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This would not be an issue if major wars were not popping up everywhere or if China has not been building a naval fleet to challenge the U.S. If China and the

This would not be an issue if major wars were not popping up everywhere or if China has not been building a naval fleet to challenge the U.S. If China and the U.S. get into a conflict, like every war it will be a question of war production. It takes a long time to build a modern ship. It takes even longer to build a shipyard capable of producing modern ships. Any great power war will be long and drawn out unless nukes are used. In a defense of Taiwan or anywhere else in the South China Sea, the defenders advantage will play a role. China with it's numerous shipyards and hypersonic weapons could easily keep the U.S. Navy out and then even more easily out produce it to replace lost ships. It's also a questionable strategy to outsource your ship building to the two countries closest to your only potential naval rival. Usually countries fighting protracted long wars do not put their primary means of production next to enemy forces. Hopefully things remain peaceful and this never matters.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> If China and the U.S. get into a conflict, like every war it will be a question of war production This describes attritional war [1]. Not all wars are attritional. American war planning has, since the Cold War, extracted a peace dividend in not maintaining its warmaking industry, relying, instead, on stockpiles and quick victories. In China, for the first time since the Soviet Union, we have an adversary who could draw down our stockpiles and force us into attritional war. [1] https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in-the-indo-pacific https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in...
- treebeard901 2y ago
  Fair point. I was referring to great power conflict which should always result in attritionial war. Not every war as I said. Of course, if one side wins quickly, it would be questionable if it was ever really a great power conflict to begin with.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
zdp7 2y ago
China can't win. If there was any lesson nations of the world should have learned from WW2 is you need resources. Oil in particular for ships. China is an net importer of oil. The US is a net exporter and the largest oil producer in the world. Second there is no defender advantage at sea. Defender advantage comes from built up defenses. The only thing you can do at sea is mine. That will be a problem for both sides. China also doesn't have the air power to win. Now the biggest problem for China is a population of around 1.4 billion people. This comes back to a resource issue. China is also a net importer of food. Ships aren't going to help. The Ukraine war has shown they are very vulnerable to cheap drones. I suspect the US doesn't see an investment in ships to be a high priority. Air power is what matters and they are behind.
- JumpCrisscross 2y ago
  > Oil in particular for ships China is investing heavily in nuclear in part to counter this weakness.
  - zdp7 2y ago
    I suspect they will need it to build ships. If you look at the Wikipedia page for the Three Gorges dam, you will find a graph showing that two thirds of annual electrical production is fossil fuel based. If the US is involved, I suspect very little oil will make it into China. I would also expect the vast majority of hydro power to be destroyed. I would doubt they could build many ships once war starts.
- maxglute 2y ago
  PRC is a continental sized power like US, they produce 4m barrels, not as much as US but enough domestic oil to sustain military multiple times current size on war economy with rationing (for reference US military uses ~250k barrles per day). Meanwhile other 10m barrels used energy and transportation is rapidly being electrified. They're also calorically self sufficient. Plenty of domestic coal for other energy use and to gassify into fertilizer. PRC's correlation of forces in region > US airpower, which likely won't be operational (both land and carrier) because PRC has magnitude more firepower bandwith that US posture in region simply not survivable. It's USN who has no defender advantage vs PRC's entire land based A2D2. Hence IMO correctly surmise US DoD lackidasical about fixing ship building - they see large surface combatants have little future. Also why DoD NGAD is a shit show, they see theatre aviation have little future (against PRC). Only thing US doing right and not fucking up procurement wise is B21s because they realize only survivable edge has to be based in CONUS or far outside of 1/2IC. PRC answer to that is long range strike via missiles/hypersonics, aka doesn't matter US can produce all the oil if CONUS refineries and LNG plants go boom. Air power is just a means, the ends is degrading adversary war fighting capability / surviving attrition in sustained total peer war. Current trend is US has increasingly little ability to degrade PRC mainland, while PRC's ability to degrade CONUS is increasing. US biggest problem is fortress America is over, and they're trying to match up against a adversary more productive than US ever was during the peak of US industrial output, which was only possible because prior tech made disrupting CONUS at scale impossible. Reality is, IndoPac war will turn 1IC and pacific into no mans land and boths sides will be flinging long range conventional strikes at each others critical homeland infra until someone has had enough.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago

