Chinese Naval Might

[Patroklos]

The OP explains that the Chinese are expanding their shipbuilding abilities. You do realize that countries are able to operate more than one drydock at a time, right?

So now we have imaginary pipelines and imaginary drydocks, awesome

It takes years to build dry docks. So now not only are they going to accomplish the impossible by building all those hulls in a decade (peer designs that don't exist, btw), they are going to build drydocks and then all those hulls in a decade! Oh glorious people's revolution, their will is unbreakable!

Seriously, you guys are being absurd. China's naval might will continue to increase but it is simply not within their capability to accomplish what the OP suggests. I expect China will finally get the SSBN fleet up to the eight boats they originally wanted this next decade (40 years late) and very well may have a single home grown carrier hull launched (but not operational) as well.

There surface fleet will continue its development. If you look at their latest DDG designs you will see they are not creating large class runs, probably because they know their designs are currently hopelessly outclassed and instead are going with small runs with continual improvement between them. They are making progress, but they are pretty much stuck at 1980 US tech at the moment, the introduction of phased arrays is significant though.

[David Floyd]

Also, anyone can, eventually, build hulls. That isn't tough, relatively speaking.

The tough part is training officers and command those ships, developing doctrine to operate those ships, supplying those ships at sea, and, you know, the sort of thing that the United States basically created during WW2 and absolutely ****ing perfected since.

Give China 10 CVNs tomorrow - hell, give them 20 - and I guarantee the US Pacific Fleet would still make short work of them.

[Drake Tungsten]

It's like the two of you think Tom Clancy novels are real and that we're living in one...

[David Floyd]

If only we were, we'd be so much better off

What would also be better would be if you could provide some facts.

[Drake Tungsten]

Why would I provide more facts to people who dismiss the previous facts as "imaginary"? Neither of you is worth my time.

[Patroklos]

Why would I provide more facts to people who dismiss the previous facts as "imaginary"? Neither of you is worth my time.

I agree, your time would be far better spent digging up a map that actually shows a pipeline to China.

It's like the two of you think Tom Clancy novels are real and that we're living in one...

Thats odd coming from someone whose position is based on fiction

[David Floyd]

Or, better yet, explaining why the US couldn't easily interdict pipelines that might be built to China, given the fact that neither India nor Russia wants to see a superpower China (hint: they've both fought multiple wars/border skirmishes against China since the 1960s).

[Patroklos]

We can just bomb them inside China itself. We would not be able to achieve air superioirty over the mainland in any relevant timeframe, but there is nothing China can do to completely ward off all strike warfare.

[Drake Tungsten]

We can just bomb them inside China itself.

I'm sure you have some Clancy-ish way to project American air power into Xinjiang.

[David Floyd]

Your smugness knows no bounds, even though it seems pretty irrelevant.

I mean, you know, even if Xinjian proved problematic, it's not as if every other point of the pipeline route(s) (which are imaginary at this point) will be unassailable.

Like, you know, at the source.

Dumbass.

[Patroklos]

I'm sure you have some Clancy-ish way to project American air power into Xinjiang.

We could project air power into the heart of the Soviet Union against defenses many times more robust than China's, why you think it is somehow outside our ability to put some terrain guided cruise missiles onto a completely indefensable, extremely large, and utterly immobile target anywhere in China is beyond me.

[Drake Tungsten]

I mean, you know, even if Xinjian proved problematic, it's not as if every other point of the pipeline route(s) (which are imaginary at this point) will be unassailable.

Like, you know, at the source.

So, your Clancy-ish way of solving the problem is to attack an uninvolved third nation? Yes, I'm sure that will go over well in the real world.

[BlackCat]

We can just bomb them inside China itself.

I'm sure you have some Clancy-ish way to project American air power into Xinjiang.

Nah, when they could do it in Iraq and Afghanistan, it's probably no problem to do it in interior china

[David Floyd]

Right, as if the source nation might have a vested interest in supported US interests vs. Chinese interests, without the US resorting to violence.

[Drake Tungsten]

Right, as if the source nation might have a vested interest in supported US interests vs. Chinese interests, without the US resorting to violence.

I can't even begin to decipher what that was supposed to mean...