China Wants Aircraft Carriers-How Long To Develop Naval Air Arm?

Hrump.

You’re behind the curve, my beamish boy.

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I checked Wikipedia, F-18s are US$29-57 million each (2006) and F-16C/Ds are US$18.8 million each (1998). Certainly you cannot compare the two using unit costs separated by about a decade. And maintenance and operation cost much more money. But you can’t deny that the navy birds are much more expensive than air force birds. And they are about as good in a dog fight.

F/A-18E/Fs are way more expensive.

Anyway, being able to operate on a carrier does tax a lot on either the performance, or the costs. Either you have a really poor airplane in comparison with a land-based one at the same cost, or you build a sea bird that’s as good as a land bird for maybe twice the money.

If you really know anything about Taiwan’s armed forces, you will probably change your mind.

Correct me if I am wrong, but I really don’t see Taiwan’s military forces capable of doing much. I really don’t want to use the word “anything.”

Seeking independence really was not the goal for the ROC’s military power. It was created to defeat the communist party and restore China. Reunion was the name of the game.

I know that reunification is not a word in today’s Taiwan. It has even become a taboo to some Taiwanese. However, these people are unwilling to defend themselves. Most of them don’t even want to pay for their “freedom.” To make things even more funny, they could not govern themselves.

Tell you the truth, today’s southern Taiwan has become not very manageable. These people do not want Chinese control. They could not govern themselves either. They pay very little or no taxes because they are mostly farmers or low-income or jobless. Yet they are mainly pro-independence. If you ask them to sacrifice their lives to let Taiwan go free, they won’t do it. It was not like Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders. There are no Rough Riders in Taiwan. No one is willing to fight for his El Alamo.

Back in the 1950s, the ROC forces were eager to fight back and take over China. Today’s Taiwanese forces are nothing like that. They are not willing to fight. Not for their own democracy or freedom. Because they are hollow words. Taiwan’s so-called democracy has become a bad joke. When the people finally has the power, they make their lives even worse than before. Why fight for your “freedom”?
Even if Taiwan has nukes, it’s not going to change anything. It’s like you cannot do a fist fight so you buy a gun. You still end up a lousy fighter. Not to mention China has become another playground for worldwide money. If you dare to nuke Shanghai, you are making wars against Nokia, Toshiba, IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Sony, Toyota, Mercedes-Benz …

Something else to consider, of course, are the two great advantages of carrier-borne aircraft: Their home bases can be MUCH harder to locate and attack (that big airbase your land-based planes are flying from? Once I know where it is, I’ll always know where it is. I can send planes to attack or, it just lob off the occasional missile raid with a pre-plotted course to keep putting pot holes in it. A carrier is MUCH more mobile, and if it gets damaged, it can simply move itself away to effect repairs, while the airfield will not share that option.

But yes, planes launched from the ground don’t have to sacrifice performance for the extra necessary ruggedness, but then you have to grant that the Naval planes are going to be able to take more punishment. And when we say the F/A-18 has less raw performance than the F-16, that means that it is limited to “only” being able to travel something like 1.2 times the speed of sound, and has marginally less lightning-quick maneuverability. The F-16 itself is not rated for traveling much faster, being designed as a “knife fighter”, ideal for close-range engagements, as opposed to the F-15, which is much more powerful (and more expensive)

It is worth noting that comparing the F-16 to the F/A-18 (or to the F/A-18E, which is in fact essentially a completely different aircraft) is academic at best, as those two types of aircraft are unlikely ever to fight each other in serious combat (though, when flown by American pilots going up against each other, both planes are effectively equal). I’m not sure how much an effect economy of scale had on the F-16’s price tag, but it’s worth noting that a lot more F-16s have been produced than F-18s.

