Wait, for real?
That seems crazy to me. Lot of those ships minus the vls are pretty useless.
I guess they rely on bases all over
Similarly, ships carry more defensive missiles than they can expect to be able to fire. No defensive system anyone uses has a 100% effectiveness; Burkes have sufficient stock of ESSM and Standard that you can expect there to be leakage and the ship to be taken out before they run out.
But all this assumes a fairly mirrored matchup, with both sides using weapons of similar quality. If one side uses a lot of cheap, attritable munitions, it might not work out the same.
> My solace is that in a real conflict, all of that red tape would be put to the side and people can get about building things.
That's just not going to happen. A real conflict would involve nukes, and the war would be quickly over.
I doubt that something close to Vietnam can happen again either. (And even for a 2nd Vietnam, I doubt that any significant artillery would be used when, as you point out, missiles are an option.)
Invasion, now . . well, there's the magic power that comes with having 'em. No one invades you, ever.
Also,outside factors could change the math here, like a megavolcano under the west antarctic ice sheet or something that raises ocean levels by meters. That redefines "back against the wall". If your country loses all access to fresh water, well, you might as well be under occupation or destroyed, so you might use your nukes aggressively. Just don't accidentally drop them in the water you're trying to get.
I also kind of doubt that China is going to try, at least in the next decade or so, because those so far irreplaceable chip factories are almost certainly booby trapped and are a critical piece of the global economy, so China would be sabotaging itself first. (And Xi has probably a long way to go for Putin-like mistakes.)
The reality is the US would very much like to avoid having to negotiate that situation: far easier to arm Taiwan to the teeth with AA and anti-shipping missiles, and let them take care of it.
EDIT: It's also worth nothing nukes aren't the only deterrent forces. It's one thing to "know" that the US Navy isn't going to get involved...it's quite another to conduct an invasion of an ally while well inside the missile engagement range of the US Navy on the assumption that's actually true.
If the Republicans abandon Ukraine, US credibility will take a huge hit, probably worse than when the US abandoned South Vietnam.
Russia presents a threat to Europe that it doesn't present to the USA. Europe needs to tool-up. I say this as a former pacifist.
And so far, NATO has to actively participate in the fighting in Ukraine. Since this would be a major escalation, one that is extremely hard to sell to NATO country citizens, that will obviously not happen anytime soon.
And even if you'd want to use that metric. How exactly loosing zero US personnel at the cost of getting a real-life assessment of NATO combined mobile warfare against the Soviet artillery superiority doctrine is a lose situation for US?
But I'd say that this makes it even the more valuable lesson. Battlefield characteristics is still very close and Russians (now) are acting like they would act against the NATO-trained forces.
And, of course, it's liberal on my part to put Ukrainian Army in the basket of NATO forces as that is only true for maybe a year (after the first rotations ended).
That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
I don't think they are even close to that - their meat assaults Avdiivka type is not something that would ever happen in conflict with NATO involvement, because the frontline would never stabilize in a way that would enable russia to employ those tactics.
NATO-trained is very wide statement, some African armies and Afghanistan ones were NATO trained and it went nowhere.
>That being said. I think that there's unprecedented amount of military intel US is getting out of this conflict for pennies on the dollar.
Sure. There's no EW piece that russia had in 2022 and wasn't captured intact in the first few months :)
Chinese preparations for an invasion would take more than that.
What to do with them anyways? Taiwan would need plentiful supply of them and a reliable delivery mechanism. Japan surrendered because the US had total air superiority and bluffed about their supply of nukes. North Korea has long-range missiles and literally tens of thousands of artillery pieces aimed at Seoul.
A nuke is easy to hide, we are not talking about global second strike capability here, just delivering a couple of them to close coastal cities, even by smuggling them in some civilian transport. Can China be 100% sure that not one slipped through? Taiwan could do a proof detonation on non-city Chinese soil if things get tense.
Gaodeng is a ROC island just five miles off the mainland. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaodeng_Island An atmospheric nuclear test there would be the wildest provocation imaginable that would not actually be on PRC soil.
Even after a Chinese decimation attack, if the invasion force is not immediatly ready Taiwan will still have enough time to build the nukes.
Realistically if PRC seriously think they haven't eliminated TW nuke production, they'd throw their entire airlift capabilites and drop 50-100k troops a day into the grind and if that doesn't work, nuke TW first and send in NBC teams to an uncontested husk of an island to clean up. If US+co materially impacts that effort and PRC ends up eating a nuke, then we're in global MAD territory.
Also consider nukes has hasn't deterred PRC from security interests less important than TW, they fought US (really all of UN in Korea) /USSR/India, threatened UK over HK, supplied Vietcon against French. If risking nuclear war is what it takes, then they'll (if history is teacher) risk nuclear war.
> drop 50-100k troops
That's fantasy land, most of those planes would be shot down, and if not the soldiers would land in a kill zone with no reinforcements.
Shoot down with what, preempt air campaign would have destroyed most of TW anti air. Fantasy is thinking TW has any chance to deny the air game. Planner for porcupine model US advocates doesn't assume TW has any chance to deny PRC air superiority, only hope they sink enough amphib to deny mass invasion, and barring that, make the ground/urban fighting long enough until US comes to assist.
If scenario is actually about denying TW nuke run, then US won't be assisting. Only other actor with intelligence on ROCA comparble to PRC is probably US. Given stakes, things will get stupid real fast. PLA airlift will be dropping in zones secured by persistent CAS and a buffer soaked in chemical warfare on a one way mission to destroy TW nuclear infra in the mountains if they have to. Maybe TW resists fine alone, and nukes a few mainland targets (assuming no duds, and no intercepts). Then what, PRC nukes living resistance off surface of island and then waltz in bunny suits to breech production sites.
TW trying to nuclearize is automatic invasion redline for a reason. It's not like PRC has an exact contingency plan, only they'll throw everything and the kitchen sink to make sure it doesn't happen.
E: Dang is going to badger me for engaging this thread too long. We'll just have to agree to disagree on whether PRC will be deterred by TW nukes.
Capturing the mainland won't help you at all in that case, and there's no way you would get them all. It would be a MAD situation, and that's all TW needs.
- state-of-the-art submarines. Anything else can't hope to evade the Chinese, and they probably have to be nuclear as well to ensure range and stealth
- submarine-launchable missiles (ballistic or cruise), with a lot of range since China can probably deny the sea immediately off the mainland.
- nukes compact and reliable enough for the missiles
This doesn’t make sense. The point of nukes is to say you have them so no one touches you. You become a prickly porcupine.
The only country that doesn’t follow this rule is Israel, but they just present it differently (“MAYBE I’m a prickly porcupine. Touch me and find out.”)
is not a credible deterrence. Snuggling a nuke will work maybe once, and that is not nearly enough to hit all assets Taiwan should be worried about. If the nukes work, it will strengthen China's resolve to dismantle any threat it perceives Taiwan to be. Even at the price of shooting every ship leaving the island for the mainland.
Even very plausible low thousands of artillery pieces can put out enough dakka to slag anything looking even remotely like an air defense radar or missile launchers.
And you're not putting your guns literally at the frontline - you need them more back so they don't get counterbatteried (or just bombed, which would be more likely in case of US involvement) instantly.
This is at best disputed, and alternative explanations have a great deal more supporting evidence.
Just maintaining their power.
And that gives them time to pursue things politicians from liberal democracies consider things of history.
The big problem of a Chinese invasion so is: the Taiwan straight. They have to get the invasion force across, that meens a lot of big, slow, fat transport vessels. Those are easily sunk, meaning not enough boots on the ground. Which leaves pounding Taiwan with missiles.
No one is crazy enough to go to war over it, and that might put Taiwan into panic mode.
Another is to isolate it politically and create a soft blockade around it.
A country in, maybe, panic mode is not conquered. And if said island is strategically important enough, yes, people will go to war over it. And if it isn't, there is no real point beyond symbolism to take it in the first place.
An invasion of Taiwan would probably effectively destroy globalisation, China exports would be sanctioned, China imports of energy and raw materials would be heavily disrupted (China's supply of fossil fuels is very vulnerable). It would be the most disruptive event to the world order since WW2.
The chip fabs are a line item among thousands on that bill.
The US attitude to world conflict now is vastly different to the views of 1941
Artillery would be huge, missiles are great but they're expensive and you run out quickly. Afghanistan/Iraq were already being compared to Vietnam, and while you don't see it on the news so much, most of the kills in those conflicts were with artillery.
Artillery is still, and for many reasons will be, a king. Shells are order of magnitude cheaper than rockets. They are smaller. Easier to manufacture. Missiles are nice if you want to destroy specific targets. Things that move or are so far away that artillery can't reach them.
Things change, organizations and people adapt. Not foreseeing these changes is not a failure.
Believing that throwing predictions at the wall, and only picking the ones that stick in hindsight, is a viable strategy is just plane wrong so.
Likely this was the biggest surprise to emerge. Even Georgia and Armenia did not foreshadow the scale and slogmatch reality of Ukraine eh. The need for stockpiles is real.
> Artillery is still, and for many reasons will be, a king. Shells are order of magnitude cheaper than rockets. They are smaller. Easier to manufacture.
This statement is incomplete without also referencing drones. See for example: https://roguesystemsrecon.substack.com/p/drone-war-evolution...
> That's just not going to happen.
Check out Urgent Operational Requirements [0] in Op HERRICK (UK name for ops in Afghanistan). These led to multiple entirely new platforms, systems and capabilities being developed and deployed in weeks and months, e.g. physical and electronic countermeasures for the rapidly evolving IED threat. The downside is increased logistics / supply-chain burden because you have additional ad-hoc support contracts and staff, in and out of theatre.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urgent_Operational_Requirement
If your defenses are just amazing, and you take out one every three seconds, you're still going to run out of time. You're on the right track with "firm kill" DEWS though. Gotta be a little careful with those, because the engagement range for DEWS is always going to be short, due to attenuation, mist/fog/spray, dust, and good old line of sight. Also, it's quite surprising how little it takes to shield electronics from even nuke-class EMP. But the short engagement range means you have even less time.
The weapons are faster and more lethal now, but similar tactics would probably still work to an extent. The Navy has run some computer simulations but they've never done an all-up fleet exercise of a realistic saturation attack that requires emptying the magazines. So, no one really knows for sure how well the defenses would hold up. There would probably be some nasty surprises.
If a conflict with Russia or China breaks out, I think the first thing that happens is aircraft carriers are going to immediately become obsoleted by antiship missiles as quickly as battleships were obsoleted by air attacks in WWII. Probably even more quickly.
I sure hope I'm wrong. And even more than that I hope we never find out.
On paper US anti missile intercepts has been performing well in UKR and Red Sea, but consider the actual numbers. In UKR, 6 Kinzhals, alleged moving at shit tier mach ~3 speed end up damaging a patriot. In Red Sea, shit tier Houthi/Iranian cruise (subsonic) / ballistics, launched in even less coordinated salvos, realistically singles since description of multi missile attacks report these events unfold over matter of hours. Majority intercepted, but few still slip through to hit ships protected by flight IIA/III upgraded DDGs. IMO questionable how well a stacked CSG performs against high end AShMs (Teixeira leak allege US clocked PRC DF27 tests at mach 8+).
That's before considering replenishment fleet, of which US has only 11 fast supply class that can keep up with carrier groups, would also be targetted, leaving non nuclear CSG escorts single deployment assets with days of endurance in high tempo operations. And then what does the carrier do? Operate undefended? Said supply ships would almost be hard not to sink since they have to spend hours restocking in port, in theatre.
