The Glade 4.0

Some time ago, Monty asserted a concern that China might develop the capability of invading the United States.

The purpose of this thread is to discuss the possibility of this scenario. For purposes of this thread, nuclear weapons will be disregarded.

Currently China's People's Liberation Army (the overarching organization equivalent to the DoD) has a total military strength of approximately 2.25 million active and 750,000 reserve troops. 1.6 million of these are part of the Ground Force, broken down in to group armies. These are further subdivided into: 9 armored divisions, 24 motorized infantry, 15 infantry, 2 amphibious assault, plus 22 separate infantry briages, 12 armor brigades, 7 artillery divisions, 14 separate artillery brigades (plus any artillery oragnic to other divisions and brigades) 19 air defense brigades, and 10 helicopter brigades. Further ground forces include the People's Liberation Army Navy Marines; this organization seems to have a combat strength of 2 brigades, although other manpower estimates would seem to suggest as many as 8 or 9 brigades.

For a comparison, Coalition Forces during Desert Storm were about 550,000 land forces; about 30% of the size of the Chinese forces. Since Desert Storm was 20 years ago, and China has modernized much, but not all, of its forces, we will for the sake of simplicity assume that Chinese forces are comparable in overall combat power to Coalition forces from Desert Storm on a per-unit basis, giving them roughly 3 times the power of Coalition forces when numbers are accounted for and assuming that China would not commit more than 90% of its land forces to an attack. This may seem like an exceedingly generous proportion, but attacking the U.S. mainland would be an endevour of epic proportions to begin with.

By contrast, the U.S. has an Army of roughly 1,100,000 soldiers when including both the National Guard and Army Reserves. The Marine Corps consists of 243,000 active and Reserve personnel.

This total gives a numerical advantage of roughly 150,000 soldiers, or a bit more than an 11% advantage in ground strength. In some vehicle types, the advantage would be more significant numerically, in others not so significant.

At it's height, the Iraq War required roughly 150,000 U.S. troops to control. It has a total area of roughly 169,000 square miles. The United States, by contrast, has a total land area of 3.79 million square miles. Assuming that Alaska is initially not attacked, this can be reduced to 3.13 million square miles (Hawaii would necessarily be an objective).

Therefore, we can easily see that 90% of total Chinese land forces would only be enough to hold a little under half the land area of the U.S., assuming that A) U.S. citizens resist with roughly the same intensity as the Iraq insurgency at its strongest and B) that Chinese forces have taken 0 losses to actual organized U.S. military forces.

Furthermore, even if the U.S. has roughly 20% of its forces committed elsewhere, this leaves roughly 880,000 Soldiers and MArines to face the Chinese land invasion; leaving the Alaska National Guard out does not affect this rough estimate as nominal strength is under 2,000. Offensive doctrines in most world militaries call for a 3-1 advantage for offensive operations; the Chinese advantage is a bit less than 2-1. This, furthermore, does not account for the obvious terrain and logistical advantages the U.S. would have; nor does it account for our technological advantages. Our technology has also had 20 years to improve from Desert Storm.

If we assume that the Chinese forces, attacking across the pacific ocean against a technologically superior opponent with major defensive terrain advantages actually require a 6-1 advantage (which I feel is conservative) that means a bare minimum4.5 million troops and associated equipment to defeat the U.S. Army, National Guard, Reserves, and Marines and Reserves, plus an additional bare minimum 3.1 million men to control territory afterwards; again this disregards Alaska. In view of the Chinese population, this is not an insurmountable goal, but the sheer expense of equipping and training a land force almost 5 times larger than the current one, including such essentials as armored vehicles, is truly daunting. This also does not account for the air battle over land.

In the air, the PLA Air Force consists of roughly 2,024 combat aircraft. These are a mix from the very modern (J-10, JF-17, J-11) to the reasonably modern (Su-27, Su-30, JH-7) to the aging and obsolete (J-7, J-8, Q-5, H-6). Of these, only the H-6 is a large bomber; based on the aged Tu-16 Badger it might be considered a modernized, larger version of the B-47. These bombers would be reserved for the sea battle and for carrying cruise missiles as part of China's nuclear deterrent. We will therefore deduct the 120 H-6s from the total, as well as 125 fighter aircraft (20% of fighters) and 20 fighter-bombers (10%) reserved to protect China. This will result in a total estimated committal of 1760 fixed-wing combat aircraft available for combat over land, plus any carrier aircraft in China's hypothetical naval forces; that will be discussed later.

