TO TAKE TAIWAN, FIRST KILL A CARRIER
By Richard D. Fisher, Jr.


China's communist leadership has long anticipated that to militarily subdue democratic Taiwan it will first need to win a battle against the United States. The People's Liberation Army (PLA) is now preparing for one specific, and key, battle. It is developing methods to disable or sink American aircraft carriers and gathering the specific force packages to do so. With such a strike, Beijing hopes to quickly terminate American involvement in a Taiwan War.

FULL STORY
[URL]http://china.jamestown.org/pubs/view/cwe_002_014_004.htm[/URL]

You mean the Chinese haven't learned from the Japanese experience that sinking some of our ships just [i][b]pisses us off!?!?![/i][/b]

Well, we do have a back up plan to the sinking of an Aircraft carrier.....It's called Trident submarines..........

G E T    S O M E!!!!

Lord, what fools these (Chinese) mortals be!

From the article:

"Missiles, aircraft, and submarines all are means that can be used to attack an aircraft carrier. We have the ability to deal with an aircraft carrier that dares to get into our range of fire. Once we decide to use force against Taiwan, we definitely will consider an intervention by the United States. [b]The United States likes vain glory; if one of its aircraft carrier should be attacked and destroyed, people in the United States would begin to complain and quarrel loudly, and the U.S. president would find the going harder and harder.[/b]"

I suppose that this fellow never heard of the US follow-up on Sept 11!

He's an idiot if he thinks Red China can sink or disable a US aircraft carrier and the US and its citizens will roll over!

Oh well, you live, you learn!

Eric The(YouDie!)Hun[>]:)]

ya, but dude look at them and there history.  they just keep getting shorter and shorter everyday.  

Or you don't live long!

Sad thing is, even after reading this type of thing,
most folks will continue buying Chinese [b]"goods"[/b] or as I call them [b]"bads".[/b]

I believe that yes our aircraft carriers are vulnerable to attach and possibly sinking.  But...the 13-15 carriers we have in service are the life blood to the U.S. Military.  If those are attacked, I think that nukes would be used against China.  

Yeah, China may get a half dozen nukes launched at us, but China would get much more "punishment" from our nukes.  That's a worst case scenario.

If the Chinese want a suicide pact, then they should fight us.  I actually believe that one day we will in fact be at war with China, because we "trusted" them way too much over the past few years.

God forbid that we get a democrat in office.  That will then give the Chinese the "green light" to attack Taiwan.

That's pretty funny.  If they sunk one of our ships, you think congress would immediately issue a declaration of group hug?  I think we'd be more likely to send a lot of humanitarian aid to pluck all the chinese soldiers out of the water after their ships fall down go boom. [:)]

Kinda like eating their food, the bad thing about killing Chinese; an hour later your
ready to kill some more.[:D]

Hmph, I personally think that the Chinese economy is far to dependant on us to risk such an attack.  The commies are thick headed but how stupid are they?

I have three words in response:

"Bee-Two Baby!"


No Chinese radar can track those suckers.

How many people died on 9-11, and how angry did we get? Now how many people live/work on an aircraft carrier?

'Nuff said.

This article is BS...  China is not planning on sinking a us aircraft carrier.  That action would start a war.  Where do you think China gets money?  They get it from the US, the largest market in the world.  China is not run by idiots.  

I think the only way China would wage war with the US is to stow away 100,000-200,000 soldiers on cargo ships destined for our shores. It would be a surprise and if they unloaded at night perhaps all of them would make it onto US soil alive and kicking.

Can't happen, you say? China docks dozens of large ships every business day in southern california alone. Alot of them already have slaves tucked away in containers, so humans can take that kind of abusive trip.

I read about this plan a couple of years ago.  Its a contingency plan.  We keep contingency plans too, plans to invade and conquor every territory on earth, in case a crisis arises anywhere.  We have a plan to invade Serbia and a plan to invade Tahiti, a plan to invade French Quebec and a plan to invade China.  It doesn't mean anything until it is acted upon.

Know this, though--the Chinese would balk at using nuclear weapons on the territory of Taiwan, because they want to capture the infrastructure, etc. relatively intact.  But a US aircraft carrier at sea?  They won't hesistate to nuke a command fleet in the middle of nowhere on the high open seas.

I knew somebody would say something like this. [:)]

Does everybody remember that China didn't have the capability to launch nukes that could reach American soil till the klinton administration gave them the technology? Another reason to hate the klintons, if you don't have enough reasons already[:(!]

