Credo
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.”--General Sir Charles Napier
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
Skipper. the link has changed. My guess it’s this: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13692558
Geez, I wonder whatever happened to the promised casino deal when they bought the unfinished Russian masterpiece? No one guessed they might not be telling the truth.
Considering what THEY consider THEIR “territorial waters”, I’m sure in their opinion it will not travel elsewhere… until they want to, of course.
Where do I buy tickets to view the first recovery phase?
Hope they buy a lot of aircraft. I expect the learning curve is gonna be ugly.
Very good evidence of the need to VASTLY reduce our naval capability. Don’t want to “antagonize” our “trading partners” now do we? The budget is tight–we didn’t want them grapes anyway…Let THEM police the sea-lanes of the Western Pacific–it’s only right, right?
I knew you were a reasonable fella, VX. I hear Obama may be looking for a new SecDef. Want the job?
The question I have is this: What sort of carrier? Will it be the modern equivalent of our old “Jeep” carriers, or will it be a full up CV such as we operate? Ivan basically operated Jeep carriers with a small complement of AC. Better than nothing at all, but no match for what we put to sea.
The Reds have an old Soviet carrier, Kiev, I think, as a model. I would cost as much to operate as our CVs, but against someone that has nothing it could cause a lot of grief.
Well, they’re starting with the Varyag…except that the Chinese have refitted it. RUMINT has it that the Chinese deep-sixed the SS-N-19 battery in favor of a larger hangar. It’s not a CVN, but it would trump anything short of it.
It’s being followed up with a Chinese-designed CV.
And I would not underestimate the ability of the Chinese to learn. They know that the USN has CV operations worked out, and most of that information is open-source. It’ll be rough for a couple of years, but we’re not talking decades here.
Ivan tagged along with us for years in the Med filming CV ops, but never built anything approaching a CV. Still, the Sov Navy was actually just an appendage, much like the German Navy was. Neither were maritime countries like the Brits or us. China’s most likely targets are on the Asian continent and they are unliekly to need anything like the US Navy to be able to do what they need to do if they start getting frisky. Much of the South China Sea can be controlled by aviation assets along the littoral, and the same goes to targets as far afield as Japan, particularly if they take South Korea.
Vis a Vis the western Pacific, China is in a very good strategic position with out putting a large Navy to sea. They can deprive the US Navy of the near sea lanes without having a Navy at all. Imagine, if you will, the USAF against Naval Aviation, and the mischief the zoomies could cause if there were a shooting war between them. The Chinks are in an equivalent position. Numbers have a quality all their own, and several carrier’s air wings could be overwhelmed by large numbers of shore based AC.
QM, that’s just part of the picture. We have other technology and trained forces to open the door, if required. What we currently lack is will, and a sharp focus on war-fighting with all our national assets, vice expanding diversity.
If we try to open a door in China through military force, we will find it slammed in our faces. Hard. Anyone that seriously proposes we fight the Chinese on the Asian continent is insane.
In more limited stuff, say Ching Chong Lee tries to take the Philippines, then we have a much different problem to solve, but give the length the logistical trail, it won’t be an easy one solve. Frankly, we’d have a WW2 type problem to solve, and we don’t have even close to teh industry needed to solve it. In teh long term we are screwed unless something changes very, very soon.
“Diversity has it’s own quality” may, unfortunately, be what future historians write about us…..as well as it may be the death knell of our military capability.
Sometimes, I weep.
Just a big ass boat w/out an trained & diversified air wing to both protect and project. Getting off the pointy end and getting back on the blunt end is really only just part of the equation.
don’t underestimate
a) PRC ability to copy. anything.
b) PRC willingness to spend their people’s blood in the process
I hear they’re naming it after the 12th century general who succeeded in overrunning Taiwan…
1. The beauty of a CV is that you don’t have to “sail” into anybody’s territorial waters in order to project power.
2. You can bet the PLAN already has an extensive land-based carrier aviation training facility. This is where they’ll lose most of the non-adaptive pilots.