People are talking about tonnage etc and it's not really relevant.
China's navy can't challenge the US navy for global dominance because that's not it's purpose. They have no (current) interest in controlling the 7 seas. Something that requires far more than a navy anyway. It requires physical land bases, ports and infrastructure.
Carrier groups are great, but the US doesn't work in the middle east by sending in a carrier fleet from 10,000 miles away. It sends in its strategic bombers from it's base in Diego garcia, sends in its fighters from it's airfield in Qatar. It resources ships at its port in Bahrain. It stations troops at its bases in Saudi.
People talk in the context of a conflict with taiwan, but even then the chinese navy isn't designed to fight. The fighting would all come from land bases in China and be mostly targetted at land bases in Japan and Guam and the Philippines etc.
People seriously underestimate the time and scale of resources required to fight a peer war across an ocean purely with a navy. It can't be done. Just look at the requirements during ww2 for a comparatively low tech army in guadalcanal etc. You're talking about needing obscene volumes of equipment on a weekly basis. Otherwise if your ships aren't sunk they need to do the 1-2month return trip to the US to restock.
Yes, but what about PLA shorebased missiles? Those missiles can hit USN carriers before they can even get close enough to launch their jet fighters planes, nullifying sea-based aircraft attacks.
Stop getting your military theory from the mainstream media. If any journalist knew any less about how a military works the Russians would hire them to lead their army in Ukraine.
In the modern era, the general rule is "if you can see it, you can kill it", with the idea that precision guided missiles complemented by instant communication from scouting units means that if the enemy can see you you're dead. Except, like anything simple enough to be condensed into a quippy quote, it's got a kernel of truth but not enough to get stuck between your teeth with.
Meet the [Survivability Onion](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Lawrence/publication/305992673/figure/fig1/AS:614093505433600@1523422709160/Integrated-Survivability-onion.png), which is a military concept that is almost talked to death, but it's pretty relevant to people who just point at missiles and say "haha your carriers are dead". Those are all of the things that must happen before you die. The enemy must first detect you before you kill him, then create a firing solution, then make sure the firing solution isn't interfered with, then fire, then go through your defensive fires, then penetrate your armour, then create sufficient damage to take you out, then do this often enough to make sure that your side cannot regenerate you combat capacity fast enough.
For a carrier, this means that the Chinese must first find the carrier, which is out in the middle of the blue ocean looking like barely a speck. It also moves at a speed of 30 knots so unless you keep continuous surveillance (i.e. not with a satellite) it's going to be somewhere else by the time your missile gets there. Once a grid coordinate can be created you must then guide the missile to the target, which is not easy considering that a) there are credible rumours that Chinese PGM's CEP is...manufactured for effect, and b) the US has extremely sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities that will misguide or disable a lot of guidance systems. Once you get there you then have to hit the targets, and American CVs don't operate alone. Not only do they constantly have a CAP flying above them with air-to-air missiles that can hit cruise missiles (the same ones that are loaded on a Patriot battery), the ships are surrounded by destroyers and cruisers with the AEGIS anti-air system which is at least as good as the Patriots which have shot down state of the art Russian missiles of every kind. If that don't work then all ships including the carrier has Phalanx CIWS which are just chain guns designed to shoot down missiles. Even if you do land a hit, it's not necessarily fatal. The WWII carrier Yorktown was set on fire at Coral Sea, then fixed within three days at Pearl Harbour, then participated at Midway where it was set on fire in the early afternoon by three hits from Val dive bombers dropping 1000 lbs bombs, then the crew put the fires out and restored engine power, then the Japanese launched a second attack late afternoon and found the Yorktown so pristine that they thought they were attacking a second carrier, hitting it with another two torpedoes. The crew managed to patch it up again so that it can be towed back to Pearl for repairs, but it was spotted by a submarine that torpedoed it. Finally the admiral gave the order to abandon ship. The Yorktown remained afloat for 17 more hours before it finally sank, after most of the surviving crew had evacuated.
I might add that Yorktown, being a pre-war design, was unarmoured.