Silly Chinese....trix are for prix.

The U.S. Should recognize Taiwan as an Independant Nation. They do not consider themselves part of Mainland China, and do not follow their political views. Beijing's claim to Taiwan is tenuous at best.

They don't think like we do. A better term might be 'attitude', they think their shit don't stink. We can shut Red China down economically very easily. Don't buy from them. There are plenty of other countries that would like our business. Singapore and Indonesia for starters.
 
Regarding an invasion: Oddly enough, Taiwan is a nuclear power. They can even DELIVER them.
If the Reds don't want Beijing turned into the World Largest Glass-bottomed Wok, they won't make a move.

Red China has plenty of nukes to drop, but will have to do it with SRBMs/cruise missiles or tactical strike aircraft; Taiwan has Patriots and lots of them. Beijing does not.

The thing is, the Red Chinese don't have a navy to speak of. And nothing that even comes close to what we have regarding Air Superiority. The Taiwanese Airforce isn't too bad...I'd call it an even fight as things are, but if we have a carrier doing C3 or an AWACS out of Kadena to call the plays, the Taiwanese are going to kick some serious ass.

They have 2 nuclear subs that are louder then a freight train running at full bore, and several Soviet-Kilos. The Kilos are a worry but they have to surface to snorkel, so it's a hurry up and wait game with them. When they come up to snort, ADCAP them and be done with it - I believe the term for this is gill netting... killing them when they have to come up and breathe.

Their torps are export models: nothing to threaten an aircraft carrier unless they had time to salvo maybe four or five fish.  

I think a war with China is an inevitibility. It just depends on how dumb they want to fight it. Remember there is no one in China right now who even has a HINT of Air Combat experience or Amphibious operations, nor real world Surface or Subsurface experience. We do, and we train the hell out of our troops. It will be an interesting war.

Will it degenerate to a nuclear exchange? Maybe. We can take out their nuclear capability in under 24 hours from a green light, and they wouldn't be able to a damn thing about it.

They think we need them. That is their fatal flaw.




   

On the contrary, the Chinese learned alot from the Japenese experience. Unless you get our carriers, you're just spitting in the wind.
Think about how WWII would have been different if the Japs had not damaged one Battleship but instead sunk our Pacific Fleet carriers. For starters Midway would have fallen to the Japs.

Ok…lets set the record straight.  American carriers are not the sitting ducks some pop culture movie producers and liberal anti-war nuts would have you believe.

The carrier is a very tough ship.  Short of using a nuke, sinking a carrier is a daunting task.  First of all, it is huge...and in ship design, size really does matter.  The larger the ship, the more extensive you can make the defensive systems and the damage control and fire fighting systems.  Redundancy abounds, from multiple nuclear reactors to plane elevators, comms, weapons, radars, fire pumps, etc.  Lots of back-ups for almost everything.

During the Vietnam War, USS ENTERPRISE (CVN 65) caught fire when a flight deck crewmember mistakenly parked a piece of “yellow gear” under a parked, fully combat loaded jet.  The hot exhaust from the support vehicle was directed up into the underwing ordnance of the jet, setting off a Zuni rocket, which then had a popcorn effect of the rest of the jets on the deck.  In a split second, the flight deck was a flaming inferno with exploding ordnance tearing apart planes, the ship and people.  During the fire, at least NINE 500 pound bombs exploded on the deck, ripping up the ship, killing more sailors and spreading more flaming fuel.

It took several hours for extinguish the fires and make the deck repairs, but when they were out and the damage quickly repaired, ENTERPRISE was back in the business of flying planes.  Her hull and engineering plant were not affected.

The carrier’s hull is double bottomed and has numerous tanks and voids along the length of the ship designed to minimize torpedo damage.

The carrier’s shafts and rudders are designed to operate independently, so that if one is damaged, the others keep going.

The carrier has access to the most up-to-date INTEL information in the military.  This info is processed and made available to the decision makers onboard.

The carrier usually has three or four missile launchers with up to 32 missiles and three or four Phalanx anti-ship gun systems.  The missile and guns are automated.

The carrier’s primary weapon system is her air wing.  The ninety or so planes can carry a lot of ordnance to make life miserable for any enemy, both ashore and at sea.