By comparison the U.S. Air Force, including Air National Guard, has a total inventory of 2400 fighter aircraft; thse include the F-15C/D/E, the F-16C/D, and the F-22 pending the arrival of the F-35. A total of 162 strategic bombers of the B-1, B-2, and B-52 types are available as well. Assuming 20% of fighters and 5% of strategic bombers (primarily B-1Bs) deployed around the world, and roughly 40 F-22s left in Alaska, this leaves 2,034 combat aircraft available to counter the Chinese aircraft from the Air Force alone. To this we can add approximately 120 USMC fighters accounting for the greater propensity of Marine units to be deployed. In an emergecy, a number of trainer and aggressor squadrons could also be pressed into service as fighters or attack aircraft, and planes could be de-mothballed as well.

Therefore, we can see that the Chinese planes are already outnumbered by a technologically superior enemy, made worse by the fact that they must first take and hold suitable airstrips to operate from. Using the same 6-1 ratio, China would need at least 12,800 aircraft available, before considering aircraft recalled from foriegn stations, those unmothballed, or assistance from NATO.

Tomorrow, I'll get into the giant elephant in the living room: How does this enormous Chinese horde get across the pacific ocean intact?

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

I would like to know how china would plan on feeding and supplying its army as well.

Good read!

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"I've got twenty ways to tell you shut the f*ck up / nineteen of them are twenty-four bars long / the other one goes: SHUT THE F*CK UP" - Aesop Rock
"There is no God higher than truth." -- Gandhi
Formerly: Tulamian

They invade Japan first and acquire mecha?

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Well, used to be they could have marched them across the northern route, across Siberia and Canada with very little resistance. Unfortunately, that route is a little wet theoretically due to HIGCC.

The zombie march under the sea is also a little theoretical for this discussion.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

How would tensions in East Turkestan, Taiwan and to a lesser extent India play into the equation?

For example if China committed the bulk of their troops to an offensive in the US what is the likelihood of a Taiwanese invasion and East Turkestan revolt? As for India do you think they would move across the border to secure Kashmir and/or Arunachal?

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Feeding and supplying its army is something I'll go into in the naval section. Feeding and to a lesser degree fueling could probably be mitigated slightly by capturing supplies, but you really can't count on that.



Mecha will get eaten alive by a military with generally equivalent technology that invests in customary vehicles. Even if this battle occurs far enough in the future that building a mecha capable of fighting is feasible, standard vehicles will still benefit from the same technological advances.

You can just make much more efficient use of your weight budget on a vehicle that doesn't need all kinds of joints, servos, and other nonsense merely to move its own weight around, and you can armor it more effectively too, and put a bigger gun on it since it won't be sticking up in the air nor holding it out from center mass. Notice that even swing-wing aircraft have become less common worldwide since their late-70s early 80s heyday; all that mass for moving parts has been replaced with fly-by-wire systems that allow an unstable airframe to be feasible, and a swing-wing aircraft needs a lot less of that than a mecha.



That's also a possibility but mainly in order to keep the scenario within a reasonable amount of work I'm avoiding involving Canada, at least right now. I might add that one later since it would have obvious advantages in terms of supply; you could use road and rail for a lot more of the journey. However the climate, weather, terrain, and sheer distance would aggravate things as well, and you'd allow the U.S. to combine its forces with Canada in a wilderness far from our industrial centers. That would complicated our supplies as well, but not as much, and it would allow far more time for crash programs to reactivate and gear up manufacturing of new vehicles and aircraft.

It isn't WWII any more; we would not be able to start cranking out F-22s by the thousands. We could, however, go into a 24-hour production cycle to get replacements in the air and just say "look, we'll work out the money after we win.. if we don't, you won't need to worry about the money."



Zombies are even worse in terms of wanktastic capabilities than mecha.



This is why I retained a certain percentage of Chinese forces at home; 10% in the case of ground forces. Assuming that the "retained at home" portion expanded at the same rate as the proportion committed to attack, this still leaves 800,000 chinese troops and several hundred fighter aircraft to protectt themselves, plus their strategic nuclear weapons.

