Top to bottom: USS Kitty Hawk (CV-63) alongside Nimitz class carriers USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN-72) & USS Ronald Reagan (CVN-76). Pinterest
Loren Thompson, Forbes: Why Aircraft Carriers Are The Most Cost-Effective Way Of Containing China's Military
Deterring and/or defeating aggression by China’s military has become a top priority of U.S. defense strategy. Due to China’s geographical circumstances, Pentagon planners assume that any outward thrust of the People’s Liberation Army, Navy and Air Force would occur in the east, presumably using maritime routes. So it is there that America and its allies intend to block aggression—starting at the first island chain off the eastern coast that includes Japan, Taiwan and the Philippines.
The United States has diverse means for countering China’s military forces. Air Force assets based as far away as Guam could be brought to bear against a Chinese threat, as could Army units deployed to the island chain with long-range missiles, and various naval assets in the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Washington’s ideas about the best mix and application of friendly forces in the region are constantly evolving.
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WNU Editor: The above commentator has a very optimistic view that America's aircraft carriers can contain China's military in a conflict. To me they are just one big target that can be tracked and targeted.
3 comments:
It's all a bluff Ed. China will attack Russia!
Vietnam should sell some of their most norther-eastern Islands to the USA and also make a low level alliance with them, ideally also with shared training.
The Vietnamese would make a formidable partner for the West - and they do love the freedom and wealth we have. They do NOT like China. This seems an ideal and obvious choice of partner, ESPECIALLY if we can add to their own wealth, after the horrific war we had. They are incredible nice people, and despite that you still see people who walk around with Agent Orange deformations, they have no bad bone in them. I suggest any of you who doubt me to travel there.
An ideal partner to the West, and a country we misunderstood / where the "domino theory" misguided us. Communism wasn't all the same communism back then and isn't today. It comes in different forms. In Vietnam for example, which now hosts some of the largest telephone manufacturing industries of the world (Samsung's biggest plants are there now, not in China!). On top, Ho-Chi-Minh city, in the south, is the quasi-capital of Vietnam - certainly the modern cultural and economic centre, with a buzzing entrepreneurial group and promising tech sector.
Lets see if the Trump administration makes this move towards Vietnam next. Obama was there a while ago, as part of the TPPC, I believe, which was unfortunately cancelled. Wealthy eastern nations side with the west. Poor nations, like North Korea, Myanmar perhaps, Laos perhaps, will side with China for pure economic reasons - and they lack access and infrastructure and the human capital that the West requires. It is poverty, poverty mostly, that binds weak nations to China, because they can fulfill the lowest -ranking jobs for them.
WNU, I agree. A nuclear armed missile doesn't have to be terribly accurate to put a ship out of commission. Not sink it, just cripple it. Our ability to detect submarines hasn't been reassuring in past exercises. Guam isn't high on the stealth scale. Etc., etc.
Speculative articles of this nature are just too easy to type by glib desk top generals.
Now I am not well versed in our countermeasures. Hopefully they exist and, unlike the navy's counter torpedo torpedo that doesn't work, will perform as planned. But if you have read a bit about the undetected soviet sub that had a US carrier in it's sights and which was equipped with nuclear armed torpedoes that came close to being fired during the Cuban missile crises way back when....
If the above doesn't quench the fires of the Forbes' writer consider Pearl Harbor. Note that the attacking Japanese airplanes were detected and ignored. Oh I know. I've read the books.
I saw the dog and pony show for a delegation of the best and the brightest from congress at Fort Ord in 1967 and marched away knowing the Viet Cong would never penetrate THAT wall of lead. In another incident in 1967 we poured, that's right, POURED lubricant down the barrel and on the inner parts of an M-16 that was supposed to be cleaned every chance you got daily or it would jam, in an inspection by military and the weapon's manufacturer trying to figure out what was wrong with the thing. Talk about black powder gunsmoke at Waterloo....
Mattis has it right. The enemy has a vote. SNAFU is the SOP.
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