Airplane geeking aside, I’d say the most likely reason to get an aircraft carrier is because it’s a status symbol. It’s much easier to show the flag when you have a big ship to hang it from, and China does have interests in various parts of the world. If they want to use a carrier for force projection, they are going to have a lot of growing pains, however. As mentioned before, the US Navy is still learning how all this stuff works, and many of the lessons have been written in blood (look up the USS Forrestal if you want to know why all American sailors are now trained in damage control and fire fighting).

Will this one aircraft carrier be a threat to the US Navy? No. Might the PLAN field a carrier fleet that could threaten us in the future? Could happen. Two hundred years ago, the British would look at you like you were nuts if you told them the Americans would field the world’s dominant navy.

Something that everyone seems to be overlooking is that aircraft carriers don’t travel alone.
You need support ships for anti submarine, anti air and missile defense. In the US Navy they call this collection of ships a carrier strike group. Here is a picture of the Abraham Lincoln CSG.
Send your carrier out without the anti air, anti sub, and missile defense ships and you will wind up with a very expensive artificial reef for the local fish.

I said:

What is your connection to this, barndoor? Your opinions on this mirror almost word for word the stuff that the CCP puts out there to be quoted by apologists.

Note his join date. He joined just to be able to comment on this thread.

The Monroe Doctrine of 1823 was the brainchild of John Quincy Adams, named after President James Monroe, but was enforced by the British Navy. Why? The U.S. was recovering from the miserable War of 1812. It did not have anything to patrol the Atlantic. But their British Big Brothers had an interest in seeing keeping France and Spain from entering the New World. As a result, the two former enemies worked together. The U.S. did all the talk and the Brits did all the sailing.

Historically, China seldom expanded beyond its own sphere of influence. Before French invasion of Vietnam of the 19th century, Vietnamese scholars all speak Chinese and went to China to take the official exams. Korea was just about the same. China did not take over Vietnam or Korea.

I am using an over-simplified historical view here. However, I think its quite self-evident that future’s China would also be contained in its own territories more or less.

Chinese people may travel overseas to look for a place to make money. They seldom bring troops overseas and take over other people’s lands. There are many mom-and-pop Chinese restaurants in the U.S. and around the world. Many of them remain mom-and-pop until the day the close the doors (maybe their kids went to Harvard to became a lawyer). They seldom do mergers and acquisitions. They may close their mom-and-pop restaurant or sell it to a newcomer. They generally do not “eat” other people’s business and grow bigger and bigger.

I think it’s kind of unlikely that China will become a world-dominating power in the foreseeable future. It’s not the typical Chinese way of doing things.

Great you mentioned it. Now does China have an anti submarine force that they can field against a 688 class sub and have a hope in hell of sinking it?
Next do they have something comparable to the Aegis system for anti air, and missile defense?
What about close in defense? Something along the lines of a Phalanx gun for instance?
If China does not have these types of assets in place before they build a carrier and send it in harm’s way, it would be a very short one way cruise.
So they need to not put the cart in front of the horse. They need to build the other ships first, and work out those bugs. Once those ships are online and functional, then they could build a carrier and have some hope of not creating a really nice home for the fishes.

Either you point out my errs. Or you have a nice Christmas at home watching TV.

I think today’s Chinese Communist Party shall be renamed the Anti-Communism Party of China. They are doing much of think not imaginable 30-some years ago.

I once joked after Obama said something (don’t remember which one, too many of them):

Havana’s Cubans now swim to Miami to celebrate the founding of new socialist country.

While Miami’s Cubans sold their cars but kept the four tires so they can build a raft to Cuba to look for capitalism …

What’s your point?

Bingo! I want to ask this question too.

There are two kinds of warfare: all-out wars and not-so-serious things. If China’s game is to keep the U.S. out of its front yards, it’s pretty much doable. If China’s PLAN plans to control the Persian Gulf and rule the whole universe, well, …

No pun is not intended.

I think there will not be a real blue sea navy for China within the next couple of decades.