To be perfectly honest, China could never hide such a horrendous buildup, and pretty much everyone would be preparing to be attacked. In fact, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and quite a few others would assume themselves to be targets. That all contributes greatly to the impracticality of this whole endeavor, and I'm purposefully not even trying to account for that becase A) this is all back-of-the-envelope estimation in the first place and that would just send it into wild-ass guess land and B) it's too much work. Trying to include more and more scenarios expands the complexity exponentially, so it's easier to say "This is what China needs if the fight occurs in a vaccum and they just have to pay a 'forces tax' to account for all those unknowns".

Back later with the explanantory portion of the naval scenario.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Dammit, you pre-emptively stole my follow-up question.

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Not to mention allies and an Armed american populace.

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I prefer to think of them as "Fighting evil in another dimension"

China faces 3 basic problems in the naval portion of this exercise:

1) Getting its 7-million+ land force and land-based aircraft across the pacific ocean 2) Supplying them once they are there and 3) protecting this caravan against attack.

Obviously, all 7.6 million troops and their aircraft do not need to arrive at once. Therefore, initial attacks to take islands like Guam, Hawaii, and whatever others might help aircraft "hop" across the pacific would be a near-certainty (and in all likelyhood, any real attack by China would probably focus on taking and holding such islands rather than invading North America, but I digress).

China has a total inventory of 1 landing dock, 83 landing ships, and between 370 and 480 landing craft. For the sake of simplicity, we'll assume that this would be built up by a factor of 5, like land forces, for a total of 5, 415, and about 2000 respectively. Landing craft are small boats/ships carried by the larger vessels so we will assume 420 amphibious craft to be protected.

In addition, armored vehicles and bulk supplies of all sorts must be brought in by ship. Assuming an average speed of 15 knots and accounting for a trip of roughly 6200 miles, this means a trip taking a little over 17 days. Since the ship must then make a return trip, this means any given ship requires a minimum of 34 days travel time. Accounting for loading, unloading, and maintenance, we can assume an average of 38 days per trip per vessel.

In order to supply this monstrous force of 7.6 million men and 12,800 aircraft, food, fuel, ammunition, spare parts, and other necessities will have to come from China. Some food and fuel can obviously be captured, but nowhere near enough, nor can ammunition or parts be used in systems they are not compatible with.

During Desert Storm, ground logistics claimed roughly 300,000 tons of supplies prepositioned by ground logistics to support the ground offensive. In the event, only a "small portion" of this was consumed during the 100-hour ground war, but since China will face far more severe opposition, we will assume that they will use supplies at roughly the rated predicted for Desert Storm when the prepositioning was done, or 300,000 tons for 4 days for every 500,000 soldiers (there were really about 670,000 ground troops, but many of them were near Kuwait itself driving directly north; for simplicity of caluculation, we'll assume about 500,000 were involved int he big "left hook" and using prepositioned supplies).

This means 75,000 tons of supplies per day per half-million troops. China will require 7.6 million troops for this operation, but as stated, not all will arrive at once. However, additional troops must be brought in after the initial invasion beachhead, and they cannot come on the amphibious vessels until much later because those ships are already on this side of the pacific. Much of the 7.6 million estimate as well includes losses expected to U.S. forces; there would therefore be a large initial surge followed by a lower rate of replacement troops.

Therefore, we'll assume that follow-on forces take the place of supplies in the initial push of cargo vessels and that there is a higher and higher proportion of cargo vessels in later pushes, and use the 75,000 tons per day per half-million troops. This means 1.14 million tons of total cargo haul needed per day.

Assuming an average of 50,000 tons of cargo per cargo vessel, this means a requirement for 22.8 large cargo vessels arriving per day, on average. However, if any given ship can only arrive every 38 days, this means 867 large cargo vessels are needed in addition to 420 amphibious vessels, or 1287 ships to be escorted and protected across the pacific ocean, and without any in reserve to replace losses. Note that the amphibious ships are still counted in later convoy turns since they would be ideal for conveying the actual men and vehicles.

If this seems like an unfair estimate, consider that in Red Storm Rising, Tom Clancy estimated an entire Soviet airborne division and 24 MiG-29s to hold Iceland, and that was after NATO forces were almost wiped out by bomber attack, with Iceland having no military of its own. Compare the sixe of Iceland to the U.S. by size alone, and their total lack of a military, and you will see the sher size of the endeavor. It should also be noted that the Soviet commander stated he didn't have enough men to garrison the whole island. While normally I avoid using works of fiction as sources, RSR was intended to portray a NATO-Warsaw pact conflict as accurately as possible, and I don't think his estimate is all that far off.