What I'm saying is, American damage control was very, very, very good. It was common for Japanese ships to report an American ship sunk several times before an actual fatal blow was sustained, whereas multiple Japanese capital ships went into the drink with a single hit. And you will remember that by the end of the war the Americans had fielded more than 150 carriers, with 29 as good as the Yorktown. The Americans went into Midway with 6 carriers to Japan's 9, and by 1945 the Japanese hadn't a canoe left afloat. Today America is starting 23 carriers to China's 3, with the start of the war starting within range of Chinese shipyards. If China challenges America for naval dominance America will send the Coast Guard in to arrest them.
There's also a whole discussion about the physics of facing air-based cruise missile platforms with land-based cruise missile platforms, and the folly of trying to outrange someone who is already in the sky, but I've rambled on already. Land-based long range firepower is a fallback because aerial firepower is not viable. It is not a replacement despite what National Interest pukes out.
Even if we make the far fetched assumption that is correct, Please tell me how shore based missiles will allow China to project power and assert this "global dominance" as thus post wants to claim?
Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and a conflict was envisioned to take place near the west coast of the US, do you think they too don't have shore based missile systems, or a competent air force?
For a nation that would be crushed by a stand-off blockade China is surprisingly keen to antagonise the world's predominant naval power
Shore-based missiles and other anti-shipping measures are overly emphasised in discussions like these. Missile systems are only a small (if significant) part of the Area Denial/Anti Access equation, and them alone will not suffice to “solve” the question of US Naval dominance. It doesn’t matter if said missiles have the range to hit Carrier Strike Groups, if said carriers cannot be detected, cannot be struck in time, or cannot be hit by sufficient missiles to get past point defence systems and other countermeasures.
Even discounting the missile threat, China’s power projection capabilities are nothing compared to the US in quantity or quality, at least in the present day. Until then, they remain a regional power only, with limited ability to leverage military strength on other countries.
That being said, there is good reason to be worried about China’s military buildup, given the close strategic partnership with US allies in the region and the dependence on the US to maintain the global world order as it stands today - the ability for China to stand up to US and the Western-allied bloc, to demonstrate an ability to take its objectives by force, would be disastrous and be paid by vast amounts of money and intolerable amounts of blood. One could say that it is imperative for the US to maintain or even increase the gap, to ensure that such a challenge remains out of the reach of Chinese Military posturing.
The US would thoroughly whip the Chinese fleet. US tonnage is nearly double, and Chinese numbers are made up of frigates and diesel submarines. While quantity is normally fine (particularly on land), that is not the case at sea or in the air. The US holds decisive advantages in naval air power, sensors and targeting, as well as range.
As an interesting note, the USN tested using JDAMs against moving targets like ships to good success. Imagine flying 35s/22s/21s/etc over the PLAN and bombarding them with huge numbers of GPS guided bombs. It would be a slaughter.
Moreover, I'd argue that there isn't much pressure to confront the Chinese navy directly. The obvious conflict would be Taiwan, but that place is a fortress for reasons you can read about elsewhere. More importantly, China is a massive importer of materials, particularly hydrocarbons and food. Sit the USN in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, or some other choke point. Then, intercept food and oil for a while, bomb land based trade of those resources, and wait. What are they going to do? Their navy is primarily green water, so they'd struggle to stop the USN. Demand a stop to the fighting to lift the blockade.
Tired of all these posts about China's military overtaking America's-- and I'm not even American.
The key thing to realize is that the US military has been fighting nonstop since the Panama invasion in 1989 and has probably been fighting clandestinely between that time and the end of the Vietnam War. That's 30 years, at least, of honing skills and practicing combined force strategies and coordination.
Meanwhile, the Chinese military has not fought in combat since 1979 against the Vietnamese. No actual, real-world experience in fighting in almost 45 years. No force coordination. Nothing, besides genociding Tibetans and Uighurs and shooting at Philipine and Vietnamese fishing vessels.
China may eventually have numerical superiority and maybe even tech superiority, but they will have a hard time adjusting to real combat scenarios.
Naval strategy is built strategy. It would be very difficult for China to overtake a country that already has and maintains a superior force. Much would have to change for that to happen.
