"The 5 Most Powerful Navies of 2030" Topic

"The most powerful navies in 2030 will be a reflection of the broader state of the world. Some countries are invested in preserving the current international order, and see naval power as a means to maintain it. Other emerging countries are building navies commensurate with their newfound sense of status, often with an eye towards challenging that order.

The eastward shift in naval power will continue in 2030, a product of both declining defense budgets in Europe and growing economies in Asia. While the most powerful navies of the Cold War were concentrated largely in Europe, by 2030 both China and India will be on the list, with Japan and South Korea as runners-up also fielding large, modern naval forces.

Ship-wise, there are two classes that will define the most powerful navies: aircraft carriers and ballistic missile submarines. Aircraft carriers reflect the need to maintain a global, or even regional, power-projection capability. Ballistic-missile submarines reflect a maturation and diversification of a country's nuclear arsenal, with an eye toward maintaining a second-strike capability in case of surprise attack. More than any other type, those two will define naval power in the early-to-mid twenty-first century…"
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Amicalement
Armand

They left out Grand Fenwick….

China and Japan, definitely. Didn't think about India. I think South Korea is only a coastal force designed to dominate over North Korea, they are very careful not to step on China's toes, they'll let the USA take the heat.

@cwlinsj – Regarding South Korea they actually are building up a fairly impressive blue-water capability, complete with amphibious assault ships. Now these would be useful against North Korea in a future conflict, that's true. But I suspect that there's other wars to come they also have their eyes on….

-Will

South Korea is only planning for one war, it is against North Korea. They have no plans or strategic need to engage in hostilities with any of their neighbors, namely Japan or China. Russia? -Hardly.

While their navy may be a formidable world class outfit and may serve as a deterrent in the region, they have no other focus than their crazy bretheren just 35 miles north of Seoul. Same with their land and air forces, just one enemy at a time.

There is a pretty significant conflict between South Korea and Japan over some rocks (technical term for islands without fresh water source) in the Sea of Japan.

Unless an economic miracle happens, the only reason Russia will have a place on that list is the SSBNs. For all other purposes, the Bear is out of the blue-water navy game. Old ships rusting at the pier.

India will need to make a lot more escorts, just to properly screen her carriers.

China is the real wild card. If they can figure out quality control/quality assurance, anything made in China will be a lot better than current equipment. This really affects the capabilities of their submarine fleet. Gotta have functional submarines to get crews out to sea to become competent, though that applies equally to surface ships. They're also going to kill a lot of pilots over the next 14 years developing a Naval Aviation culture. Landing on a carrier is incredibly intolerant of error, and errors tend to be fatal.

With 1.3 billion population, China can afford losing a few pilots… Actually, with advanced VR technologies, pilots can get hundreds of hours of training while sitting in the lab.

Quality? Don't forget that the USA killed almost 15,000 pilots/crew and lost almost 14,000 planes just INSIDE the USA during WW2. There were 40 accidents a day with 1/4 resulting in aircraft lost during this time.

We learned how to create flyers, so will China, and with less sacrifice.

I'm not sure anything really prepares a person for landing on a carrier, other than actually doing it.

I'm sure of that, but how many people realize that China has actually owned 4 aircraft carriers since 1985? They've been practicing for over 30 years.

China also operates steam catapults, something the Soviets could never figure out.

This misconception that China can't match the West has got to end. They're going to eat our lunches and soon because of this attitude.