Chinas new aircraft carrier

Discussion in 'World Events' started by Buddha12, Aug 26, 2012.

  1. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    There are reports the first Chinese aircraft carrier is under construction and could enter service around 2015 or earlier.

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  3. superstring01 Moderator

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    Is that anime? Will Sailor Moon be the CO?

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    ~String
     
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  5. Buddha12 Valued Senior Member

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    Don't know but I was sent these images by my ultra right wing associate who is always trying to get more money for Americas DOD.
     
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  7. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    This is what a chinese aircraft carrier looks like:

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    Bought from the Russian's it does not even have catapults (instead it has a jump ramp)

    Why exactly does China need an aircraft carrier anyways? what does it own out in the ocean that is outside its land based aircraft's range? Heck even Taiwan in completely in range!
     
  8. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    As far as carriers go, I'd sign up for this one.

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  9. superstring01 Moderator

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    China is an emerging superpower.

    One could ask the same thing about the USA and while we do have far-flung bases and a islands, the need for the ACC's isn't dictated by that, rather the need to secure the seaways on which we trade natural resources and refined goods. Historically, the nation who owns the waves, owns history. It's been true in both peace and wartime.

    China knows this and she also knows and will look to create security through the construction of a blue-water navy.

    ~String
     
  10. Grumpy Curmudgeon of Lucidity Valued Senior Member

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    You guys are aware that aircraft carriers are the new battleships, aren't you? In modern warfare they are simply the biggest target that will cease to exist in the first few hours. We always seem to be stuck with a military designed to fight the last war, not the next one. It's not that they aren't useful in power projection UNTIL a major war breaks out, it's that we should try to build a military that can win the possible next war at the smallest cost to the world and aircraft carriers are the opposite of that.

    Grumpy

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  11. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    Actually our dependence on satellites for communications and GPS info. is our biggest Achilles heel. If we can't harden our tech against EMP we are screwed.
     
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    What "sea ways" and "natural resources" that china already controls are outside Chinas land based aircraft? I suspect China having a blue sea navy is more useful for politlcal perposes rather then military ones, aka such a navy is unlikely to actually be used for military proposes. Its a "show of force" but its force that can't be used without invading countries left and right like the USA does, attempting to do so against the USA would likely invoke WW3 at which point the navys will become useless as there won't be any nations left for them to fight for.

    How soft is military tech against EMP? I would think decades of preparing for WW3 utilizing the most powerful EMP generators known to man (as well as bing the most powerful explosive and thermal weapons known to man) would have left our military pretty tough against EMP. I would think hacking and security holes are a more serious problem than EMP.
     
  13. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Right, the legacy of "gunboat diplomacy" during China's period of "humiliation" has left the public there with a strong association between blue-water naval capabilities and national pride.

    Yeah, not really. More likely China would simply lose - it would be their one aircraft carrier - which they have zero experience using in actual combat - against America's dozen (actually, two dozen, since the USA has a dozen supercarriers as well as a dozen "amphibious assault ships," which are equivalent to what other countries call an "aircraft carrier."). If that escalated to nuclear war, China would again stand to lose - their arsenal is not capable of sustaining a MAD balance against the USA.
     
  14. KilljoyKlown Whatever Valued Senior Member

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    I don't want to guess at what our military has adequately shielded against EMP or not. But I know the U.S.A. itself is not protected. One single nuke air burst would knock out just about all our nations entire electrical grid for many months and some areas over a year, not to mention all the overhead satellites. Can you imagine what would happen to our home population under those conditions?
     
  15. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    I think that if direct war between china and the USA was the break out its likely it would go full nuclear MAD, and thus the outcome of a carrier based war would be irrelivent. But one Chinese carrier could allow them poltical play by simply threatening war, "hit my carrier if you dare, sure you likely to win the battle but I'll have reason to launch my nukes to make up!" thus aircraft carriers become multi-billion dollar pawns.

