Chinese aircraft carrier sails past Taiwan as US Navy struggles with coronavirus

Discussion in 'Warfare / Military' started by HurricaneDitka, Apr 14, 2020.

  1. HurricaneDitka

    HurricaneDitka Well-Known Member

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    https://www.foxnews.com/world/chinese-aircraft-carrier-taiwan-us-navy-coronavirus

    The media's been making a mid-sized deal out of this tidbit:

    It seems to be over-hyping things quite a bit, but also, factually inaccurate, as LHA-6 is out there in the western Pacific, and is at least as capable of a "carrier" as the Liaoning.

    What do you guys think though? If there were a showdown between the Liaoning and USS America, each with their current supporting ships, out in the western Pacific, which one wins and which one's left a burning, sinking oil slick?
     
  2. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    That is not even a carrier as the US thinks of it. There is a reason when it was part of the Soviet (Russian) Navy, it was called a "Heavy Aircraft Carrying Missile Cruiser". It is not a "carrier", it will never be a "carrier". Even our "escort carriers" of WWII like the USS Suwannee carried more aircraft than the Chinese "carriers" do.

    And which one would win? The US, without a doubt. It literally has over a century of experience in conducting large worldwide fleet operations, and almost a century of conducting large carrier fleet operations. China is still stumbling around trying to figure out what exactly a fleet is to begin with.

    And with our carriers docked, we still have a lot of ships that could be put to sea which would normally be defending the carriers. Amphibious Strike Group 8 is in it's standard configuration, with a Cruiser, destroyer, frigate, and an LA class submarine along with it (and it's Battalion of Marines). Simply adding a few more destroyers and frigates and it would be more than a match for any Chinese fleet.

    Add in 1 or 2 of the 8 Wasp class LHD ships, and then the Chinese are seriously outmanned. Not even counting our Nimitz class Supercarriers, we have 10 LHD class ships, which when combined with a single Ticonderoga class cruiser are more than a match for the Chinese "carrier".

    And the People's Liberation Army Navy is largely "all show - no go", as it always has been. It has never really been used as a "Navy", instead acting more like an upgraded Coast Guard. Rarely leaving their territorial waters, almost never operating in groups of more than 2 ships at a time, almost no capability to replenish underway, which is why having port facilities is so critical to them. In an actual conflict (not a single engagement or two), those deficiencies would quickly become glaringly obvious.

    And this has nothing to do with the ships, or the crew. It is simply how their Navy has always been treated, it is almost the "unwanted step-child" in their military, where the Army rules everything. Their Army does not understand how a true "Blue Water Navy" operates, so gravitates towards prestige ships, neglecting everything else that actually makes a Navy effective.

    Not unlike say Nazi Germany, which sunk huge amounts of supplies and money into 2 grossly overgunned Cruisers. Then got both of them sunk rather easily as their ability and experience in fleet operations was simply not there. And yes, the Bismarck class ships were really just overgunned cruisers. Smaller and with less armor than the USS Alaska class Heavy Cruiser, they simply threw Battleship sized guns on them and thought that was all that was needed.
     
  3. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    In fairness Soviet carriers were designated that way because if they called them "aircraft carriers" the Turks would not have to allow them through the Dardanelles as per the long standing treaty arrangement.
     
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  4. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    So where is this mighty terrifying Juggernaut heading? Are they going to race to the Philippines and make scary faces at some of the villagers' children again?

    I wouldn't be surprised to read in the papers some day that it was rammed and sunk by some drunken Ozzies out for a holiday.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2020
  5. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    To be fair the Australian aircraft carrier HMAS Melbourne did during its career take out two different destroyers. An American one and one of their own. I used to tease some Australians about what kind of silhouette did they paint on the bridge wall for that.
     
  6. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Oh, it is much more than that.

    Remember, the main offensive weapons on this ship was always it's missiles. The Kuznetsov class cruisers were only intended to have a dozen fighters on board. We have amphibious ships that can carry more fighters than that. No, the 18 fighter aircraft were only on-board to give it a Combat Air Patrol (CAP) in order to protect itself and the rest of the fleet that accompanies it. The fighters were never an actual offensive striking arm of the ship, it was primarily for defense.

    And this can be seen in that they were intended to operate with a Kirov class Missile Cruiser. The most powerful ship in the Soviet Navy, but without any kind of hard air cover they knew they would be vulnerable to being "swarmed" by US carrier fighter wings. This was their solution, a ship that had at least some fighters to provide a CAP, but not so many as to incur the cost of maintenance of a pure carrier.

