and landing platforms for long-range UAVs, and in the future, if technical conditions permit, it is also possible to carry some unmanned submarines and control multiple unmanned boats with high endurance.
To put it bluntly, this is the application of unmanned swarm technology in coast guard mission scenarios. Militarily, unmanned swarms have fully demonstrated their value, for example, in October of the previous year, Ukraine used unmanned swarms composed of drones and unmanned boats to carry out a surprise attack on the Russian Black Sea Fleet and succeeded, and this military operation has received widespread attention. Of course, Ukraine alone does not have this ability, not to mention more.
However, in the coast guard mission scenario, the application of unmanned technology we see now is still very limited, and what we can basically see is the coast guard ship going forward to drive away or deter, which is not the case in one country, but in the whole world. But in terms of the nature of the task,The coast guard is responsible for maritime law enforcement and law and order in peacetime, and assists the navy in completing defense tasks in wartime, and there is actually a lot of room for unmanned systems to play.
The simplest reason: unmanned systems can extend the situational awareness range of the coast guard ship itself, just like aircraft carrier-based aircraft. As for the means of attack, the coast guard does not need to use lethal means when enforcing the law in peacetime, so we can also equip warning devices on unmanned systems, and soft kill devices such as sonic jamming and electronic jamming to prevent the situation from escalating, so as to interfere with the navigation of ships that infringe on China's interests.
Moreover, unmanned swarms, especially drone swarms, have one of the biggest advantages compared to the huge coast guard ships themselves, that is, they are flexible, unless the other side uses a wide range of electromagnetic interference, or uses the "phalanx" close defense system, otherwise with the level of armament carried on the coast guard ships of other countries, it is still more difficult to repel this unmanned swarm. However, if this type of ** system is used in the sea area where our country claims rights and interests, and it also causes property damage, then it is also a huge political pressure for the other side, and it is not good that in the next hour, the serious aircraft carrier formation will come over.
In reality, China has manufactured the world's first intelligent unmanned system mother ship, Zhuhai Yun, which will be launched in Guangzhou in 2022 and delivered in January last year. The ship can carry dozens of air, sea and submarine unmanned systems equipped with different observation instruments, which can be deployed in batches in the target sea area, and carry out task-oriented adaptive networking to achieve three-dimensional dynamic observation of specific targets. Of course, the Zhuhai Yun is essentially a scientific research ship, and I take this as an example only because its use of unmanned systems is somewhat similar to the "unmanned system mothership" of the coast guard that I envision today.
In terms of platforms, those 10,000-ton coast guard ships are a good choice, if the coast guard has this demand in the future, I think we can start with these 10,000-ton giant ships, make full use of the advantages of their large hulls, and make some appropriate modifications to them. However, I need to make it clear that this should only be a transitional move in the experimental phase, and once the feasibility is determined, it will be necessary to redesign and build a true "unmanned systems carrier" to prevent the indicators from shrinking.
In fact, I also think that there is still a lot of room for improvement in the law enforcement equipment of our coast guard, because as a Chinese citizen,We very much hope to be able to guard the ancestral property left by our ancestors, so that those who are young will be frightened by their jumping up and down!
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