War games: America ‘keeps getting its ass handed to it’ by simulated Chinese, Russian attacks

The National Sentinel ^ | 3/10/19 | Jon Dougherty

[pepsi_junkie]

20 years of fighting ground wars against stone age enemies, spending the entire declining budget replenishing conventional arms and keeping troops sustained in the field while spending nothing on R&D for advanced weapon and C2 systems takes it's toll. The so-called near peer nations (arguably WE are the ones who are near peers to them, militarily) have missile systems that we can't adequately defend.

[Truthoverpower]

Snore
We All ( big boys ) have multiple thousands of MIRVs that would destroy the entire planet earth in about 15 seconds and that said the big boys ain’t getting any fight anytime soon

[nathanbedford]

The problem of increasing vulnerability of aircraft carriers has been of growing concern. Here is a reply I wrote in February 2016:

Here we have yet another article which over the years have come dribbling in which cumulatively raise the question whether the romantic age of the aircraft carrier, with whom the man in my tagline below is so intimately associated, is drawing to a close. Is the age in which the United States can resort at will to super carriers to project power around the world coming to a close, forcing us to other platforms, other tactics and other strategies?

We have previously been reading that the Chinese are developing missiles intended to strike carriers from a distance while the American Navy has been transitioning to planes with shorter range creating an obvious vulnerability to the skin of the carrier despite undoubted multiplicity of defensive weapons. It is the old problem of cost vs. gain and it will take an intrepid president indeed to send the carrier into harm's way where it can be taken out by the odd missile. It would be politically disastrous to lose a carrier and it would be disastrous to America's image as a superpower to do so.

One then begins to think that the application of carriers will resemble 19th century British gunboats patrolling colonial waters showing the flag and offering a whiff of grape if required to intimidate the native populations. It is one thing to send a super carrier against the Third World country and quite another to risk it against the missiles soon to be produced in staggering quantities by the world's second (or perhaps even first) economy.

So the first question is whether we need 13 carriers if within a reasonable timeframe they cannot be deployed except with extreme risk? Should we not be diverting precious defense funds to other platforms such as submarines or satellites? In any event, how do we maintain American power in places like the South China Sea if our carriers are in fact exposed?

The questions get worse: with the advent of this gunboat missile technology are we not in the foreseeable future facing an imbalance or asymmetrical naval battlescape in which we will be risking multibillion-dollar carriers against cheap but lethal and, more importantly, multiple missile capable gunboats? A retired naval captain once described the war in Korea to me as follows: we loaded a very expensive bomb onto a very expensive airplane whereupon a very expensively trained pilot flies it off the deck of an extremely expensive aircraft carrier and seeks a target in North Korea. They find an oxcart, fire the missile, consume expensive fuel and return to the carrier having a successfully completed mission. Two North Koreans climb out of the ditch observe their dead ox, gather the splinter wood from the cart with which to build a fire and eat the ox. Who won?

We have to run a cost-benefit analyses and we have to decide whether we have the right tools for the theater. We have to know this 30 years in advance. And we have to do it with defense in mind and not politics, with a concern only for the security of the nation and not the pork at home, with a scrupulous regard for the precious nature of our Armed Forces and a rigid indifference to the temptations of social engineering such a top-down organization as the American military represents to God playing leftists.

[nathanbedford]

We have a defense budget, not counting expenditures, both open and secret, for intelligence larger than the next 15 countries cumulatively spend, many of whom are our allies.

What the hell is going on?

[The_Media_never_lie]

The US policies toward Red China since the "opening" of China by Nixon have probably been the dumbest and most dangerous in US history.

---

I realized it was a dumb move at the time. It was made out of weakness. Richard Nixon was under siege when he made it.

Just within the past couple years, one of Nixon's grandsons was touting the move on the radio with no pushback from the moderator, John Batchelor.

[vpintheak]

Sure, lets run with that...
Propaganda works both ways.

[virgil]

All the Chinese need to do is land in Tijuana and run right over the border.

[Jim Noble]

It would be a catastrophe in more ways than one.

Most keyboard warriors here say that, if one or more CVNs were sunk in the open ocean in a BOOB attack (which is actually a real possibility), that the US would then incinerate millions of Chinese civilians in retaliation.

I don’t believe that for a minute.

As a deterrent to Chinese aggression by forward deployment, the CVN is a bluff, and it’s a bluff that can be called.