    Sure the nuclear "thermosphere" burst could cause horredous damage to our electrical infrasture, but being hacked "to death" is far more probable, heck its already happening with nation cyber espionage and sabatage, drones being hacked into, etc, etc. it even allows for a high level of deniability, something a nuclear-EMP attack does not.
     
  16. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    No, China's nuclear arsenal is neither large enough, nor sufficiently stealthy and hardened, to support a state of MAD between them and the USA. Nuclear war with the USA is a guaranteed loser for China.

    Nah, you can't threaten nuclear war against an opponent who possesses nuclear primacy relative to yourself (as the USA does wrt China). China will not escalate in that way, as it is a guaranteed loser for them. Moreover, losing a conventional naval battle somewhere out at sea is not considered a valid pretext for launching a nuclear attack, so the international consequences of such belligerence on China's part would be very heavy, even apart from the fact that they stand to get annihilated in a nuclear exchange with the USA (while the USA would not).
     
  17. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    China has a minimum of 180 nuclear war heads and ICBM to deliver them. Stealth is not a issue with ICBMs its a matter of us being able to knock them down with anti-ICBM rockets, which we have but are to a degree too limited to take out even a decent fraction of that many warheads, more so if they have decoy warhead balloons in there as well. Just one of them getting through is a enough to cause hundreds of thousand of USA casualties, a dozen certainly more then a million, that would be enough to cripple our economy and government for years. Sure China might have 10+ times the casualties but with all the ash throw up by unleashing a gigaton on them from over 1000+ warheads the global fall out and nuclear winter would likely bring the world wide death toll into the billions after a few years of famine. Even Indian and Pakistain could cause enough damage to the atmosphere-climate and thus world agriculture production to kill over a billion people within a few years, and their combine arsenals are smaller then china's. Therefor China does in fact have enough for MAD.

    Again full out nuclear war is a lose-lose even with china's present arsenal, degree of loss is irrelevant when we are talking capitals turned to glass parking lots and millions dead with coming faming killing hundres of millions or billions more. More so if losing a conventional war in some proxy somewhere was not going to launch a nuclear war then the Soviets would have openly joined Vietnam, USA would have invaded Cuba, etc, etc, just the possibility of nuclear war was enough to deter direct war between superpowers.
     
  18. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    The best estimates I've heard indicate that China has less than half that many ICBMs with range sufficient to hit American targets, and that they are liquid fueled (meaning they cannot be launched on short notice, and instead have to be set up and fueled).

    Meanwhile, the USA has thousands of bombs and missiles capable of hitting China. Nuclear escalation on their part guarantees their destruction - they cannot possibly hope to eliminate even a quarter of our retaliatory capabilities. This is why they have a no-first-use policy - they cannot afford nuclear escalation, they can only purchase some level of deterrence.

    You are putting the cart before the horse. For us to get to the point of using anti-missile rockets, China would first have to launch the missiles. For that to happen, they'd have to have survived an American first strike - the USA has thousands of nuclear delivery systems capable of hitting China's limited supply of ICBMs, which are also stealthy enough to arrive before China has time to go on alert and move or launch their missiles. Odds are high that China would not come out of an American first strike with any retaliatory capability to speak of. US anti-missile systems would only have to contend with a small handful of incoming missiles, if that.

    This is why China has an explicit no-first-use policy and would not violate such by threatening nuclear escalation against the USA - they'd be inviting a first strike that would eliminate their ability to retaliate. I.e., they'd be forced into a humiliating surrender in short order.

    Not small potatos by any means, but hardly enough to deter the USA in a situation where China is escalating to nuclear threats (as you posit). You're talking about the USA losing one city, versus the outright obliteration of China as an industrialized, functional society (supposing they do not surrender outright after the first strike, which they'd be insane not to).

    That is still a much better, more acceptable fate than would befall China is such a scenario.

    The point is less the number of casualties than the final disposition of the society - the USA would survive as a functioning economy and polity, China would not (supposing they did not surrender after suffering a first strike, which they'd be crazy not to).