    And to show how the fighters are defensive, just look at the Fighter Wing of a Nimitz class carrier, normally around 50 fighters (closer to 60 if their Electronic Warfare planes are reconfigured into a fighter role). Even without that conversion, a true carrier like the Nimitz class outnumbers it's fighters by over 2.5 to 1. And even an amphibious ship like the USS America (which is not a carrier at all) outnumbers it.

    And with their entire "Offensive Wing" off doing a strike mission, the carrier still maintains 6-18 fighters as a CAP, never sending all of them on a strike mission, ever. At almost all times at least 1/3 of the fighters are configured purely for defensive operations.

    And it must be realized that this ship almost never left the Northern Fleet, it only entered and left the Black Sea because that is where the shipyard was where it was built at. And if it was really an issue, the Soviets or Russians could surely have made an agreement with Turkey to let it pass through for those reasons.

    "Yea, we know it exceeds our agreement, but can we pass the ship through with a monitor on-board to ensure all missile tubes are capped and all aircraft are unarmed?"

    One thing that has to be remembered, the Soviets always had a pretty good reputation militarily with honoring military agreements and not interfering with observers and monitors.

    Of course, those ships were still under construction when they started their "Shtorm" project, which would have been a true carrier, likely built at one of the shipyards in the Baltic. Of course, they started design on this ship over 30 years ago, and it is still 5-10 years before they plan on laying the keel.

    But if they really gave a damn about what Turkey thinks, they never would have commissioned the Shtorm class carriers. Or the Ulyanovsk class carriers before it (the first of which was over 40% complete when the Soviet Union collapsed and the hull scrapped). With 2 ski ramps and 2 steam catapults, there was no way they could have claimed that ship was not a Carrier.
     
  7. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Well, one of the unintended consequences of the more and more aggressive China in the region, is that it has brought the US and Philippines closer together. A lot of the government there now realizes that there is not much they could do by themselves to keep an expansionistic China at bay, and they have been working more and more closely with the US, for the first time in 30 years.

    They are just one of many nations in the region that has been trying to court the US to expanding their naval presence to offset China.

    And sorry, "again"? When was the last time that China did that?
     
  8. TOG 6

    TOG 6 Well-Known Member

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    USN wins.
    SSNs.
     
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  9. HurricaneDitka

    HurricaneDitka Well-Known Member

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    I'd be disappointed if there weren't at least a couple of subs tailing the Liaoning, American and Japanese. I mean, as pitiful as it is, this is probably the most significant and likely ocean-going threat to both our navies.

    ETA: I suppose one might argue that Chinese / Russian / North Korean subs pose a similar or perhaps larger threat.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2020
  10. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Probably a single American SSN. As two SSNs trailing the same target increases the chances of one interfering with the other.
     
  11. HurricaneDitka

    HurricaneDitka Well-Known Member

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    Do you happen to know: do we do enough data sharing with the Japanese that they'd feel comfortable that they don't need to send their own submarine to trail the Chinese carrier group? And what about Taiwan? They've still got a couple of diesel-electric subs. Are they active? Would they try to monitor the Chinese with one of them? I guess I could ask the same questions about South Korea and Australia, but they seem less-directly-impacted so maybe it's less of a priority for them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2020
  12. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    Diesel electric submarines tend to be far more useful in shallow close to shore waters (littorals). SSNs are better for open ocean operations. I would suggest that Japanese or Taiwanese diesel electrics (SSKs) shadow Chinese surface vessels in the littorals while America SSNs pick up the job in the open ocean.
     
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  13. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    And that is actually where the PLAN does most of it's operations.

    One thing they are sadly deficient in is fleet operations, UNREP, and coordination. Only for the simple reason that they have never done them before, and will need to do it a lot before they get good at it. Meanwhile, in this hypothetical scenario they would be going against the Navy that not only "wrote the book", they pretty much created the very idea of the book in the first place.

    The Chinese Navy generally returns to port when they need more fuel. Meanwhile, the US Navy typically sends the fuel out to the ships, refueling 2 of them at once. This is why you hear of US Navy ships being at sea for up to a year at a time non-stop. We have perfected the ability to send them everything from fuel and food and entertainment to mail, repair parts, and even system upgrades developed while they were at sea.

    Hell, we can even take the drydock to the ship.
     
