“The cost in human lives is appalling,” writes Molan. Xi Jinping has delivered his message even as the world still struggles to restore communications. Xi’s message to America, as Molan puts it:
“You are out of the Western Pacific and we will not let you re-establish your bases in Japan, South Korea or even Guam. From Japan to Australia and out to Hawaii, the Western Pacific is now a Chinese sphere of influence.”
It’s merely a scenario, but is it plausible? Molan argues that we’re preparing for the wrong war. He thinks that we’re all standing around waiting for a limited Chinese attack on Taiwan. And while he says that’s possible, it would only happen if China’s strategists are silly.
If Xi struck Taiwan, his attacking forces would be vulnerable to a hammering from the US. Why would he accept that pain when he has the option of pushing America out of the hemisphere altogether, forcing it back to the region east of Hawaii?
Then he can take Taiwan at his leisure, probably without the use of force. And dictate terms to US allies including Australia, now cut off from its great ally.
And Xi can luxuriate in history’s acclaim as the ruler who ended half a millennium of Western dominance of the Pacific.
angloid military strategists always make reality sound 10000x cooler than reality
https://archive.ph/wXdhE
And this would be a bad thing how exactly?
The US taxpayer would no longer be on the hook for these fabulously expensive military bases. The world would be a safer place without the most violent militaristic country lodging its forces thousands of miles away from its shores. I'm just not seeing any downside, to China or the American people.
But there is a downside to the violent neo-cons in the US government, who number no more than a few tens of thousands. They would feel personally affronted, and their own prestige would be damaged. It's insane when you begin to understand that we have to go to war so this tiny number of people can avoid feeling bad about themselves.
and their own prestige would be damaged
Almost like the inscrutable occidental barbarians also understand the concept of losing face.
Going to start referring disparagingly to the occidental barbarian brainpan whenever the topic of US-China relations comes up
Death to America
Less treats, as China gives them better terms. The treats must flow.
it is, for :porky-scared-flipped: and for the ~150 million :lmayo: who derive their sense of self-worth through vicarious identification with him
As based as it would be, China probably can't force the USN out of the Pacific, since their Navy is built around the assumption that they'll have support from land-based anti ship missiles to deal with large threats. They would need a few more aircraft carriers and a fleet of naval planes to seriously challenge the US in the open ocean.
But i don't think that's their plan. They just need to be a credible enough threat to weather America's death throes, and to fill in the power vacuum that naturally arises.
It could be that the scenario foresees China breaking the back of the USN on the defence first before counter attacking.
The US has 11 carriers (for fixed wing aircraft, not just helicopters), of which probably 8 or 9 are operational at a time (the others being under repair or refit). Assume that 1 or 2 need to be elsewhere due to US commitments, and that leaves 6 to 8 carriers the US can field against China.
Now say that 3 or 4 of those are sunk or knocked out while steaming towards or fighting around Taiwan. That leaves 3 to 4 carriers for the PLAN to contend with on the offense. Assuming a similar ratio of operational ships, that means China needs a total carrier fleet of around 6 carriers in this scenario to reach parity. It's not impossible for the PLAN to have that many large carriers by 2035 or 2040, so of course the USN has to plan for this possibility.
Naval drones aren't the proven weapons that land drones are, in part because if you're fighting in the middle of an ocean you still need a platform to launch drones from, which brings you back to some sort of carrier.
There are also other factors, like the ranges involved being much larger so your drone has to carry more fuel than a land drone. You also have to get your your enemy in a reasonable amount of time and not hang around too long in your enemy's kill zone, so a naval drone has to be faster than a land drone. You then have to carry enough ordinance to theoretically cripple a ship, which means more payload weight than a land drone. All that means that a naval drone is much larger than a land drone and is basically a fighter jet without the cockpit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hongdu_GJ-11
Guided missile swarms are a much more dangerous threat to carriers, along with long range ballistic anti-ship missiles. However, nobody has ever actually tested modern versions of those in real combat so we essentially won't know what modern naval combat looks like until it happens.
