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Think we be out a carrier fleet when Iran goes nuclear.

IF and thats a huge if Iran develops the bomb how long do you think it will be before there is a "spontaneous revolution"? Its in the regime's best interests to keep threatening and make no progress. It keeps them relevant and in power instead of assassinated and nuclear.

 AustonT wrote:

Vulcan wrote:My question is, how well will it function once a B-2 drops 16 tons of high explosives onto it's deck? My guess is "not terribly well."

To my knowledge the B2 is not capable of hitting a warship at sea or more likely would not even be slated for that type of mission. Missiles and torpedoes, most likely launched from submarine constitute the major threat to carriers at sea, or you know the defeat of their air wing by another carrier.

Mr. Burning wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
While its anyone's guess my take on PLANs ASW capability is that it is at best marginal. The PLAN simply doesn't put to sea to train as much as they should or could and simulations only give so much. Even of they weren't 20 years behind in military technology, and they are. It seems by the design of thier destroyers tha they are more concerned with the AA role than ASW, which is folly with number of possible opponents China faces with submarines of really good quality.

They a littoral force at the monent, their Navy is geared up to AA and anti surface/anti ship. In order to provide some support to inavsion fleets and to defend their coastline/attack their closer neighbours. I still wouldn't put it past Th PLAN to be able to aquire and develop effective ASW in the next few years and to ramp up their time at sea.

As for B-2's, they wouldn't be used, anti ship missiles would constitute the main threat. Cana B2 even leave it's hanger without its RAM coating being damaged, that's if you can find one thats mission capable.

1. I have no doubt China can deveolop or steal decent hardware but it wont be soon. China's aircraft industry has grown by leaps and bounds but do we really think they have jumped from copying 30 year old Sukhois and making watered down Gripens The Pakistanis wish were Block 15 F-16, to a homegrown 5th Gen Fighter? I for one do not. Until China builds not just the production capability but the ability to innovate new technologies they will continue to lag a decade or more behind whoever IS in the lead. And lets be honest the leader is not the US Navy, it's too big. I think in the next 10 years China will show us how to use 1980's or 90's ASW tech at a proficient level while the Swedes or the Germans show us what 2020 tech looks like

B-2 can be armed with cruise missles.... so, the ships wont see them.

However, it won't be the B-2s... it'll be the subs...

 KalashnikovMarine wrote:
If you don't use a proper cat to launch your fighters you may as well not have a carrier frankly. *snorts* ski jumps! I swear it's military technology by way of Monty Python.

That said I do find it amusing that the Marine Corps 'gator fleet's LPDs and LHDs

(these things)

mount similar airpower to a lot of other nation's full size carriers, and we even stick a bunch of extra tanks, vehicles and extremely grumpy grunts in the bottom of ours.

Here's a fun video on how MEUs do business:

Those sailors need to paint that float. Cool video.

 AustonT wrote:
They are probably going to have to fight Japan for it, and Japan will probably have an offensive military by the time China is ready to take it to the show. Lets give Japan credit from seeing the writing on the wall and knowing Uncle Sam isnt going to be able to protect them in a relatively short period of time.

I also believe the general thought being that the Japanese Navy would beat the living stuffing out of the PLAN even if they went to war today. There's a FP article on the issue, which accounts for better training, tech, and experience

 Huffy wrote:

 AustonT wrote:
They are probably going to have to fight Japan for it, and Japan will probably have an offensive military by the time China is ready to take it to the show. Lets give Japan credit from seeing the writing on the wall and knowing Uncle Sam isnt going to be able to protect them in a relatively short period of time.

I also believe the general thought being that the Japanese Navy would beat the living stuffing out of the PLAN even if they went to war today. There's a FP article on the issue, which accounts for better training, tech, and experience

Lets be realistic, the FP article stated that in a straight engagement the PLAs navy would beat the japanese due to sheer numerical superiority. It then spent three pages desperately trying to set up scenarios where that wouldn't occur. The entire article is further based on the ludicrous idea that the U.S. wouldn't intervene.

An Aircraft Carrier without aircraft is a floating skate park.

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An Aircraft Carrier without aircraft is a floating skate park.

Or a nice parking lot. Its the ultimate car ferry!

