If one or two carriers is supposedly enough to cause the rest of the world to piss their pants, isn’t that all the more proof that we spend way too much money on our own military?
how did you get from A to B?
Yeah, not seeing the correlation there either.
-XT
Huh? Half their exports and nearly all of their imported oil travels through the Indian Ocean. What India’s navy has to do with anything is beyond me. It’s not like India owns the Indian Ocean or is even a significant naval presence there. Pirates and unstable governments in the Middle East and East Africa are, however, a real threat to China’s world trade.
Interestingly, the carrier is being called the Shi Lang after a Chinese admiral who conquered Taiwan for the Qing Dynasty.
No message there I am sure. 
Our armed forces were and remain to this day structured to fight a conventional war on land, sea and air. As far as over spending I direct you to that really large green bar on The world’s top 5 largest military budgets in 2010 chart
Not exactly what you said, though, is it? Yeah…our armed forces are structured to fight on land, sea and in the air. And we are structured to breath air and drink water, too. In other news, dog bites man…
Because we spend more that means we are overspending? 
Epic fail. And, again, not exactly shocking news here. Man bites dog, and in other news, the US, the worlds only military superpower spends more than other countries do on it’s military. Tomorrow…water…wet? You decide…
-XT
They are doing their best. The Indian Navy is the fifth largest navy in the world. They are attacking the Somalian pirates.
xtisme, just when I think I’ve seen the most outlandish No True Scotsman argument on the Dope I can always count on you to top it.
So, ok. You are right. The sky isn’t blue. It is merely a complex series of hues seen some of the time that only a scant majority of people define as the cortex input defined as ‘blue’. But not at night. Or during a storm. Or sunset.
Quite dangerous-see the German naval rearmament in the decades before World War I that led to an arms race with Britain thereby causing World War I.
Is that carrier the Kuznetsov #2 ? If so that is very old news. I do wonder if they managed what the Russian couldn’t and figured out how catapult launches work though 
Well, at least my post was coherent. What (the fuck), specifically, is your issue with whatever I wrote that you didn’t quote and are calling a No True Scotsman argument?
Well, at least we can agree on that part…
…ah well, that didn’t last long…
Dude…seriously. It’s really impolite to not at least offer to give me a toke of whatever you are puffing on there. How else am I going to see all the pretty colors?
Or when you are partaking of the evil weed, no doubt. Perhaps next time you will be willing to share with the rest of us, or at least with me, so that I can follow along. Even incoherent rantings sound better when everyone is in the same altered state.
-XT
He means, if one Chinese half-assed ancient tub of a carrier is enough to strke terror in the hearts of sailors everywhere, then why does the United States need 11 supercarriers? Shouldn’t we scrap them all and dig out an obsolete mothballed rustbucket from the 60s, and make the world fear our power with just that one ship?
I’d think it would indicate just the opposite, to be honest. If China thinks they need a carrier, and is supposedly building 2, 3, or 10 additional carriers, perhaps there is something to this whole carrier thingy after all, and we should keep the ones we have.
-XT
Not that I give a shit either way, but that argument is silly. Just because the other guy is doing something retarded doesn’t mean it’s not retarded.
In today’s wars, carriers are little more than missile and torpedo magnets. They might be worth their weight in scrap metal when dealing with nations who have fuck all naval or air assets (e.g. Iraq, Somali pirates) but pit them in an honest to god conflict with a first world nation and they’ll become artificial reefs in the first or second day of the fight, no questions asked. [
That goes for American carriers too. [URL=“The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced | Daily Mail Online”]Cite](The uninvited guest: Chinese sub pops up in middle of U.S. Navy exercise, leaving military chiefs red-faced | Daily Mail Online).
I wonder why the new class of American supercarriers is called the “Ford” class. Any particular reason why they picked Ford?
Well…yeah. That was the intention. 
That’s true, but the main point was to gently mock the concept that the alleged Chinese carrier is causing such a wave of fear that one carrier is going to cow the world and bring about Chinese domination, and that the US doesn’t need all the carriers we have because one or two is enough to have the same effect. We have more carriers because we want to be able to project US power on a global scale. One carrier can only be in one place at a time.