So, again, China needs to protect 1287 ships to maintain this offensive. More coming.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Allies are purposefully left out until I get to the Northern Route varien through Canada, and then we'll talk Canada, although it's safe to assume Canada and Mexico will both commit forces as well, as will Britain, and Australia, Korea, and Japan in the naval battle. I'm leaving them out for simplicity. Other nations would probably commit as well assuming NATO is intact and even Russia might decide to attack China out of either opportunism or fear.

This would sort of result in and endless buildup cycle as China built up for this, everyone else built up to meet the threat, they build up more to overcome the buildup, and so forth. We're just sort of ignoring that in order to get a look at where they'd need to be right now if they wanted to attack next week.

The armed American populace is accounted for in my total estimate of ground forces, assuming Americans will resist at intensity comparable to that found in Iraq at its height. Again, this is for simplicity; Americans are likely to use very different tactics, have far better non-urban terrain to conduct guerrilla war in, and will not be nearly as prone to intersectarian violence with each other, and will be supported by the continuing resistance of an organized military. However, we also would not have access to the large quantities of military explosives for making IEDs, nor are there lots of RPGs and other antiarmor weapons just laying around.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

At sea, there are two basic types of attack: torpedo and missile. For all intents and purposes, gun battles between surface ships will not occur barring extremely unusual circumstances.

Missile attack relies on launching missiles from surface vessels, aircraft, or submarines. These missiles come in two basic flavors: supersonic missiles that come straight at you at high altitude and low-flying cruise missiles that hug the water to avoid detection until the last minute.

In either case, the defender needs to stop the missiles before they strike his ships. Modern warships essentiall eschew armor in favor of active defenses; while many have some limited degree of protection against near misses, terrorists with machineguns and the like, and really large ships like carriers have thick hulls just by virtue of their size, modern missiles would pierce old-style steel armor plate with relative ease, mainly due to the advent of shaped-charge warheads. This is not to say armor is useless; just that the amount needed to actually keep out modern missiles or torpedoes would be unreasonably heavy and expensive, and even if you could much of what ship needs to fight (radar antennae for example) cannot be armored.

Therefore ships rely on measures such as ECM and decoys to lure missiles away, and various forms of air defenses to destroy them. The ideal with any missile is really to shoot down or sink whatever is launching it before it can fire. Failing that, a ship must destroy or avoid incoming missiles.

Any formation of ships (even if its only one ship) will be able to stop a certain number of missiles. In actual practice the vagaries of life will adjust this number up or down but a pretty good idea can be had based on what's generally available to the formation to defend itself based on the average success rate of different systems. This is further adjusted by how long the ship has to engage the incoming missiles; really fast high flying ASMs can be seen and fired at a long way off, but they come in really fast. Sea-skimmers, on the other hand, come in slow, but cannot be detected until they are much closer.

What this means is that each defending ship in a formation will be able to launch a given number of salvos of SAMs in the time avilable and each salvo will contain a given number of SAMs based on the number and type of launcher. A certain percentage of these will hit. Furthermore, a quick-and-dirty assumption can be made that each ship will, if it contains the appropriate system, defeat 1 missile with guns (dual-purpose and point defense) 1 with ECM and 1 with decoys, assuming they are trgeted on the defender and not some other ship; i.e. an escorting destroyer can absorb 3 missiles targeted on itself with guns, ECM and decoys, but if there are none then 3 missiles targeted on merchant ships cannot be engaged with those systems instead.

Take the following diagram (I didn't draw this myself; I found it elsewhere on the web)



This example shows a carrier battlegroup including 4 Arliegh Burke Aegis destroyers, 2 Oliver Hazard Perry frigates hypothetically upgraded with Evolved Sea Sparrow to replace the now-removed SM-1 missile system, and a carrier and ammunition ship each with Evolved Sea Sparrow and RAM missiles. Each ship can be assumed to have PD guns, ECM, and decoys. Note that the smallest range circle, the red for RAM is still a 16 KM radius as opposed to about 2KM tops for PD guns. While this is suspicious (other sources show only a 7.5km range) it still confers a major advantage over guns. Note also the E-2C Hawkeye AWACS track above the formation, and the direction of air threat.

As an aisde, the destroyer that is out away from the formation is acting as a "missile trap"; it would remain with radar shut down untilt he Hawkeye detected the bombers within range of the destroyer then it would suddenly activate and fire SAMs at the bombers which will, for obvious reasons, try not to get too close to the ships they are attacking. The frigate out ahead of the formation is sweeping for submarines. Any friendly submarines attached to the formation are left off as they are not relevant to the air defense picture.