Suppose 3 CVN deployed in the Pacific and Indian Oceans disappeared one night, and China claimed credit.

What do YOU think would happen next?

[Captainpaintball]

Aircraft carriers have become what battleships were by the 1940’s. They still have their uses. But they are much more vulnerable than a lot of people want to admit.

Especially since a US admiral told a Chinese Admiral that all US carriers have little or no armor on the bottom of the boat, putting every single sailor on these nuclear powered deathtraps, in danger. Instead of being shot in the head, this admiral enjoys a full pension.

[Jim Noble]

These games are based on a premise that China and Russia when it came to it could execute a blue water fight of some kind

If China decides to sink the CVNs deployed in the Western Pacific and Indian Oceans, they will probably do it from space and they certainly won't be doing it ship-to ship.

All of these scenarios involve the enemy doing what we expect hm to do - and we lose all of THEM.

When China makes her move, they will be doing something unexpected.

[Jim Noble]

We built and launched 53 aircraft carriers in 1942-43 from a standing start.

It now takes 9 years to build one, and as far as I know there’s only one shipyard that can do it.

[Jim Noble]

Snore We All ( big boys ) have multiple thousands of MIRVs that would destroy the entire planet earth in about 15 seconds

So, IOW, if China carried out a successful surprise attack and sank 3 or 4 CVN in the open ocean, with zero non-military casualties, you believe the correct response would be to destroy the planet in 15 seconds?

That actually is NOT what would happen.

[SgtHooper]

Re-write the software. Done.

[Jim Noble]

Great (re)post, as usual.

Don’t know if you read my posts on this thread, but what do YOU believe would happen after a successful Chinese counterforce attack that sunk three or four CVN?

I certainly don’t believe we would kill millions or tens of millions of civilians in China and elsewhere.

An attack like that would be the ultimate validation of Mao’s “paper tiger” sneer.

Which is exactly why I expect that they have been working the problem since 1973.

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

Military conflict has always been a struggle between quality and quantity. If you overemphasize one over the other, you become vulnerable to its opposite. The US has become too focused on quality, so the way to address this is with quantity.

Say the US wants truly amazing, high tech fighter aircraft with a huge price tag. What if instead, for the same price, it manufactured 500 expendable drones? Carrying either an anti-aircraft machine gun *or* a 1000 pound bomb, short of detonating a nuclear weapon, it would be impossible to stop an air armada like that.

They would be a mix of off the shelf parts, and with a cheap computer to run it. And even if the computer was fried, it would continue on to its destination guided by internal wires on a hard programmed course.

Attrition would be high, for any number of reasons, but it wouldn’t matter.

I suggest this as an idea for the US, but the US doesn’t really have a choice. Either it goes for sheer numbers or it remains unacceptably vulnerable to any nation that can make an automobile, which means it can make a drone.

[SgtHooper]

The Chicoms are a serious threat where they can unleash their multi-million man army to overwhelm by sheer numbers. But that ain’t here!! And nuking us would be a monumental failure for anyone so foolish! Carriers wield enormous power in those areas where missiles are not necessarily the threat. Of course, missile counter-measures enhance carrier capability enormously, so I keep hoping that exists or is just around the corner.

[Bulwyf]

I have no doubt China will make a move. It’s only a matter of when. The west has been sold out by our so called “leaders” and the splurge of spying without repercussions has been rampant.

China is all over Africa, taking what they want. Their military has made huge leaps and bounds over the last 15 or so years. It’s all thanks to mostly American politicians. Canada has helped them too. Canada has let them buy and operate oil companies and they’re profiting off that as well.

This won’t end well, but I never thought it would anyways.

[nathanbedford]

I quite agree with you, we would not retaliate with atomic weapons in the scenario you describe which would bring on the Apocalypse. Indeed, if my finger were near the red button I would not push it and no reasonable president would.

I quite agree that in the age of microwaves, lasers, satellites, hyperspeed rockets, Ray guns and God knows what else, the next attack will be as surprising as Pearl Harbor but it certainly won't be anything like December 7, 1941.

We spend enough, we should have that extra margin which this report argues we have squandered along with trillions.

[whistleduck]

Load up all naval vessels with all female crews and watch the wide eyed fear in the eyes of our opponents as world events heat up. Wow. Get the word to the Trump admin and get moving on this. Force multiplier.

[CodeToad]

“They have zero experience.”

What experience do we have? We can’t even prevent collisions with merchant ships.