Chinese Aircraft Carriers
- Thread starter Snagglefoot
- Start date
Regarding Nuclear ship building capability, China already has 59 Nuclear submarines.
What China does well is manufacturing. They're specialists at manufacturing at all levels. That allows them to quickly copy/turn out products fast. Look at how close their rockets and other things resemble ours. They clone these things quickly.
Yeah they somehow make worse copies of our original 40 year old stuff.
A carrier is going to survive even a few of these making contact? Let alone a volley? Better hope you’re able to intercept them.
A city is a much larger and easier target to hit than a moving aircraft carrier that can defend itself better than the entirety of Ukraine though
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A carrier is unlikely to survive pretty much anything made in the last 50 years, if someone is crazy enough to send it the carrier's way. Tom Clancy's 'Red Storm Rising', while fiction, and written a long time ago, is a great read on that subject.
Google "показуха". Reads po-ka-zoo-ha. In the grand scheme of things, this is all that is.
I'm still waiting for the Shkval torpedoes to show up. And I'm a huge fan of the Soviets' submarine achievements which are otherwise real.
The Russians' pokazoohas are sorely needed to the US economy. Without a competent enemy the weapons industry will wither on the vine.
CIWS go brrrrrrrrr since the late 1970s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phalanx_CIWS
I've seen these fire in person from very close, it's so loud you can't even look at it, it will make fluid in your eyeballs vibrate so everything goes blurry.
Their only chance to beat it to simply overwhelm it with shear numbers.
The US has THAAD, 2 different Aegis systems and Patriot that will soon be on boats.
Or bring back the sprint missile system or put the w66 warheads on one of the above mentioned systems.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_(missile)
Sometimes new problems need old solutions.
A single Carrier Strike Group has on the order of 60 combat aircraft - the rest being surveillance and support.
With 60 modern fighter aircraft, the carrier alone has a better air force than many nations, but I certainly wouldn’t rank it third. Consider, too, that lists of air forces include all of the trainers, transport, and other non-combat aircraft, while the Carrier is nearly all combat aircraft like F-35 and F/A-18.
So, in terms of Air Power, the carrier alone ranks much higher than the pure number comparison would suggest.
The carrier is certainly way down the list, either on numbers or on air power - but it is a credible Air Force all unto itself, with fuel, spare parts, crews, and ammunition to support sustained combat operations. An Air Force that we can position, rapidly, anywhere in the world.
What is true, for the purposes of comparison, is that the US has the largest Air Force, and that the US Navy would rank right about 2nd in the world as its own Air Force, on the basis of total aircraft, right on par with Russia.
The old saying that, “The largest Air Force in the world is the US Air Force, and the second largest is the US Navy!” is basically true.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/largest-air-forces-in-the-world
My niece's husband is an AF officer in charge of B2 bomber sustainability. He told me that when the next skirmish or incident happens, the American people are going to be shocked at the number of casualties. Just trading shots with these new weapons will kill a lot of people.
The US has decades of experience with all aspects of running a carrier. I think it cost many lives over those decades. But the US got better and better. And more automation so needing somewhat less crew.
You don't just put a bunch of guys on the flight deck in different color jackets and tell them to "go launch some planes".
Keep in mind from memory the Chinese carriers are STOBAR vs the USA CATOBAR type carriers
The newest version is CATOBAR using EMALS. But as Astro said, the important thing will be whether or not they can operate as a fast tempo that would be required during hostilities. Currently they've demonstrated a fairly gentle pace. I've heard they also have a limit because they have three catapults, and two cross the angled landing area.
The first two Chinese carriers do not have a catapult but the latest one does. The catapult method can launch heavier planes, so more fuel and ordinance.
The whole catapult system is not an easy system to engineer. The older ones were steam. And the US Ford carrier is electromagnetic which had a lot of technical issues they needed to iron out.
That catapult is pulling a heavy plane down the carrier runway at a high speed. Not an easy feat.
I will bet the early days of the US trying to get steam catapults to work properly were not fun times. Probably more than one plane was dumped in the ocean.
I think the US has (maybe had) more carriers than the rest of the world combined. Russia has one that burns that black tar oil (cannot remember the name) and you can see the smoke from far off. It's had so many disasters happen it will probably never sail again as a carrier. It needed to sail with a tug near buy so when it broke down the tug would tow it back to port. And it was always breaking down.
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I've been following this for a couple of months. There's a small army (or navy?) of Chinese commentators who insist that China is considerably more advanced and that the technology will win fights. I've pointed out that steam catapults aren't really all that bad other than some limitations on launching smaller aircraft (like drones) and the effect on the gear.
The one thing that's really crazy is the insistence that they've somehow done an EMALS launch of a fifth generation aircraft off a carrier. I think it's meaningless. The F-35 could be dropped on the USS Ford and launched today, other than the blast shields would need reinforcement (done on steam catapults right now) and the US Navy hasn't equipped the weapons and electronics on the USS Ford that would be needed to host an F-35 squadron. But as a matter of launching an aircraft, that's fairly trivial, but the Chinese comment army talks about it as it's some grand achievement.
I think the integrated electronic control systems between ships and planes is huge. The Chinese say "planned". The US has it.
The CVN-78 has massive electrical generating capacity. Much more than the ships needs currently. Think laser or other non conventional weapons. It's ready.
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A major disadvantage the USA has is that China has significant access to Americas information technology networks and infrastructure. It's the open nature of our society and access allowed. China also doesn't have the diversity of citizens the USA has. While China may be at a slight disadvantage in terms of combat experience, they do have a massive, overwhelming manufacturing advantage and can severely cripple the USA simply by with holding RE materials and even pharmaceuticals.
War is a game of attrition. China knows this and knows the USA has no chance to win a conflict which depends on sustainability and production capability.
China is laser focused on high tech research and leads in ALL 9 fields. The USA is now far behind China in that aspect (and falling further).
We also have very little true knowledge of their capabilities. But as Americans, we always pride ourselves in over estimating our abilities while simultaneously underestimating our foes'
War is a game of attrition. China knows this and knows the USA has no chance to win a conflict which depends on sustainability and production capability.
China is laser focused on high tech research and leads in ALL 9 fields. The USA is now far behind China in that aspect (and falling further).
We also have very little true knowledge of their capabilities. But as Americans, we always pride ourselves in over estimating our abilities while simultaneously underestimating our foes'