Finally, the carrier never goes anywhere without her escorts including usually a couple of AEGIS cruisers, 2-4 AEGIS destroyers (For the uninformed, think Star Trek power and automation.), an oiler/ammo/stores auxiliary (oil for the escorts, bombs for the carrier), and a couple of sneaky bastard nuclear submarines.  The subs can make life REAL unpleasant for any enemy.

This is NOT to say that the threat from the Chinese is insignificant.  Their new weapons do pose a threat and they might even have some limited successes if the balloon goes up, especially if they can achieve true surprise (Which I doubt they can do.).  My point is that we learned out lessons well during the Cold War.  We trained to withstand coordinated attacks from the Russian Bear with multiple anti-ship missiles.  That threat was FAR worse than anything the Chinese can conjure up.

I think that if the Boys in Beijing actually believe that crap spouted by the general, and you KNOW he wasn’t off the reservation when he said it, then they are sadly mistaken.  Americans get REAL angry when we’re sucker punched, and we really do have the means with which to defeat them - without having to resort to nukes.

Gee, where have I heard THAT before? [;)]

Thank you, LWilde, for your informative post.

BTW, what's the Chinese Army up to these days, 100 million? 200 million?

the main problem is getting close enough to
one of our carriers to do it harm. the main
problem in ww2 was finding the damn things,
after that getting close was no problem.

Somebody 'splain to me why China needs Taiwan anyway, and why they need to sink a US carrier to do it?  IMO, the Chinese are doing a fine job of taking over the US (never mind Taiwan) by economic means.  Everything from Happy Meal trinket-toys to shoes to shirts to brake rotors for my Pontiac to the freakin' lighting fixtures I installed in my basement last week.

WTF is NOT made in China, nowadays?

I try to buy "North American" if not outright "American", and I don't mind paying the higher price but jeepers, it is getting harder to find US made stuff.

Noah, rant off.

Sorry, double post somehow; see above.

Why do they need to develop a weapon to sink our carriers? All they have to do is shoot a nuke at the ship and it would take out the whole group. If they do attack us we will have to nuke their ass for sure theres just way to many of em. We should support taiwan fully. We should'nt be trading with the chinese we should let their economy go to shit and let their country fall apart.

Not that we'd wish for it, but I'm sure alot of us Americans would enjoy popping off a few foreign invaders.

I'm afraid LWilde is full of it.

First of all, it wasn't the ENTERPRISE (CVN-65), it was the FORRESTAL (CV-59).

Secondly, the ship was [b]nowhere near[/b] "back in the business of flying planes." She had to limp back to the United States for extensive repairs that took [b]months[/b]. During the conflagration, it was seriously feared that the ship would be lost.

The fact of the matter is that, for [b]any[/b] ship afloat, fire is just as deadly, [b]if not more so[/b], than flooding. Flooding is far more easy to identify, control, counteract, and repair than fire. Just ask the British after the SHEFFIELD incident and our own Navy after the FORRESTAL disaster.

As for an American aircraft carrier being a difficult target: very true, but [b]never[/b] make the mistake of thinking they are invincible. If it floats, it can be sunk. All they have to do is come up with a tactic, weapon, or something else we haven't thought of, and BOOM, no carrier.




I'm sorry to disagree with you, Eric. It seems as if our great nation is now quite willing to roll over even [b]after[/b] the atrocity of September 11th, so what makes you think that the death of 5,000 war-mongering baby-killers and the destruction of their decadent funds-that-could-go-to-AIDS-research-poaching floating palace would be any different?

I hate being so cynical, but it comes from living in a country that has so many fucking Liberals living in it!

Edited to add: I'd be willing to bet that if China took out one of the aforementioned symbols of American imperialism, the likes of Martin Sheen, Alec Baldwin, Barbara Streisand, and the rest of the Kalifornia crowd would petition their flacks in the Congress to make China the 51st state...

Did anyone see "Conspiracy Theory" when Gibson is creating the story at the beginning of the movie?  He takes various news reports and info and turns them into what he wants it to believe.  I have a hard time swallowing that China is stupid and self destructive enough to threaten the most powerful military on earth.  Its just too unplausible.

Otherwise, the story gave some interesting info!