Let's assume for example that this formation is attacked by bombers armed with AS-6 Kingfish missiles. This 13,000 pound monster has a speed of about 3400km/h (mach 3.5 depending on altitude) with a 1000kg warhead (or a 350kt nuclear warhead); hence the importance of avoiding even one hit and the pointlessness of trying to stop such a thing with armor.

A bomber really could not be expected to carry more than two, and possibly only one depending on range to the base. In either case, the bombers will doubtless be detected at well beyond maximum range by the E-2C hawkeye, or by any radar or other sensors they use to locate the ships. The missiles will run in at about 65,000 feet until they are almost over the formation, leaving them in full view. The bombers will launch at maximum range in order to limit the amount of time they are exposed to attack by the carrier's fighters.

Maximum range for the missile is given as anywhere from 300 to 700 km, but the shorter range is proably safer due to the need to locate the ships before firing. Therefore, at 3400km/h it will take the missiles 4.8 minutes or 288 seconds from launch to arrive at their targets. The ships have this long to destroy them.

An Arleigh Burke carries a 30-cell and a 60-cell VLS. For purposes of the example, we will assume that each Burke has 20 of these cells loaded with Tomahawks for antiship or land attack and therefore not available for air defense, and 10 more loaded with ESSM for closer-in. Each Burke will be loaded with SM-2 Block IIIB SAMs; with 4 Burkes this gives a total available SM-2 load of 240 missiles. Since each Burke has a 60-cell and a 30-cell launcher, (we will assume the tomahawks are evenly distributed between the two) and each launcher can fire one missile per second, that allows 8 SM-2 launches per second for 20 seconds and 4 per second for an additional 20 seconds from the formation as a whole (despite the illustration, we'll assume the missile trap destroyer is actually back with the formation to keep this simpler).

This version of the SM-2 can engage at 170 km, and launchers will actually be managed so that the first wave of SAMs arrives just as the AS-6s break this barrier. At this point, the AS-6s are 163 seconds from impact. 8 more SAMs will arrive every second for 19 more seconds, then 4 more per second for 20 seconds. We will give each SM-2 an 80% chance of a hit (not at all unlikely since this is what AEGIS was intended for back in the 1970s and both it and the missiles have been upgraded considerably). The SM-2s can be expected to stop 192 incoming missiles by the time 40 seconds have passed. This is the beauty of the AEGIS system; it does not have mechanical illuminators that need to be steered onto targets. Although not all the missiles can be directly controlled at once, they don't all have to be since they are arriving in waves, and there are 4 AEGIS systems to control the missiles.

If there are any missiles remaining, the carrier, the 2 frigates and the ammunition ship can engage with Evolved Sea Sparrow as can the destroyers. The ESSM can be quad-packed in the VLS systems of the Burkes, meaning that the 10 cells we devoted to these can actually carry 40 missiles. I cannot locate a rate of fire for the non-VLS launchers of the other systems, but we will assume the average launch rate of 1 per 2 seconds that older mechanical launchers used, and still 1 per second for the Burkes. ESSM has an effective engagement range of 50km, and whiel the non-Aegis ships actually do have illuminators and directors, they can also just let the AEGIS ships control their missiles. Allowing for 1 launcher per frigate, 2 for the carrier and ammunition ship each, this allows an average rate of fire of 11 ESSM per second starting at 50 km. At 50 km the AS-6s are 48 seconds from their targets. It is safe to assume, however, that the ships will have no more than 20 seconds worth of ESSM available (the capacity of the destroyers); this still allows a total of 220 ESSM to be launched.

Because not all the ships are on top of each other and the missiles will go for different targets, it will be very hard to get hits with the last ESSM launches. We'll take an overall average of 50% hits for ESSM. This allows 110 hits.

At this point, RAM, gun systems, ECM, and decoys take over. RAM, assuming 1 launcher per escort and 2 for the 2 large ships means a total of 10 launchers firing 1 missile every 2 seconds, and we can expect a 50% chance of a hit. With the AS-6 covering 0.94 km/s from 10 km out can expect 50 RAM launches and 25 kills.

This gives us a total of 327 AS-6 kills. Each ship can be expected to defeat another 3 missiles targeted specfically at it, but these are not totalled in because the missiles will generally tend to go for the bigger targets.