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An Aircraft Carrier without aircraft is a floating skate park.

Or a nice parking lot. Its the ultimate car ferry!

Seems it would be a waste of that nice ski jump though...

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An Aircraft Carrier without aircraft is a floating skate park.

Or a nice parking lot. Its the ultimate car ferry!

Seems it would be a waste of that nice ski jump though...

It's clearly meant to be a skatepark. Tony Hawk is going global.

The Chinese had Krupp artillery during the opium war, it didn't do them much good.

A lot of this sort of histeria is people assuming that the world will shift from American hegemony to Chinese hegemony. There's no reason to think that it will, and given how strong the opposition to Chinese foreign policy is in the region, China know full well that there's very little they can do in terms of hard power.

And remember - the US Navy is badass. God bless the USA

 Testify wrote:
The Chinese had Krupp artillery during the opium war, it didn't do them much good.

A lot of this sort of histeria is people assuming that the world will shift from American hegemony to Chinese hegemony. There's no reason to think that it will, and given how strong the opposition to Chinese foreign policy is in the region, China know full well that there's very little they can do in terms of hard power.

And remember - the US Navy is badass. God bless the USA

I see no hysteria.

 Ketara wrote:

Curiously enough, history is actually repeating itself here. If we look back to 1900, you'll note that Germany and Britain were in the same position as China and the US. Germany was a young, expanding nation, desperate to secure its own holdings and resources, and Britain was the worldwide naval power that restrained those ambitions. As a result, Tirpitz initiated a large Dreadnought battleship construction programme, arguing that if Germany had enough naval power to threaten Britain locally, it would counter Britain's greater worldwide numerical superiority (as Britain would never focus the number of ships necessary to counter them in that part of the world). That would grant Germany the capacity to act more or less as they wanted without the threat of British interference.

Unfortunately, what happened in reality was that Britain scrapped the majority of its older ships, built two new Dreadnoughts for every one Germany built, and stationed them in the Home Fleet locally. The Germans never once thought the British would be prepared to sacrifice the security of their Empire to contain them, nor expend the vast amounts that they did on naval construction to keep on top of them. Come 1914, the British Home fleet was still bigger than Germany's, and still capable of containing them fairly securely.

It will be interesting to see over the next ten years if America will follow Britain's earlier example, or instead choose to withdraw and cede the locality to China.

That's a good analagy, though it is flawed in one very crucial way - Britain is and was an island nation. For that reason, it is capable of spending far more of its defence expenditure on the navy than comparable powers. Germany wanted to maintain the largest land army on earth, while Britain had barely a few thousand volunteers. Even with a larger economy than the UK's, Britain was still capable of outspending Germany on the navy by 2 to 1. The united states, by contrast, has a)land borders and b)crucially, two huge shore lines. Even though the other side of the Atlantic is fairly stable (for the time being), the US will always need some sort of naval presence in the Caribbean, while China have a single coastline.

The United States does have two things going for it though -

1)The inherant instability of the Chinese state. The entire beurocracy is utterly curruprt, and being an authoritarian state it is very difficult to stamp out. It is almost definite that the Chinese state over-estimate their own strength for this reason

2)The Chinese economy is rotten. They have a property boom the size of the German economy waiting to burst. The government's refusal to truly liberalise the economy means there are all sorts of distortions and bubbles in the system that a single event could cause to collapse. They have insane wage inflation, constant industrial strife that is virtually unreported in or out of the country, and entire cities full of empty apartments and shops.

And of course, the US at present still has a huge military advantage, as well as virtually everyone in the area hating the Chinese.

 Testify wrote:
The Chinese had Krupp artillery during the opium war, it didn't do them much good.

A lot of this sort of histeria is people assuming that the world will shift from American hegemony to Chinese hegemony. There's no reason to think that it will,

I disagree. Whilst I do not see China possessing the kind of power and influence America currently enjoys globally in the forseeable future, I can certainly see them forcing out the American influence in that part of the world over the next twenty or thirty years. I'd place good money on that occurring. I also would predict the US withdrawing more and more from global affairs over the same period, simply because the government is finally realising that not everyone wants good old Uncle Sam's apple pie (with a suitable repayment schedule), and that fighting insurgency campaigns is considerably different to racing to build guns against the Soviets.

