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>From the article: "Navy Capt. Henry Hendrix estimated China could produce 1,227 DF-21D ballistic anti-ship missiles for the cost of a single U.S. carrier." Ye
by gozur88 10y ago
>From the article: "Navy Capt. Henry Hendrix estimated China could produce 1,227 DF-21D ballistic anti-ship missiles for the cost of a single U.S. carrier."
Yes, and so what? They have not done it.
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DF-21 indicates China is actively improving and expanding this satellite capacity.
Not as quickly as the US is improving its ability to knock them out. We have literally thousands of missiles that can take out satellites in LEO, and more every day. And that doesn't take into account things like jamming and lasers which could disable a satellite without blowing it up.
>You can say that about every weapon system in the world. If China built thousands of these, there's no way you're taking out all of them in a preemptive strike.
That's not how it works in real life - you don't have to take them all out. You only have to take out enough that between manufacturing defects, design failures, ECM, control systems degradation, antimissile systems, smoke, chaff, and more exotic stuff like lasers and rail guns, the remaining missiles don't hit a carrier. And remember, these are conventional missiles - they have to actually hit the carrier, which is not an easy thing to do. It's not like lobbing a nuke and calling it a hit if it lands within fifty miles of the target.
>Again, China can build thousands. An entire carrier battlegroup is going to have at most a few hundred SM-3s.
Again, so what? You're comparing a deployed carrier group today with a Chinese arsenal at some future date following a huge production spree they don't seem particularly interested in undertaking.
Saying you can build x missiles for every carrier is a meaningless statistic - it assumes a reasonable response from the US would be to build more carriers instead of upgrading the defenses of the carriers (or, more accurately, the carrier battle groups) we already have.