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  14. Dayton3

    Dayton3 Well-Known Member

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    In all fairness, the Chinese Navy obtained a great deal of their operational doctrine from the Cold War era Soviets. The Soviets never figured there naval forces to last long in a major war with NATO. Thus their philosophy was to load (some say overload) their ships with weapons so they could be sent out to launch attacks and then sail back to the U.S.S.R. (hoping the ports there still existed) for rearming. They had little ability to reload weapons at sea, refuel, much less do vital maintenance and damage control away from port.
     
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  15. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Exactly, of course their Surface Fleet was never really important to them. Most of their effort went into submarines. And in reality, in military-political terms there was never really anything of importance to them that they had to get to which they were not connected to by land.

    Like the Soviets-Russians, China has always been an enormous land power. And that has always caused them to give little consideration to their Navy.

    The US however was from the start (like England) an "Island Nation", so we put huge amounts of effort into our Navy. And we first started developing our UNREP capability was back in the 1800's when ships were still primarily fueled by coal. We could not always get permission to put a "coaling station" in other countries, so our solution was to bring our own coal with us.

    Ultimately, much of this is really about logistics. And it is obvious in the Navy, but also in their Air Forces. Lots of fighters and bombers, an amazingly small airlift capability for a nation that calls itself a "Superpower". This simply mirrors their own concerns, and logistical abilities.
     
  16. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    Those seas in Asia are getting crowded; the Vietnamese and Indians also have subs, though I don't know much about them or how they're being used. Throw in Japanese and South Korea, and I get visions of long submarine parades tailing Chinese naval vessels and stealth out the window. Secrecy? lol yeah right.
     
    Last edited: Apr 17, 2020
  17. ricmortis

    ricmortis Well-Known Member

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  18. scarlet witch

    scarlet witch Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    https://chinapower.csis.org/aircraft-carrier/

    I'll put my money on the US then
     
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  19. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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    They might be arrogant enough to make the same errors the Japanese militarists made re their Strategic stance versus the U.S., but I think their internal problems will escalate, and do so rapidly, and they will not have the means nor the leadership necessary to do much; they're already making themselves vastly unpopular n Africa, none of the BRICS efforts has paid off and nobody even brings that up any more, it's dead, and besides, we've weathered these kinds of inane posturing before, when the Soviets were making their last gasps as a 'threat' when they shipped every piece of shi'ite they owned that would float for a few weeks to our abandoned base in Viet Nam, and even built a sub drydock or something there that got the media all up in arms, circa 1979 or so, in the hopes we would leave them alone in Afghanistan, and once again that gimmick failed, and left them even more bankrupt than before. The Soviets kept making the same keg runs at the Philippines as the Chinese have. All it did was piss off all the SEATO countries and hastened their demise as a world power. In the Chinese' case, it made the Philipines have second thoughts about their latest ' Hate America' campaign demanding the closing of our bases there; within a year they were whining and crying for them to come back when the Red Chinese showed the world their typical respect for other countries borders and sovereignty and fishing grounds.

    I've never been an isolationist, the history of the world's' respect' of our neutrality never existed in real life and having forward bases is a lot better than the alternatives, but I get why so many feel that way when observing how stupid other countries get after lying to later generations about their real history and why they aren't speaking Chinese, or Japanese, or German, or Russian, or Arabic these days, as if they somehow kept themselves free all by themselves.
     
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  20. Farnsworth

    Farnsworth Well-Known Member

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  21. TOG 6

    TOG 6 Well-Known Member

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    That's because we have aircraft carriers -- we also have ships like the Chinese boats but we call them landing ships or helicopter platforms.
     
  22. Mushroom

    Mushroom Well-Known Member

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    Such as being huge parts of any disaster relief effort we take part in.

    Or one little discussed fact, in that they can slave their power plant to shore facilities and provide them power if needed.

    The differences are so much more than that.

    For one, those are Amphibious Warfare ships, and generally have a Battalion or more of Marines on board. Along with all of their equipment for fighting for 90 days.

    They generally have no more than 4-6 AV8B or F-35B fighters on board, for use both as a minimal CAP over the amphibious group as well as to provide at least some close air support if the Marines have to get off somewhere. Almost all of the hangar deck is actually occupied by helicopters on those ships.

    Yes, theoretically they do have a much larger capability for holding the F-35B. But in reality, that is almost never used because their mission is not to act like a "baby carrier", but to transport and support the Marines.
     
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