1) China won't attack Taiwan until it can be assured a swift victory.
2) China will reach that state within our lifetimes.
WWII was won, in part, by US manufacturing prowess. China has that advantage. It's military is currently behind in equipment, but if it chose to, it could build a blue water navy or whatever else it wants in record time. It also has the political ability to engage in major projects like these (see respective COVID19 responses).
I suspect Chinese military leadership is far more competent than US or EU. The cream of the crop in the West doesn't go into the military (see Afghanistan for an good example of how US armed forces are managed).
I also think we will see major disruptions in military from autonomous and semi-autonomous machines which will really reduce the US lead. DJI is headquartered in China, as are many of the other players here. If heave machines like carriers are obsoleted, the US advantage might turn into an expensive liability.
Carriers are already obsolete in a superpower war. Both sides possess weapons that can destroy them utterly from a great distance, and their location cannot be kept secret. Carriers won't last a day.
China's hypersonic missiles have shorter range than an F35 launched from a carrier with midair refuel drone.
The only issue is that we'd want our carriers closer in practice. Close to the action means faster response times. If we are willing to destroy Chinese satellites, then China's kill chain becomes much harder.
I'm not convinced that a drone or spyplane can reliably penetrate the defensive line of destroyers + cruisers + E2 Hawkeyes.
And satellites aren't even that reliable either, it may be possible to hide a carrier between satellite flyovers in practice.
A drone could not penetrate a defensive line of destroyers, cruisers, and E2 Hawkeyes.
However, a destroyer costs $870 million. I can build a drone for around $870 which has decent range, and sufficient firepower to do real damage if attacking with sufficient precision (e.g. placing a small explosive charge directly within a barrel).
That means I can launch a million drones for the cost of one destroyer. I'm pretty sure that a line of destroyers, cruisers, and E2 Hawkeyes wouldn't be able to destroy a fleet of a million drones. If they could, the cost of destroying each drone would likely be greater than the cost of the drone.
You can also launch 870 cruise missiles for the cost of one destroyer from a greater range with greater destruction.
Actually, this is wrong. That is the cost of the missiles, not the cost of the launch platform, nor the cost of the personnel, nor the cost of the logistics.
CRAM bullets cost cheaper than your drone, and those CRAMs are on each Destroyer. I think our cruisers have 2 CRAMs on them (but I forget exactly)
These CRAMs can aim-bot and destroy subsonic cruise missiles (500mph), and even supersonic cruise missiles (1000mph). That's why China has spent billions developing hypersonic missiles (2500+mph) to dodge our CRAMs and missile defenses.
How fast is your drone flying? Does it pull enough lateral Gs to dodge CRAM shots or avoid the Patriot defense missiles?
The "city-version" has shorter range, because we need the bullets to self-destroy themselves before they land on someone's property. So the Israeli "Iron Dome" is in fact, inferior, to the defense system on these Destroyers / Cruisers that surround the Carrier.
Tel Aviv's Iron Dome also has a much more difficult job: defending a population center rather than just a few ships. There will naturally be "holes" in the Iron Dome (just areas of the city that aren't as well defended).
In contrast: we can position our ships to maximize the chance of interception, and minimize the chance of our CRAM's failing.
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The worry about China's drones is their stealth spydrones which will try to triangulate the position of the carrier strike group. The drone then sends the coordinates to a hypersonic missile.
I'm not convinced that the stealth systems on those drones are sufficient to "hide" from radar, probably only good enough to prevent things like CRAM/Patriots from locking on. Without the ability to lock on, we don't have an ability to kill those drones from Destroyers / Cruisers.
That's where the Carrier comes in. The E2 Hawkeye has an aerial radar system and can get "eyes in the sky", making our targeting superior (maybe then our Patriots can hit). We can also launch fighters (F22 is probably sufficient) to close the distance and lock on / destroy the target... or even engage in a dogfight (radar-drones wouldn't have much dogfighting ability).
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How is China launching a million drones anyway? Their carriers aren't like ours. We have 4x catapults and 2x runways per carrier, I'm pretty sure China's carriers are only 1x runway. How many minutes does it take per launch?
