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Is the idea of a hot, but non nuclear war with China realistic? I have a hard time picturing scenarios where China is sinking carriers which don't quickly escal

Is the idea of a hot, but non nuclear war with China realistic? I have a hard time picturing scenarios where China is sinking carriers which don't quickly escalate to full blown nuclear war. As a practical matter, perhaps carriers are just not going to be as important in the future? Drones can be launched from a much wider variety of places / ship decks. The future of war may be a giant swarm of small ships and drones rather than one large flagship ringed by layers of destroyers etc to protect it.

sitharus 8y ago
China has a "no first use" policy with nuclear weapons, so it's entirely possible for a conventional war to be fought. They do have a large range of conventionally-armed missiles though, so I have no idea how the escalation path would go.
- XorNot 8y ago
  The problem is a conventional ballistic missile launch of the type you use to sink a carrier is indistinguishable to a nuclear ballistic launch and you can't really vector trajectories very far in advance of losing counterstrike capability. They're effectively not usable.
  - tomatotomato37 8y ago
    That's only for some of the cold war tech; modern missiles don't use a ballestic trajectory but instead actively fly a path optimized for avoiding point-defense
lainga 8y ago
IMO the world is heading towards a hot war where each side is confident in their ballistic defence capabilities against nuclear attack. We have to hope it isn't overconfidence.
- vpribish 8y ago
  no one is remotely confident in their BMD, where do you get that idea?
  - lainga 8y ago
    Increasing capacity in the next 20-30 years. I didn't mean right now.
    - 0xffff2 8y ago
      It will never happen. To have any hope of reliably intercepting right now, you need multiple interceptors that are nearly as complex as the missiles they are intercepting. That math just doesn't work out. It's extremely cost effective to just out-build your oponent's defensive capacity.
AWildC182 8y ago
Regarding China, we just don't know. That said, taking billions of dollars from one carrier and using it for hyper-sonic interception research so the other 10 can survive unscathed isn't terrible math. The important thing to realize is that in a war scenario sortie rates are important. Drones are great because they can take off from North Dakota, fly 20 hours half way around the world, drop some stuff then spend 20 hours flying back. Compare that to a carrier sortie where you take off, fly for two hours, drop something, and fly two hours back. That frees 36 hours on that airframe to get reloaded and go drop more stuff.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  The important thing to realize is that in a war scenario sortie rates are important. Sortie rates and the ability to use full military power for just a little longer. Just the extra time it took to fly over the English Channel was a significant advantage for RAF pilots over German pilots in the Battle of Britain.
- fixvzbdjzis 8y ago
  And how much does a drone and a drone hour cost?
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    Even so, what if China responds with their own drones and takes advantage of their higher sortie rates?
    - AWildC182 8y ago
      ^there we go. I forgot to mention this. Sortie rates favor the defender if the attacker is far enough away. If A and B have 10 planes each and A's planes take 1 hour to kill something but B's planes take 2, A will win even with a significant technological disadvantage because you have to kill half their fleet before you reach parity.
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    Vs a piloted aircraft? The difference is there but not in the realm of 2:1. As more tech gets loaded on them I suspect they'll reach parity with manned systems. The issue isn't so much wartime cost but the fleet cost as a whole. You get X drones from your budget and they cost a lot of money to maintain (not dissimilar to manned aircraft) so you can't always just have enough to make up for time in transit.
flyinglizard 8y ago
I don't see how any conventional war which is short of full conquest escalates into a nuclear war. The gap between one and the other is wider than the gap between peace and conventional conflict.
steve_musk 8y ago
We’re watching a hot non-nuclear military confrontation between two nuclear powers (India and Pakistan) as we speak. The dynamics between the US and China are obviously much different but I don’t think we can 100% rule out a non nuclear confrontation.
tomatotomato37 8y ago
I could see some scenario where a semi-successful counterforce strike only takes out the nuclear forces at the expense of effectively emptying the other nation's stocks, which would still leaves plenty of military and civilian infrastructure standing and ready to fight, but it'll definitely be unlikely.
- simplicio 8y ago
  Chinese nuclear doctrine is just to maintain a large enough arsenal to ensure survival of enough weapons in the event of a first strike to wipe out an adversaries major cities. The idea being that rather then spend the huge extra amounts of money necessary to ensure total obliteration of the enemy, its enough of a deterrent just to guarantee an attacker would lose a large percentage of their population/economic capital.
philwelch 8y ago
> Is the idea of a hot, but non nuclear war with China realistic? I have a hard time picturing scenarios where China is sinking carriers which don't quickly escalate to full blown nuclear war. It could be if there isn't a meaningful conventional deterrent. Thought experiment--if the US only had strategic nuclear weapons, what would they do if China attempted to, for example, blockade Taiwan or the Philippines? It would be insane and homicidal to immediately escalate to nuking Beijing. What if the US had conventional forces, but not ones strong enough to hold off Chinese forces? They might take the risk that we wouldn't attempt a first strike. Conversely, if it happened today, it would be proportional and reasonable to deploy conventional naval forces to escort merchant ships across the blockade. Maybe one of the Chinese ships would fire on one of the American ships, or one of the merchant ships under American protection, and maybe there might be a naval skirmish. But it wouldn't immediately escalate into a nuclear exchange. There would be an "incident", the Chinese would realize that they would have to escalate to a nuclear first strike because their naval capacity is hopelessly outclassed by ours, and thus they would probably stand down. Furthermore, China already knows this is exactly what would happen in this situation and that's one of many reasons they don't try anything. Despite an infamous 1995 quote from a Chinese general that "in the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei", Chinese posturing in the Taiwan Straits in 1996 led to a large US naval deployment to the seas around Taiwan, at which point China stood down. A full-on war could still escalate to a nuclear exchange, but that is all the more deterrent against starting even a conventional war with US forces. (For similar reasons, note how Russia's bullying tends to be targeted towards countries that haven't joined NATO.)
- stcredzero 8y ago
  There would be an "incident", the Chinese would realize that they would have to escalate to a nuclear first strike because their naval capacity is hopelessly outclassed by ours, and thus they would probably stand down. Or, they might plan a secret saturation anti-ship missile strike that would take out a big chunk of the US fleet, calculating that we wouldn't escalate to full war or nuclear over Taiwan. Despite an infamous 1995 quote from a Chinese general that "in the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei", Chinese posturing in the Taiwan Straits in 1996 led to a large US naval deployment to the seas around Taiwan, at which point China stood down. Basically it comes down to this: At what point is maintaining the Taiwan "cork in the bottle" no longer worth the cost for the US to maintain global dominance of the oceans? Keep your eye out for a naval arms race between the US and China.
stcredzero 8y ago
Is the idea of a hot, but non nuclear war with China realistic? I have a hard time picturing scenarios where China is sinking carriers which don't quickly escalate to full blown nuclear war The announced (by PRC) invasion of Taiwan.
simplicio 8y ago
I think conventional wisdom is basically that in the event of a hot war with a major power like China, carriers and much of the rest of the surface fleet would send spend the war in port. They're too expensive and too vulnerable to missile attack to risk. Their real purpose (aside from being a big make-work project) is to project force during peace time and during wars with adversaries that can't afford large numbers of the latest and greatest missiles.

