31–40 of 47 posts
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I stand corrected. Don't aircraft carriers have pretty good missile defence systems, though?
No. They have effectively none.
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There would be records of the radar track in the computers of the Aegis cruisers in the task force. There may well be evidence of the launch captured by satellites. ELINT is very powerful, and the US intelligence agencies have been at this game since before WWII. Their sneakiness boggles the mind! They were using signals bounced off of the moon to spy on Soviet equipment, and disguised the whole thing as radio astron…
(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines?) Nukes. If I were the US, I'd simply make it an official matter of policy that any attack from a nuclear power would result in an immediate nuclear response, the logic being that once two nuclear powers are at war it's probably going to turn nuclear eventually, so you might as well make the first strike.
There will never be a hot war between US and China for so long as nuclear weapons have no effective defense. Nuclear weapons are probably the single biggest enabler of peace on the planet.
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(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines?) Nukes. If I were the US, I'd simply make it an official matter of policy that any attack from a nuclear power would result in an immediate nuclear response, the logic being that once two nuclear powers are at war it's probably going to turn nuclear eventually, so you might as well make the first strike.
Please tell me you are joking. Some of us spent our entire youth afraid of nuclear annihilation 24/7. We've been out of that for some time now, but I don't think anyone wants to send the world back to that point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
(Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines?) Nukes. If I were the US, I'd simply make it an official matter of policy that any attack from a nuclear power would result in an immediate nuclear response, the logic being that once two nuclear powers are at war it's probably going to turn nuclear eventually, so you might as well make the first strike.
The others may mock you, but you are in fact correct as to why it is impossible for two nuclear-armed foes to fight directly. There will never be a hot war between US and China for so long as nuclear weapons have no effective defense. Nuclear weapons are probably the single biggest enabler of peace on the planet.
I beg to differ. First, see India v. Pakistan as a direct counter to your "impossible" statement.
Second, as the example shows, the line you draw regarding using nukes does not extend all the way down to the rifleman. It's entirely possible to start a conventional and/or localized war with the understanding that you intend to win and therefore do not have the need to use your nukes.
You're making the major mistake though of assuming your enemy is a rational actor, a la the cold war. Russia is a rational actor. So is China. Even India.
In Pakistan however, only a minority are rational actors. Should a change in government occur that is pro-Taliban, you now have a nation of irrational actors with nuclear weapons.
MAD falls apart at this point. The fear of death means little to the Muslim extremist, and a man that isn't scared does highly irrational things, like nuke a civilian target.
All it takes is one, and then all bets are off.
Blah blah blah. 'I'm a Navy shill and let me tell you, China's going to kill us all within a very implausibly short-time if we don't shovel billions into cool new ships & weapons. We must eliminate the carrier gap!' Haven't we heard this story before? And here I was hoping for an interesting analysis of the Iran wargames and the dismal results for the carrier groups, but all I got was let's build a bigger bluewater f…
I'd put more resources into cruise missiles launched from submarines and small missile carrying craft with stealth technology.
Out of every $100 spent on national defense worldwide , $40–$50 are spent by the United States. About 30% of the US Federal budget is military spending, and about 13% is paying interest on money we borrowed for previous military spending.¹ Any hypothetical war that the US couldn’t win unless it spends even more coin on military hardware is not a hypothetical war that the US should be hypothetically fighting in the fi…
What the US gets for that money tho' is a vast amount of tech that eventually ends up with the general public. I have two GPSs on me at the moment. Which is ridiculous but hey, they're so cheap, why not stick one in every electronic device?! There's a reason that all that comes out of the US. The EU as a whole spends about half what the US does on defence and ends up with about 10% of the capability. Hmm.
(E.g. during the Second World War a lot of new technology came out of the military, too. But that was only to expect, since all resources went into the military.)
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Please tell me you are joking. Some of us spent our entire youth afraid of nuclear annihilation 24/7. We've been out of that for some time now, but I don't think anyone wants to send the world back to that point.
Fear of nuclear annihilation is why there hasn't been a war. Nuclear weapons = peace. Not a happy peace, but infinitely better than either no nukes or a single side having nukes.
Modern Carriers can't fit through the Panama Canal and I am sure they would be fine going around the tip of South America.
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I stand corrected. Don't aircraft carriers have pretty good missile defence systems, though?
No. They have effectively none.