    Also an upshot of a high-tech arsenal like the American one is that it uses much smaller, more accurate warheads and strikes hardened targets at (or even below) ground level, rather than relying on massive bombs set to airburst mode. So the fallout issues would be much less dramatic than what you imagine there. For perspective, keep in mind that the USA has already conducted several hundred open-air nuclear tests right here in Nevada over the years, without causing a nuclear winter or other climate armageddon.

    That isn't what we are talking. We're talking "China's intercontinental nuclear capacity effectively wiped out in an American first strike."

    This being why China doesn't behave as you say they are entitled by their present arsenal to do.

    It didn't stop China from going into a massive land war against the USA, back when China didn't even have any nuclear weapons and the USA did. Mutually assured destruction seems to work okay, and a nuclear deterrent short of that can indeed raise the costs of conflict to where it isn't worth it, but China is not in any position to threaten the USA with talk of nuclear escalation. A state of MAD does not exist between China and the USA. China has enough of a deterrent that the USA is going to think twice about getting into any serious confrontation with China, but not enough that they can themselves behave aggressively and cow the USA with threats of nuclear war, as you posit.
     
  19. superstring01 Moderator

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    Silly. The some of the US Military's biggest investment is in new technology.

    Thus the F35 is the last serious effort into a manned fighter. It's all drones with fuzzy logic. Micro-drones in the thousands. Some the size of humming birds.

    The NGA is focused on creating 3D predictive models of the world. By gathering every last shred of information on a nation, from personality profiles of every single one of its officials (from local clerks to the leaders), all electronic transmissions, economic data, social e-data, to every last piece of environmental data, to social profiles, to geologic records. Terabytes upon terabytes of information crunched in computers that are already a generation ahead of the most powerful acknowledge computer on earth (see: Sequoia) to make predictive models of social trends like those we use to predict weather. And don't think they are fooling themselves into believing that they'll get much of a predictive model beyond a week or two. That's not the point. That's all they need. Imagine having predictive models that accurately forecast out a week of what each nation will be doing, how they would react to certain circumstances. Once such computers posses something resembling weak AI, the forecast models become frightening.

    The NSA already has "flack sized" listening devices that network. 100,000 of them dropped over a few square miles all listen and pick up EM signals and work like a cellular body--each contributing to the overall calculations. Larger broadcast models--a few hundred of them--work as large transmitters to beam signals home. No matter where you run, if you're in ear shot of the "flack", it's listening and broadcasting.

    The scary thing is, the US has, since the end of WWII, been the biggest investor and acquirer of futuristic technology. It's just that by the time you and I see it, it seems run-of-the-mill.

    ~String
     
  20. superstring01 Moderator

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    None of this even remotely takes into consideration the money China has to spend policing the state, on par with what it spends policing its borders. The richer it gets, the more it has to spend policing its people. Add into that a slowdown, negative population growth you understand why so many people are bearish on China beyond 2020.

    Exactly, the USA has the fortune of being an island nation (de facto), while China has a lot to deal with right on her borders. Calamity with the USA is unlikely. It's Japan, Korea (esp. a united Korea), Australia (UK/USA pact), Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia and India that China has to worry about. They all are vying for the same resources. Local hegemony butting up against Japan & India that she's got most on her mind. Even well into 2050 few models show China's military might outstripping that of the USA and certainly not worthy of a nuclear conflict.

    As you said, the USA has almost 100 years of tinkering with aircraft carriers. China has to play catch-up and then build a dozen super-carriers + nine amphibious assault carriers, secure overseas bases and do so in such a way as to guarantee any kind of military parity with the USA and her allies. Unlikely. It's more about pride and -- as I pointed out -- keeping China's fiercest modern adversary (Japan) and her likely new adversary (India) at bay.