If its an air battle you want, the 4x catapults + 2x runways the Supercarriers push will get more planes into the air than anything in the Chinese Navy... and we have something like 10 carriers fielded right now.
We're talking about Taiwan. China sets them up in the fields in a few of the rural communities near Xiamen. They simultaneously lift off from the fields. They fly at ~25mph. They take perhaps three hours to clear the water between Taiwan and China. There's a million of them. They're slow, but fairly agile.
Looking at the video, it looks like the C-RAM system is shooting perhaps dozens of rounds per second. Shooting down a million drones would take many hours of continuous shooting, assuming every bullet hit, which it wouldn't.
And a Patriot missile is $2-3 million.
I think the future of warfare is likely to be cheap, small, but smart and precision.
* A small drone flies into a gun barrel and explodes.
* A small drone flies into a jet air intake, and explodes, spraying material designed to damage the engine as it passes through
* A small drone deposits a chemical weapon in a ship's HVAC intake
* A small drone sprays corrosive paint on a camera, on a jet window, other surface we look through
* A small drone launches a single bullet to kill a mechanic
... and so on.
I think a lot of this goes like rock-paper-scissors, where a million $1000 drones overwhelms a $1 billion ship. On the other hand, a hundred thousand $10,000 drones could probably make quick work of a million $1000 drones. And so on.
As long as the ship is traveling 25mph away from a 25mph drone, its shooting them down with machine guns (and bullets are very, very cheap). A flock of drones flying at 25mph isn't a weapon, they're sitting ducks. Fully and completely ineffective at ever dealing damage to these warships.
Like, 25mph means that these drones are going to be within effective range of the machine guns for 10 minutes when the ship is standing still. And these AEGIS systems on these destroyers have 300km+ effective radar range.
Unless you have very expensive equipment on those drones: they'll be flying in blind and getting sniped. Either stealth (which prevents the CRAM from locking on), or superior radar (to see the ships before the ships see it), or a combination thereof.
And again: if they're not standing still: the ships can basically run around in circles and the drones would never catch up.
1) China doesn't need to destroy US ships; it merely needs to keep them distracted long enough to take control of Taiwan. If China moves quickly, the Taiwanese leadership are deported to Beijing, and there are boots on the ground, it's a done deal. Once that's done, it will be like Crimea. There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia.
2) Ten minutes, at a dozen shots a minute, means a gun firing at 10 RPS can take out 6,000 drones. That's 0.6% of a flock.
3) You can't run circles around a flock of millions of drones, no matter how fast you go. A flock can cover a lot of space. The best you can do is run away, which would take US forces out-of-commission.
4) The Taiwan Straight is simply not that large. It's not hard for China to be aware of everything that happens there, even with a fleet of small, cheap AUVs. Heck, they could drop a few hundred thousand of these as well, if they wanted to.
5) It's equally not hard for China to communicate with a flock of drones. A directional spread spectrum link isn't easy to jam. At that range, even an optical link is practical, and not something where we have countermeasures.
6) A million drones can effectively blanket the whole Taiwan straight.
7) In terms of stealth, I'm not sure how technology will progress, but I'm pretty sure that building drones indistinguishable from birds on radar just wouldn't be that hard. I'm also pretty sure a flock of drones could be made to emulate other forms of craft, on radar.
8) I'm also pretty sure China wouldn't telegraph what they're doing. It's not like we can prepare countermeasures. I gave one example of a disruptive technology; there are dozens of others. To be honest, I have no idea how AEGIS would deal with a million targets, nor what having that many targets would do to its ability to track things like Chinese landing craft, unless the US were explicitly prepared for this particular threat.
Also, the C-RAM price-per-round is about $30. With a $1000 drone, things are cost-neutral if about 3% of rounds hit. At 10 kilometers, it would take rounds a little under 10 seconds to arrive. Even modestly chaotic trajectories would dodge most rounds.
Frankly: the discussion point of "suicide drones" is pretty ignorant.
