After a decade of steady expansion, the Chinese military has made significant strides toward limiting the United States’ ability to deploy its own armed forces in the western Pacific. A combination of new submarines, long-range anti-ship missiles and heavily-armed jet fighters underpins what the Pentagon calls Beijing's ‘anti-access, area-denial’ strategy, aimed at keeping the warships of the US Seventh Fleet, based in Japan, out of the South China Sea. ‘Reversing the erosion of the Navy’s strike advantage will require investments in a new generation of capabilities to increase the range, persistence and survivability of carrier aircraft,’ Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, a Washington, D.C. think tank, posited in a September report. ‘Without such investments, US aircraft carriers will be locked into a concept of operations that is dependent on relatively benign, permissive operating conditions.’
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