I mean, they have even less...
peter Zeihan 2020
- Thread starter Cherico
- Start date
Poe
Well-known member
The US Navy literally invented modern naval warfare and has a century of institutional knowledge in conducting large scale naval maneuvers. Meanwhile China is just copying tech developed by the US and has only been learning this stuff for a generation, having zero years of institutional knowledge and zero experience conducting naval warfare in a live scenario.
These snarky comments of yours don't change this fact and makes it seem more like you have a petty grudge than any actual understanding of things.
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
No, I am trying to wake people out of their post cold war stupor. This isnt the 90's anymore. China's navy is no longer a bunch of rinky dink missile boats. They are building an enormous blue water fleet of modern ships with an industrial capacity that dwarfs the USA. Unless we properly understand that the USA will lose its unquestioned naval supremacy in the next 15 years we will continue to act under a delusion.
And your attempts at crystal ball gazing are supposed to not be a delusion?
Yes, China's military buildup is a concern, but if you want to discuss it, talk technology and strategy, not throw around tonnage or ship numbers, that just shows you don't understand modern naval warfare. By tonnage and numbers WW2 US Navy is many times bigger than current US Navy, but there's no doubt which would win.
How many times did the PLAN use an aircraft carrier in anger?
How many times did US Navy?
Here's your institutional experience.
So, how many people who faught in Praying Mantis are still serving? Since it was 36 years ago, I'm sure the number isn't zero, but its close to. And anyone who was in any sort of leadership position then is likely well retired or dead.
In which case the way the current US Navy is "experienced" from this event is that the current people can read case studies and leasons learned documents. And given how much of this stuff is either open sourced or can be pretty trivially gotten by low level spy activities, the Chinese probably have those same case study documents, and their own lessons learned reports.
The advantage of direct combat experience tends to fall off pretty quickly. The US does do a bit better holding onto it it seems, compared to say, Russia, which generally has to relearn a fair bit with each new conflict it enters, but anything not practiced decays pretty quickly.
The US's advantage is in mostly doing exercises. Which the Chinese are doing quite a lot of too now, as they've gotten richer and can afford it. I'm not sure any combat done 40+ years ago would provide any relevant experience, at least in a way China doesn't also have.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Can you think of anything between now and then that might have carried that experience in running Carrier operations forward into the present?
*Looks at carrier operations for the last 20 years...*
AnimalNoodles
Well-known member
Its tonnage advantage comes from its carriers, which in the age of drones, hypersonic missiles and autonomous torpedoes may be going the way of the battleship. They may be useful for bullying 3rd rate powers, but how will they fair against a peer?
And that tonnage advantage is rapidly declining as china puts more and more modern ships into water at a rate the USA cannot match. The Chinese advantage in shipbuilding greatly exceeds the advantage the USA had over Japan in ww2!
The real advantage the USA has in terms of its fleet are its submarines, which are the best in the world. Submarines are the future, not carriers and China's sub fleet sucks. But, China is now starting to build good subs as well.
The USA also has an advantage in tradition, which is not to be scoffed at. But when you can outbuild your competitor by a factor of over 200 times, you can afford to learn by doing.
Terthna
Professional Lurker
Not every conflict is a World War.
*may*
Pure hype. Even the very countries who shill these supposed carrier killer weapons put massive efforts into making their own, shittier carriers from scratch. So much for their belief in this technology.
As i said, numbers and tonnage do not matter much, tech capabilities on ship matter a lot now.
Tech is what makes most of a difference between a first rate missile destroyer and glorified coast guard ship (and the price difference between these, the hull may well be the same).
China (and SK and Japan) have a massive civilian shipbuilding sector, but the usefulness of that for military purposes is not as direct as some imply, it's outright impossible for Japan for example to suddenly decide to make their shipyards pump out quality navy ships instead of freighters and tankers, it's not WW2 anymore. They could make (subpar but functional) hulls, but where will they get so much of the radars, missiles, other sensors and a variety of other electronic crap to put on the hulls? Will they skip that and just put some guns on it? Congratulations, you have a coast guard ship, maybe some very poor third world country will buy it. But it won't be something you bring to a war in XXI century.
And if i'm wrong, well, SK and Japan are US allies against China after all, and they are the other 2 globally relevant shipbuilders...
They still lag, and carriers are almost as old as subs.
In civilian ships, not in warships, and the warships are of subpar quality. If they would start to just use civilian shipbuilding for the warships they quality would go down further. Steel is cheap, silicon is expensive, as i said, what's the point of more hulls if you don't have the means to equip and supply them as warships.
In the last 20 years besides running exercises? Not particularly. I guess there's ISIS, but I'm not sure how much that really counts more than just running exercises.
Sure, but Japan trying to blockade China probably would be.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
Carrier Operations supported Gulf War 1 & 2, which means that there have been actual combat operations off of US Carriers in the last 20 years.
Given Carrier Air Wings are generally commanded by pilots, this means that the current crop of CAGs are going to be veterans from those conflicts, and a number of said individuals are going to have been teaching in the time since then.
In other words, there is active institutional experience of how to fight off of a carrier in the US military in active service, and teaching the pilots currently working up through the system.
This is something China does not have.
Now a more significant question; why did this not occur to you?
The question is, does the US navy still have that level of training and skill? Or has it gotten complacent, suffering from poor training thanks to wokism and a lack of recruits? I’ve also heard stuff about how the US’s stock of motions has run low thanks to Ukraine.
Its honestly hard to tell who sucks more these days but Id most likely put it on china.
Dispite their industry centralizing all power into a singular person really fucks your ability to wage war.
Then you have wrong, and besides it would be wrong munitions, as since when do warships fight with GMLRS and 155mm artillery shells?
Shh, don't point out we haven't been sending much in the way of naval equipment to Ukraine, and that the stocks needed for the Navy to wallop Iran haven't really been touched to help Ukraine; it might hurt the narrative the US is a paper-tiger that Darth wants to push.
Gulf War 1 and 2 are more than 20 years ago. Duh. My Dad served during Gulf 1, and retired shortly after we started Iraq War II. That one was fought in 2003. It is now 2024. Just about everyone who was a pilot in Iraq II who did their 20 years is retired now.
Some of the people from Iraq II are still around, more than from the 1980s, but they would more or less all be in the high ranks, and may be pretty thin there at this point.
And obviously Iraq II was not all that much of a fight, compared to Iraq I. Probably more than Libya, but I'm not sure.
Last edited: