As others have posted, this is exactly what has been widely expected. If anyone in Chinese intelligence is surprised then they deserve to be [del]shot[/del] fired.
In the early 90s when I was first working there, very few people wanted any sort of offensive military capacity, but China’s agressiveness has pretty much eliminated that resistance.
Wiki has a pretty good explanation, including a photo.
They are used on carriers that don’t have catapults to allow shorter runways.
Any time an admiral says he has an unsinkable ship, there’s a good chance he’s wrong.
We won’t really know until we send carriers into a genuine battle situation in the South China Sea. Of course, not really knowing is why we might hesitate to send carriers into a genuine battle situation in the South China Sea. Which counts as a win for China.
I think you’re making an unwarranted leap to assume that the DF-26 “can handle American carriers”.
That’s the multi role fighter complement. Does not count any attack birds, AEW, refuellers, helos and other supporting a/c.
A USN Nimitz carries the same number of Hornets. And the Chinese Flankers are big bastards.
You changed the argument with that first sentence. I never said unsinkable. BTW; US Carriers are still sailing in the South China Sea.
The Chinese have steadily improving weapons and the US has steadily improving defenses. In another decade we are expecting to have a laser defense system which will greatly increase air defense. The big danger to the Carriers remain torps and lack of readiness. The second one hopefully we prevent.
Our countermeasures for torpedoes is nowhere near as well tested or publicly documented at least. The Russians are believed to have torps extremely dangerous to the US fleet and I hope I am wrong, but the major part of the protection involves not letting their subs and ships close enough to launch torps. I’m not aware the Chinese have as powerful or as fast a torp in their arsenal. But if I was an admiral, that is what would scare me.
Not that the Russians and Chinese don’t have these weapons, but I find it hard to believe that our scientists, Admirals and war planners haven’t devised countermeasures and accounted for them in our war planning and doctrine.
Or for that matter, that there’s some good reason we don’t also have similar weapons. It’s not like either nation has a significant technological edge over the US- anything they have, we could also have, but are choosing not to. I have to suspect that maybe there are disadvantages or technical challenges that make these things a lot harder than the Russians or Chinese are letting on, or that the purported performance is 70% BS, 30% reality (historically likely based on past experience with Russia)
The Russian navy is mostly a bad joke.
That’s true, but the entire premise there rides on a very large assumption itself. I have to think that if China REALLY thought they had a carrier killer that could actually take on a carrier task force and sink or even heavily damage said carrier they would be doing a few things quite differently than they are doing them. My WAG is that the Japanese are taking the Chinese carrier killer every bit as seriously as the US is taking it…and the sooper dooper Russian carrier killer torpedoes and hyper-velocity cruise missile system that can fly circles around our interception capabilities.
3rd largest Navy and has 39 attack subs. It is rated anywhere from 2nd to 4th strongest. If it is a joke, then no sense worrying about any other Navy.
We know the USN is by far the biggest,best and most powerful. But Russia & China are strong enough to be of some concern.
I’m glad the Royal Navy is also rated high as I feel like they’re the one ally we can absolutely count on. NATO & Japan do add in theory a goodly amount of Naval support.
The reality of the weapon is that it’s a weapons system that would be reliant on a bunch of working parts to actually be effective, and China hasn’t demonstrated the capability of putting all those pieces together into a coherent system. Think about what such a system would have to do. It would have to track a US carrier group in real time and coordinate that tracking with a missile flying extremely fast and having to constantly maneuver. In addition, they would have to be able to launch said vehicle and do said tracking without the US being aware of it to actually work. And they would have to hit a moving, maneuvering target that also has active defenses while avoiding having any of the chain of pieces that have to work (built by the finest Chinese contractors no doubt) being disturbed or interrupted. Break any link in the chain and the result is almost certainly a failure to kill or hurt the carrier.
They would be (and probably are) better off with traditional surface to surface ship killer missiles or air to surface ones than this kludgy system. Of course, the problem with that is they either have to suck the US task force in close or go out to meet it on it’s turf, which isn’t a winning plan either. Those new ‘islands’ of theirs are undoubtedly to help in that, and maybe they will.
The various US allies DEFINITELY add a lot of extra capability to the mix. In Asia you have Japan, South Korea and Australia, as well as the RN and even the French from time to time. You could also posit India…at least, the Indian Navy often exercises with the US Navy, participates in war games and would almost certainly weigh in on the US alliance side in any sort of confrontation with China. In the Atlantic you have the RN, France and Germany, as well as several of the Nordic countries wrt Russia. The US strength, besides it’s own merits of course, is it’s vast global alliances and treaties and the other nations that participate. I wish someone would explain the basis of US power to our president.
:dubious:
Not quite sure what you are getting at frankly. The Chinese aren’t stupid enough to think that the new weapon systems are silver bullets which are going to make the entire USN surface fleet fish food. Or the Russkies think that their latest Torpedos are somehow all they need. I doubt the USN think that either. No matter what hysterical articles fanboys might tweet about.
All the Chinese systems do is add a threat to the USN task forces operating near Chinese coasts. The aren’t supposed to win a major fleet action like Midway or Trafalgar.
If the Chinese Navy can keep the USN Carrier and LHA groups away from its coast, thats a win.
What you are describing is basically the ship killing systems that has been available to most combatants since the 70’s. I think (sarcasm here) the Chinese already had that one. The system they are saying they have is a hyper-velocity long range system that could defeat US or anyone else’s defenses since it would, in theory, be able to come in from odd directions and at very high speeds.
The Russian torpedoes are their theoretical supercavitating ones that can travel at, again, theoretically very high speeds (and somehow be able to maneuver as well) from greater distances to defeat traditional defenses.
No one is saying China and Russia don’t have traditional missile attack systems or torpedoes either. That would be particularly stupid, since they do. But these supposed carrier killer systems are highly speculative and, frankly, are probably mostly vaporware when it comes down to a practical, deploy-able weapons system.
It’s mostly old Cold War-era stuff that’s wearing out. The Chinese are a much more serious maritime power than the Russians imho.
They have a hell of a lot bigger budget. But they are still a building force at this point, and they also have a mix of a small number of good new units and lots of old crap. It’s going to take them a decade or so to really build a working blue water navy, and probably that or longer to build a real carrier force.
I’d be extremely disappointed if there weren’t already a bunch of TLAMs in the region pre-programmed with the coordinates of each and every one of those islands.
Agreed, but they’re trending up while the Russians are trending down.
Chinese anti-carrier missiles are designed to sink carriers. You said a carrier fleet’s defense would prevent this. How is that different than saying they can’t be sunk by anti-carrier missiles?
Yes, for now. China has protested this and said that the South China Sea is its territorial waters and our navy is violating their territory. So far it’s been diplomatic protests.
Meanwhile China has developed an anti-carrier missile system and is deploying it in the South China Sea. It’s scheduled to be complete by 2020.
I think there’s a pattern here. I feel that once China has the missiles in place it will upgrade its protests. It will no longer simply make protests over what it sees as an invasion. They will instead warn other countries, including the United States, that any further unauthorized ships in what it regards as its territorial waters will be fired on.
Definitely. I don’t think Russian’s navy is necessarily a joke, but it’s a fading force for sure. Starved of resources and without even the money to properly maintain it, let alone expand it or it’s capabilities. Still a powerful force on the world scene, which says more about everyone else’s navy but the US’s than great things about Russia.