[grey_whiskers]

In addition, for the last couple of years at least, at internal airfields, they have been practicing SU-27 and SU-30 aircraft take-offs from land based bow jumps...just like on the Vayrag.

Jeff, I've lurked some of your stuff and respect your opinion.
How seriously should we take the carrier, given that a REAL ship at sea bobs up-and-down-and-back-and-forth, and a land-based runway does not?

And how well can they coordinate their landings and launchings?

Lotsa logistical and tactical hurdles and lessons to learn before they can touch a US carrier group one-on-one...

No cheers, unfortunately.

PS try reading up on the Avian Flu stuff in China, there are (serious, non tinfoil hat) indications a bioweapon may have got loose, or else naturally occurring gene transfer between Ebola and Avian Flu... (H5N1 is the strain).

Even Less Cheers, Unfortunately!

[Jeff Head]

We have to take it seriously. Given what they are doing, the best time to put a wrench in their works is now. It would be hard economically at this point, but the cost of waiting until they do have the experience and logistics will be much, much higher. That is my point.

[SevenDaysInMay]

Asymetric warfare: China like islamists and perhaps in concert can use massive swarming to befuddle, such as an integrated cyber attack to freeze non-hardened networks (fin., comm. and media), common street/transit terror with strategic targets (refineries/pipelines/bridges/dams), and decapitations - university/research brain trusts, business management stars, and enough politicians families so that survivors won't be leaders. All this while we are shadowing their Formosa Fleet, ships which won't engage while cruising around the new "China Lake" and Carribean ports of call to sign 50 year contracts for all of Venezuela's oil/fuel output.

A nuke scud from a suicide tramp steamer or NK "accidental" launch could go "heroic save" airburst at 100-400 KM to EMP tens of millions of us as a lesson without killing an American.

IMHO, our nearly universal refusal to admit that we are in a state of total war with no rules begs our mortal enemies to be both creative and merciless, to slaughter innocents and cripple our national productivity for a period of years or even a generation during which China can make their ellusive "Great Leap Forward" without their fingerprints at the scenes of the crimes risking assured destruction.

Soon, the ChiComs shall have more college graduates than we have citizens. The PLA can have more War College postgraduates than we can have draftees. Given the Clintons' treasons, the ChiComs have most of our weapons systems. No wonder the Bill and Hillary Clinton created their own Politburo; I expect them both to be overseas when the time comes as a heads up would only be professional courtesy, a gratuity like the W-88 was.