The following transcript is provided by Air Force Magazine. It is an interview with Vice Admiral David J. Dorsett, Deputy CNO for Information Dominance from January 5, 2011.
Q: Good morning, Admiral. About a year and a half ago Secretary Gates said that we wouldn't see a Chinese stealth fighter for about 20 years. I'm sorry, until 2020. He said it not once but several times, and very emphatically. Last week there were pictures circulating on the Internet, apparently blessed by the Chinese government, that show a Chinese stealth fighter. It looks an awful lot like our F-22 and F-35.This interview is 19 PDF pages of important reading.
Can you tell us first of all, is this actually a surprise? And is this a game-changer in the view of the Navy or in just your personal opinion?
A: No. It's not a surprise. I think one of the things that is probably true, true from my observation in the last several years, is we have been pretty consistent in underestimating the delivery and IOC of Chinese technology, weapon systems. They've entered operational capability quicker. We frequently project, in terms of the stealth photos, there to be IOC of a stealth aircraft. It's not clear to me when it's still going to become operational.
So is it a surprise? No. Do we need to refine our assessments better? I think so.
And your second question, is it a threat to the U.S. Navy?
Q: Is it a game-changer.
A: I've been concerned about Chinese game-changing capabilities in non-kinetic vice kinetic. I am concerned about the [inaudible] ballistic missile. I am concerned about stealth fighter aircraft. But the area and the technology that I'm most concerned about is China's focus and attention on trying to develop capabilities to dominate in the electromagnetic spectrum, to conduct counter-space capabilities, and clearly to conduct cyber activities. That's a greater concern for me than some of the other hardware-driven or kinetic associated capabilities that they're delivering.
I think the other concern I have is China's ability to become operationally sufficient in a joint warfighting, sophisticated combat environment.
Q: I'm sorry, operationally?
A: Sophisticated in a joint warfighting, complex combat environment. I don't see China with those capabilities right now. I see them delivering individual components, individual weapon systems. Those things are being developed. But as soon as they acquire that proficiency, the question is how competent are they really going to be?
So one of the areas that I focus on is how good are they at developing their operational proficiency to manage across the spectrum of warfare? And that's one where I don't want to get the assessment wrong. I don't want to underestimate or overestimate. I want to get it pretty right about when we think they're going to become operationally proficient. We're not seeing that. We're seeing it in individual elements of warfare, but not across the joint spectrum of the fight.
Q: Let me follow up a bit. The fact that this airplane looks so much like some of our airplanes -- F-22, F-35. What's at work here? Are we underestimating the speed of their technological advance? Or are they pretty much able to enter our data systems and pilfer at will?
A: I can't really comment on to what extent they're pilfering from our data systems. I think what you see is across a broad array of weapon systems they're making advances. Their economy is such that they can invest and have been able to invest this decade quite heavily in their military buildup, and a stealth fighter is just one aspect of that. So the fact that they're making progress in that should not be a surprise to us. The speed at which they're making progress in some of these areas, their anti-ship ballistic missile, we underestimated when they would be competent [inaudible] in delivering a technological weapon of that type. We certainly wouldn't have expected them to be as far along as they are today, if you'd asked me the question five years ago.
I think this stealth fighter is part of the same issue. How far along are they? I don't know. They clearly have an initial prototype. Is it advanced? How many trials and tests and demos do they need to go through before it becomes operational? That's not clear to me.
Q: You mentioned the BF-21. Is that a game-changer? Do you consider that operational, or is that like what we did with Global Hawk where we rushed something out to the field really before it was fully shaken out?
A: I think [inaudible] has written an article on it just recently, and our assessment, Admiral Willard's assessment at PACOM is that it has reached an initial operational capability. I think that's true.
The Chinese have tested the BF-21B missile system over land a sufficient number of times that the missile system itself is truly competent and capable. The entire weapon capability, they have ISR, they have sensors on board ship that can feed into the targeting aspect of it. So could they start to employ that and field it operationally? Yes, I think so. It gets back to that question of proficiency. How proficient are they, though, in the end-to-end employment of that capability? Their 2nd Artillery's been around for over five decades, so they have a competent missile system, or missile command and control capability. But the question of fusing all the information to use it in targeting, I think there's still some questions of how proficient they would be to fully employ that at this point. But are they at the initial operational capability? Yes, I think so.
Q: One follow-up of that. The [Navy] people told me a year or two ago that the chances of hitting a carrier with a ballistic missile is pretty remote. Has that assessment changed?
A: Yes. The technology that the Chinese have developed and are employing in their BF-21B missile system has increased their probability of being able to employ a salvo of missiles to be able to hit a maneuvering target. How proficient they are, what that level of probability is, we don't know. Frankly, I'm guessing that they don't know. I'm assessing that they don't know. The reason I say that is they've probably simulated this in laboratories. They've certainly test-fired it over land. But to our knowledge they have not test-fired this over water against maneuvering targets. If you're an engineer and you've developed a weapon system, you pretty much want to make sure that you use the entire weapon system and employ it in an operational environment to understand how really competent and effective it is.
But to answer your question, yeah, they're demonstrating the technology to be able to hit maneuvering targets. A few years ago our assessment was no one had a capability.
Q: A salvo would be like two, three, four missiles?
A: Several missiles, let's put it that way.
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