How would a war with China be fought?

Target practice?. By who?, the magnificent "combat" proven Americans?. Sure if that means dropping ordnance on the civilian Iraqi population. If American aircraft enter Chinese air space, watch out, it is not Iraq Mk.3

The Russian army is target practice and lacking funds or any type of maintenance. Their "stocks" of missiles left over from the cold war are hazards to themselves because of the corrosive fuel used mean they have shorter life spans than normal missiles. Not to mention that their service has a fraction of chinas Anti-defense capability of WOKRING missiles not on paper

Given the size of the Chinese Army, do you really think the Chinese government would be able to feed and supply their troops with everything they would need to keep it going?

You should look into American strategies during the cold war. The AEGIS was actually more or less designed for this task in mind so that the American carriers would get close enough to attempt to destroy soviet submarine basins. The Soviets were not a offensive navy and the knew that and they had to go on the offensive to stop first or second wave attacks from Soviet nuclear boomers.




Dont make up things.....





Submarines and aircraft. Have a look at the Kola penisula and you will see the number of aircraft bases and their angles to any American attack




Proven as in combat proven or "on-the-range"?. All missiles have been proven in test, it doesn't mean they work perfectly in combat, like the US Sheridan missile

Besides these mythical super duper mach 12 cow deploying PLAN missiles which will hit and sink US carriers at will, correct? The SM-3 has vastly more "proof" under it's belt then these paper tigers, but I digress.

Quote me......

reply to post by chinawhite

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It was sarcasm. What I'm saying is that China does not posess these mach 4 sea skimmers, not only do they not have them no one has them.

I suppose you think the US would just disregard air bases around taiwan?? This is not so, in fact they would be the first targets of the CVBG's own massed tomohawk attacks. After that, they would be taken for US use if they were at all strategic.

Subs? I agree, they would be more of a problem, but with all of the ASW assets on a CVBG as well as the L.A. and Virginia class subs I find it hard to believe many would get through at all. Think blockade - there are a lot of subs in the USN and if they would do as much as form a simple line overlapping their sonars any Chinese sub would be hard pressed to find a gap.

But not critical. The price of oil is the speculative market. The US could move as many countries to more or less nationalize the oil supplies. Even China may have issues, while cozy with Iran, long range interdiction would put a huge crimp in the ability to move oil and any major pipeline would be hit. Unless the Russians sell them everything they have, thier maritime abilites to move oil in sould be very very hard.

The US could effectivly establish a blockade with the navy and limit some ground options. If the Russians play ball and they might (because a weak China would solidify thier position as the top dog in both Europe and Asia, China would have huge issues. make no mistake so would the US but I think much less so that China

The US at this time has a much better ability to project force than does China so Interdicting US suplies from North America would be tough.

reply to post by Harlequin

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The scenario assumed no nuclear weapons A nuclear responce would generate retliation in a like minded way. Rendering this whole discussion academic.

Assuming that the interceptors at Ft. Greely work (10 interceptors 2 per missile) , you would have 5 ICBM hitting the west coast and Hawaii.

Figure Hawaii, Los Angeles, San Fran, Seattle/Bremmington, and San Diego

The other scenario is to hit the numerous dams upstream and allow the flood waters to overwhelm the 3 Gorges Dam

I never said they did either. I said china has "New generation missiles have much smaller RCS and skip on the water, impossible to detect at long ranges. " Unlike the Soviet missiles which traveled fast and got really hot making them easy to detect unlike modern missiles



And how many Tomahawks do you have and how many will miss and how long will it be before the runways are repaired. Are you suggesting that America will use a large portion of its tomahawks on the 14 airbases close to china?.

Are you also suggesting that the US will invade china and take over those airbases?



Google HMS Gotland and see what you find.

After more than a year the USN much vaunted ASW capability was proven to be little more than propaganda. The Collins class submarine in Australia sank a Los angelas and Aircraft carrier during one exercise. Its easy to believe that their capability is not exactly what Tom Clancy writes

Yes, this would not be a conventional land battle at all. If the US were to invade they would lose period. There is simply no way they could get enough troops on the ground and even with air superiority, I doubt they could because of sheer numbers. Force on force the US wins hands down, but that will not be the case. The standing PLA would be augmented by millions of reservists and im betting the leadership of China is much more willing to stomach mass casulties than the US is by a long shot.

A war would be largely an air war, with long range interdiction to take out supplies, oil facilities etc. One aspect of China huge surge as of late is an increasingly oil dependant, electronic based society (At least in the cities) so they have the same vulnerabilites as we do.

FredT, if we can compare figures

Consumption
US- 20.8 million bbl/day (2005 est.)
China - 6.93 million bbl/day (2007 est.)


Production
China - 3.73 million bbl/day (2007 est.)
US - 8.322 million bbl/day (2005 est.)


