"Chinese Cruise Missiles Could Pose Biggest Threat.." Topic

…To US Carriers.

"TAIPEI — Saturation strikes from Chinese anti-ship cruise missiles could become the biggest threat to US Navy carrier strike groups (CSG), according to a paper issued by the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs at the National Defense University.

The paper , "A Low-Visibility Force Multiplier: Assessing China's Cruise Missile Ambitions," draws from both Western and Chinese-language open source documents and concludes, "experienced Aegis warriors will respect China's emerging capabilities."

Written by cruise missile specialist Dennis Gormley, and China military specialists Andrew Erickson and Jingdong Yuan, the paper states that, due to the low cost of developing, deploying and maintaining cruise missiles, the Chinese believe that cruise missiles possess a 9:1 cost advantage over the expense of defending against them. China assumes that "quantity can defeat quality" by simply saturating a CSG with a variety of high-speed, low-altitude, cruise missiles…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

While I see a war of some kind as likely, the reality of a nuclear power taking a US carrier down means nukes will fly. In the end few will even be left to remember the carrier.

First, find your carrier. But I agree, if folks are shooting at carriers, we are in a full scale war situation, which would not be nice.

"While I see a war of some kind as likely, the reality of a nuclear power taking a US carrier down means nukes will fly. In the end few will even be left to remember the carrier."

Unlikely, despite the beliefs of some here the US administration isn't that stupid. Remember also that "takedown" doesn't equate to "sinking". A mission kill is quite sufficient.

However, the whole premise is extremely unlikely. What we are seeing here is deterrence, just of a non-nuclear variety. By possessing a credible long range threat the Chinese will undoubtedly impact on the planning options of those whom they feel might want to impact on their own potential future actions. It is this kind of technical development that actually makes armed conflict between near-peer nations less likely rather than more.

Isn't this the old Soviet counter? A huge fleet of Backfires carrying SSMs? Or are they just going to build missile batteries ashore and just sit back and dominate "just" the South China Sea?

I am pretty sure that's what China wants "the China sea" in the immediate future.

The counter is of course the USs ability to use exactly the same weapons on or prior to the Chinese release of their loads. I'm sure the Americans hold to their preferred stance of being on post no matter what the Chinese want and having a 1st strike policy anyway. So long of the short it still puts China on a back foot strategy of 1 second past the hour at all times. Cheers

Sounds exactly like the strategy that the Aegis ships were designed to counter.

Have fun with that, China.