That's what happens when you outspend every major country in the world combined on your military.
I wonder how much he upkeep of all these carriers costs
There were a few, so not sure if this is the latest or most accurate.
Sure, but refueling at sea necessitates a smaller fleet and makes any long range operations that much harder. The Falklands War was a fragile operation and if the Argentinians were more dangerous opponents, the British might well have lost that war. Modern navies don't want to take that kind of risk so they'll use proper fleets for that. China is interested in projecting power into the Indian Ocean, hence their bases in Pakistan and Djibouti. And to achieve that goal, they're going to want to use proper nuclear-powered carriers. The ones they have probably aren't intended for combat, they're more of a stepping stone to the next level.
To be fair, China doesn't have a need (or probably want) to challenge the full strength of the USN. Their needs are more modest; just covering the Western Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters. Accordingly, they're not going to need as many carriers or surface combatants as the US.
What's with all the warhawking on GAF today. Jeez if I didn't know better, I could confuse this for a website that caters to gunnutters.
There were a few, so not sure if this is the latest or most accurate.
I think that both would like better trade and closer ties with one another, but two things stand in the way. The first is that China's longest-standing and most important alliance is with Pakistan and Pakistan is India's most serious rival/enemy. The second is that India doesn't want to be second fiddle to anyone, and in a China-India pairing, China is going to be the senior partner. Another standing issue is that China's new trade route goes through Central Asia and Russia, purposefully bypassing India and sea lanes adjacent to India.
Doesn't this ignore the rising costs China will face also? Making an aircraft carries like this, while impressive, is remaking the Russian one. Now they need to use that experience to make their own stuff. Which is going to be expensive, have setbacks, etc.
No. just no. First off there is a cruiser in a CSG that's sole purpose is to be a bullet sponge for the carrier. Second, no carrier or destroyer is getting remotely close to a carrier with the subs patrolling. Third, no planes are getting close to a carrier with an US carrier housing far more planes and weapons than any other ship in the world. Finally the cruiser, destroyers and carrier itself have major missile defense systems, so even if the destroyer gets a missile off it is unlikely to hit, and will be sunk before it has a chance to get off another. It is nearly impossible to hit a carrier in a strike group with a full on strike group, much less with 2 ships.
The Enterprise was a bastard ship literally designed so that the US Navy would stop asking for nuclear powered carriers. It's not sad to see it go.Quite a few carriers there that are long gone.
Enterprise
That's exactly the point of this ship. It's meant to be a test to see if China can build an aircraft carrier on their own, and to learn enough in the process to start up completely indigenous designs. Of which at least one is already underway. The expense of the carrier program isn't too much of a concern because China currently spends only about 2% of its GDP on its military so they have some room to grow.
The natural balance is going to be a East Asia and Southeast Asia that's dominated by China. Simply put, China has more people than the rest of the entire region. For example, The entire membership of ASEAN is about 625 million people, and China is double that. Combine that with the relative wealth of the country and it's a foregone conclusion as long as there isn't some sort of major crisis or war.
People are already making models!
Picture of the J-15 which China copied exactly from the Russian Su-33. They expect this aircraft carrier may utilize 28 or more of these jets.