I still don't understand how hypersonic anti-ship missiles don't just immediately end the viability of all surface ships. I mean even against regular subsonic missiles, anti-missile systems seemed very sketchy to me. CIWS is a security blanket that would get torn to shreds in actual combat with a peer that could overwhelm it. Intercepting with missiles of your own is really difficult and unreliable- even shooting down missiles on perfectly predictable ballistic trajectories with generous advance notice is fearsomely hard and US systems don't exactly have a flawless test record. And sure enough that Russian cruiser went down in the Black Sea to just a couple of Ukrainian ASMs despite being packed to the gills with supposedly state-of-the-art tech. And hypersonics? As far as I know the US doesn't even have radar that can track those. So how is the entire US pacific fleet not headed straight for the bottom on day one of a hot war?
The only answers I've ever seen for this are:
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"It's hard to find and target a ship in the wide open ocean if we shoot down their satellites first." Um okay I guess, but it still can't be great to just sink immediately if an enemy ship or recon drone ever spots you, ever.
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"Lazerzzzzz! Maybe? Someday? Idk." Wow so how many percentage points of GDP do you need for building useless ships until this speculative directed energy tech someday materializes?
Am I missing something? Cause I'm unqualified too and it seems like I must be missing something. If surface ships are donezo then why is the PLAN still building carriers?
Mostly because only China really has hypersonic ballistic anti ship missiles, many of which are still in testing, and none of which have ever been fired at an enemy ship in combat. That means that it's absolutely possible that said missiles don't work as intended, or flat out don't work.
However, because military planning proceeds on the basis of assuming the best for your enemy and the worst for yourself, China still has to build a surface navy because it needs to prepare for the eventuality that it's ballistic missiles turn out to be V-2 rocket level wunderwaffles.
The ship itself was like Brezhnev-era old but I thought that it was nevertheless loaded with fully modern anti-air anti-missile tech :vivian-shrug:
It was loaded up with the navy S-300 equivalent, which isn't cutting edge but still very fearsome. Against planes. As far as anyone knows the radar can't track anything at wavetop height, so they're useless against modern anti-ship missiles.
It also had a pair of Osa-M missile systems that should have been capable, but these are old 70's swing-arm launchers, overcomplicated with a slow rate of fire.
If all that failed they had the AK-630 CIWS-equivalents.
So no, other than the S-300F none of the anti-air tech was particularly modern, and the S-300F can't shoot down sea-skimming missiles. It's still bewildering that it couldn't shoot down a couple subsonic ASMs, though.
Ooh thank you for correcting me, this is really informative! I must have gotten some bad info, or misremembered. Thanks! :rosa-salute:
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Uh but sir I heard China is going to collapse 10 years ago because they made an empty city so like why even bother
There are several Youtube channels that thrive on "China is going to collapse any minute now" videos. I remember last year the Three Gorges Dam was going to collapse and the resulting mass human misery was going to be a laugh riot. Still waiting...strangely the subject has been dropped. Now it's about how a few rural banks in the middle of nowhere are going to bring down the entire system.
Yeah it's a grift. I had a radlib friend (he is so very close to getting it) who tried to tell me how China was about to collapse over their housing market and all I could tell him is to talk to me about it again in a year. We aren't going to talk about it again.
Either he'll get it or it'll be some new crisis for China that he's focused on
I'm not surprised that an America worshipping Aussie wrote it. They cry about Chinese influence while the US owns most of their businesses and politicians.
Why would he accept that pain when he has the option of pushing America out of the hemisphere altogether, forcing it back to the region east of Hawaii?
Why wouldn't he simply force it out of the Pacific altogether and back to the Atlantic? Or even press the US out of every ocean on Earth? Rather than pushing America out of mere oceans, why wouldn't he just push China into the whole entire Milky Way Galaxy?
I think the reasoning here is that the US still would not want MAD even if it meant losing control of the Pacific. I doubt that reasoning
I think a better avenue would be to simply seek a more offensive solution, like establishing China's own military bases in South America
I don't think China should be seeking it's own bases overseas. Unlike the US, China is not a hegemonic power seeking to impose its will on others at gunpoint. A series of overseas bases would mark a possible change of China from the former to the latter, which I oppose.
Chinese bases are a guarantee against US exploitation, and the more powers there are competing for bases, the better of a deal Latin America (or Africa) gets in the long run
half a millennium of Western dominance of the Pacific
conveniently leaving out one little 5-10 year span
Japan? honestly more than a 10 year timespan but yea
I wouldn't say they really had Pacific control until they conquered the Philippines from the Americans.
