Chicom Flatop?

china's standing army is not designed to counter the u.s. - as the changes in its military doctrine of the past 10 years surely are - it's designed to counter the country's own population.

china's emphasis on space technology, and specifically those which take advantage of a well-known u.s. dependence on satellites, is what makes china's military "asymmetrical." meanwhile, china is also launching cyber-warfare attacks on nearly every important US government agency every second of every day - another aspect of its defense program that is considered asymmetric.

oops, btw i am NOT the john tk of heritage foundation, should anyone make that connection.

lol, thanks for clarifying John.

I dunno, I've heard the space argument beat into the ground. Cyberwar is a good example.

They really got hung up on the Rumsfeld transformation concept recently. Interesting, since that is turning out to be a bit of a failure in Iraq.

Guess it still works state v. state, if you've got our level of military tech.

Off subject but this recent US move towards legalizing counter-cyber warfare from our side is interesting. The article concentrates on the Jihadi's being countered but the 800lb gorilla in any Cyber battle field is China.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20070328/1a_lede28.art.htm

I cannot not imagine the magnitude of the civil liberties, legality, freedom speech, blah blah blah debate this opening publicly of Pandora’s box will reveal but either way it is a necessary skill set for the future that will be needed to counter what many others from Jihadi's to loan wolfs to China are already doing.

To quote AMD Hayward, "I'm sick and tired of hearing about the threat. Let US be the threat!"

I thought China's carrier was old news. They bought this thing off the Soviets in their waning days back in the early-90's. I think it sat in drydock somewhere for awhile while they figured out how to transfer it... hell, I once read an article that China was going to turn it into an amusement park. I guess they're finally dusting it off (or chipping the rust off rather) and trying to put it to sea. Good luck to them.

The Chinese expressed a keen interest in our naval aviation capabilities and operations in the mid-90's. Bullnav can probably provide more insight, but if I'm not mistaken, they even sent out several Chinese naval delegations to observe flight operations on several of our carriers.

The long and short of it is this... it took us the better part of 50 years (yes, a half century) to figure out carrier operations without killing ourselves (and it cost the lives of many fine naval aviators doing so). We still remain, to this day, the only Navy in the world that conducts carrier flight ops at night. And it's still dangerous. We still have accidents.

How long do you think it'll take the Chinese?

I think this one carrier will be meant more to counter our "interference" in China's internal problems (read Taiwan) on the once every five years or so someone decides to make it a crisis. Hell, aren't we due another Taiwan crisis any day now?

I was always under the assumption that Russia agree to sell China the carrier on the term that it will not be used operationally, that's why the amusement park cover story. I was thinking they will be using it as a testing platform to learn about how to build an operational carrier.

Oh, good. Target practice for US submarines. I'll give it three days survival in any way in which it puts to sea, from underway to on the bottom. If we have warning before she leaves and have some sub on station, I give it less than 24 hrs. Those are good odds.

Subsunk

subsunk....living up to his blogging handle :)

Wow, I guess I'm the only one who thinks this might be the real deal. I agree that the Chinese carrier would have a lifespan of seconds in a fight with the US, but I sincerely doubt that's the intent. This is all about projection and prestige. The articles already addressed the prestige point. But what I think this is intended to be is a military extension of their current foreign policy. Is the IKE battlegroup gonna sweat if they see the red carrier coming at them? Probably not. But what about Sudan, or Venezuela. If the chinese use their carrier the way we use ours, it will significantly increase their prestige. Its long be argued that the Chinese military only threatens targets within a 7 day march, making fun of their massed infantry approach. A succesful carrier group would change that. It can also let them obstruct us. Right now, China can only get involved verbally in confrontations outside of their immediate neighborhood. How much more stressful would this weeks carrier exercises have been if a third carrier had been added to the gulf, a chinese carrier? That will significantly change the rules of the game. The first question asked of the SecDef in any crisis is supposedly "Where's the nearest carrier?" In 10 years, the second quewstion might be "Where's the Chinese carrier?" Again, I think it reflects minimal military threat to the US or US allies because the Chinese have not shown themselves to have the military, naval, or aviation tradition necessary to handle a modern surface-warfare/naval-aviation program. But I think its going to really change the way politics are played.