Wednesday, December 14, 2011

I'm guessing, what, 18 kts?


DigitalGlobe Inc., a commercial satellite company, said Wednesday that it took a photograph of China’s first aircraft carrier during a sea trial in the Yellow Sea, off the Chinese coast.

20 comments:

Bugsy said...

What do you want to bet one of our submarines has better pictures (although from a different angle)

UltimaRatioRegis said...

Well, that's THREE down.

1.  China will never get or build a CV

2.  China will never be able to fix and commission a CV they buy

3.  China will never get their CV to sea

What are the others?

4.  China won't figure out flight ops for decades

5.  China doesn't have an effective naval fighter aircraft

6,  China will never build a CVBG worth of capital ships

Coming to blu water near you.

Grandpa Bluewater said...

Sucker bet.

Adversus Omnes Dissident said...

funny thing was that they should have stopped betting after losing "china will never be able to sneak up on one of our CV's with a submarine" and "china will never be able to develop ASBM's since the Soviets tried and failed at it"

Adversus Omnes Dissident said...

Gramps, one is born every day.  Unfortunately, many decide to go into politics.  Others become recent SECNAVs.

Grandpa Bluewater said...

AOD: The quote is P. T. Barnum: "There is one born every minute."

They are everywhere.

ewok40k said...

I'd say #5 is already done, Flankers looks damn well capable to me...

Byron said...

I've never said any of the above; what I have said is that if China wants Naval Aviation, it better be ready to spend a lot of money and lives. The PLAN has no institutional knowledge of flight deck ops. The crap about steering the boat is SWO stuff and fairly easy :)

MrGuest said...

DigitalGlobe just became enemy #1 of Chinese hackers. It should go join the Russian carrier anchored off of Scotland.

SCOTTtheBADGER said...

We have been doing it for 100 years, and we still have lots of accidents. It will take them awhile to get up to speed, I should think.

ewok40k said...

they seem to have plenty of both money and lives to expend...

ewok40k said...

they are too valuable as source of photos for Chinese intel, there will be quiet memo " leave them alone"

UltimaRatioRegis said...

Byron,

Over the past twenty years plenty of people inside the Defense establishment and in the think-tank world have said all of the above, and done so dismissive of contrary viewpoints. When first raising the spectre of China as a regional power in the mid 90s (especially during the LORAL discussions), I was once told China would never even build a NAVY.   How foolish is that notion?

China will learn flight ops inside of a decade.  And will build a CVBG of quite modern capability.  Innovation?  Nope.  They will steal the technology as they have for the past decade, straight from the source.  They will also carefully read all of our lessons learned and mimic our TTPs. 

Thirty years ago, China was fifty years behind us.  Twenty years ago, thirty years behind.  Ten years ago, twenty years behind.  Now?  Closer and closer to technological parity, and numerical superiority. 

To dismiss that rapid progression is foolish indeed.

Old Grunt said...

Unfortunately, the US is not the only country with carrier experience. You can be assured there are carrier aviation experts (in every sense of the word) from many other countries advising (for big bucks) the Chinese how to do things.  Will there be accidents? Yes. Will the Chinese military lose sleep over them? No.  They will, like we have, learn from their mistakes. As to cost, as long as we continue to feed unlimited money (and technology)to China, the US is paying ALL the bills.

As to the threat of this initial carrier? There is none.....militarily that is.  Of course, our military-industrial-intelligence complex is touting the "new" carrier as one more reason to increase military spending now at the highest levels since WWII.  The real threat is Chinese "show the flag" world tours.  It won't matter if they can't do anything other than launch and land planes.  The rest of the world will only see a carrier with a Chinese flag. Then again, wait and see what happens when NATO or the US attempts to do another Libya and the Chinese show up with their carrier battlegroup "to assist" us. We won't be able to tell them to leave (since the Chinese own our mortgage). I'll love to see how we handle that one.

Old Grunt said...

Unfortunately, the US is not the only country with carrier experience. You can be assured there are carrier aviation experts (in every sense of the word) from many other countries advising (for big bucks) the Chinese how to do things.  Will there be accidents? Yes. Will the Chinese military lose sleep over them? No.  They will, like we have, learn from their mistakes. As to cost, as long as we continue to feed unlimited money (and technology)to China, the US is paying ALL the bills.

As to the threat of this initial carrier? There is none.....militarily that is.  Of course, our military-industrial-intelligence complex is touting the "new" carrier as one more reason to increase military spending now at the highest levels since WWII.  The real threat is Chinese "show the flag" world tours.  It won't matter if they can't do anything other than launch and land planes.  The rest of the world will only see a carrier with a Chinese flag. Then again, wait and see what happens when NATO or the US attempts to do another Libya and the Chinese show up with their carrier battlegroup "to assist" us. We won't be able to tell them to leave (since the Chinese own our mortgage). I'll love to see how we handle that one.

CharleyA said...

Yawn, not particulary worried about this carrier - they are not going to be able to generate the sortie rate to make it a threat (at least to the US.)  And if it is to survive, it will need to operate within range of their land based AEW.

UltimaRatioRegis said...

It might not be so ho-hum in 20 years, when they can match us CV for CV, and outnumber us in all other combatants and assets, including shipboard AEW.

butch said...

They couldn't hit an elephant at this ra ...

NAnonymous said...

The problem is that the Chinese don't seem to place the same value on life as we westerners do. They have enough people to be able to stomach the loss of pilots and deck crew for the sake of the greater good.

Grandpa Bluewater said...

Mmm, might be the nature of the Chinese and it might be the fact that the Communists run the place.