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China

ponderingturtle said:
And clearly there is nothing to see here, nope nothing at all, those aircraft carriers could be for anything.
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:dl:

That piece of junk reminds me of the "banana-boat" converted carriers my old man served on in WWII - not fit for purpose. I guess that at least it's not coal-powered like its sister, the Admiral Kuznetsov.

It really shows what a bunch of twats Xi and his pals are - a vessel that's excellent at bullying little guys, like Vietnam and Philippines, but they may as well have rowboats if they want to scare Japan & Taiwan, who have a friend with somewhat better materiel.
 
The Atheist said:
: dl :

That piece of junk reminds me of the "banana-boat" converted carriers my old man served on in WWII - not fit for purpose. I guess that at least it's not coal-powered like its sister, the Admiral Kuznetsov.

It really shows what a bunch of twats Xi and his pals are - a vessel that's excellent at bullying little guys, like Vietnam and Philippines, but they may as well have rowboats if they want to scare Japan & Taiwan, who have a friend with somewhat better materiel.
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I wouldn't laugh too hard. This is all practice for China. They're playing catch up on a hundred years of carrier ops experience. Getting their hands on a recent gen carrier and improving it is a huge step forward in capability and institutional knowledge.

The Chinese aren't stupid. They know the Kuz isn't adequate to the task they have in mind. But they also understand that it's a valuable stepping stone to the next goal: Real fleet carriers, capable of contesting the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan.

This current attempt is a significant and serious milestone on the road from nothing at all to operational fleet carriers. If nothing else, it allows their air wings to start practicing carrier ops from a real working carrier.

Given that the Aussies have sod all in the way of carriers, and couldn't contest an Emu's fart outside of their island air space, maybe laughing isn't in order.
 
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theprestige said:
Given that the Aussies have sod all in the way of carriers, and couldn't contest an Emu's fart outside of their island air space, maybe laughing isn't in order.
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Oh, I'd be laughing all the harder if Aussie were involved. We'd definitely side with China in a Sino-Ockeran War.
 
dudalb said:
Global Times is China's version of "Russia Today" a pure propaganda paper, and anything in it needs to be taken with a ton of salt.
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Got it china's navy and naval build up is a total fiction and not something that actually exists and anyone who suggests otherwise is clearly on the side of the chinese.
 
theprestige said:
I wouldn't laugh too hard. This is all practice for China. They're playing catch up on a hundred years of carrier ops experience. Getting their hands on a recent gen carrier and improving it is a huge step forward in capability and institutional knowledge.

The Chinese aren't stupid. They know the Kuz isn't adequate to the task they have in mind. But they also understand that it's a valuable stepping stone to the next goal: Real fleet carriers, capable of contesting the South China Sea and the Sea of Japan.

This current attempt is a significant and serious milestone on the road from nothing at all to operational fleet carriers. If nothing else, it allows their air wings to start practicing carrier ops from a real working carrier.

Given that the Aussies have sod all in the way of carriers, and couldn't contest an Emu's fart outside of their island air space, maybe laughing isn't in order.
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I don't like or trust the Chinese Government, but I am not going to get all paranoid about them either. I think China is a long ways off from fielding a Navy to compete with the US. I think their carriers are more a propaganda/political muscle thing then a attempt to build a blue water navy.

I think we are a long,long ways off from having to plan for Coral Sea 2 to stop CHina from invading Australia...

And what is it with those on the Right? They can't live without an Enemy to fight.
 
dudalb said:
I don't like or trust the Chinese Government, but I am not going to get all paranoid about them either. I think China is a long ways off from fielding a Navy to compete with the US. I think their carriers are more a propaganda/political muscle thing then a attempt to build a blue water navy.

I think we are a long,long ways off from having to plan for Coral Sea 2 to stop CHina from invading Australia...

And what is it with those on the Right? They can't live without an Enemy to fight.
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The point is China is working towards that goal, and making steady progress.

And I'm not looking for an enemy to fight. But I think China's behavior clearly puts them in the "hope for the best, prepare for the worst" bucket.

And naval build up is a multi-decade process. If there's going to be investment in a counterbalance to Chinese naval power in the region, it has to be decided on early enough to make a difference. China's investing in naval power right now. Two or three decades from now, we might wish we'd invested in parallel, rather than waiting to see if it would turn out okay if we didn't.
 
dudalb said:
I think their carriers are more a propaganda/political muscle thing then a attempt to build a blue water navy.
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Holy crap, we agree on something!