> If China and the U.S. get into a conflict, like every war it will be a question of war production This describes attritional war [1]. Not all wars are attritional. American war planning has, since the Cold War, extracted a peace dividend in not maintaining its warmaking industry, relying, instead, on stockpiles and quick victories. In China, for the first time since the Soviet Union, we have an adversary who could draw down our stockpiles and force us into attritional war. [1] https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in-the-indo-pacific https://phillipspobrien.substack.com/p/war-and-deterrence-in...

treebeard901 2y ago
Fair point. I was referring to great power conflict which should always result in attritionial war. Not every war as I said. Of course, if one side wins quickly, it would be questionable if it was ever really a great power conflict to begin with.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

zdp7 2y ago

China can't win. If there was any lesson nations of the world should have learned from WW2 is you need resources. Oil in particular for ships. China is an net importer of oil. The US is a net exporter and the largest oil producer in the world. Second there is no defender advantage at sea. Defender advantage comes from built up defenses. The only thing you can do at sea is mine. That will be a problem for both sides. China also doesn't have the air power to win. Now the biggest problem for China is a population of around 1.4 billion people. This comes back to a resource issue. China is also a net importer of food. Ships aren't going to help. The Ukraine war has shown they are very vulnerable to cheap drones. I suspect the US doesn't see an investment in ships to be a high priority. Air power is what matters and they are behind.

JumpCrisscross 2y ago
> Oil in particular for ships China is investing heavily in nuclear in part to counter this weakness.
- zdp7 2y ago
  I suspect they will need it to build ships. If you look at the Wikipedia page for the Three Gorges dam, you will find a graph showing that two thirds of annual electrical production is fossil fuel based. If the US is involved, I suspect very little oil will make it into China. I would also expect the vast majority of hydro power to be destroyed. I would doubt they could build many ships once war starts.
maxglute 2y ago
PRC is a continental sized power like US, they produce 4m barrels, not as much as US but enough domestic oil to sustain military multiple times current size on war economy with rationing (for reference US military uses ~250k barrles per day). Meanwhile other 10m barrels used energy and transportation is rapidly being electrified. They're also calorically self sufficient. Plenty of domestic coal for other energy use and to gassify into fertilizer. PRC's correlation of forces in region > US airpower, which likely won't be operational (both land and carrier) because PRC has magnitude more firepower bandwith that US posture in region simply not survivable. It's USN who has no defender advantage vs PRC's entire land based A2D2. Hence IMO correctly surmise US DoD lackidasical about fixing ship building - they see large surface combatants have little future. Also why DoD NGAD is a shit show, they see theatre aviation have little future (against PRC). Only thing US doing right and not fucking up procurement wise is B21s because they realize only survivable edge has to be based in CONUS or far outside of 1/2IC. PRC answer to that is long range strike via missiles/hypersonics, aka doesn't matter US can produce all the oil if CONUS refineries and LNG plants go boom. Air power is just a means, the ends is degrading adversary war fighting capability / surviving attrition in sustained total peer war. Current trend is US has increasingly little ability to degrade PRC mainland, while PRC's ability to degrade CONUS is increasing. US biggest problem is fortress America is over, and they're trying to match up against a adversary more productive than US ever was during the peak of US industrial output, which was only possible because prior tech made disrupting CONUS at scale impossible. Reality is, IndoPac war will turn 1IC and pacific into no mans land and boths sides will be flinging long range conventional strikes at each others critical homeland infra until someone has had enough.