KINDA MAKES YA FELL ALL WARM AND FUZZY.
[IMG]http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/120000/images/_122321_Clinton_and_jiang_review_military.jpg[/IMG]



EDUCATING THE YOUG CHINESE. HOW TO
PLAY HIDE THE INTERN UNDER THE DESK.[:d]
[IMG]http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/120000/images/_123442_Copy_of__123442_CLINTON_IN_THE_SHANGHAI_STOCK_EXCHANGE_AP_150_01-07-1998.jpg[/IMG]


I KINDA LIKE IT HERE
[IMG]http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/120000/images/_122321_clinton_hillary_and_chelsea_on_tour_of_great_wall150.jpg[/IMG]

I believe that our Stealth bombers, properly armed, could set China back in the middle ages PDQ.

I do fear that the US has grown far too soft as far as our military is concerned. Sadly enough, I think we would need a War to change this - and no one really wants that.

Tyler

Someone in department of the Navy had the foresight to check into it, something like 94% of  valuable military assets in China are within 80 miles of the coastline.

And before you question why thats significant, for all the bully and bluster the Navy views the Iowa's as "Oh shit" weapons... A serious fight with China would likely get them back in the active fleet. That would give the USN 4 full combat battlegroups, capable of hitting targets up to 100 miles inland, rapidly, cheaply, effectively and with impunity.

Short of concentrated and lengthy air attack the Iowa's have little to worry from anything the Chinese can field including (if the Bikini Atoll Results are to be considered) strategic nuclear weapons.

Very true about the IOWA-class battleships. Those things were built to WIN an war, not PREVENT one! To say they are armored is an understatement. Modern ships, even carriers,  are veritable tin cans by comparison. It would take a direct hit by something BIG to really hurt one.

Armed as they were with their 16-inch batteries and (if I remember the number correctly) 32+ Tomahawk cruise missles, they could pack a punch, boy! COuld have done even better had they replaced the aft battery with a Vertical Launch System (VLS) full of Tomahawks. With that, these ships could have practically levelled those 94% of the assets all by themselves!

Unfortunately, the pinhead paper-pushers at the Pentagon mothballed these beauties as soon as Chinese co-premier Bill Klinton took office.

I HATE that asshole!

They are still considered to be in the reserve fleet, even the Missouri and the Jersey despite being used as museums.

The Plan to replace the rear turrets with Tomahawk Batteries were considered superflous since the main advantage is the 16 inch batteries.

They still consider the vertical launched tomahawk  batteries for bb-65 and 66, The Illinois and Kentucky were never completed but the Hulls and engineering plants were complete when work stopped. For some odd reason they never seem to get around to disposing of them and there have been several plans to complete them as missille battleships with hundreds of tomahawks.

You gotta believe that in case of a serious strategic war those plans would finally get greenlighted.

No not true, [i]Illinois[/i] was only 12% complete when she was ordered broken up in the late 50's.

[i]Kentucky[/i] was 70% complete but she too was broken up after giving her bow to [i]Iowa[/i] after [i]Iowa[/i] rammed a destroyer in a 1950's accident.

[i]Kentucky's[/i] machinerey was divided and used by the fleet replenishment ships (AOE's) [i]Sacremento[/i] and [i]Camden[/i]. [i]Illinois[/i] machinery went into storage, and has since been used for parts to keep the other four [i]Iowas[/i] and the two AOE's running over the years. So there probably isn't much left of it.

Its a really confusing thing...

The ships are set aside as museums but none of the tactical gear or military equipment has been stripped, and there are still large areas that are  sealed off even to the museam staff. (and by sealed off I mean all the blast doors have been welded shut).

The Iowa and wisconsin are apparantly in rather good shape except for the Teak decks.

The Illinois and Kentucky are the big mysteries, some sources say the hulls were scrapped, some say that they were moved around, some say that thryre being kept for future completion. And there were formal plans that emerged as late as the late 80's for thier completion (even though they were suppossedly broken down by that time).

The whole atmosphere behind the Iowa's is like that, a lot of contradictory talk and classifications, where no one knows whats going on. I suspect that it may be a way to keep them off the Radar screen, cus there are a lot of high ups in the Navy who hate them with a PASSION....

At the risk of sounding pedantic and patronizing (Ahhh...the rightness of youts!), I was there in '69 serving in an escort off the coast of Vietnam when the Big E caught fire while training back in the Hawaiian OPAREAs.  I had to go back and do a bit of research to make sure I wasn't giving you a bad steer, but I'm not far off the mark.

Not sure what you mean about, "...it was Forrestal and not the Enterprise", since both ships suffered major conflagrations during the Vietnam War.