Obviously in any conflict there will be restrictions on fuel. But which country is able to limit consumption more efficiently.



And you seem to assume that interdicting oil supplies have no consequence

reply to post by chinawhite

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Interdicting oil supplies would have HUGE consequences, but as many put forth in the beging of the scenario, Iran could close the Gulf. This in turn effects a big chunk of the world including China. The US would be getting a bigger percentage of oil from North America. Even if Iran does not the US Navy could do the same.

China without Russian help would be dependant on internal reserves and production plus any overland oil shipments (Trains, trucks, and pipelines) from Iran etc. Since we would also be in a shooting war with Iran sending bombers to interdict supplies would be part of the deal. In fact, it would be huge. Figure any pipeline is toast pretty quick and train lines are just as vulnerable. Trucks are simply not efficient enough to supply that much oil.

In this scenario, Im not sure that they could get enough oil overland to meet needs even on a reduced civilian consumption regime. They would need less than the US because they would be defending home turf and the US would be the one needing to conduct long range attacks.

But Oil is everything in our world and very important. Im just suggesting that in the short term, it would effect the US far less than China.

Edit to add: I agree China will be able to diver all of its oil production to its military. im just suggesting the US will have less restrictions on it. The economy of everybody will be crippled BTW.

[edit on 3/15/08 by FredT]

Agreed, what is worst than multi-national companies is our dependence on oil

Here ya go.



Yes, and the US has next generation anti-cruise missile weapons that should mature around the same time, such as ESSM which is specifically designed to hit supersonic, evading cruise missiles. Add to that UAVs constantly scanning every square meter of water below specifically searching for radar reflections to send back to the battle group and I think that these missiles can be countered more effectively than you think. Even if it was not detected at long range, the ESSM and RAM are made to launch quickly and are light enough to accelerate fast.



Well lets see exactly how many. Assuming there are three CVBGs deployed and excluding upcoming USN ships such as DDG-1000...

Each CVBG carries at least 2 Ticonderoga class cruisers, each of which holds 122 VLS tubes. Depending on its mission, they can all be filled with tomohawks. To be fair they wouldn't be, so lets be generous and call it 80 per ship for a total of 160 missiles.

www.globalsecurity.org...

Each CVBG carries around 3 Arliegh Burke class destroyers, each with 96 VLS, probably packing 50 tomohawks a piece, so that would be another 150 tomohawks.

www.globalsecurity.org...

Here's my favorite. The refitted Ohio SSGNs are exclusively tomohawk and are probably the most powerful non-nuclear ships ever put to sea. They carry 154 tomohawk missiles.

www.globalsecurity.org...

The total cruise missiles per CVBG equates to over 470 missiles. With three CVBGs deployed behind taiwan that would be upwards of 1500 cruise missiles. There is simply no way that loadout will not make absolute rubble of 14 air bases with plenty to spare.

This of course is assuming the USN wants to utterly eradicate the air bases, all it really has to do is take out the SAMS and than the aircraft from the carrier can pin them down well.



Not at all. In fact I don't really see that as EVER happening, it would be totally impractical.



Do you recall why the gotland was engaging the USN in mock combat in the first place??

The US leased the ship from sweden in 2005 to find out how to kill it! They messed around with it for years off the coast of california figuring out tactics to track and kill it. Granted it took them a while but I am inclined to think that they figured it out after two years straight.

I can't be definitive of course but circumstantially I would be amazed if the USN didn't figure out a way to counter it. Add to that the Virginias coming out which absolutely incorporate technology devised from experiences with the Gotland, which just so happens to share a propulsion system with the Song class subs and its derivitives .




[edit on 16-3-2008 by BlackWidow23]

War with china would be similar to this...

YouTube Link

We have these and so do they and so do our allies and so do their allies... Chain reaction WWIII 2billion + dead... Hopefully we will not go to war and recede from the one we are in now...

this is my first post and i really dont want to sound cocky but if we were to go to war with china, nukes wouldnt be an option, the destruction and resulting fallout would affect multiple countries and the enviroment on a massive scale, contaminating food and water supplies in the eastern hemisphere.

now this is just my opinion but given that we have satellites that can read the liscence plates of cars or even track depressions in the dirt made by tires, its safe to assume that we know where their military strengh is.
first strike would be to launch and detonate emp devices (may or maynot exist) over their major cities and military bases, disabling power and most land based communications and electronics, of course cruise missles would work too but you have to worry about backups. second strike no more than 5 minutes later would be to target their air feilds and missle silos, disabling long range attack and defense capabilitys. at the same time this strategy can be applied to the chinese navy under the pretense, fire enough bullets and eventually youll hit your target. the third strike would probablly consist of long range bombers and fighters taking out ground forces and tanks. and with our current military strength and ability estimated time start to end... about 30 minutes if its done one after the other. im not an expert, these are just my thoughts

Sure! Even beating the remains of the German armed forces in North Africa, Italy and then France was by no means bad in terms of operational training. Obviously the Russians got the most training but i must ask what the Chinese knows about modern combined arms warfare in terms of practical if-you-make-a-mistake-you-lose-army-groups type of operational warfare.