If the US can find a way of backing out of its defence commitments to the region(Asia) without losing face, commercial capacity, or severely damaging its capabilities for home defence, they will do so. It simply is not in their interests to be forced to pick sides over a number of uninhabited rocks in the middle of an ocean half a planet away. The Falklands was bad enough for us, but we at least had the reason that it was us personally being invaded, and there were our citizens living on it. Factors which the Senkaku Islands and the ones in the South China Sea do not enjoy with regards to America.

That's a good analagy, though it is flawed in one very crucial way - Britain is and was an island nation. For that reason, it is capable of spending far more of its defence expenditure on the navy than comparable powers. Germany wanted to maintain the largest land army on earth, while Britain had barely a few thousand volunteers. Even with a larger economy than the UK's, Britain was still capable of outspending Germany on the navy by 2 to 1.

You missed the point of the analogy. It was never about who could outspend who necessarily, Germany had no intention of rivalling the British Navy in total size or power. It was about possessing a fleet local to Europe that outmatched the British home fleet, or at least was on even enough terms with it that it would force Britain to tread more warily around German politics. In the Boer War, Germany had been very critical of Britain's policy, but entirely impotent and ignored by the British. The Kaiser wanted to make it so that the British would have to deal with Germany as a nation of consequence, and the best way to do that was to pose a threat locally to the home islands. Not a large enough threat to cause a panic or require extreme expenditure and investment in the Navy on their part, but a credible enough threat that Britain would think twice before dismissing them on anything of global importance or working against Germany's interests.


In a similar way, China does not have to outmatch the US in sum strength or military capacity. It merely has to possess enough naval strength locally that the US would be unwillingly to force a confrontation if or when they choose to start throwing their weight around. If China has seven carrier fleets and decides to invade and colonise Burma (unlikely, but for the sake of an example), the US would consider it to be too much trouble to even begin to be worth interfering with or creating problems for the Chinese over. On a similar note, if China has seven carrier fleets, and declares that they own the Senkaku islands, the senkaku islands are theirs regardless of what the Japanese may think on the matter.

However, the Chinese plan is to build up gradually, and thus not risk any snap confrontation where the US gets pulled in. In thirty years though, Asia is going to be seriously under the Chinese sphere of influence. And I don't see Washington forking out to station ten carrier fleets off Japan when there's little in it for them.

 Testify wrote:
The Chinese had Krupp artillery during the opium war, it didn't do them much good.

A lot of this sort of histeria is people assuming that the world will shift from American hegemony to Chinese hegemony. There's no reason to think that it will, and given how strong the opposition to Chinese foreign policy is in the region, China know full well that there's very little they can do in terms of hard power.

And remember - the US Navy is badass. God bless the USA

The US Navy will not go to war to protect Vietnam. I doubt at this point we'd go to war for Taiwan or the Phillipines.
This is a good thing.

Japan? I don't know. They are also a major trading partner, and have better chances of success, but I don't know. No two nuclear powers have gone to war. I wouldn't want to for, well any country.

 ShumaGorath wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Kid_Kyoto wrote:
An Aircraft Carrier without aircraft is a floating skate park.

Or a nice parking lot. Its the ultimate car ferry!

Seems it would be a waste of that nice ski jump though...

It's clearly meant to be a skatepark. Tony Hawk is going global.

Tony Hawks - Workers Edition!

"Tony Hawksu! Spin revolution, on board ship floor! workers unite, high spin velocity, marble points! magical!"

"2 players contribution to party ideals. No sharing!"

 Polonius wrote:
Forgive my ignorance, but based on sheer geography, is there a great power that needs a carrier less than China?

It's like Dreadnaughts, you couldn't be considered a serious Great Power prior to WWI without them.

I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

Warfare is so backwards now. A weak country can be a big player by owning a couple big bombs, with a piece of junk ground army and a sub-par air force.I'm not talking about russia, just in general.

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.
.

Yes, don't worry about their boomers, bomber fleet, or the 8 bazillion nuclear warheads they have.
I'd ask if you have a brain in your head but that would be wrong and impolite. Instead I suggest you read up on current force metrics. I'm sure they are a shell of what they were, but they still have more nukes than god.