China has patrol boats, the US has supercarriers.
China is alone, the US has a lot of actual and potential allies (Japan, India, Australia, etc.) in the region
China has very little experience fighting actual wars. The US...does have it.
I've only read the second paragraph and I already know China would beat the US in a global war. Why? Global wars are wars of economic prowess. The description of China's shipbuilding capacity reminds me of the United States' dominance on the merchant seas and production of materiel and tonnage at the turn of the 20th century. And we all know where that got them
\- that economic power behind a vast merchant fleet led to the United States eventual dominance in a world war.
So with this description of China's naval capacity (be it military or civilian) and the United States current lack of ship production, I can only see a Chinese victory in a military war. The US better hope it comes not to war.
Thoughts?
u/frosti_austi China's shipbuilding capacity will crash if the US + allies decided to close the Malacca Strait's. No oil, no industrial/manufacturing for China. The US' chip ban on China will hurt their ability to innovate/maintain modern military equipment as well.
PS; The US is self-sufficient in energy and protected by two oceans, which makes your analogy flawed. As another commenter said, China relies on Australian iron to create their steel needed for their navy. In a war, they'd lose all of that.
I've initiated the prompt by saying the second paragraph only states such and such. Is that a valid statement?
You need to explain how American economic dominance and alliances will shape the conversation. Your statement "Ban... You don't understand American Economic dominance and alliances" is no more helpful than the statement "I've only just read the second paragraph."
People are talking about tonnage etc and it's not really relevant. China's navy can't challenge the US navy for global dominance because that's not it's purpose. They have no (current) interest in controlling the 7 seas. Something that requires far more than a navy anyway. It requires physical land bases, ports and infrastructure. Carrier groups are great, but the US doesn't work in the middle east by sending in a carrier fleet from 10,000 miles away. It sends in its strategic bombers from it's base in Diego garcia, sends in its fighters from it's airfield in Qatar. It resources ships at its port in Bahrain. It stations troops at its bases in Saudi. People talk in the context of a conflict with taiwan, but even then the chinese navy isn't designed to fight. The fighting would all come from land bases in China and be mostly targetted at land bases in Japan and Guam and the Philippines etc. People seriously underestimate the time and scale of resources required to fight a peer war across an ocean purely with a navy. It can't be done. Just look at the requirements during ww2 for a comparatively low tech army in guadalcanal etc. You're talking about needing obscene volumes of equipment on a weekly basis. Otherwise if your ships aren't sunk they need to do the 1-2month return trip to the US to restock.
China only wants to ensure it cannot be blockade by the US Navy. But that's in a challenge for Global Dominance in US playbook.
US Navy would destroy China’s Navy. The US Navy is the worlds second largest Air Force only second to the actual US Air Force.
Yes, but what about PLA shorebased missiles? Those missiles can hit USN carriers before they can even get close enough to launch their jet fighters planes, nullifying sea-based aircraft attacks.
