China is rebelling

[zemtex]

China rebuilt an old ukrainian ship into their first aircraft carrier. It is not a very good aircraft carrier, but anything is better than nothing. This is considered a rebellious act toward western civilizations. Now that China can move forces of air power around, something they couldnt do before, it may be considered rebellious.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/aug/1/china-begins-to-build-its-own-aircraft-carrier/?page=all

[dedndave]

that is not a good sign
if US national security were my responsibility, this would make me very paranoid

aircraft carriers and submarines are tools that are meant for non-nuclear trans-oceanic warfare
(you don't really need either of these for a nuclear attack, although they may also be used that way)
i mean, who else would they have in mind as a target ? Chile ? Brazil ? Canada ?
this is clearly aimed at us

our economy is in trouble, which makes us vulnerable
they ramp up with a tool like this - makes me very suspicious

[anunitu]

Maybe they are coming to foreclose on us :naughty:

[Bill Cravener]

Maybe they are coming to foreclose on us :naughty:

Yep, that would be more likely anunitu.

[dedndave]

you think we're unhappy now...
wait until all our tax dollars go to Beijing

[zemtex]

Despite the fact that china is pursuing the use of aircraft carriers, they have ONE. It doesn't really post any threat, they will not get a nuclear powered until 2020.

The u.s have had a total of 67 aircraft carriers, great britain have had 40. I think that China is way behind, this is their first one and it wasn't even intended to be used as an aircraft carrier.

I think that this can be the result of the north vs south korean war incident and the military exercise with the use of aircraft carriers. I think that China needs to be more active there too with carriers.

[shuttlebug]

No. They're bringing 50,000 more peasents to work on the private Chinese collectives being built in the state of idaho.

[baltoro]

We need to send in a spy to check it out. :eek
Unfortunately, it'll be a suicide mission,...I'm pretty we don't have any chinese assembly programmers here at the MASM forum,...

[hutch--]

The next superpower war if it ever happens will be nuclear (nookela if your from Texas) and aircraft carriers will not matter as they are redundant in modern warfare. A great big floating target that cannot be defended against anti-shipping missiles. Modern warfare currently is a mixture of space technology and submarine technology using the more recent very high speed surface to surface missiles. The US has them, Russia has them, China has them and a number of other places like Iran have them and anything on the surface is a sitting duck.

The only use for old junk like aircraft carriers is limited warfare against 2nd and 3rd world targets that don't have modern military hardware to defend themselves. Unless the Tea Party find a way to test out the "First Strike" capacity, I seriously doubt that there will be a superpower war any time soon as its clear there will be no winners. 60s era Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) is our friend here.  :bg

[anunitu]

This kinda makes a lot of things redundant Hutch.
If they get it working,they can hit anywhere in under an hour.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1108/11htv2b/

Quote from above link.
"A hypersonic glider launched Thursday by the U.S. military was lost in flight, the second straight mishap crippling the Pentagon's desire to develop a strategic weapon to deliver conventional munitions anywhere in the world in less than an hour."

[Gunner]

I bet all the politicians are regretting laughing at Regan and his Star Wars idea...  What do they care really till something is too late...  In this day and age they want to cut military spending.... a shame...  I think I will start learning Chinese or whatever they speak in Iran.

[dedndave]

i seem to recall bush trying to revive that program - or something similar
it failed miserably - a waste of a lot of money

[zemtex]

hutch: Anti ship missiles have very limited range compared to inland attack missiles. All ships in a task force is protected by gat guns which can spray down most "normal" missiles. Its very fast and responsive, each ship have them. But normally they would use stealth bombers and tomahawk to take out any missile bases before they put in such expensive ships. There are u.s bases all over the world and they can fire at any target at any time, response time is down to minutes. Aircraft carriers IS a nuclear platform, it carries nuclear bombs (not missiles), so the next nuclear war will definitely be carrier based. (as well as missile based)

hutch, the most important thing about carriers is not so much about a next world war, the important use of them is that the larger your economy the greater need is to have them. China is getting a better economy and apparently they need them too.

anunitu: I read about that yesterday.

[FORTRANS]

Hi,

   China has territorial disputs with Taiwan, Japan, and Vietnam.
And economic and political differences with India.  They are
the ones that should worry about a Chinese aircraft carrier.
The U.S. should worry about the massive number of missiles
China has if it wants to worry about an armed conflict at all.

Phtt,

Steve N.

[hutch--]

zemtex,

Your technology is out of date, try 2500km range.

http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_generic.jsp?channel=awst&id=news/awst/2011/07/18/AW_07_18_2011_p24-347899.xml

YouTube Iranian anti-shipping missile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehd0dmwCcUc

It gets worse,

http://www.metafilter.com/88559/The-Russian-antiship-missile-we-have-no-defense-against

For the last 30 years or so both the US and the Russians have had nuclear submarines that are armed with nuclear missiles that patrol each others borders, aircraft carriers are useless against this type of attack from either direction yet they are an easy target for any of the advanced anti-shipping missiles deployed by the various superpowers. Aircraft carriers may be useful to attack 2nd and 3rd world countries like Iraq or Afghanistan but are a free kick for any advanced military power.

Like battleships, aircraft carriers are a thing of the past, i would imagine that the Chinese rebuilding an old Soviet era carrier is more to do with a status symbol than any real military worth.