Here is an excerpt from the U.S. Navy's CHINFO site (I'm sure you'll recognize the pedigree!)..."...A fire aboard Enterprise on 14 January 1969, resulting from detonation of a MK-32 Zuni rocket warhead overheated by exhaust from an aircraft starting unit, took 27 lives, injured 314 and destroyed 15 aircraft. Repairs to the ship were completed at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, in early March.".

A review of the available info indicates that the ship was never in any danger of foundering either.

As you correctly state, repairs WERE completed at Pearl.  I knew that...but omitted that because I was trying to make my point about the toughness of the CVN platform.  I stick by my original statement that Enterprise was capable of launching and landing aircraft within a few hours of completing the fire fighting and DC efforts.  I will freely admit that her capabilities were reduced because of the damage, but that is a hair-split I declined to bother with.  She was mission capable but at a reduced capacity.  Since she was deploying, timely repairs were called for, thus the speed of the RTP and into the yard.

BTW, if we're going to pick nits...I don't think it proper to characterize her return as, "limping".  Her plant was functioning quite well and she was able to easily achieve a flank bell on her return to port.

As to your other points...especially about the liberals and LaLa Land...I most heartedly agree!

I was mistaken on the number of bombs that detonated.  Actually, it was 18 500 pounders that exploded.

WADR, My primary source is a coworker...and former CHENG in Enterprise.  History books and Internet are secondary sources.

Keep the wind abaft the beam...and your sails full.

An old swab...[:D]

I say we let em take Kali, all true patriots retreat to a preselected rally point, and then after a few months or so we counterattack.  Unfortunately, many innocent, forward-thinking, progressive, idealist liberals would get caught in the crossfire and be used as human shields (I hope) by the infidel Chinese.

Hey I can daydream can't I?

Iowa and Wisconsin better be in good condition, because by act of Congress the Navy is required to keep them ready to return to service. That is why some areas are off limits to museaum staffers.

The Marines love the BB's, the Navy-except for a few who served on them in the past- hates them. They consider them resoruce hogs because of their 1300 man crews. The Navy also keeps forgetting that they have no enemy fleet to fight anymore, and transporting and landing Marines is the only job they have now.  Secretly many high level Navy officers cheer on the Chinese attempts at building a real Navy so they can relive the old days again...

In reality the "old days" are only going to come back if the USAF has to put its heavy bombers back on nuclear deterant alert again.  This campaign in Afghanistan was very bad for the Navy, it allowed the USAF to show off what it can do now that all of its bombers are free from having to stand alerts against suprise nuke attacks and can be totally comitted to tactical work. B-1's and B-52's have delivered the majority of all ordinance expended on Afghanistan so far. And even though we have A-10's and F-16's in country now for CAS there are still heavy bombers orbiting over Afghanistan 24/7 simply waiting for a call. And each of the JDAMs they carry IS equivilant in destructive power to a 16" HC shell, and is more accurate.

I'd like to see the battleships back too, but first we got to figure out what they can do that the AF's heavy bomber fleet cannot. And so far nothings come up yet!

Sounds like the Japanese before Pearl Harbor, eh.  Give the Americans a swift kick - sink a few capital ships - and they will stay down.

In fact, it sounds like the Nazis too.

Does every country have to learn this lesson at least once:  [b]don't mess with us.[/b]

OK. I know when to admit that I may have been in error, and I'm man enough to do it publicly, especially when called on it by a fellow squid.

When I read your post, it sounded SO much like FORRESTAL that I assumed (mistake #1) that you had messed up the ship's name, and hence the extent of the damage. All my comments were based entirely upon the FORRESTAL incident, and are accurate with that in mind (including the severity of the damage).

Your post sounded like some kid who had read one too many Tom Clancy books or seen one too many Discovery Channel documentaries and was trying to sound cool. I apologize for my error.

I've heard stories of ENTERPRISE suffering a similar, yet far less devastating, accident, but 99% of the time the standard to which other incidents are measured is the FORRESTAL. In fact, I'd be willing to bet that the overwhelming majority of active-duty Navy personnel are unaware of the ENTERPRISE accident you describe, but can quote you chapter and verse about the FORRESTAL, since that incident is drilled into every fire-fighting course offered in the Navy.

Again, my apologies. I'm gald we agree on the rest though! [;)]

Fair winds and following seas...

A (slightly younger) swab!  [;)]