    There is an amazing yet outdated book called "The Coming War With Japan" (www.amazon.com/The-Coming-War-With-Japan/dp/0312058365) that was written in the 80's and is so off base, but when substituting "China" for some of the policies of the USA, it becomes obvious about how the USA and Britain have largely succeeded in the past 400 years by effectively surrounding their enemies with satellite states about which they have to fret and spend and control. The UK did this with France & Spain. The USA & the UK did this to Germany and Japan. Even the USA used the British Empire as a buffer to door-stop Japan & Germany.

    And post WWII, the US obsessed with the same tactic against the Soviets. The funny thing is, that the Soviets caught on quick and attempted to build buffer nations in Eastern Europe (good idea) and attempted it several times against the USA in her home court (Cuba, Central America), but -- for larger reasons -- the US succeeded in prickling the borders of the USSR with Turkey, Finland and even giggling at the Sino-Soviet chill. The US securely kept Soviet expenditures focused on the land and in Asia, with projection and holding power held by the UK/USA Pact allies.

    It's likely the same outcome with China. India, Vietnam, Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia all serve the purpose of occupying China's military attention.

    ~String
     
  21. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Deterrence is all they need, even a dozen of their nukes hitting us would mean over a million dead and likely our capital turned into a glass parking lot.


    So your assuming we would attack first and that we would risk the odds that they would not able to fire off a counterstrike, I'm not sure many of our politicians would take that risk, even if say china took over Taiwan, though I doubt china also has the balls to risk us not taking that risk. (risk risk risk)

    No first use policy is purely words, if there was no chance of them firing off first than their present arsenal is useless even as a deterrent by your estimates: we would eliminate their arsenal first. Thus either they might fire first despite breaking their word, or the risk they can put up a counterstrike is too high despite your claims otherwise, or both.


    I would think we would lose several cities, Washington for starters, we would lack a capital, central government may be completely destroyed, differences in opinions on what to do between states might factionalize the USA, its unlikely but is possible. Even assuming the USA government comes out unscathed and intact the fact of us lossing only a few cities would do horrific damage to our moral and economy.


    So? Are you saying we would be willing to initiate nuclear war with them because we would only lose a few cities? I don't thing we are, ergo the deterrent affect of MAD, even if it means comparatively Minimal Assured Destruction on our part.

    Though are chances of surviving with a functioning economy and goverment are high they arn't garenteeded, nor does that make our casualties unremarkable.

    Turning cities into terratons of ash and pumping that into the stratosphere is vary different from turning deserts into glass, thus you can't compare air-burst done over areas with minimal material to burn spread out over a decade to what would happen in a few hours of nuclear war. The studies are based on the affect of cities being incinerated which is what we would have to do in order destroy enough of chinas population and infrastructure to annihilate them as a nation.

    No I was talking about them have enough of an arsenal to deter us attacking, hence why they can now build a blue water navy and likely use its mear presences to twist arms in international poltics, dispite the fact it will be inferior to USA navy by an order of magnatude. We arn't going to risking going to war with them and it escalating to a full nuclear war, even if it means we would likely suffer minimally compared to them.

    Back to my origional question: Why would they be building an aircraft carriers (and a blue water navy) then? China must feel it can flex muscle and the USA is in no position to stop them. The threat of nuclear war with china does not need to be stated, it mearly needs to be possible.
     
  22. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

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    Here an intresting one: China has had road mobile, solid fueled, ICBM that can strike anywhere in the USA since 2006, each with only a single ~1 megaton warhead. There are beleived to be less then 15 in service today. Certainly these would be hard to destroy in a first strike on our part and just one can level all of washington.

    China already has 4 nuclear submarines armed with 12 of these kind of missiles each.
     
  23. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    All they need for what? Not for the scenario I was responding to, wherein they use threats of nuclear escalation to enable aggressive, far-flung actions. For that, you need nuclear primacy.

    China only has about a dozen missiles capable of hitting the USA, FYI, so that is actually the maximum damage they could inflict (not "even").