We’ve had this debate in the past, and the only thing I’ll say to this is that I don’t agree. If it were as cut and dried as you and the advocates of this position make it then why is anyone building the things? Why is anyone running the things? Granted, you guys think that the US military is composed of a bunch of flaming idiots who don’t know what they are doing, but how does that work for all the other countries that have the things…or want to acquire them? They all wrong too? I suppose they could be…or, perhaps the things are more useful than you and others realize? And perhaps not as vulnerable as you think?
Sure they do. But then, if first world nations go toe to toe they are probably going to be tossing nukes, so what difference does it make? Again, don’t want to hijack the thread, since we’ve had this debate before. I think that a lot of you vastly under rate carriers, and over rate some vanishingly small probability chance of 1st world nations going toe to toe in a conflict. Why you and the others think that this low probability event makes carriers obsolete is beyond me, since they are useful in all of the higher probability conflicts and crisis events they will most likely be used in.
So, an attack sub was able to surface (during a time of peace and low alert) in the midst of a carrier task force…and you figure this proves? What? For one thing, during war time the task force would probably have a screen of attack subs of it’s own, not to mention active ASW and of course the escorts. It was a stunt. It proves that carriers are not invulnerable fortresses. That was the case when the Soviets had attack subs too. The thing is, subs are vulnerable as well, and doing a stunt like this isn’t the same thing as trying a non-suicidal attack on a carrier…and it’s a bit different when they are actually alert and under war conditions.
-XT
The first of that class will be the Gerald R. Ford (CVN-78). Usually, the first of that design gives it the name. (Sometimes the first ship of a class laid down is not the first one of that class commissioned.)
The Secretary of the Navy decides new ship names.
Gotcha, and agreed.
Because they *are *worth their weight in scrap metal against little tin pot countries, which is what superpowers are in the business of fighting these days (and arguably have been since the 50s, Soviet Bear or not).
So the real debate here isn’t really “OMG China has a carrier, is America teh doooomed ?!!!1!”, more “Oh shit, there goes Taiwan”.
Did you miss the part where the incident happened during naval exercises where the bitch did have an active and alert screen to protect it ?
Not that it really matters because carriers at sea always have an active ASW screen and a handful of subs trawling the sonars around ahead of the fleet. They might be doing it half-assedly and out of brain-killing routine, but they do it.
And when it comes right down to it, the Navy doesn’t get to say “yeah but in peacetime it doesn’t count”. Pearl Harbour counted 
But if you want actual sub-on-carrier kills during “wartime conditions” and joint exercises, you’ll find plenty in this cite. It even quotes USN bubbleheads who opine that finding and clubbing their own carriers is cake.
There’s also that little October 2000 embarrassment when Russian Sukhois buzzed the Kitty Hawk’s flight deck, having flown in completely undetected. Failing to catch silent-as-the-grave diesel submarines is one thing, but a flight of inbound bogeys ? Even if that only happened in peacetime conditions you can bet your right hand no asses went unchewed that day 
The bottom line is that carriers are not just “vulnerable”. They’re glass cannon.
One sub for one carrier is a good trade. Knight for Queen.
And that’s assuming what’s left of the carrier group even manages to find the fucker after he’s blown up the carrier, which as evidenced by the aforementioned war games isn’t a given. ASW is a very rigged game.
Can’t find a link to the video. It was from a local news network - 06/09/2011 (I even wrote the date Mr McGreg style for our American friends :p). The exact year given was 2022 (for the ten carriers) and, as mentioned, the four confirmed vessels by 2015.
Obama’s ‘impoverished, corrupt, Kashmir preoccupied, debt welshing India pwns supercomputer toting, unlimited human resource sporting China’ brainwash is really working a treat it seems!
Also:
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Taiwan
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The malodour of urine is rank in this thread given most of the responses are dismissing this as just a hunk o’ Russian-cum-Chinese junk and ignoring the threat others closer to China will perceive this move to be; in turn drawing the US into more saber rattling. Forest not the trees, people… :rolleyes: