Perhaps just me, but do these carriers just scream suck or what?
They only need to look good so Westerners will go “Waaaaaaaaa. They are our military equals. Let’s be nicer to them.” Or whatever dumb shit the CCP thinks they mean. Go ahead. take them for a spin. Man up. Go take over some tiny island in Indonesia ; go rule a lagoon somewhere.
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We now know their Achilles heel anyway. One man with the flying aids and they is fucked.
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The propaganda value of sinking a PLAN carrier would be immense. Even if Japan and the United States do not outright join the conflict their subs will be hunting for those things to pick off.
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I doubt anyone would appreciate risking their only sons on an operation that’s far from guaranteed. Not to mention, why even bother with the east coast? Can’t land troops there and you can’t establish a dock there without taking existing ones. You need a dock for an invasion to work. Not to mention carriers in the East is very vulnerable.
It took the US considerable loss to take Okinawa, and that’s far easier to take than Taiwan.
Why does China need a carrier? They can fly across the ‘Straight’. A carrier can be sunk!
And like they state combat from the Pacific side, they can be attacked by a US fleet from beyond.
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Yea I said carrier blockade won’t work, it will be attacked on the pacific side. Also the central mountain range has unpredictable air and weather so it may be dangerous to fly over that.
Okinawa was defended by Japanese. They were not easy to take.
We can only speculate about how easy the Taiwanese would be.
The US would have a bunch of nuclear subs and drones swarming that sucker. Even Taiwan could target it.
If Taiwan had the same resolve, China will have an extremely hard time.
Been revisiting Shan Ganshan recently, which is close to where I work, and to Tainan AFB.
When I first went there, maybe…oh…10 years ago, it was quite militarised, A base near the top had a couple of big steel-doored bunkers and usually had some M40-something Vietnam era “duster” flak tanks parked up. There is a network of roads around the mountain connecting a dispersal of concrete revetted firing positions. My guess was this was for point-defence of the AFB. This kit was obsolete even during the Vietnam conflict, but a 40mm shell is still a 40mm shell.
They may also have had some AA missiles in the bunkers but I never saw any.
All the bases (apart from the radar station at the top, which may have a civilian ATC role) are now abandoned, and there are early indications of property developer ground works. Nice little earner for somebody. Good firing position = premium view.
Could be they have given up on fixed-wing aircraft.(though there is still a fair bit of expensive activity at the AFB) which perhaps would make sense, and tends to be confirmed by the apparent lack of any realistic dispersal practice, but I don’t see much evidence here of “resolve”.
Conversations with conscript students ditto.
Compare and contrast with Switzerland, under no immediate threat, and an armed camp.
You don’t use a nuclear sub to take out a carrier. Nuclear subs are meant to be kept hidden.
You would use attack subs.
Yeah but what would Trump use?
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Depends what you mean by “nuclear”. All US subs are nuclear-powered, and all are probably nuclear armed.
If you mean ICBM sub, then I’d think you’d be correct, but nobody said that.
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Dunno.
Is it crappier than Hermes, which was too crappy for the Australians?
Crappy stuff can still get the job done, bearing in mind that its a classically crappy job.