I think there's a good reason Navy isn't being recapitalized properly, and it's more than redtape. IMO people behind the scenes also sees the writing on the wall for large surface ships.
Considering this and Taiwan, it's funny that Congress isn't pushing for more SSGNs and accelerating the SSN(X) program.
VS 100+ B21s with less labour and per unit cost that can deliver around the clock, probably difficult to shoot down unless they're parked in hardened hanger or their midair tanking (if needed) gets degraded, but losing one is a couple pilots and 1/10th the cost.
E.g. cutting off oil...not like that has ever led to unexpected outcomes (perl harbor).
Countries generally react to mitigate your actions. What are some of the potential reactions you could see if the PRC perceived that as an existential threat?
And it's not enough, at least for the next ~decade. The ocean supply route is to large and too strung out for a navy lesser than the USN to defend.
That was fine strategy 10 years ago when he wrote Accidental Superpower / pre PLA modernization. This is the part where we circle back to developing PRC conventional hypersonics and potential to overwhelm US missile defense, and PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional) global strike which they've been telegraphing development for years. A threat vector US planners are slowly acknowledging. Which means PRC can proportionally deny US energy by hitting critical infra like oil/LNG refineries, huge stationary targets with simple kill chain. Fortress America + shale autarky doesn't mean anything if you can't protect energy security (and by connection of fossil industrial inputs, food security), which is PRC's reverse UNO for the the entire blockading PRC oil strategy, except when applied to US, straight to extraction chain because can't blockade US from US. So next best proportional (even if escalatory thing) is just to make US as vunerable as PRC. All the resources in US sovereign soil is no good if they can't be extracted and made useful to sustain US hegemony. Saudi equipped US hardware learned that lesson when Houthis hit their refineries. Sure Us isn't incompetent like Saudi, but PRC isn't Houthis either, unless you think they actually replaced rocket fuel with water, and used said fuel for hotpot.
Zeihan of skips over the politics in geoPOLITICS when convenient, i.e. US has most waterways, but PRC actually engineered significantly more and uses more internal waterways. US has deep coasts, but PRC dredged her to make way for half of worlds top 10 ports, the other half doesn't contain US. PRC has bad demographics, except PRC has the ideal demographics for geopolitical competition in the timelines relevant to us - set to produce and coordinate more high skilled talent in next 30 years (the cohorts that actually build national power) than US is projected increase population from all sources total, AND declining population of non productive peoples (old, unskilled, unproductive) aka less import dependencies. Declining cohort also has high home ownership and savings rate because frankly they don't expect big welfare net like west. Next 30 years, PRC swapping 50 million STEM talent (already born) with tier1 city earning potential for 100m farmers, migrant workers etc (old -> uneducated die first) that earn 1/10 that. IMO PRC demographic trend (if scrutinized beyond naive pyramid reading) is more pros than cons, especially considering PRC geographic/resource constraint - they don't need 3x more people than the US where only 1x can marginally compete with US and 2x are excess mouths to feed. Better off long term with 2x US population that PRC soil can sustain, where 1.5x can out compete US.
Eitherway the point is frequently politics in geopolitics matter more.
Fortress America has always been part geographic fortress and part artificial, technologic fortress. The entire reason US built/maintains the largest high tech expeditionary military is basically to stay on the front doors of any potential adversaries so they can't get close to CONUS. Let's not forget Continental Navy couldn't hold against out British blockade during revolutionary war without French Navy entering picture. CONUS was vunerable with 1800s tech, it's the technology (politics) part that made fortress america and it's the technology (military) that ensure two oceans are moats. High end missiles circumvents that, hence US unlikely to take out PRC without PRC taking out US unless US engages PRC directly. That's without considering PRC can drag US to fight near PRC home court by hitting JP/SKR/PH to trigger security obligation. Those are island with much worse self sufficiency that'll collapse in 2 months that US is treaty bound to defend. The TLDR is entire Malacca delima / SLOC blockade strategy operates on logic from 10 years ago when US can unilaterally fuck PRC at no _existential_ cost to herself (CONUS), once that logic breaks, blockade becomes unlikely / suicide pact. Question then is what will US/PRC commit suicide over.