25mph drones will not hold back a warship. They can't effectively close range at 10km out, let alone at 5km, 1km, or shorter. As I stated earlier: warships are literally faster than that.
The "meta" under discussion, by serious people (including Chinese investments / Chinese saber rattling) is the missile. 500mph cruise missiles, 1000mph supersonic missiles, and 3000mph hypersonic missiles.
If you're going to "suicide drone", you do it at 3000mph to impress people. You don't do it at 25mph. Even at 500mph and 1000mph, the methodology is so clearly ineffective that China has spent billions making 3000mph missiles instead.
The minute you start thinking about how these drones are going to take off, refuel, get their payloads (etc. etc.), is the minute you realize how impractical the whole proposal is. What kind of launch platform will these drones take off in? What's the effective range of a drone?
US Destroyers have tomahawk cruise missiles that can reliably hit targets 2000km away, and these missiles fly at 500mph+. How long does it take for your 25mph drone to cover the 2000km range that these Destroyers are at defending Taiwan?
By the time your drones get there, the Destroyers have already launched all their missiles and have gone home.
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How do you even find the warships in the first place? You keep saying "hundreds of drones", but drones flying at 10km high can only see 300km out.
Secondly: if you fly "like a bird" at say 1000meters, you can only see 100km out before the horizon blocks you. It'd be impossible to track down the warships firing from 2000km away.
At these ranges, the E2 Hawkeye of the Carrier will see your drones, and an appropriate response will be dispatched. Most likely, the warships will just avoid the drones. Hiding behind the horizon.
What kind of drone are you using to even try to tavel 2000km over water? I'm pretty sure that your typical $1000 drone simply don't have the range or speed to even get to the warships.
> There's no way the US is getting drawn into a land war in Asia.
Classic blunder or not, the US gets drawn into land wars in Asia fairly regularly (especially in the 21st century, where we’ve spent most of it involved in two at once.) 1950-1953 Korea, 1955-1973 Vietnam, 1991 Iraq, 2001-2021 Afghanistan, 2003-2011 Iraq II: Elecric Boogaloo, 2014-? Iraq III: Now with Syria, too.
I either agree or think your predictions make sense, but I think your premises that lead to them are a little bit suspect.
China doesn't have the same manufacturing prowess that the US did because of its location. In World War II, the US was essentially an untouchable supply chain with access to both oceans. It could fight Japan and supply Russia through the west if necessary, and it could fight Germany and supply England and Russia through the eat too.
In China's case, the main issue is that while the factories are certainly humming right along, they need to import food, oil, and other raw materials. Where do those come from? Certainly Russia, despite its blustering, isn't going to do too much to help China because that gives the U.S. an easy excuse to attack Russia in the east. Expect Russia to sit this one out and maybe screw around in a inconsequential way in Europe at best.
Will China then get resources from neighbors? Sure. Except now they have to transport all of these raw materials to the east coast of China where all the factories are. Lots of lead times here.
Meanwhile, the US can simply purchase the same materials from untouched supply chains in Europe and South America.
> it could build a blue water navy or whatever else it wants in record time.
I very much doubt this. And this has to happen years (decades?) before a war breaks out. China would have to build these ships in docks on the shore, which would be vulnerable to any number of U.S. bombing campaigns from strategic locations (Guam, Japan, carrier fleet, etc.). Not to say why wouldn't the U.S. also build hypersonic missiles?
> It also has the political ability to engage in major projects like these (see respective COVID19 responses).
Sure, that's always the general strength of the authoritarian regime. The ability to issue dictates. But that's also the great weakness, because you can go down a very wrong path and you won't know until its too late. Japan experienced this in World War II.
But the U.S. (and allies) would undoubtedly be united in a response to a Chinese invasion of Taiwan. The center-left, center, and entire right wing of the US for sure would be. So I'm not sure I'd look at the U.S.'s COVID-19 response and generalize from that.
> I suspect Chinese military leadership is far more competent than US or EU. The cream of the crop in the West doesn't go into the military (see Afghanistan for an good example of how US armed forces are managed).
