Hmmm, true. You do make a good point about the slowing growth of the Chinese economy. What they really need to do now is take all that exporting and turn it inward to bridge the gap between the internal and external sectors, and I think that's what the groundwork for the latest Five Year Plan is set out to do, which means that they still have another Five years at least where they'd screw themselves over with war. Which still puts us at about 2016-18 before things kick off, and by then they'll have the military muscle to be able to block any ideas the US has of intervening.
Of course, there could be any number of events that could transpire within even the next two weeks that could completely derail that prediction. A hardline military coup for example, a tsunami that hits Hong Kong or Shanghai, heck the Three Gorges Dam could collapse and send China back into the middle ages next month for all we know, it's certainly not the most stable dam in the world...
The trouble at the moment is that we have built such powerful weapon that we have priced ourselves out of the market. The F-22 Raptor, when it is not trying to gas its pilots, is currently the pinnacle of air weapons engineering, however its cost prevents it from being used to its full potential. The B-2 stealth bomber is a marvel of engineering but costs such a huge amount to build that there are only twenty of them. Of course, it can be argued that twenty is all you need, perhaps that is true, hopefully we'll never have to find out. But either way, we simply do not have the money to churn weapons out like Russia and China do, and bear in mind here that China and Russia both spend a helluva lot less of their GDP on the military than America does, because we have spent the last thirty years building up our militaries to fight the Soviets and letting the debts mount up, and now they've come home to roost.

Don't forget to keep an eye on dem evil Marshins! :D

http://pyxis.homestead.com/WoW.jpg

Hey, that's not true, I worked on that project :stare:

hmmmm...
... seems there is a couple of people here from the ROCAF who want to talk to you...
:hmmm:

This is assuming that nukes are not being thrown around. A tac nuke or 2 could decimate a fleet. I love me my surface ships, but nowadays the submarine is the most deadliest single weapon the world has ever seen.

and when those ASMs start flying, you know whos gonna get whacked first...

Carriers are just too damned expensive, ginormous, and a bullet-magnet in the modern era of warfare. I long for the days when battleships were still a force to be reckoned with...

If only......

If we could take all of the money, all of the scientific efforts, all of the manpower, every resource being used to create military weapons of destruction, and refocus those resources on the real problems we are facing globally, we might actually make the world a nice enough place that we wouldn't need to have wars.

I know, it will never happen in our lifetimes, but we can still imagine...

A modern day attack sub would most likely take the CVN out of the battle group as has been proven on numerous exercises involving a US CVN.

Rgr that.

If only Mothballs, if only...

And Torplexed, that goes without saying ;)

Betonov, when it was built it was in good condition but there have been reports of micro-fractures in the structure, aaand it's near about six active fault lines. Plus, of course, there's always the possibility of someone dropping a missile on it, although IIRC the PRC has stated that they would respond with nuclear weapons if someone did that...and I can't really say I blame them.

In terms of ASW in CVBGs (I still can't bring myself to use the modern term for them) it has certainly been shown in the past ten years or so that the USN needs to up its game a bit, particularly in terms of SSKs which the PRC has one or two of.

Personally if I were Hu Jintao I'd direct the navy towards investing in SSGNs and contact Tupolev to buy the license for the Tu-22M3, that would create a nice anti-carrier trifecta in SSGN SSM, ASM, and BASM. Launch a co-ordinated strike from all three of them at once into a carrier group...well...I wouldn't like to be in the radar room at the time, that's for certain...

"Vampire Vampire Vampire Vampire Vampire Vampire Vam-oh son of a-"

Don't know about that and that's some bad construction, our local dam was built in 1949 and never needed a patch up since then.

I was involved with turbine blades construction, at least that I can guarantee it will survive doomsday :smug:

:yeah: Well, the whole design of the dam was an ecological disaster, it's completely wrecked the surrounding area in terms of river levels, sediment build up and the like, but since it's only peasants in the area it doesn't matter much to Beijing ;) Even the governmental mouthpiece the Xinhua news agency has admitted that the initial design of the dam could lead to an environmental catastrophe.
Apparently the dam is designed to withstand earthquakes up to 7.0, and local earthquakes have yet to exceed 6.0, however the weight of water in the reservoir behind the dam may exacerbate the seismic activity.
In theory it was a fantastic idea, in theory it was all that Mao wanted...but in fact it's probably Chinas biggest Achilles heel.

if only is right. Trouble is the monies generated by arms sales and military buildup programs, they seem to have the mysterious effect of sucking the blood from our brains and rendering the brain pretty much useless except for making war. Humans are blessed with the ability of talking themselves into conflict, they will even lie just to start a war, work that one out.

The military build up does not look to have grown. I think it might be more in the general conscience and news. The US is constantly working on and building military items. IMO the military is a business.

If nukes start flying a submarine anywhere in the vicinity will be dead as well, so this is a moot point.

The question isn't who would win in a scrap-up, as that's very much an open question based on individual crew skills and environmental factors.

The real point I'm making, is that you can't win a war with submarines alone. They are not power projectors. A CV battlegroup allows one to put real pressure on the enemy and allows one to actually dismantle their war making capability. Submarines at best can lob a few cruise missiles and maybe insert a specops team.

Unless your enemy is dependent on overseas trade (US, China, Japan) or has national goals off shore (Falklands, Taiwan). Then a submarine can put them in to ruin or deny them their end goals. :know:

I'll have to excuse myself from the war tactics discussion.

I will say I'd hate to be on a submarine in the Taiwan straights during a war. The water is too shallow and there's nowhere to hide. :(