3 ms·

The best case outcome of a Chinese first strike against American carriers would still be pretty awful for them. If the Chinese are going to take the risks and

The best case outcome of a Chinese first strike against American carriers would still be pretty awful for them. If the Chinese are going to take the risks and roll the dice on a first strike, then they're going to be playing for some pretty enticing stakes, like Taiwan. That's the point of such a move. It would come at the end of a series of escalations. For such a move to pay off, they'd have to be confident that they could control the seas around Taiwan long enough to mount a successful invasion. Prior to that, there would need to be a buildup of China's submarine forces. Perhaps they would have built a SOSUS style listening array, along with a surface fleet buildup which would only hit a level that the US Navy brass would still scoff at. If I were China, I would consider building a great many attack subs with ultra quiet but cheap surface independent propulsion and anti-ship capability. Many of these might come in the form of even quieter, smaller, and somewhat expendable autonomous drone subs. To make such a plan work, they will also have to solve the logistical problem of landing an enormous number of troops and their supplies. That last factor will likely be detected by US intelligence long beforehand, but might be camouflaged to throw off the time estimate. If I were the Chinese top brass, I would be conducting a highly secretive program of drone sub building. As an alternative or an adjunct, perhaps do a huge air force buildup with very potent anti-submarine capability. The idea would be to neutralize the US Surface advantage with saturation missile strike, then make it very dangerous and miserable for the US submarines, but achieve those advantages while still having the US Navy brass scoff at your capabilities. If you're discussing the claim that cruise missiles are cheaper than carriers, a fair response is that megawatts are cheaper than cruise missiles. Maybe it won't work out, but it's worth a try and that's the stage we're at. The question is not if cruise missiles are cheaper than megawatts. The question is not even if cruise missiles are cheaper than the high-tech ship that deploys those megawatts. (Which is a less favorable question for the US.) The question is if the price of those cruise missiles and Chinese lives is worth getting Taiwan. Given that Taiwan is a stepping stone for China's ascendance to the level of global superpower, I suspect the price they're willing to pay is rather high.

philwelch 8y ago
The problem with Taiwan is that to take Taiwan, they have to actually take Taiwan. That means transporting troops across the straits in sufficient force to establish a beachhead and transporting supplies and reinforcements to that beachhead. That requires a lot of Chinese surface shipping that would be even more vulnerable to cruise missiles and air attack. And that’s assuming an RoE where the US doesn’t just immediately (conventionally) bomb all of China’s coastal ports preemptively. Even if they solve that problem, it would be logistically very difficult to cross even the Taiwan Straits in sufficient force, and would require destroying and alienating Taiwan and causing a possibly bigger problem in the long run. This is why the South China Sea is so important—it provides a potential outlet to the open sea while keeping open the possibility of gradual, peaceful reintegration with Taiwan. The only caveat—and it’s a big one—is that China is in a demographic situation where it wouldn’t hurt them to lose even ten million men due to the heavy gender imbalance of the military-age generation created by the one-child policy. As for DEWs, cruise missiles and saturation attacks work because you can launch so many cruise missiles that no system can track all of them in enough detail to acquire a firing solution and launch SAMs. DEWs simplify this a lot. The firing solution is just line-of-sight to a contact, you can fire the DEW as quickly as you can generate power rather than having a set amount of ammunition you need to conserve, and if it’s a choice between firing at an unconfirmed target and losing the ship and you can fire the laser, you fire the laser. The question is simply generating enough power to fire the DEW at the necessary rate to handle a saturation attack. Hypersonic cruise missiles make this harder, but at the cost of the cruise missiles themselves being more expensive. It’s not obvious where the balance is going to end up.

philwelch 8y ago

The problem with Taiwan is that to take Taiwan, they have to actually take Taiwan. That means transporting troops across the straits in sufficient force to establish a beachhead and transporting supplies and reinforcements to that beachhead. That requires a lot of Chinese surface shipping that would be even more vulnerable to cruise missiles and air attack. And that’s assuming an RoE where the US doesn’t just immediately (conventionally) bomb all of China’s coastal ports preemptively. Even if they solve that problem, it would be logistically very difficult to cross even the Taiwan Straits in sufficient force, and would require destroying and alienating Taiwan and causing a possibly bigger problem in the long run. This is why the South China Sea is so important—it provides a potential outlet to the open sea while keeping open the possibility of gradual, peaceful reintegration with Taiwan. The only caveat—and it’s a big one—is that China is in a demographic situation where it wouldn’t hurt them to lose even ten million men due to the heavy gender imbalance of the military-age generation created by the one-child policy. As for DEWs, cruise missiles and saturation attacks work because you can launch so many cruise missiles that no system can track all of them in enough detail to acquire a firing solution and launch SAMs. DEWs simplify this a lot. The firing solution is just line-of-sight to a contact, you can fire the DEW as quickly as you can generate power rather than having a set amount of ammunition you need to conserve, and if it’s a choice between firing at an unconfirmed target and losing the ship and you can fire the laser, you fire the laser. The question is simply generating enough power to fire the DEW at the necessary rate to handle a saturation attack. Hypersonic cruise missiles make this harder, but at the cost of the cruise missiles themselves being more expensive. It’s not obvious where the balance is going to end up.