This means that, to get at least one hit, a bare minimum of 331 missiles would be needed, or 166 bombers' worth, and that assumes that both A) the bombers are operating close enough to base to carry 2 each and B) totally ignores missiles or bombers destroyed by F/A-18s from the carrier. If land-based fighters were nearby or worse, a second carrier, the number gets truely ridiculous.

Keep in mind however, that this is based on an AEGIS-centric defense, and China does not have AEGIS. Moving on to torpedo and submarine attacks next, before we get into the actual situation in the pacific.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We have Chuck Norris.

Is anything else really important?

Before moving into torpedoes, 2 important points should be taken from the above exercise.

1) It takes a lot of missiles to saturate a modern air defense network

2) Once the network is saturated, hits start occuring. The saturation point isn't hard and fast; but our back-of-the-envelope calculations should give it to us within +-10%. At some point around 300 incoming missiles, hits become very likely, and almost certain as we get close to 330. This is simply because there is no more time nor any more SAMs to engage the incoming missiles with. In other words, if we fired say, 340 missiles and got 10 hits that does not mean we'd get one hit from 34 missiles; we're well below the saturation point. It is not a "percentage" event.

Moving on.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

The modern torpedo is quite a different animal than the WWII torpedo of popular culture. The U.S. uses the Mk-48 ADCAP torpedo, an immensely capable weapon. Officially, the range of the weapon is "greater than 5 miles" but that's rather a "no ****" thing; WWII torpedoes easily exceeded that. Open-source estimates place the range at about 23 miles at 55 knots, probably about 30 miles operating at reduced speeds.

The torpedo offers huge advantages over the missile: It attacks from underwater, and it cannot be shot down. It's big disadvantage is its comparative lack of range; a submarine must get well within the range of ASW equipment, especially helicopters, to make a torpedo attack. Many submarines carry missiles as well; these allow the submarine to make a standoff attack, and are likely to get a lot closer before being deteced than in our air example above because there is no huge bomber formation to be found, but they also will tend to be slower and in smaller numbers.

The U.S. has a total of 53 active nuclear powered attack submarines. Keeping 10% for atlantic duty and assumign 10% under long term refit, this allows for a war surge of about 42 boats. In addition, 4 Ohio-class ballistic missile submarines have been converted to tomahawk-launch platforms, and could be used to supplement the attack boats either with missile attacks or torpedoes. They are an exception to the rule of small numbers of sub-launched missiles; each boat carries over 150 tomahawks.

In contrast China has about 5 nuclear powered attack submarines in commission, with 4-6 in reserve that could be surged in the event of war (although I'm certain we could surge a few ourselves). They also have 5 or fewer ballistic missile subs that form their strategic deterrent. They have 47 conventional attack submarines, of which 22 are reasonably modern or better.

Ignoring the older Romeo-class and Ming-classes which are noisy, slow, and have been know to kill their entire crew with toxic fumes leaves China with 27 attack submarines, or only about 50% of our total. We will assume that every one of theirs cancels one of ours (not necessarily kills, nor vice versa, just keeps it from attacking surface ships because it has to be elsewhere; for example tracking their ballistic missile subs. We can assume the older attack subs are protecting them as well, since preserving strategic weapons would be a top priority.)

This leaves us with 26 attack submarines and 4 cruise missile subs to attack a Chinese surface force with. Assuming that each attack submarine can destroy one escort ship before being forced to break off or being sunk (this, again, is an average; one sub might sink 3 escorts while another never locates a convy, and I am being conservative) per convoy turn, this means that 26 escorts will be lost every 38 days to submarine attack.

The reason for attacking the escorts is simple: Eliminating the escorts leaves the escorted ships wide open to missile attack. The reverse is true; eliminating ASW escorts with missiles will greatly increase the chances of torpedo attack, but missiles must saturate defenses while torpedos do not need to. Therefore, it conserves ammunition enormously and saves immense amounts of money to eliminate SAM-armed ships by torpedo.

We can expect, however, to lose some attack submarines; a safe assumption will be one per week from the outbreak of hostilities. Therefore the actual rate of escort loss decreases over time. Furthermore, their submarines will be sunk as well, freeing up our 'cancelled' subs. Therefore we would not expect to see a serious decrease in the rate of escort sinking until 16 weeks into the war, or 2.9 convoy turns. We should therefore expect to sink 75 escort vessels by torpedo attack in that time.

