Posted on 01/05/2012 4:53:26 AM PST by sukhoi-30mki
China Takes Aim at U.S. Naval Might .
The USS Gerald R. Ford was supposed to help secure another half century of American naval supremacy. The hulking aircraft carrier taking shape in a dry dock in Newport News, Va., is designed to carry a crew of 4,660 and a formidable arsenal of aircraft and weapons.
But an unforeseen problem cropped up between blueprint and expected delivery in 2015: China is building a new class of ballistic missiles designed to arc through the stratosphere and explode onto the deck of a U.S. carrier, killing sailors and crippling its flight deck.
Since 1945, the U.S. has ruled the waters of the western Pacific, thanks in large part to a fleet of 97,000-ton carriers—each one "4.5 acres of mobile, sovereign U.S. territory," as the Navy puts it. For nearly all of those years, China had little choice but to watch American vessels ply the waters off its coast with impunity.
Now China is engaged in a major military buildup. Part of its plan is to force U.S. carriers to stay farther away from its shores, Chinese military analysts say. So the U.S. is adjusting its own game plan. Without either nation saying so, both are quietly engaged in a tit-for-tat military-technology race. At stake is the balance of power in a corner of the seas that its growing rapidly in importance.
Pentagon officials are reluctant to talk publicly about potential conflict with China. Unlike the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Beijing isn't an explicit enemy. During a visit to China last month, Michele Flournoy, the U.S. undersecretary of defense for policy, told a top general in the People's Liberation Army that "the U.S. does not seek to contain China," and that "we do not view China as an adversary,
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(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
The worst mistake China could ever make would be launching an attack against one of our carriers. we could destroy them conventionally but I doubt that two nuclear super powers could engage each other openly for long before the conventional bombs were replaced by nuclear bombs. They know better than to open Pandora’s box.
The question that remains is how does one successfully acquire and lock a target that’s capable of maneuvering at 30 knots for an indefinite period of time, and do so with the precision necessary to ensure a killing hit with a conventionally tipped ballistic missile?
yes....if we had an ‘American’ president that is probably true....but with a Marxist POS in office. He would probably apologize for damaging the Chinese missile after it hit the Aircraft Carrier.
MIRVs, with terminal guidance.
MIRVs aided by emitters built into components in electronics installed on the ship (READ: Chinese ASICs and subcomponents)
The answer is to continue work on the upgraded Standard Missiles.
God bless Raytheon and the people who work there.
http://www.raytheon.com/capabilities/products/standard_missile/
Thanks!
Gunpowder was going to make war obsolete. How’d that work out?
Obviously it is possible to call China's bluff, and there is a very good chance that China would not take any real action (for the reasons you mentioned ...it would also have a lot to lose), but chances are that the USN would not make such a gambit. That is what China is relying on for the short-to-medium term. Build real capability to directly engage the USN in an (albeit) limited manner, in the hope that that will keep off the USN from the area. Hence the focus on asymmetrical capabilities geared towards the USN (the 'Assassins Mace' strategy). At the same time China has also been building up its conventional (non-asymmetrical) capabilities, in this case massive investment in submarine technology, AEGIS-esque destroyers, aircraft carriers, etc which will be geared at enforcing/protecting shipping lanes etc as well as any incidents in the Taiwanese Strait/South China Sea/India etc.
Oh, yes. Since the potential enemies of the USA could attack and kill our forces, we need to tuck our tails between our legs and make nice and they won’t hurt us!
recall that during his tenure Clinton sent 2 carriers in the area when some tension regarding Taiwan had come up ...it would be difficult to repeat that today).
Wasn’t it business as usual for George W. Bush while the Chinese held 24 American airmen hostage in 2001? After the US got them back, nothing changed with the special relationship.
Read: the money is necessary for the ACORN STATE.
It has long been recognized that an attack like that on our carriers from a sovereign nation will result in a nuclear response.
Unless, of course, if our President is Obama, in which case we would appologize for our carrier being in the way of thier missles.......
Brought to you by “free trade”.
Yes. Not a trivial task. Seems like you’d need real-time imaging from low-earth orbit as well as a secure tactical datalink to the weapon.
Then you have the risk of lofting a ballistic weapon between nuclear armed combattants. How is the side being targetted expected to react?
Finally, the sinking of a US aircraft carrier with all hands is very likely to draw an escalated response. Consider that the US has already taken that decision by the simple act of putting the carrier within range of those (theoretical) weapons in the first place.
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´Glad you feel safe with obummer about.
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