China Is on Track to Have Four Total Aircraft Carriers in the Next Two Years

National Interest ^ | Today | by Kyle Mizokami

[cba123]

Quick and alarming.

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The People’s Liberation Army Navy—more commonly known outside of China as the Chinese Navy—is modernizing at a breakneck pace. Chinese shipbuilders have built more than one hundred warships in the past decade, a build rate outstripping the mighty U.S. Navy. Most importantly, China now has two aircraft carriers—Liaoning and a second ship under sea trials—and a third and possibly fourth ship under construction. With such a massive force under construction it’s worth asking: where does PLA naval aviation go from here?

(please see link for full Article)

[cba123]

Wake up people.

All the crap we buy in EVERY GOSH DARNED store in America is PAYING FOR THAT.

Trump you have the right idea, but you are far, far too hesitant.

Raise tariffs on China.

Not 25%

Start at 100%, and raise them if they complain. Double them.

We have been complete push-overs for the last 30 years.

Both parties.

Everyone.

[cba123]

https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/china-track-have-four-total-aircraft-carriers-next-two-years-78446

[Does so]

I do what I can by buying at yard sales.

Chinese junk bought second-hand doesn’t send enabling funds directly to China; also, American-made tools are often made available. People upgrade their cordless power tools, and that’s a good time to buy sets that match your chargers.

My most recent yard sale purchase was a working two-blade US-made fan—and NO part is made of plastic!

It’s also a good way to meet townsfolk, and if a move is planned to those locales, a good time to inquire about neighborhood issues.

Last year, a small bus stopped at a yard sale I was at. Eight women got out, and started looking around. They’d rented the bus and a driver for a Saturday of shopping!

[BTerclinger]

They call them aircraft carriers.
We’ll call them reefs.

[nathanbedford]

Aircraft carriers are in danger of becoming the dreadnoughts of the 21st century. Every day every dollar put into aircraft carriers becomes more of a liability and less of an asset.

Against Third World nations, aircraft carriers are awesome instruments of projecting power, against the Chinese mainland or in the South China Sea, our super carriers are rapidly becoming targets. Do we really need billions and billions of dollars worth of 13 super carriers to play 19th century British gunboats against the Third World?

What are the Chinese trying to achieve with the construction of these carriers? They are certainly not trying to fight the last war, they have already put killer satellites in space and are building hypersonic missiles, gunboats, submarines and aircraft not to mention artificial islands, all to destroy carriers. Meanwhile, as American super carriers become more and more vulnerable it becomes less and less prudent to sail them in harm's way. They are more and more expensive to maintain but the return on the investment tails off.

No, their carriers are not meant to win the battle of Midway against the United States, they are meant to change the balance of power in the Western Pacific and in the Indian Ocean. They can say to the Philippines or other near abroad nations, in effect, we have carriers, we are equipped with atomic weapons just as the Americans but we will use ours, can you rely on the Americans to use theirs in your defense? The balance of power just changed in that vital sea area of the world. And the change was bought at a very cheap price.

The long-term danger from the Chinese remains as it was, not from aircraft carriers but from mercantilism.

[BobL]

“Against Third World nations, aircraft carriers are awesome instruments of projecting power, against the Chinese mainland or in the South China Sea, our super carriers are rapidly becoming targets. Do we really need billions and billions of dollars worth of 13 super carriers to play 19th century British gunboats against the Third World?”

...and we were CONVINCED that there was no need for our pilots to know how to dog fight going into Vietnam, since we had air-to-air missiles. Sadly for a number of those pilots, our geniuses were wrong then.

Hopefully we learned a lesson there, that it’s easy to rationalize something as obsolete, particularly if it’s expensive....but that doesn’t mean the other side agrees with you.

[nathanbedford]

13 super carriers, I don't know how many smaller aircraft carriers, how many support ships, how many crewmembers to each battle group all drawing pay, medical for the rest of their lives, many drawing pensions, all creating costs to maintain these battle groups running out for generations. There comes a time when the expense of a weapons platform can make a country actually weaker.

Consider this perspective: modern super aircraft carriers are the floating equivalent of the Maginot line.

The long-term danger from the Chinese remains as it was, not from aircraft carriers but from mercantilism.

[BobL]

“13 super carriers, I don’t know how many smaller aircraft carriers, how many support ships, how many crewmembers...”

Still a drop in the bucket relative to our GNP. In fact, we should be at 25 carriers, considering how the rest of the world is arming-up. I prefer this country be STRONG and ready to fight, as each time we experiment with disarming and trying to ‘charm’ the world (as in right after WW2, right after electing JFK and then Carter) BAD THINGS seem to happen. And vice versa.

[nathanbedford]

Our discussion is not whether we should be strong, in deed the strongest nation on earth capable of defeating any two powers at the same time, but what is the most intelligent way to maintain that position. Part of making that judgment is to preserve the economic base which produces the weapons which guarantee supremacy. Political considerations of how much will be spent must not be ignored or Democrats will end up putting us back in the Carter/Obama eras.

Here is a reply from some time ago which yield yet another perspective:

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.

[BobL]

I guess that’s the difference - some people think we’re INVINCIBLE (hence, strongest country in the world), even though we’ve basically sat on our asses for 30 years, while Russia/China fielded weapons system after weapons system.

But what the hell, we’re INVINCIBLE so why not just keep downsizing our military? After all, nothing can go wrong...

[BobL]

By the way, that retired Navy captain is full of crap. We didn’t do a damn thing to re-arm after WW2 until AFTER North Korea sensed our ‘charm offensive’ and unloaded on South Korea. All we had were some leftovers from WW2 and they were DIRT CHEAP during that war.