PRC increasingly able to strike CONUS at scale
from mainland - PRC's version of prompt (conventional)
global strike which they've been telegraphing development
for years.
How does this not trigger MAD?
The US has no way of knowing if the incoming missiles are conventional or nukes. Would the US wait for the missiles to land to figure out if they're nukes or not? Would the US not simply launch a retaliatory (presumably nuclear) counter-strike while China's initial missiles are en route?
I honestly don't understand what value striking the CONUS would have for China. Seems like it would just instantly trigger MAD.
For the actual process, I imagine it's going to be very communicated/coordinated affair to pace escalation. PRC: you stopped 40% of our energy imports, we're going to degrade 40% of your domestic energy infra if you don't stop in name of proportionality. First maybe via cyber, then via kinetic strikes, with warning ahead on list of facilities that are potential targets so they can evacuated ahead of time. Start with offshore rigs, then escalate to territorial targets. Launching X missiles at Y time at Z targets. US can either lift blockade, withdraw from PRC civil war, escalate to total war, or trigger MAD and both go back to stone age. Ideally this game theory gets played before hand, and there's no blockade or US intervention in first place - ability to hit CONUS is as much a deterrence function. But TLDR is PRC isn't going to sit back and take hits if they can dish hits as well. Meanwhile US expeditionary/military game theory has been based on fighting adversaries who can't really hit back. Which is why PRC is pouring so much resources into platforms that can.
No weapon is beyond reach in war, or indestructible. And still, they have their use cases.
but an aircraft carrier can still project force at a distance
It's ~130 ship-launched guided missiles and ~75 fighter jets. They will not be operating at a stand-off distance relative to the reach of cruise and ballistic missiles launched from Chinese homeland. And the planes are not going to be able to take off and land if the carrier is executing evasive maneuvers because of missile attack.
If you were China, how would you tackle that? Is there any reason you wouldn't just send several waves of several hundred missiles their way?
Carrier strike groups are still useful. 130 missiles and 75 jets is plenty to dissaude most countries on earth. Just not the biggest ones, if they have committed to waging a full-scale war against you.
China would definitely not emerge unscathed. The CSG would be augmented with a lot of longer range stuff such as US fighters/bombers/missiles/subs launched from elsewhere. But I mean, I think the CSG gets effectively deleted in the first few hours of war. Hope I'm wrong.
So I don't think you're wrong, and I think we've already found out.
A submarine with a nuclear torpedo could take out an entire carrier group.
Nuclear submarines are apparently still hard to detect underwater; but once someone figures out how to detect them, they'll be obsolete.
I think the Senior Service may be doomed.
For any technological advance, the counter technology adapts, so it's not very common for something to actually become obsolete.
Apparently they're modified jet-skis with cheap FPV navigation equipment.
- A peer/neer-peer adversary can presumably throw a very large number of simultaneous drones at a USN vessel. I don't know how feasible it is rustle up 10 or 100 reliable simultaneous human suicide bombers.
- The jet ski drones can surely be physically smaller than a speedboat that needs to hold a human
- The jet skis can trade some of that size back and armor themselves against CIWS etc in ways that would be less practical for a suicide boat
I don't think I'd be so worried about them surviving hits from the CIWS. On the open ocean I'd be worried about the possibility of encountering so many drones that the CIWS runs out of ammunition. In a port, I'd be worried about the practicality of using the CIWS at all, but I think the Navy can adapt.
The main thing is that the Navy were sort of deemphasizing stuff like the Phalanx on their recent ship designs, and this is the second time the past couple of weeks that I've read something suggesting they'll probably need to reverse that trend.