sitharus 8y ago

China has a "no first use" policy with nuclear weapons, so it's entirely possible for a conventional war to be fought. They do have a large range of conventionally-armed missiles though, so I have no idea how the escalation path would go.

XorNot 8y ago
The problem is a conventional ballistic missile launch of the type you use to sink a carrier is indistinguishable to a nuclear ballistic launch and you can't really vector trajectories very far in advance of losing counterstrike capability. They're effectively not usable.
- tomatotomato37 8y ago
  That's only for some of the cold war tech; modern missiles don't use a ballestic trajectory but instead actively fly a path optimized for avoiding point-defense

lainga 8y ago

IMO the world is heading towards a hot war where each side is confident in their ballistic defence capabilities against nuclear attack. We have to hope it isn't overconfidence.

vpribish 8y ago
no one is remotely confident in their BMD, where do you get that idea?
- lainga 8y ago
  Increasing capacity in the next 20-30 years. I didn't mean right now.
  - 0xffff2 8y ago
    It will never happen. To have any hope of reliably intercepting right now, you need multiple interceptors that are nearly as complex as the missiles they are intercepting. That math just doesn't work out. It's extremely cost effective to just out-build your oponent's defensive capacity.

AWildC182 8y ago

Regarding China, we just don't know. That said, taking billions of dollars from one carrier and using it for hyper-sonic interception research so the other 10 can survive unscathed isn't terrible math. The important thing to realize is that in a war scenario sortie rates are important. Drones are great because they can take off from North Dakota, fly 20 hours half way around the world, drop some stuff then spend 20 hours flying back. Compare that to a carrier sortie where you take off, fly for two hours, drop something, and fly two hours back. That frees 36 hours on that airframe to get reloaded and go drop more stuff.