Carriers are the battleship row of the next big war. great against little guys, not so good against someone who can shoot back.

Drone launching supersubcarriers of ultimate doom, dodging hammerbombs dropped from satellite, now thats the future. I feel like I should watch some manga for the first time in decades....

 Frazzled wrote:

The US Navy will not go to war to protect Vietnam.

Really? Britain, France, Germany, the USA and Russia went to war over Serbia, you don't think the USA would intervene to stop China from annexing a sovereign state?

That would be a truly tragic day for the world.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

To you, maybe. They still make Europe feel nervous, especially with a castrated Germany.

 Testify wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The US Navy will not go to war to protect Vietnam.

Really? Britain, France, Germany, the USA and Russia went to war over Serbia, you don't think the USA would intervene to stop China from annexing a sovereign state?

That would be a truly tragic day for the world.

You missed that whole "they didn't have nukes" thing didn't you?

Two nuclear powers have never gone to war. What you're talking about is war. Wars escalate. When wars escalate they use everything they can. If the powers in the fight have nukes then what remains gets to play Mad Max with the ruins.

Above all the US should not get into a nuke war with China over some island. Thanks but no thanks.

Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

To you, maybe. They still make Europe feel nervous, especially with a castrated Germany.

Not enough for them to have any sort of real defense budget though.

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

Warfare is so backwards now. A weak country can be a big player by owning a couple big bombs, with a piece of junk ground army and a sub-par air force.I'm not talking about russia, just in general.

The united states is the only country on Earth that has intercontinental force projection capabilities. Pretty much everyone else on the planet is left with attacking people along their borders. It's one of the primary arguments for why our military spending is ludicrous. There's no one around to actually fight.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.
.

Yes, don't worry about their boomers, bomber fleet, or the 8 bazillion nuclear warheads they have.
I'd ask if you have a brain in your head but that would be wrong and impolite. Instead I suggest you read up on current force metrics. I'm sure they are a shell of what they were, but they still have more nukes than god.

Carriers are the battleship row of the next big war. great against little guys, not so good against someone who can shoot back.

Drone launching supersubcarriers of ultimate doom, dodging hammerbombs dropped from satellite, now thats the future. I feel like I should watch some manga for the first time in decades....

Russia barely has any of what you just listed. Their nuclear arsenal is in disrepair, their airforce is in shambles (and lacks anything close to a skilled force of pilots), their navy might as well be cardboard cutouts. Their only real military feats are first strike nuclear capability which isn't known at present and a couple of their nukes would probably explode in the silos and their giant fleet of outdated tanks. Russia isn't a threat to anyone but itself and poland now. Possession of nukes doesn't make you a military powerhouse as nukes have no realistic use in a war scenario against another nuclear armed country. They just ensure that no one can capture large swathes of territory of fundamentally threaten the existence of the nation itself.

 Frazzled wrote:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.
.

Yes, don't worry about their boomers, bomber fleet, or the 8 bazillion nuclear warheads they have.
I'd ask if you have a brain in your head but that would be wrong and impolite. Instead I suggest you read up on current force metrics. I'm sure they are a shell of what they were, but they still have more nukes than god.

Carriers are the battleship row of the next big war. great against little guys, not so good against someone who can shoot back.

Drone launching supersubcarriers of ultimate doom, dodging hammerbombs dropped from satellite, now thats the future. I feel like I should watch some manga for the first time in decades....

No, I'm well aware of all of those things. Russia is definitely not weak, it just surprised me. Frankly, the idea of power projection by sea power is kind of outdated. The russians were smart enough to realize that it was a waste of money. Plus, they have plenty of submarines, which are the real players of the sea.

Edit: I'm sure shuma is going to say they don't have as many submarines as I think they do, so I'll acknowledge that I'm probably wrong, and my knowledge is limited to The Hunt For Red October

 Samus_aran115 wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.
.

Yes, don't worry about their boomers, bomber fleet, or the 8 bazillion nuclear warheads they have.
I'd ask if you have a brain in your head but that would be wrong and impolite. Instead I suggest you read up on current force metrics. I'm sure they are a shell of what they were, but they still have more nukes than god.

