Posted on 12/27/2019 2:10:37 PM PST by Mariner
A Chinese admiral and pundit told a trade-show audience that Beijing could resolve China's territorial disputes by sinking two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers and killing thousands of American sailors.
Rear Adm. Lou Yuan's threat isn't an empty one. The Chinese military has deployed an array of weaponry that it acquired specifically to target American flattops.
But a U.S. Navy test in 2005 proved that even if you hit them, carriers are really hard to sink.
Lou made his provocative comment on Dec. 20, 2018 at the Military Industry List summit, according to media reports.
“What the United States fears the most is taking casualties,” declared Lou, an anti-American author, social commentator and military theorist at the PLA Academy of Military Science...
..."The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline," The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. "After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel's stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor."
"America stood up to four weeks of abuse and only succumbed to the sea after demolition teams scuttled the ship on purpose once and for all, it's clear that America was built to sustain heavy damage in combat and still stay afloat."
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalinterest.org ...
Or that even getting off a shot is extraordinarily dangerous?
That it is most certainly a suicide mission?
Read the entire article and be edified.
Rear Adm. Lou Yuan should read Admiral Yamamoto’s reaction to news of the Pearl Harbor Attack..................
Was the America loaded with fuel and bombs when she was used for target practice?
Aren’t out of control fires the vulnerability in carriers after taking damage?
Maybe our Navy FReepers can say.
Four weeks to sink a carrier that had no one onboard for damage control. Think about it.
Yes, fires are a huge problem, right up there with holes below the waterline.
“The fog of peace.”
Even the Yorktown shows how tough it is to sink a carrier. The Japanese had to sink it twice before she would stay down.
Yeah, I was just thinking to myself: This mofo better be buried deep deep in a bunker cause the attack on a US carrier, let alone sinking one, is going to lead to hellfire nuclear war in most cases......
Methinks, Chinese want a military confrontation so bad with the US that they have to talk utter BS in an attempt to provoke said confrontation...not working so far.
Yes, if America had been fully loaded she would have hit bottom on the second day, at most.
Yeah, sink the US navy in a sneak attack. Then we will immediately sue for peace. They might wanna run that plan by their friends in Japan.
From the article:
“To even try to sink an American flattop, you first must hit it. That’s not easy, either. No carrier sails without an air wing with as many as 50 fighter aircraft plus several escorting destroyers, cruisers and submarines. A virtual wall of defensive weaponry surrounds the flattop out to a distance of several hundred miles.”
“But the observation that the enemy has a missile or torpedo that can kill a carrier only begins a conversation about carrier vulnerability,” Farley continued. “Shooting anything at an aircraft carrier is a costly, difficult operation.”
“The ship was pummeled by explosions both above and below the waterline,” The War Zone reporter Tyler Rogoway explained in 2018. “After nearly four weeks of these activities, the carrier was scuttled. On May 14, 2005, the vessel’s stern disappeared below the waterline and the ship began its voyage to the seafloor.”
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A single nuclear-tipped cruise missile, and it’s game over for a carrier. Carriers were a game changer in WW2, they’ll be obsolete in WW3.
More so, I saw this: “What the United States fears the most is taking casualties”....he has a point up to a certain degree. I remember the Korean War and just like the Soviet Union during WWII, the Chinese always resorted to mass troop waves when they attacked positions. I remember an old ROTC Colonel who served in the Korean War tell the class that the Chinese mass wave attacked a machine gun position and that the two guys using the .30 cal fired so long and so many bullets that the gun barrel literally melted and stopped functioning before they had to retreat from the position.
I guess when you have nearly a 1/3 of the world population in one country, you can talk such sh*t.....
The carrier’s attackers could face withering counterfire from the vessel’s defenders. “Beyond the monetary cost, launching an open attack against an American carrier strike group, with its own cruisers, destroyers and submarines, is almost certainly a suicide mission.”
And if the United States’ reaction to the 9/11 terror attacks is any indication, Washington surely would deploy all its remaining military might, including its surviving eight or nine carriers, against country behind the sinking.
“So there are two questions that remain for anyone who thinks they even have a shot at taking down one of these enormous steel behemoths,” Farley explained. “Can you do it? And even if you can, is it worth it?”
Even a Nagasaki type nuke failed to sink one the test carriers in the post war Baker test in the Pacific. Granted nuclear technology has improved and delivering a nuke directly below the waterline of a carrier might well sink it. However, attacks with conventional weapons might not deliver a knock out blow. The Iranians delude themselves to think their small boats and commandos would knock out let alone sink a US carrier. The sinking of a US carrier would be a Pyrrhic victory as it would invite massive retaliation.
“they’ll be obsolete in WW3”
Assuming, as you do that WWIII is a nuclear conflagration, nobody will bother shooting at carriers.
Everyone will have bigger fish to fry.
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