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Expert's warning to US Navy on China: Bigger fleet almost always wins

3 points by TowerTall 4y ago

jqpabc123 4y ago
Low tech wars of history are a poor indicator for a high tech future conflict. This is like studying history and concluding that the army with the most archers usually wins. With satellite recon and long range hypersonic missiles, an aircraft carrier is just a high value target. There is no effective defense at the current time. In other words, any Navy will most likely be neutered within the first few hours or days of a high tech conflict. The WWII era is over. Submarines aside, the primary application of a surface Navy nowadays is low tech regional conflicts.
abudabi123 4y ago
Gigafactory rates of production will win the auto attrit struggle. Old mousehead experts fail to have navy comms interoperate with friendly fleets in an age when everyone has a smartphone and strangers share an image with a tap.
bell-cot 4y ago
My impression is that the current USN - at least the surface fleet - has enough deep problems with organization, enlisted quality & quantity, only-looks-good-on-paper systems, etc. that mere numerical superiority could not give it an edge over an actual peer navy. Read the in-depth reports on some of the collisions that USN warships have been involved in over the past ~10 years. Or the in-depth report on the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard - a capital ship which "burned to the ground" (metaphorically) while sitting dockside in a huge USN base - because the crew, the base FD, and the on-board repair contractors f*cked around for ~1 1/2 hours - after knowing that the ship was on fire - unable to actually get a single fire hose spraying water on the known & easily accessible location of the fire. The local civilian FD, showing up at the scene dead last, and with no idea of even the ship's basic layout, managed to do that much.
simonblack 4y ago
When a frigate has a similar amount of offensive capability to a carrier battle group, it's time to rethink what a navy is, and what it's usefulness is. Many other people besides myself, have maintained that the Carrier Battle Group in today's world is as obsolete as the battleship was in 1941. It's time all navies got rid of their White Elephants and started afresh.

3 points by TowerTall 4y ago

Low tech wars of history are a poor indicator for a high tech future conflict. This is like studying history and concluding that the army with the most archers usually wins. With satellite recon and long range hypersonic missiles, an aircraft carrier is just a high value target. There is no effective defense at the current time. In other words, any Navy will most likely be neutered within the first few hours or days of a high tech conflict. The WWII era is over. Submarines aside, the primary application of a surface Navy nowadays is low tech regional conflicts.

abudabi123 4y ago

Gigafactory rates of production will win the auto attrit struggle. Old mousehead experts fail to have navy comms interoperate with friendly fleets in an age when everyone has a smartphone and strangers share an image with a tap.

bell-cot 4y ago

My impression is that the current USN - at least the surface fleet - has enough deep problems with organization, enlisted quality & quantity, only-looks-good-on-paper systems, etc. that mere numerical superiority could not give it an edge over an actual peer navy. Read the in-depth reports on some of the collisions that USN warships have been involved in over the past ~10 years. Or the in-depth report on the loss of the USS Bonhomme Richard - a capital ship which "burned to the ground" (metaphorically) while sitting dockside in a huge USN base - because the crew, the base FD, and the on-board repair contractors f*cked around for ~1 1/2 hours - after knowing that the ship was on fire - unable to actually get a single fire hose spraying water on the known & easily accessible location of the fire. The local civilian FD, showing up at the scene dead last, and with no idea of even the ship's basic layout, managed to do that much.

simonblack 4y ago

When a frigate has a similar amount of offensive capability to a carrier battle group, it's time to rethink what a navy is, and what it's usefulness is. Many other people besides myself, have maintained that the Carrier Battle Group in today's world is as obsolete as the battleship was in 1941. It's time all navies got rid of their White Elephants and started afresh.