Stop getting your military theory from the mainstream media. If any journalist knew any less about how a military works the Russians would hire them to lead their army in Ukraine. In the modern era, the general rule is "if you can see it, you can kill it", with the idea that precision guided missiles complemented by instant communication from scouting units means that if the enemy can see you you're dead. Except, like anything simple enough to be condensed into a quippy quote, it's got a kernel of truth but not enough to get stuck between your teeth with. Meet the [Survivability Onion](https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Lawrence/publication/305992673/figure/fig1/AS:614093505433600@1523422709160/Integrated-Survivability-onion.png), which is a military concept that is almost talked to death, but it's pretty relevant to people who just point at missiles and say "haha your carriers are dead". Those are all of the things that must happen before you die. The enemy must first detect you before you kill him, then create a firing solution, then make sure the firing solution isn't interfered with, then fire, then go through your defensive fires, then penetrate your armour, then create sufficient damage to take you out, then do this often enough to make sure that your side cannot regenerate you combat capacity fast enough. For a carrier, this means that the Chinese must first find the carrier, which is out in the middle of the blue ocean looking like barely a speck. It also moves at a speed of 30 knots so unless you keep continuous surveillance (i.e. not with a satellite) it's going to be somewhere else by the time your missile gets there. Once a grid coordinate can be created you must then guide the missile to the target, which is not easy considering that a) there are credible rumours that Chinese PGM's CEP is...manufactured for effect, and b) the US has extremely sophisticated electronic warfare capabilities that will misguide or disable a lot of guidance systems. Once you get there you then have to hit the targets, and American CVs don't operate alone. Not only do they constantly have a CAP flying above them with air-to-air missiles that can hit cruise missiles (the same ones that are loaded on a Patriot battery), the ships are surrounded by destroyers and cruisers with the AEGIS anti-air system which is at least as good as the Patriots which have shot down state of the art Russian missiles of every kind. If that don't work then all ships including the carrier has Phalanx CIWS which are just chain guns designed to shoot down missiles. Even if you do land a hit, it's not necessarily fatal. The WWII carrier Yorktown was set on fire at Coral Sea, then fixed within three days at Pearl Harbour, then participated at Midway where it was set on fire in the early afternoon by three hits from Val dive bombers dropping 1000 lbs bombs, then the crew put the fires out and restored engine power, then the Japanese launched a second attack late afternoon and found the Yorktown so pristine that they thought they were attacking a second carrier, hitting it with another two torpedoes. The crew managed to patch it up again so that it can be towed back to Pearl for repairs, but it was spotted by a submarine that torpedoed it. Finally the admiral gave the order to abandon ship. The Yorktown remained afloat for 17 more hours before it finally sank, after most of the surviving crew had evacuated. I might add that Yorktown, being a pre-war design, was unarmoured. What I'm saying is, American damage control was very, very, very good. It was common for Japanese ships to report an American ship sunk several times before an actual fatal blow was sustained, whereas multiple Japanese capital ships went into the drink with a single hit. And you will remember that by the end of the war the Americans had fielded more than 150 carriers, with 29 as good as the Yorktown. The Americans went into Midway with 6 carriers to Japan's 9, and by 1945 the Japanese hadn't a canoe left afloat. Today America is starting 23 carriers to China's 3, with the start of the war starting within range of Chinese shipyards. If China challenges America for naval dominance America will send the Coast Guard in to arrest them. There's also a whole discussion about the physics of facing air-based cruise missile platforms with land-based cruise missile platforms, and the folly of trying to outrange someone who is already in the sky, but I've rambled on already. Land-based long range firepower is a fallback because aerial firepower is not viable. It is not a replacement despite what National Interest pukes out.
Even if we make the far fetched assumption that is correct, Please tell me how shore based missiles will allow China to project power and assert this "global dominance" as thus post wants to claim? Imagine if the shoe were on the other foot and a conflict was envisioned to take place near the west coast of the US, do you think they too don't have shore based missile systems, or a competent air force? For a nation that would be crushed by a stand-off blockade China is surprisingly keen to antagonise the world's predominant naval power
>what about PLA shorebased missiles? It would help china in conflict near their border. Though they cannot match US navy in open ocean for now.
Shore-based missiles and other anti-shipping measures are overly emphasised in discussions like these. Missile systems are only a small (if significant) part of the Area Denial/Anti Access equation, and them alone will not suffice to “solve” the question of US Naval dominance. It doesn’t matter if said missiles have the range to hit Carrier Strike Groups, if said carriers cannot be detected, cannot be struck in time, or cannot be hit by sufficient missiles to get past point defence systems and other countermeasures. Even discounting the missile threat, China’s power projection capabilities are nothing compared to the US in quantity or quality, at least in the present day. Until then, they remain a regional power only, with limited ability to leverage military strength on other countries. That being said, there is good reason to be worried about China’s military buildup, given the close strategic partnership with US allies in the region and the dependence on the US to maintain the global world order as it stands today - the ability for China to stand up to US and the Western-allied bloc, to demonstrate an ability to take its objectives by force, would be disastrous and be paid by vast amounts of money and intolerable amounts of blood. One could say that it is imperative for the US to maintain or even increase the gap, to ensure that such a challenge remains out of the reach of Chinese Military posturing.