On to the Chinese escorts themselves.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

This is truly fascinating.

I think RSR was my favorite Clancy book.

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Holy shitsnacks!

China's largest combatant ships are destroyers; it has 26 of these of various ages and capabilities. 4 of these destroyers are extremely modern air defense vessels and could be considered generally equivalent to the Burke-class. 4 more are Russian Sovremenny-class or equivalent/improvements. Another 3 are modern ships but seem to be less oriented on air defense; the remaining ships are refits of older ships.

China has 46 active frigates with 1 in sea trials and 2 under construction. Of these, only the final 7 (when currently building ships are complete) have significant antiair capability.

As we can see from these numbers, the PLA Navy is pitifully inadequate to escort over 1200 amphibious and cargo vessels across the pacific ocean to attack North America.

Even escorting only the 420 amphibs, if these ships average 500 feet in lengthx100 feet wide, 500 yards between ships, steaming in 6 columns this would make the invasion fleet alone 27 miles long by 1.5 miles wide, or 40.5 square miles of ships to be escorted. Initially, the antiair ships could be oriented on the expected threat axis, but as the fleet got closr to the U.S. the directions the threat could come from would spread immensely, and of course submarine threat could come from any direction.

Submarines could fairly easily nibble away the dozen or so best antiaircraft vessels and then aircraft loaded with Harpoons could simply alpha-strike the remainder of the escorts and amphibs until they were all sunk.

China has no operational aircraft carriers, they have had the ex-Varyag from Russia since 1991 and have not yet either put it into operation or built one themselves. Despite Monty's thinly-veield attempt at a racism accusation ("anything we can do they can do! Are our workers just better or someting?") the facts indicate that they have not yet overcome all the engineering problems. They have also acquired the ex-HMAS Melbourne and the ex-Minsk and Kiev, but despite having 4 carriers to study apparently lacked either the engineering skill or some technical resources needed to make aircraft carriers until recently. Reports indicate that 2 carriers will be finished in 5 to 6 years and operate the Su-33, a navalized version of the Su-27/30.

Aircraft carriers could greatly simplify the overall problem they face; they would provide the ability to intercept bombers at great distances and air support during intial landings. They would also greatly increase antisubmarine capacity, mainly through helicopters.

The problem, of course, is that the U.S. has 11 aircraft carriers, all bigger than what China would build, and all escorted by numerous AEGIS ships. With 22 AEGIS cruisers and a planned 70 Burkes and 11 carriers for the U.S., China would need at least a comparable force to contemplate a transoceanic offensive. Some U.S. carriers would be unavailable, but since ours are bigger, that still puts China needing at least 11, and probably more. With only about 4 Burke-equal escorts at this point, China really needs another 80 modern destroyers to escort this carrier force, plus at least another 25-30 to escort convoys (with 1 convoy every 7 days, 38 days total turnaround that allow).

Frigates, for antisubmarine protection, are similarly deficient. At least 3 per carrier (the destroyers providing additional ASW) means a requirement for 33 modern frigates for the carriers alone and probably about the same number to protect convoys.

This would greatly decrease the rate of loss for escorts to subs in the first place, maybe even enough to eliminate a sub threat.

However, we are talking about hundreds of ships needing to be built between amphibs, escorts, and carriers, without even thinking about submarines, plus hundreds of 50,000+ ton cargo vessels, the current numbers of which are unknown.

At current building rates, it would take over 30 years just to build the carriers. Obviously more than one ship can be built at once, but how many? And how long until we would detect this and build up ourselves?

On the other hand, realize that if we allow our own defenses to atrophy, it has a multiplicative effect. 100,000 fewer soldiers for the U.S. is 600,000 fewer China would need to invade. That means fewer amphibs to transport the men and fewer cargo ships to haul the supplies, which in turn means fewer carriers and escorts to build to proect them.

More importantly, 2 of our states are far more vulnerable to invasion. More on that next.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

At what point in the Atlantic would our ground based aircraft be able to measurably impact their naval units?

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I would immagine they would first invade southern Mexico, and conquer it, such that they could stage a prolonged ground invasion from within their own territory.

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I would think our aircraft would have a measurable impact long before their ships were able to cross the Rockies on the way to the Atlantic...

I would think once we destroyed their escorts, our land based aircraft, B1-B and B2s would be very successful in the Maritime strike role.