Carriers are the battleship row of the next big war. great against little guys, not so good against someone who can shoot back.

Drone launching supersubcarriers of ultimate doom, dodging hammerbombs dropped from satellite, now thats the future. I feel like I should watch some manga for the first time in decades....

No, I'm well aware of all of those things. Russia is definitely not weak, it just surprised me. Frankly, the idea of power projection by sea power is kind of outdated. The russians were smart enough to realize that it was a waste of money. Plus, they have plenty of submarines, which are the real players of the sea.

Edit: I'm sure shuma is going to say they don't have as many submarines as I think they do, so I'll acknowledge that I'm probably wrong, and my knowledge is limited to The Hunt For Red October

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_Russian_Navy_ships
as compared to
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_current_ships_of_the_United_States_Navy
"The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined."

Russia and the soviet union are not the same. The collapse hollowed out their military in almost every way. Russia is certainly one of the more powerful military nations in the world, but military power has moved towards homogeneous blocks, their ability to overwhelm the french, for instance, is useless since the English or Germans would intervene. Nations (other than the U.S.) can only realistically threaten their direct neighbors these days.

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

Warfare is so backwards now. A weak country can be a big player by owning a couple big bombs, with a piece of junk ground army and a sub-par air force.I'm not talking about russia, just in general.

I'm sorry lolwhut? Here's the Federation

Russia doesn't NEED a carrier force to project power, they have borders. Her carrier spends most of her time in the Baltic and the Med because that's where Russia needs to project its extracontinental influence. You know by having most of Asia and Eastern Europe covered. Russia is still in the midst of decades long reform to her conventional forces that will not be sorted out for decades to come, because her primary problem is leadership. As weak as they are if I was any one country with no allies I wouldn't want to poke the bear, weak doesn't mean impotent.

Russians can see Alaska from their house, they could attack us at any moment!

and lacks anything close to a skilled force of pilots)

I will look for an article that I read last month that had a mock wargame near Australia were Russia's 1980's Su 27 and 30's vs f-35 and 22's and got their asses handed to them by the Russian pilots.

 Deathshead420 wrote:

and lacks anything close to a skilled force of pilots)

I will look for an article that I read last month that had a mock wargame near Australia were Russia's 1980's Su 27 and 30's vs f-35 and 22's and got their asses handed to them by the Russian pilots.

If F22s got their asses handed to them by anything the RussiaNs had that would imply a level of technology that doesn't exist in Sukhoi model craft. That would have panicked the DoD.

 AustonT wrote:

 Samus_aran115 wrote:
I didn't know Russia only had one Carrier. That's not much of a threat at all. It doesn't matter how good your aircraft and special forces are; if you don't have the power projection of a carrier, you're not a threat.

Warfare is so backwards now. A weak country can be a big player by owning a couple big bombs, with a piece of junk ground army and a sub-par air force.I'm not talking about russia, just in general.

I'm sorry lolwhut? Here's the Federation

Russia doesn't NEED a carrier force to project power, they have borders. Her carrier spends most of her time in the Baltic and the Med because that's where Russia needs to project its extracontinental influence. You know by having most of Asia and Eastern Europe covered. Russia is still in the midst of decades long reform to her conventional forces that will not be sorted out for decades to come, because her primary problem is leadership. As weak as they are if I was any one country with no allies I wouldn't want to poke the bear, weak doesn't mean impotent.

Indeed. Even in her decrepit state no power outside of CHina has the strength to challenge her in a major confrontation. PLus they don't have bases and carriers spread across the globe. Must be nice.

 Testify wrote:

 Frazzled wrote:

The US Navy will not go to war to protect Vietnam.

Really? Britain, France, Germany, the USA and Russia went to war over Serbia, you don't think the USA would intervene to stop China from annexing a sovereign state?

That would be a truly tragic day for the world.

I'm sorry to break your bubble, but China has already tried invading Vietnam in 1979 and the west didn't do anything about it, only the Soviets made some noise.

Of course, like it happened before when any other country invaded Vietnam, the Chinese got their asses handed to them by the Vietnamese...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sino-Vietnamese_War