What do you base this on? If nothing else, the United States and European Union (NATO allies) have been engaging in actual joint operations all over the world for the past 20-some years.
And the U.S. fought a different kind of war in Afghanistan than it would the one it might have to fight against China in the Pacific. First, the U.S. occupied the country just fine for 20 years, and then got tired of it. The U.S. also operated with very strict rules of engagement. Like, shoot at US soldiers then throw your Ak-47 in the weeds and say it wasn't you and nobody could do anything since you didn't have your weapon on you. Iraq looks to be a better example but neither should be relied upon as a good case.
> I also think we will see major disruptions in military from autonomous and semi-autonomous machines which will really reduce the US lead. DJI is headquartered in China, as are many of the other players here.
Who cares about DJI?
> If heave machines like carriers are obsoleted, the US advantage might turn into an expensive liability.
Weren't you saying that China would build a blue-water navy in record time? What would they do with this obsolete navy?
But the U.S. doesn't need to keep its carrier groups within range of any Chinese action to cause lots of problems for China. A naval blockade, they can go sink ships in ports that are friendly to China but aren't in China, etc.
> The Chinese military also has more manpower.
True that quantity does have a quality all of its own, but it seems like a bottle neck to me. Are they going to load up boat after boat and sail soldiers to Taiwan? Seems like a pretty expensive offensive and will Chinese moral handle losing soldiers in boats going to attack Taiwan? Lots of uncertainties.
Anyway, my point here was just to provide some counterpoints to some of yours here. Frankly, this is all really stupid.
> Not to say why wouldn't the U.S. also build hypersonic missiles?
China isn't even building missile-defense cruisers (equivalent to the AEGIS system on US-ships). Our tomahawks (cheaper, subsonic cruise missiles) would obliterate them at much cheaper prices.
Why fly at 3000mph (hypersonic) when 500mph is already too fast for their defenses?
There's no reason to build hypersonic missiles until China (or Russia) demonstrates missile-defense capabilities. Even then: the methodology of "launch 20 missiles simultaneously to overwhelm their defense system" seems a lot cheaper than using developing or using hypersonic missiles.
Cheap subsonic cruise missiles are all you need unless your opponent can shoot them down. China needs Hypersonic because of AEGIS (ie: we've reliably demonstrated that we can shoot down missiles flying at 500mph). China hasn't done that, and doesn't seem to have any plans to obtain this technology yet.
"The center-left, center, and entire right wing of the US for sure would be."
I doubt that. I am an American and wouldn't support war with China over Taiwan. I don't know a single person who has ever said anything suggesting they think we should commit the country to war to protect Taiwan.
Coming off the failed Afghanistan war I expect war would be extremely unpopular. Especially with an enemy so much more capable than assorted Afghan militia.
I really don't want another war. At the same time, I don't want the world that would result from China taking Taiwan, either.
What's wrong with that world? 1) We didn't keep our promises. 2) Another 23 million people oppressed by force against their will. Even if it isn't our job to defend them, it still doesn't sit well to see it happen. 3) We can't get chips (much less important than the other two).
Where does that leave me? Not wanting war, but not wanting the alternative? There are a fair number of people with that perspective. If it comes to it, what will we decide? I don't know, even for myself.
1) China won't attack Taiwan until it can be assured a swift victory.
2) China will reach that state within our lifetimes.
WWII was won, in part, by US manufacturing prowess. China has that advantage. It's military is currently behind in equipment, but if it chose to, it could build a blue water navy or whatever else it wants in record time. It also has the political ability to engage in major projects like these (see respective COVID19 responses).
I suspect Chinese military leadership is far more competent than US or EU. The cream of the crop in the West doesn't go into the military (see Afghanistan for an good example of how US armed forces are managed).
I also think we will see major disruptions in military from autonomous and semi-autonomous machines which will really reduce the US lead. DJI is headquartered in China, as are many of the other players here. If heave machines like carriers are obsoleted, the US advantage might turn into an expensive liability.
The Chinese military also has more manpower.