stcredzero 8y ago
The important thing to realize is that in a war scenario sortie rates are important. Sortie rates and the ability to use full military power for just a little longer. Just the extra time it took to fly over the English Channel was a significant advantage for RAF pilots over German pilots in the Battle of Britain.
fixvzbdjzis 8y ago
And how much does a drone and a drone hour cost?
- stcredzero 8y ago
  Even so, what if China responds with their own drones and takes advantage of their higher sortie rates?
  - AWildC182 8y ago
    ^there we go. I forgot to mention this. Sortie rates favor the defender if the attacker is far enough away. If A and B have 10 planes each and A's planes take 1 hour to kill something but B's planes take 2, A will win even with a significant technological disadvantage because you have to kill half their fleet before you reach parity.
- AWildC182 8y ago
  Vs a piloted aircraft? The difference is there but not in the realm of 2:1. As more tech gets loaded on them I suspect they'll reach parity with manned systems. The issue isn't so much wartime cost but the fleet cost as a whole. You get X drones from your budget and they cost a lot of money to maintain (not dissimilar to manned aircraft) so you can't always just have enough to make up for time in transit.

flyinglizard 8y ago

I don't see how any conventional war which is short of full conquest escalates into a nuclear war. The gap between one and the other is wider than the gap between peace and conventional conflict.

steve_musk 8y ago

We’re watching a hot non-nuclear military confrontation between two nuclear powers (India and Pakistan) as we speak. The dynamics between the US and China are obviously much different but I don’t think we can 100% rule out a non nuclear confrontation.

tomatotomato37 8y ago

I could see some scenario where a semi-successful counterforce strike only takes out the nuclear forces at the expense of effectively emptying the other nation's stocks, which would still leaves plenty of military and civilian infrastructure standing and ready to fight, but it'll definitely be unlikely.

simplicio 8y ago
Chinese nuclear doctrine is just to maintain a large enough arsenal to ensure survival of enough weapons in the event of a first strike to wipe out an adversaries major cities. The idea being that rather then spend the huge extra amounts of money necessary to ensure total obliteration of the enemy, its enough of a deterrent just to guarantee an attacker would lose a large percentage of their population/economic capital.

philwelch 8y ago

> Is the idea of a hot, but non nuclear war with China realistic? I have a hard time picturing scenarios where China is sinking carriers which don't quickly escalate to full blown nuclear war. It could be if there isn't a meaningful conventional deterrent. Thought experiment--if the US only had strategic nuclear weapons, what would they do if China attempted to, for example, blockade Taiwan or the Philippines? It would be insane and homicidal to immediately escalate to nuking Beijing. What if the US had conventional forces, but not ones strong enough to hold off Chinese forces? They might take the risk that we wouldn't attempt a first strike. Conversely, if it happened today, it would be proportional and reasonable to deploy conventional naval forces to escort merchant ships across the blockade. Maybe one of the Chinese ships would fire on one of the American ships, or one of the merchant ships under American protection, and maybe there might be a naval skirmish. But it wouldn't immediately escalate into a nuclear exchange. There would be an "incident", the Chinese would realize that they would have to escalate to a nuclear first strike because their naval capacity is hopelessly outclassed by ours, and thus they would probably stand down. Furthermore, China already knows this is exactly what would happen in this situation and that's one of many reasons they don't try anything. Despite an infamous 1995 quote from a Chinese general that "in the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei", Chinese posturing in the Taiwan Straits in 1996 led to a large US naval deployment to the seas around Taiwan, at which point China stood down. A full-on war could still escalate to a nuclear exchange, but that is all the more deterrent against starting even a conventional war with US forces. (For similar reasons, note how Russia's bullying tends to be targeted towards countries that haven't joined NATO.)

stcredzero 8y ago
There would be an "incident", the Chinese would realize that they would have to escalate to a nuclear first strike because their naval capacity is hopelessly outclassed by ours, and thus they would probably stand down. Or, they might plan a secret saturation anti-ship missile strike that would take out a big chunk of the US fleet, calculating that we wouldn't escalate to full war or nuclear over Taiwan. Despite an infamous 1995 quote from a Chinese general that "in the end, you care more about Los Angeles than you do about Taipei", Chinese posturing in the Taiwan Straits in 1996 led to a large US naval deployment to the seas around Taiwan, at which point China stood down. Basically it comes down to this: At what point is maintaining the Taiwan "cork in the bottle" no longer worth the cost for the US to maintain global dominance of the oceans? Keep your eye out for a naval arms race between the US and China.

stcredzero 8y ago

simplicio 8y ago

I think conventional wisdom is basically that in the event of a hot war with a major power like China, carriers and much of the rest of the surface fleet would send spend the war in port. They're too expensive and too vulnerable to missile attack to risk. Their real purpose (aside from being a big make-work project) is to project force during peace time and during wars with adversaries that can't afford large numbers of the latest and greatest missiles.