Originally Posted by AndrusN
But on a side note.
Congrats to China for ignoring the U.N., U.S. U.K. and Germany on building that CV.
It's about time that we had another World War, it's what we need to pull this world economy out of the slumps.
Anyone else notice the pattern here? About every 50-70 years we have a major economic crisis followed by a major world conflict. Crazy how human nature works it's self out, just sucks it has to be solved with war.
They said that China has plans to build 4 more CV's in the next 10 years, 2 nuclear and 2 Conventional and with their Industrial might, they could pull it off ahead of schedule.The fact that they have been doing a large Military build up over the past few years does indicate that they ARE on the road of trying to aggressively expand their Empire.
Fun fact: China controls 97% of the worlds "Rare Earth elements" http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-13777439
In the short term china having 4 aircraft carriers, even brand new really don't mean much. The USN has 13 massive nuclear powered ships and another 6 conventional powered ships in mothballs. With the way that technology is going, it is accepted in the military that eventually bombers are going to become extinct. Why bother flying over something to drop bombs when a missile can be remotely controlled? The next thing to go after that will be fighters. After all, the purpose of a fighter is to kill a bomber. Eventually, aircraft carriers as they are now, will be a thing of the past. Air force friends of mine figure they've got about 20 more years until pilots become no more. Even if china gets all 4 CVs going, they are still hopelessly outnumbered and then on the verge of becoming pointless in the long term.
What is concerning is that it means China wants the ability to project power to other places. Right now, China can very well defend its coasts with land based planes. What exactly does China want to project other places for? The only motives I can see are
1) Desire to expand their borders - This type of thinking led to Germany and Japan begining world war 2
2) Wanting to be a "world power" - This thinking created the cold war between US and USSR. Although there was no massive bloodshed like WW1&2, it gave us things like the Vietnam War, Korean War, USSR invasion of Afghanistan, Cuban missile crisis... and so on.
3) They are "cool" - Ironically in the years leading to WW1, the Kaiser had a fascination with ships and the navy. He had a very strange vision at one point where he and the king of England would meet each other with massive fleets in the middle of the ocean... and then have respect for each other and resolve their issues by talking.... very odd but true. You can read that in Castles of Steel, an amazing book that gives insight to WW1 battleships and surface warship combat.
I agree with you. China wanting to suddenly start projecting power can lead to nothing positive or good.