    Meanwhile, such a scenario would also guarantee the obliteration of China as a functioning polity and economy. It is literally suicide, which is why they would not do that or threaten to do that.

    The scenario I was responding to here was China threatening nuclear escalation to enable foreign belligerence. In that situation, the USA would have a huge incentive to simply strike first, which is exactly why it will not come to pass.

    You keep going on about how even a tiny risk of a couple of warheads will prevent American policy-makers from escalating, and yet you simultaneously claim that China can threaten escalation in the face of guaranteed annihilation. It doesn't make sense.

    That is basically correct, and also why they are in such a rush to upgrade their arsenal to the point where they have a credible retaliatory capability. As of right now, they do not, and so they are constrained in how they can relate to the USA and others.

    They won't do that, because they have no chance of eliminating the American retaliatory capability. Launching a first strike against the USA is guaranteed suicide. Inviting a first strike from the USA is guaranteed suicide. Thus, China cannot risk any conflict with the USA escalating to nuclear war - this is the basic point that I've been making here.

    It's a question of the risk relative to the other considerations. The premise here was Chinese overseas belligerence backed by threats of nuclear escalation - if the USA were convinced that China was ready to engage in nuclear war, then the risk of not striking them is even larger than the risk of striking them.

    The USA has very extensive plans for how to preserve and maintain those capabilities in the face of a nuclear war. We spent decades worrying about a superpower that actually had enough weapons to destroy us, after all. The central government operations would be moved to hardened, dispersed locations in any kind of crisis like that. Likewise, the whole reason that Washington DC is located where it is, is exactly that it is not a particularly important location for the function of the country as a whole.

    Of course - but the alternatives would be even worse, and likewise China would suffer a vastly worse fate.

    If the alternative is capitulating to Chinese nuclear threats and overseas aggression - the premise of this tangent - then yes. More to the point, the Chinese would never attempt such, because they know as well as we do what the balance of nuclear forces looks like.

    Again, there is no "assurance" here. We have a high probability of wiping out China's retaliatory capabilities in a first strike. We can assure their destruction, they can only present us with a small probability of a couple of nuclear explosions. That is enough that we wouldn't want to risk such without a very good reason, but the whole premise here was China employing nuclear blackmail to enable overseas aggression against us.

    China's non-survival would be guaranteed, though, which is why they would never go down the assumed path in the first place.

    You are spending all of your time worrying about US nuclear risk calculations, but not applying in scrutiny to China. How is it that China is going to successfully leverage threats of nuclear war to enable overseas aggression, in the face of guaranteed desctruction?

    That is not what a US strike would consist of. We'd be attacking their missile and submarine sites, likely with ground-penetrating warheads. At that point, we demand that they surrender unconditionally, under threat of bombarding their cities. They then comply, having no real choice. You don't just go for a massive genocidal exchange off the bat, unless you're in a MAD scenario where promising to do such is the whole cornerstone of your deterrence in the first place. A strike from a position of primacy means a limited attack on China's nuclear weapons - if that's successful, the war is over at that point.

    No, you don't actually have to do that - you just destroy their nuclear forces. At that point, they have to surrender as you can rain bombs on them at will. The mere fact that you have the capability to inflict that level of damage is what prevents stupid gambits like the one supposed in the premise.

    They do not have such an arsenal. To deter a nuclear attack, you have to have a credible retaliatory capability - a sufficient number of sufficiently hardened weapons with sufficient range that an adversary cannot have any confidence of destroying them in a first strike. China doesn't have that - if they try to twist arms, they'll get burnt.

    Likewise, China isn't going to risk going to war with the USA, because they have even more disincentive to do so. So this navy of theirs isn't going to be used in any way that would lead to such a conflict - they aren't going to be twisting the USA's arm.

    Asked and answered. It's about national prestige, and power projection into the South China Sea and nearby areas.

    Why would the USA want or need to prevent China from deploying an aircraft carrier? Why is this development held to equal American acquiescence?
     

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