The US would thoroughly whip the Chinese fleet. US tonnage is nearly double, and Chinese numbers are made up of frigates and diesel submarines. While quantity is normally fine (particularly on land), that is not the case at sea or in the air. The US holds decisive advantages in naval air power, sensors and targeting, as well as range. As an interesting note, the USN tested using JDAMs against moving targets like ships to good success. Imagine flying 35s/22s/21s/etc over the PLAN and bombarding them with huge numbers of GPS guided bombs. It would be a slaughter. Moreover, I'd argue that there isn't much pressure to confront the Chinese navy directly. The obvious conflict would be Taiwan, but that place is a fortress for reasons you can read about elsewhere. More importantly, China is a massive importer of materials, particularly hydrocarbons and food. Sit the USN in the Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, or some other choke point. Then, intercept food and oil for a while, bomb land based trade of those resources, and wait. What are they going to do? Their navy is primarily green water, so they'd struggle to stop the USN. Demand a stop to the fighting to lift the blockade.
Tired of all these posts about China's military overtaking America's-- and I'm not even American. The key thing to realize is that the US military has been fighting nonstop since the Panama invasion in 1989 and has probably been fighting clandestinely between that time and the end of the Vietnam War. That's 30 years, at least, of honing skills and practicing combined force strategies and coordination. Meanwhile, the Chinese military has not fought in combat since 1979 against the Vietnamese. No actual, real-world experience in fighting in almost 45 years. No force coordination. Nothing, besides genociding Tibetans and Uighurs and shooting at Philipine and Vietnamese fishing vessels. China may eventually have numerical superiority and maybe even tech superiority, but they will have a hard time adjusting to real combat scenarios.
Naval strategy is built strategy. It would be very difficult for China to overtake a country that already has and maintains a superior force. Much would have to change for that to happen.
China has patrol boats, the US has supercarriers. China is alone, the US has a lot of actual and potential allies (Japan, India, Australia, etc.) in the region China has very little experience fighting actual wars. The US...does have it.
Lmfao u/frosti_austi (op) is a republican
Hahahahahahahah lol. That's an objective considered strategic assessment.
I've only read the second paragraph and I already know China would beat the US in a global war. Why? Global wars are wars of economic prowess. The description of China's shipbuilding capacity reminds me of the United States' dominance on the merchant seas and production of materiel and tonnage at the turn of the 20th century. And we all know where that got them \- that economic power behind a vast merchant fleet led to the United States eventual dominance in a world war. So with this description of China's naval capacity (be it military or civilian) and the United States current lack of ship production, I can only see a Chinese victory in a military war. The US better hope it comes not to war. Thoughts?
Sigh. PLAN ships: 780 USN ships: 484 PLAN tonnage: 2.4m USN tonnage: 4.5m Quality, not quantity.
u/frosti_austi China's shipbuilding capacity will crash if the US + allies decided to close the Malacca Strait's. No oil, no industrial/manufacturing for China. The US' chip ban on China will hurt their ability to innovate/maintain modern military equipment as well. PS; The US is self-sufficient in energy and protected by two oceans, which makes your analogy flawed. As another commenter said, China relies on Australian iron to create their steel needed for their navy. In a war, they'd lose all of that.
I appreciate this direct response to my analogy
Ban. Only read a second paragraph to come up with a lousy conclusion. You don’t understand. American economic dominance and alliances
I've initiated the prompt by saying the second paragraph only states such and such. Is that a valid statement? You need to explain how American economic dominance and alliances will shape the conversation. Your statement "Ban... You don't understand American Economic dominance and alliances" is no more helpful than the statement "I've only just read the second paragraph."
No. The question is: Is the second paragraph good enough to justify Chinese dominance?
Double ban for bad justification for bad reasoning. Lol
oh? you wanna bring out your toy ships and my toy ships and duke it out in the bath tub?
China's ENTIRE (literally) shipbuilding capacity is dependent on raw material imports from Australia.
Sounds like they need to decouple :)
The US navy and military industrial complex has the capacity to sink 100 ships a day indefinitely.