I'll break out the Veuve Cliquot.

dudalb said:
Your how ultra cynical I Don't like Anybody But Kiwis shtick has gotten old.
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You missed the point on that one - it was a joke aimed at someone thinking I was in Australia.

Mate, if there are two countries in the world that will always stick together, it's NZ and Aussie.
 
The Atheist said:
That piece of junk reminds me of the "banana-boat" converted carriers my old man served on in WWII - not fit for purpose. I guess that at least it's not coal-powered like its sister, the Admiral Kuznetsov.

It really shows what a bunch of twats Xi and his pals are - a vessel that's excellent at bullying little guys, like Vietnam and Philippines, but they may as well have rowboats if they want to scare Japan & Taiwan, who have a friend with somewhat better materiel.
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The other issue the Chinese has completely missed that the United States and Russia have vastly different views on how Aircraft Carriers fit into their Navys.

Okay so a United States Carrier will go out with 6-10ish other ships. Usually a cruiser, a couple of destroyers, maybe a sub, a supply ship, a few other heres and theres.

The main striking force of an American Carrier Battlegroup is the planes. You've basically got a fairly robust entire air force you can park off someone's coast. The other ships there are fully capable off adding with strikes (you've probably got several hundred Tomahawks at your disposal for instance) but in general they are there to protect the Carrier.

So if you're an being attack by an American Aircraft Carrier Battlegroup, odds are good what's coming your way is a squadron of F/A-18s.

Russia does it differently. Russia Naval Aircraft don't have anywhere near the strike range of American ones. If a Russian Naval Battlegroup is fighting you, odds are missiles, not planes are coming your way. And the Carrier is more there to provide aircover to protect the missile ships.

Now of course both are full of ships with some level of versatility so variations happen, Americans are perfectly capable of missile stripes and Russians are perfectly capable of Naval airstrikes, but the groups are focused differently.

China buys/builds a Russian style aircraft carrier which is best suited to protecting large missile ships it doesn't have.
 
JoeMorgue said:
China buys/builds a Russian style aircraft carrier which is best suited to protecting large missile ships it doesn't have.
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Or need. They just build islands to house the missiles.

It's pretty plain the Chinese aircraft carrier/s are there to show how clever they are instead of any serious purpose. They've only just started taking off and landing.
 
The Atheist said:
Will not happen.

Even Xi isn't mad enough to try that - they will continue to apply renminbi diplomacy and nothing more.
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It won't happen soon.

But China is actively working to change conditions so that China could take it by force. They might never reach that stage, but they very much want to. And it will take active efforts by the west to counter China on this score. It's entirely possible that we could sleepwalk into China invading Taiwan a few decades from now.
 
Big issue for China is that despite relaxing their one child policy and allowing people to have two its made no difference to birth rates, their response? Let people have three children! Much as we like to whine about it in the west we can offset our aging population through immigration, that's not on the cards for China.
 
Garrison said:
Big issue for China is that despite relaxing their one child policy and allowing people to have two its made no difference to birth rates, their response? Let people have three children! Much as we like to whine about it in the west we can offset our aging population through immigration, that's not on the cards for China.
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That dropping population is also going to exacerbate the ghost cities problem. The property in those cities was often bought as an investment, with the idea that it will be worth something in the future. So the fact that the ghost cities aren't populated now isn't really the problem. But with a shrinking population, they may never be. And given the shoddy construction quality of many of them, they may not be fit for habitation even if people want to move there.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XopSDJq6w8E
 
The Atheist said:
Or need. They just build islands to house the missiles.

It's pretty plain the Chinese aircraft carrier/s are there to show how clever they are instead of any serious purpose. They've only just started taking off and landing.
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Establishing that they are clever enough to build aircraft carriers and begin practicing carrier ops seems like a pretty serious purpose already.
 
theprestige said:
Establishing that they are clever enough to build aircraft carriers and begin practicing carrier ops seems like a pretty serious purpose already.
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Probably impresses the hell out of people like Duterte, while instilling fear into Taiwan, so regionally, it probably works quite well.
 
The Atheist said:
Probably impresses the hell out of people like Duterte, while instilling fear into Taiwan, so regionally, it probably works quite well.
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No, I get it. I really do. If China is actually on course to build a blue water navy, with a mix of carrier groups and fixed outposts to project power around the south China sea, that would tend to legitimize the current US policy of Pax Americana Navalis, and continued investment there.

Since the Pax Americana is illegitimate and offensive to reasonable people all around the Pacific Rim, it necessarily follows that China isn't actually making real progress in that direction.
 
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