But on the other hand, a U.S. Carrier Strike Group (was called a Battle Group before) does not merely use its weapons for its own protection. It also operates on the well known fact that if you sink one, the other 10 CSGs or a nuclear missile comes to you. If China makes it clear that if you sink my boat here in South China Sea, we will come to you, it can be useful against some not quite well-organized countries.

To be fair, a quick glance at history indicates that the typical Chinese way of doing things is to start a new country every 50 years or so. :smiley:

And as I said before, if you looked at the United States in the late 1700s or very early 1800s, you’d be forgiven for thinking they’d never have a very powerful navy. Every journey starts with a single step, as they say. As it is, I’m still not really sure what use the PLA would have for aircraft carriers, aside from “joining the club”, if not to attempt to project their power elsewhere in the world.

Japan’s operating cruisers that launch and recover aircraft (as opposed to aircraft carriers) does not put them in any unique club. They’re up there with the British and the Russians for using some rather flexible ship classifications, with the reasoning often having to do with legal restrictions on aircraft carriers (then again, the US Navy for a time in the Cold War seemingly had a huge number of frigates, but no cruisers, until it turned out that many of these frigates were big enough to take a Russian cruiser in a fight no problem. They ended up reclassifying a bunch of the ship classes so they’d make sense again.

Incidentally, I’m not sure if I mentioned it or not, but I “get” TingBuDong’s name too. :smiley:

You forgot to add intimidation of it’s African colonies.

I would imagine that a couple of decades is highly optimistic, since china is heavily into that face thing, I doubt that they would risk what ever they do build.

That’s were we really differ, I don’t believe that china has the testicular fortitude to engage in an extra national engagement.

Too many other countries have weapons systems that can effectively sink a carrier, albeit these were mainly directed at American carriers, but will do just as well against sino flattops.

Now it’s fine if the nation that sinks the carrier is close enough to feel china’s wrath, not so much good if it’s 18 time zones away, and requires an expeditionary force.

I’m thinking the straights of tushima in 1905 , and while you may be taking lessons from the defenders, it’s really lessons from the Russians that you might want to pay attention to.

Declan

Could you enlighten the rest of linguistic zeros?

heh heh heh - I didn’t think there would be a sub-thread regarding my handle.

Tingbudong. A literal translation would run along the lines of “listen, don’t understand”. Basically means “I don’t know what you are saying”.

10 years before Tushima, Japanese fleet defeated a much stronger but disorganized Chinese fleet and ended China’s sea-going plan. That was an even-easier-to-understand lesson to China.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Sino-Japanese_War

The Battle of Tushima also taught Japanese a lesson: it was quite easy to blackmail the Chinese Empire that they thought they could do the same thing to Russia. Not exactly so. After they had defeated Russia on the land and on the sea, Japanese people expected to gain a lot from Russia. No. The Russian Empire did not give them too much. And the battle-weary Japanese Army could not place any more pressure to Russia. What could they do? Chase the defeated enemies all the way to Moscow? Frustrated Japanese citizens rioted and burned down the Hibiya police station in downtown Tokyo. (Japanese people suffered several civil wars and sky-high taxes since the 1850s to have a united country and a nice navy. When they had defeated China in 1895, it was their first “Google IPO.” People got rich because of the war. Ten years later, when they defeated Russia, they got … well, peanuts …)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hibiya_Incendiary_Incident

After this, the Japanese army and navy developed their own soul and set up their own colonies in China’s Manchuria beyond any government control. It was the prelude to the Pacific Wars.

I think this shall be a good lesson for people in the U.S.

I’ll pass my time however I feel like, thank you.

I’m not disputing you, just pointing out that these arguments seem awfully familiar. I was hoping a bit of background would give us all a little perspective on what your specific connection to this subject is.

Awfully familiar? What?

When a man eats a lizard, “it takes like chicken,” he says.

I guess you already have eaten chicken before.

Have you seen any actual Chinese propaganda to know that my words are “awfully familiar”?

I am here to fight ignorance.

And say Merry Christmas to all chicken eaters.

But eaters of Beef can just go screw themselves! :smiley: