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China has approximately 300 nuclear warheads total. If they used 50 per carrier, they'ed still have half a dozen supercarriers to deal with, and now the America
by jjk166 5y ago
China has approximately 300 nuclear warheads total. If they used 50 per carrier, they'ed still have half a dozen supercarriers to deal with, and now the American nuclear retaliation as well.
And 50 warheads might not even do it - naval ships are hardened structures, a carrier could likely survive a detonation within about 3 km for even the largest weapons in chinese inventories, and perhaps within hundreds of meters for a more realistic tactical weapon. 50 missiles each with 200 kt warheads would be able to clear an area roughly 30 km in radius, which a carrier could likely escape in about half an hour. Using 300 5Mt warheads, you'd need to know the position within 85 km, which it could travel in about 90 minutes, which is coincidentally about how long it takes for a spy satellite to complete an orbit.
Carriers are big, but oceans are really really big. Way too big for a brute force solution.
- cturner 5y agoChina has purpose-build non-nuclear anti-ship cruise missiles. There is a running game of chicken between the CCP and the US about whether they would dare use them against a US carrier group stationed in the SCS. The way the game theory works out, no they wouldn’t, but the sitting US president needs to have the stones to continue navigating the SCS. Xi Jinping bluntly promised Obama he would not occupy the SCS, and then did exactly that, and Obama blinked and did nothing. All the other countries in the region, from Japan to Australia to India, are now crapping themselves as China extends further. For example, they are now regularly pushing military ships posing as fishing vessels into Indonesian waters as a repeat of the ‘cabbage leaf’ process they executed in the SCC. Indonesia is in a precarious position because it does not want to be muscled out, but they took on a lot of debt from Belt and Road for stupid initiatives. There are other countries in a worse situation. East Timor has taken on debt from b&r equivalent to a full year of its GDP, and sits on the edge of the Australian oil shelf. Australia is in a weaker situation than it should be due to not having enough coast guard style ships, and the difficulties sourcing world-class conventional attack subs. This show may be the US signaling that it has learnt its mistake and won’t be had again.
- jjk166 5y agoI don't really see how non-nuclear cruise missiles affect the math of blanketing an area with nuclear weapons.
- cturner 5y agoMy post could be read as a correction to yours. Unintended. Perhaps I should have replied to randomopining. You made a significant point about the number of Chinese warheads. Once nuclear misses are discounted, I think it is significant that China has a type of non-nuclear missile that is designed for attacking carrier groups.
- randomopining 5y agoYeah Obama was weak in this regard. Actually I've read that Biden had some of the most hawkish views on CCP in the admin. Obama was too naive, he believed in the good of countries etc. And I say this as an Obama support who voted for him. Realistically though what could he have done? They should've been airtight on the CCP since the 80's 90's.
- cturner 5y agoI agree with the thrust of your comment. The current situation is the result of decades of us (west) misreading the situation, rather than a single event of one US president. We saw what we wanted to see, rather than what was there.
- randomopining 5y agoWon't the nukes and EMP's fry the electronics which make them useless?
- jjk166 5y agoNo, only high altitude detonations produce strong EMPs and carriers, like most high value military targets, are shielded even against those strong EMPs.