Their range is not an issue, we have in air refueling capabilities that theoretically allow us to strike pretty much anywhere we want.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Much like Mexico has invaded the US already? I mean, it can't be that hard for a military force to get across that border considering a homeless guy with a goat on his back stuffed with meth can accomplish that same feat.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Logistically how long could you keep a single bomber crew in flight though, plus re-armanent and how many airborne tankers do we have? Etc.

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The B2 crews run missions from MO to Iraq and Back. I imagine the B1B crews do similar. We have approximately 450 KC-135 and something like 80 KC-10s.

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Holy shitsnacks!

On to the Alaska question.

Alaska is 4331 miles from Beijing. This cuts 1900 miles off the trip from Beijing, reducing the total trip one-way to 12 days, or 28 days for a round trip, load and unload, and maintenance.

More importantly, this greatly reduces the se exposure of the convoys. They can now focus their defence much more on attacks from the directions of Japan and Alaska. This greatly reduces the need for carriers to protect against air attack; fewer carriers can be used because they are concentrating in a smaller area with a more predictable threat axis.

If all that's wanted is Alaska, China can greatly reduce it's manpower committment as well. Alaska is 663,000 square miles, still much larger than Iraq, but it has under 1 million people compared to 31 million in Iraq. Citizen resistance, while undoubtedly fierce and competant, would simply be overwhelmed. If China committed a force of only 150,000 men, comparable to our largest Iraq deployments, that would give them just under 1 soldier per 4 Alaskans, compared to one U.S. soldier per 206 Iraqis. More importantly, while Elmendorf AFB with its F-22s makes for reasonable air defense, total ground forces in the region include only the 1900 or so soldiers of the Alaska National Guard and one airborne brigade from the 25th Infantry Division.

Alaska has little ability to defend itself just based on its remoteness and low population. The joke about "I can see Russia from my house!" is a lot less funny when one realizes how little is readily available to defend Alaska.

Granted, Canada would readily grant permission to move across their territory to defend Alaska, and probably would even fight itself for fear of being next.

That brings us to the question of an attack down through Canada.

Despite the logistical advantages at sea, I find such a proposition even more unlikely than a seaborne attack. Any advantages gained at sea are negated by the ever-lengthening supply train back through the Canadian rockies to Alaska which would mean ever increasing needs to protect the flanks of that train, and fuel to haul supplies along it.

While Canada only has a little over a hundred fighter aircraft and only 3 additional brigades of ground forces on top of U.S. forces, and has only 1/9th our population or so, most of that population is concentrated in the southern portion of the country. Thus, fighting would proceed through hundreds of miles of sparesly-inhabited wilderness and mountains, well suited to the defender, before even getting to any major Canadian targets, much less U.S. ones. Worse, attacking both Canada and the United States would almost guarantee a that practically every NATO soldier and airplane would show up even in the unlikely event they wouldn't fully commit to defending the U.S. against an invasion.

This route seem to me a pipe dream of the sort only envisioned by Axis and Allies. Its big advantage, greatly decreasing sea vulnerability, is simply swallowed up by the Canadian countryside.

Hawaii is about 4900 miles from Shanghai, China, putting it squarely between Alaska and California in distance. Hawaii has a total area of only about 11,000 square miles, and its population is a little less than twice Alaska's. It could therefore be taken and held in and of itself fairly easily. However, Pearl Harbor is there with major naval assets. The Hawaii National Guard includes the 29th Infantry Brigade, a rapid-call up NG Brigade. It's Air National Guard includes a squadron of F-22s. There is also an active duty brigade in Hawaii, and active Air Force forces there and in Guam.

Hawaii would be significantly easier to take and hold than Alaska only because of its small size; troops would not be simply swallowed up by wilderness and because they would be present in much smaller numbers a much smaller sea presence would be needed to sustain them.

In short, while the continental U.S. has little to fear from the Chinese at current force ratios, and Hawaii and Alaska would currently be hard to invade becaause of the current state of Chinese naval forces, creating the ability to attack either of the latter two is much more realistic. More importantly, in either case we lose most or all of our logistical advantage because of the distance of these states from the other 48.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Except for the fact that Mexico would scream for assistance, we'd give it, and then they'd face the same naval problem they did in the first place. Not to mention the ire of the rest of Latin America, which, while not military giants, suddenly get a lot more dangerous when they all cooperate and you're on their mainland.

The British were successful in the Falklands because they were islands, and because Argentina didn't have the U.S. Navy.. or much of a navy at all.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."