[bert]

The leftover General McArthur and his staff damn near lost Korea.....twice

[Tonytitan]

... how many crewmembers to each battle group all drawing pay, medical for the rest of their lives, many drawing pensions...

The days of an 18 year old joining the US military, spending 20 years on active duty, retiring at 38 and drawing an Uncle Sam pension for the rest of his life are over and have been for a long time. With rare exception is anyone allowed to reach 20 anymore, for exactly the reason you stated. They don't want to spend the Pentagon budget on retirees, they want to spend it on weapons. Once someone reaches 12 to 15 years in they start looking to end his or her career by any means necessary. The downside to this is that they eject the more capable, experienced and critical parts of the command structure, an aspect of which is missing from the Russian and Chinese command structure and what makes our force structure far superior.

As for the Chinese, I hope their weapons work as well as the rest of their crap does!

[nathanbedford]

that retired Navy captain is full of crap.

Decorated Career Annapolis graduate, brilliant communications officer, served on Enterprise from Pearl Harbor through Okinawa, when Enterprise took Kami Kazi strikes. I would say he knew what he was talking about when he talked about naval aviation warfare.

[central_va]

For now. They are building these to learn and grow their support repair infrastructure. It is not how many aircraft carriers you have at the start of hostilities, its how many you have at the end.

Modern naval warfare is not won at sea but in the shipyard.

[central_va]

So Nathan should we scuttle our carriers now so we can be better off and safer?

[BobL]

“Decorated Career Annapolis graduate, brilliant communications officer, served on Enterprise from Pearl Harbor through Okinawa, when Enterprise took Kami Kazi strikes. I would say he knew what he was talking about when he talked about naval aviation warfare.”

He’s an ACTIVIST if he’s putting out that crap - it’s straight out of the talking points of the Left - always beat up our military over money. I’ve heard it all my life - that guy doesn’t fool me for a moment.

By the way, go look at some of the people who populate Leftist think tanks. Many retired high-level military types. Totally sucks to have people spend a career in the military just to hate the country when they leave. I wish they would do a ‘patriotism test’ on people before they leave. Show them a picture of a US soldier and a teenage boy in the Middle East with guns pointed at each other. Ask them who the bad guy is - 3 options: The boy, the soldier, can’t tell. If they chose the soldier or can’t tell, send them off with a General Discharge.

[BobL]

“As for the Chinese, I hope their weapons work as well as the rest of their crap does!”

Well, the best way to find out how good their weapons are is for us to start disarming. Works every time!

[BobL]

By the way, a bit of history about the start of our involvement in WW2. Seems that we had just moved our Pacific Fleet from San Diego to Hawaii to get them better positioned for what was looking like a war in the Pacific. We stacked them 2-abreast in Pearl Harbor in relatively shallow water. Water that was too shallow for Japanese torpedoes to travel in, so our ships were safe.

Well, the Japanese didn’t sit on their butts and fly doves, they secretly developed a low-water torpedo and kicked our asses there.

Moral is, DO NOT underestimate your enemies. When a wealthy country spends less than 5% of GNP (we’re at 3%), they can AFFORD a military build up, particularly when “The End of History” (look it up) was proven to be totally bullshit, and nothing has gotten better, or safer, for us since that book was written.

[nathanbedford]

The average cost to just operate and maintain a Super Carrier is appropriately: $160 million per year just for the personnel. Add aircraft fuel and maintenance parts, and you’re looking at closer to $400 million per year.

Carrier strike groups are expensive to buy and operate. Factoring in the total life-cycle costs of an associated carrier air wing, five surface combatants and one fast-attack submarine, plus the nearly 6,700 men and women to crew them, it costs about $6.5 million per day to operate each strike group

https://www.quora.com/How-much-does-it-cost-to-build-and-to-maintain-one-aircraft-carrier

A CBO analysis of trends in DoD spending is sobering. Their projection of DoD spending under three different budget scenarios shows that military personnel spending on compensation and non-compensation will grow to the largest budget item by 2022 if action is not taken.

Examining the DoD’s on-budget personnel spending just scratches the surface of all military-related personnel spending. Harrison notes that most military personnel spending is actually funded outside of the DoD budget. The chart above displays the breakdown of off- and on-budget personnel costs.

Veteran care comprises a majority of off-DoD-budget military personnel spending, with $56.4 billion planned for veteran health care, $72.2 billion dedicated to veteran income security, $14.3 billion funding veteran education, training, and rehabilitation, and a remaining $7.2 billion to provide miscellaneous veteran benefits. The Treasury Department’s payments for the Military Retirement Trust comprise a formidable $70.3 billion in spending, while tax exemptions for military personnel amount to another $15.2 billion in costs. All told, total military personnel spending will reach $412 billion in 2014, $235.4 billion of which is off the DoD’s official budget.

https://www.mercatus.org/publication/personnel-costs-may-overwhelm-department-defense-budget

Many seek to justify these costs by pointing out that they are a fraction of our total expenditures. The trouble is we are able to maintain these expenditures only by racking up $1 trillion a year debt.

This level of debt is unsustainable. When the music stops playing, and it will, we will be lucky to be able to put the fleets to sea. But that will hardly matter 30 to 50 years from now-the projected life of an aircraft carrier-because by then any wars fought will be fought by satellites, lasers, missiles and, yes, keyboards.

We need the proper weapon platforms not the romantic weapon platforms. Please note my tagline.