Chinese poised to assert it's naval muscle...

Or, to look at the situation another way... there's a 200 mile long, completely unsinkable, combined aircraft carrier, battleship, refinery and factory vessel, with a crew of 23 million, anchored less than 100 miles off the coast of China. It bases hundreds of planes, and bristles with tens of thousands of anti-surface missiles within striking range of targets deep inside China. Its own air defense suite is second to none with massive radar grids, thousands of SAMs and phalanxes of alert-5 fighters. If this wasn't enough, it has a battlegroup protecting it that is bigger than many national navies.

And people think that China is gonna up and take the thing by boarding action.

Hey, your preaching to the choir here. Logically I don't think China would want to take on Taiwan.

But the fact remains that China still considers Taiwan a rogue breakaway state and now they're building their naval power and developing ways to mitigate ours.

China does not operate on Western logic. All it will take is a Taiwanese Premiere to make some comment or policy that pisses off the ChiCom's and all bets are off.

^Indeed.

Yet again people are making a standard "rational man" mistake.

They look at China and Taiwan and say "Well, the Chinese gain nothing from attacking Taiwan and in fact it would cost them a lot in terms of money, troops, international relations".

But a member of the Chinese leadership might not see things in those terms.

China will never attack Taiwan because of external factors.

But I do think they would attack because of INTERNAL problems.

Say a massive recession hits China, literally tens of millions of people are suddenly out of work. Incomes and living standards start plunging. Angry workers start filling the streets.

Especially if their news is full of how Taiwan is still doing well.

Do they need it though?

Slap Taiwan hard enough and long enough and starve it then you could just air drop troops in and take the ports.

China has more then enough men to waste on such a plan.

If that were to happen, Taiwan would most likely sortie her entire Navy and loose every missile it has pointed at the mainland. It would get very ugly, very quickly. China has rattled her sabre for decades concerning Taiwan, yet nothing more than random sea battles(that have not occured since the 70's) and Island bombardments. Every day that passes, the ROC increases their military capabilities and strength, making it less likely the Chicoms will use military force to unite Taiwan and the mainland.

I suspect that by the time the Chinese make this thing operational, we will have defenses for it.

If you read the article I linked to in Post # 56, you'll see that according to CINCPAC the missile is already operational and deployed. They are still working on it and improving it, but it is considered operational by the USN.

We have nothing even on the drawing boards to stop this. Our best anti-missile batteries, the Patriot doesn't have a prayer.

At some point we will realize that General George MacArthur had the correct plan all those years ago. No North Korea problem, No China problem. I blame Truman for firing him.

AW Shit!

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/11/28/global-naval-balance-of-power-shifting-with-introduction-of-chinas-aircraft-carrier/

Oh, and.....
http://indrus.in/articles/2012/12/05/vikramaditya_and_liaoning_-_forces_of_the_future_19567.html

There is a little arms race in the Pacific that gets very little attention.....

Over at military.com they pointed out that this means they are now up to, like, the mid 20th century, when a jet was first landed on an aircraft carrier. Still cause for concern but let me know when they're capable of flying 24 hour a day ops in 8 foot seas with a 15 knot crosswind.

So China has one. And we have ten. I'm not concerned.

You will be. You will be.

I'm thinking more about the local consequences, and the potential for our involvement. For once, its not about the US entirely.

You do a lot of that?

Still not worried. One barely-functioning carrier vs ten state of the art flattops is a pretty good balance.

Except that not all ten American carriers would ever be available.

One third of U.S. carriers are completely unavailable for combat at any one time.

That leaves 7 probably.

You would have to leave probably one in the Atlantic or Med. Plus one or two in the Indian Ocean. .

That leaves four or five to deal with the Chinese. But the Chinese would be operating close enough to their own shores to get substantial support from their land based aviation. So they wouldn't be a pushover.

The US actually has another 12 carriers. Except the USN is so large and powerful they aren't even called aircraft carriers.

The Tarawa class LHA:



And the Wasp class LHD:



Would be considered aircraft carriers in any other navy in the world. They base helicopters and strike aircraft (currently Harriers, to be replaced with F-35s). If they go through with the proposed AEW variant of the Osprey, this would round out their package as complete compact aircraft carriers.

The USN therefore has 10 supercarriers, and about the same number of aircraft-carriers-in-all-but-name.

China remains monstrously overmatched on the high seas.

Again, I didn't post this information to try to illustrate some kind of direct threat to the United States, but to shed some light on the proliferation of arms and the contest over land and sea borders in the Pacific.

Hmm, where to begin. There is only one Tarawa class LHA in commission, and she will be phased out sooner rather than later.
The LHA/LHD's are not "Aircraft Carriers". They are what they are. No catapults? You can't launch a fully combat loaded aircraft, even an F-35. That is a serious problem. These ships are designed to deliver a Marine Expeditionary Unit, it's equipment, and be able to support it, to a point. They are unable to support a meaningful amount of aircraft, thus, not even remotely Aircraft Carriers. Just sayin.

Eh, they are capable of deploying 20 AV-8Bs (though they will be phased out very soon for F35IIs). That's not anywhere near mainline US capacity, but would be a nasty shock to any other navy in the world. The Chinese carrier is believed to deploy 30 J-15s, which is considered inferior to the Su-33s that they were designed from.

Not that isn't their default config, and not their role. The Harrier is a less capable craft than the J-15. If they are upgraded to the F-35II, they'd definitely have the edge on a J-15.

It isn't that big a stretch really. The Wasp LHA IIRC was offered to the British in case one of their two carriers had to withdraw during the Falkland War. The Wasp was only a little less capable than the Brit main carriers.

The US still has a HUGE edge over other countries in naval power. The only question is whether they could deploy near Chinese coastal waters. Anything in the deep sea would be an overwhelming advantage to the USN.

For now. $$$ means that can change.

Was any thought given to building the Wasp class with a "ski jump" like the British carriers had? That's a way to get a heavily-laden VSTOL aircraft off the deck without a catapult.

Couldn't you launch a shit load of blackhawks off of one of those?

Your count is off. There are 8 Wasp Class LHD's, and 1 Tarawa class LHA. The piece of shit you have in the picture there, the USS Shit-Pan, was sold for scrap. LHA 3, the USS Belleau Wood, was sunk as a target decoy. LHA 5, the Pelieleu, is currently active, but will be decomissioned in the next 3 years. USS Tarawa, LHA1, is awaiting a final decision of whether to sell for scrap or sink as a decoy. The only ship of the class deemed fit for the Reserve Fleet is the USS Nassau, LHA-4, which is currently tied at the reserve fleet facility at Beaumont, TX.

The biggest difference is in the well deck. The LHA well deck had a huge center island that kept us from operating LCAC's until the entire class had serious retrofit in the 90's. The LHD class is the same basic design as the LHA, but with an improved well deck design, and elimination of design flaws like having the bridge far too high in the superstructure, and having all the command and control centers up in the island. Oh, and yes, I am damned proud to have served on the jewel of the class, the USS Nassau.

Yep. The George Washington is the only forwarded-deployed carrier in the fleet, and also the closest to China. Dayton is pretty spot-on about the state of carriers...as soon as they return from their eight-to-ten month deployment, they go right into the yards for at least six months to a year for repairs.

I'd take the Dokdo with F-35s over either one of those. Not to mention if ROK Sailors are anything like ROK Soldiers they are better trained and more disciplined than anyone in Asia excluding Australia.

Anna agrees: A friend of mine was on that ship about a year or so before its decommissioning.
[-][/-]
[-]
Which one?
[/-]

Dur. Reread.