The Germans also bombed civilians and it did little to detract from the fact that they were also quite proficient at winning wars. The two issue's just aren't connected and underestimating the US armed forces , and especially what i might be capable of if it's public is suitable aroused, so completely just isn't accurate.



Just basic nonsense that always seems to be accompanied with little or no evidence. The Russians have never allowed their true strategic forces ( NBC) to degrade to levels where it would not provide more than sufficient deterrent.
Their SAM network, and their battle management radars, were consistently upgraded over the last two decades despite economic hardship, and plenty of starving Russians, and to confuse dozens of rusting naval vessels and thousands of non functional tanks and aircraft with a true lack of capability to muster sufficient forces to ward off any convention or strategic attack is in my opinion entirely fanciful. No continental or American army could be raised to invade or seriously threaten the RF without giving the RF YEARS to raise sufficient fighting formations to give itself the time to properly employ it's natural resource wealth.



Which is why these missiles are normally kept in un-fueled states... Defense intelligence and other 'experts' are still officially crediting the RF with Nuclear forces and delivery systems that at least on the face of it superior to that of the US forces and even with plenty of failures of delivery systems and systems in general it's in my opinion quite impossible to deny the strength that remains.



What do you mean by anti defense capability? Russia has by far the most modern Surface to air defenses and have had such a lead for four decades. The joke of Baghdad being so heavily defended was just that considering the fact that the vast majority were GUN defenses.

You know that i have sources so just tell me if this argument about inferior Russian strategic ability is REALLY worth it. The fact that you so easily dismiss the proven American armed forces should in good part show that your not being as objective as know you can be!

Stellar

The war will be very short.
US and Russia will launch half of their rockets to China and China will be a history.

There was no realistic chance the the USN would have been able to get it's carriers into positions to strike at Soviet submarine bases and certainly non after the late 70's. Sure the AEGIS was DESIGNED to in theory deal with saturation attacks but it's testing never showed that it had a realistic capability to do so at the time. I am not sure how good that system is today but back in those days i have my doubts as to how effective it would have been against massed missile strikes.Incidentally at the time were are discussing the vast majority of the Soviet sea launched missiles could be reach US targets from firing positions in their home ports; the same was obviously not true for US SLBM's. Obviously i am not alone in doubting either the AEGIS or the abilities of the USN against the massive submarine and surface forces of the then USSR:














www.g2mil.com...

www.transasianaxis.com...



In fact it was the Soviets that had the offensive navy ( submarines) and the US navy were defense centered considering that it was supposed to keep open the atlantic to enable a defense of Europe and North Africa.



So as you can see the USSR deployed far more submarines and in far more specific roles at that. The US simply had no equivalent to the Soviet cruise missile submarines that were designed solely for the purpose of catching and attempting to overwhelm convoys with volley fired sea skimming missiles.



I agree as what exists in steel and flesh is in all likelihood perfectly good.



It would be a bit silly to send anything you want to keep afloat there but that's just my opinion.



And it's not even widely employed yet so i fail to see the point of claiming that we have to discuss it's supposed superiority!

Stellar

reply to post by FredT

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i can see china hitting running reactors tbh rendering vast area`s of the US similar to alot of the ukraine thank to the events at prypryat


a war with china v usa would literally be that;

russia would not get involved - they don`t like either side , and are certainly not china`s best buddy - they have some of there own nukes aimed there - but they would defend there own interest - so if the US wanted to commit suicide they would hit Vladivostok as well as china, the reponse from russia would be the 5th and 7th Russian surface fleet , and 3 backfire squardons and 2 bear squadrons + MiG-31`s to run interferance - and thats just the navy ; the air force at Ussuriysk have SU-27`s , MiG`s and more Backfires , and that base is 100km`s away from Vladivostok.

So the US wouldn`t touch russia - not unless they wanted yet another front opened in the black sea/ME with russian forces coming in over afghan to hit them. And lets not even mention europe in a land war with russia; no russia would stay as it is seeing it as a china/us war.

nato? nope not a chance - not aus or anyone - they have got there hands burnt this time with iraq and won`t get involved with an american war.


hmmm CBG`s - well all of the pacfic forces would be needed around china - thats the 6 carrier groups in the pacific (3rd and 7th fleet).

btw , i do`t think its been covered - but resupply for the ships at sea- the arleigh burkes are all nice and that - but 2 or 3 rapid air attacks and the ammo bunkers will be empty - then what?