I still also think the front of a "jetski" drone could probably be hardened to withstand a certain amount of 20×102mm fire but, I am guessing and don't know how to determine how feasible that might be.
I think aircraft carriers are already obsolete, not due to antiship missiles but due to small, quiet diesel subs.
Pretty much any NATO navy operating these has stories from NATO exercises where their small, unimpressive sub managed to score hits on a carrier.
This isn't new. Around two decades ago, the US felt the need to ask Sweden to loan them their HSMS Gotland to learn how to do something about them.
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/think-us-navy-aircraf...
And then like you said, the engagement range is also going to be quite short - meaning all of this becomes just that exponentially more difficult.
I think the idea of DEW is that you're not trying to literally melt the thing out of the sky, you're trying to penetrate it electrically and scramble something. To that end a very sharp pulse (chirped pulse) is the better approach as then you're more likely to cause damage once you exceed the capacity of (for example) the input isolators on the radar antenna to divert excess energy away from the very sensitive amplifier. Or, to put it a simpler way, you're trying to make sparks jump across gaps.
this protects from lasers, but also makes it glaringly obvious to EW and radar systems.
I did speak to a few missile manufacturers facing the same thing, including DOD's lack of urgency, which I interpret as Congress' lack of urgency. In the nightmare situation of a hot war in the Pacific, that attitude would change on a dime, and I still think Operation Warp Speed is the primary example of how we would respond to direct threats. Similar to COVID, I would much rather deter such a situation with bold action now than wait until we're certain we'll need them, which will cost many more lives.
And I've heard dubious things on Replicator too, but thankfully, smart defense private money is going to truly disruptive dual-use tech that is autonomous, resilient, and ultimately attritable. That combination is the best answer for democratic countries that care about soldiers' lives vs. authoritarians sending human waves.
[0] I keep my sanity by staying grounded in lightweight markup and developer tools - there's really nothing you do in the Big XML world that you can't do in vanilla Asciidoc on standard tooling.
[1] Real hard for me to not put that acronym in quotes. The IETM as a thing is a bit of an open joke. Each IETM implementation is basically a completely nonstandard, homebrewed content browser. Think if you went back in time to Ted Nelson's Xanadu, and then just had every single hardware manufacturer go absolutely nuts making their own idea of what that means. Then you make up "IETM Levels" of capability defined by total non-sequiturs.
We'll probably burn through the RAM/SM inventory in weeks . . but not before leaving a whole bunch of ships with empty magazines, because they can't UNREP top off their VLSs. We're just now getting a taste of this problem in the Gulf of Aden, and that's in an AoR surrounded by safe/friendly ports, versus a bunch of Iranian second stringers.
This is the core reason for the "Replicator" initiative in DoD, but, Pentagon being the Pentagon, their "replicator" systems are on course for being too expensive by orders of magnitude. They need to get focused on cheap commodity DEWS, and do it yesterday; the fact that a teenage youtuber[2] hacked up a kilowatt-class DEWS capable of burning 2-3mm steel at 200m says to me - emphatically - that there is ZERO reason to not have these things ALL OVER THE DAMN PLACE. Having air defense missiles and light strike also being built on commodity would also be dandy, but harder, and also not as critical as getting mass defensive DEWS CIWS up.
[0] DoD procurement and business process is . . it's something else. I'm not sure I can communicate it to outsiders. Fighting inertia inside of defense organizations has basically turned into my career focus, although in a tiny little bubble of technical content production, and at the cost of chopping a zero off my salary. I think, at the end of the day, I'm just tired of twenty million dollar PDF files - that are also late, and wrong.
[1] I'm including armed UAS in this. They're basically missiles built on dual use chassis - the more fight you fit into commodity UAS, you get exponential returns. China's close link with their dual use industry gives them a depressing advantage here, but that might be a double edge sword in a EW-heavy AoR.
[2] https://youtu.be/xNmbvaUzC8Q?si=FZcAwGRTLjyNlrQu