China, Casinos And The Ark Royal

The Diplomat:

For decades now, aircraft carriers have been the dominant symbols of military power and technological strength. Nations who develop them have the ability to strike their enemy from thousands of miles away, inflicting massive damage.

Read the whole story: The Diplomat

Comments

[OnTheOtherSideOfEarth]

12:11 AM on 08/06/2011

NO,we are doomed. Chinese have an aircraft, US only have 14.
NO,we are doomed. Chinese spending 114 billions on millitary, US only spending 698 billions.

[Jack Daniels Esq]

05:13 AM on 08/05/2011

So the Chinese copied a trashed, old English Bullet Train ..........

[duxguts]

04:57 AM on 08/05/2011

In other words folks, the Pentagon wants more money to counter this latest Chinese threat. On another front the Pentagon are keeping a close watch at what the Zulus are up to.

[adamben]

09:59 AM on 08/05/2011

over one out-dated aircraft carrier no where near deployed?

[mike711l]

04:12 AM on 08/05/2011

I wouldn't lose any sleep over this. We are not going to war with China anytime soon, and we owe them so much money they cannot afford to go to war with us if they ever want to be paid back. Turning the old carriers into casinos will prove so profitable we will be copying them soon.
Besides, one missile or a few torpedo's can take out an entire carrier anyway.

[MosesDidItBest]

12:59 AM on 08/05/2011

The timing is perfect. Especially now with the military budget ostensibly on the chopping block.

[Foodgrade]

12:01 AM on 08/05/2011

I'm not worried about Chinese aircraft carriers. I worry about outsourcing to China.

[any mouse]

03:24 AM on 08/05/2011

You are worried about the correct thing since China has no desire to go war with anyone especially the US since Chinese leaders are well aware that wars are a tremendous waste of resources.

The carrier (singular) that China is building is primarily for zonal defense, NOT to provide remote attack capability because as other have noted, carriers are pretty much sitting ducks in a real war where both sides have lots of resources (at least to begin with).

[Jack Daniels Esq]

05:14 AM on 08/05/2011

Only buy American - aint rocket science

[MajorKong]

07:02 AM on 08/05/2011

Tell ya what. Head down to Walmart and try counting "Made in USA" labels. I bet you won't find many.

[ellwood145]

10:52 PM on 08/04/2011

Floating lead poisoning. BVUY AMERICAN

[MajorKong]

09:44 PM on 08/04/2011

I hear they're already working on the new Walmart Class carrier.

[any mouse]

03:26 AM on 08/05/2011

Just because the US vastly over-pays for war toys, does not mean that China has to.

US war toys are vastly over-engineered and about 100X the cost they should be.

Keep in mind, as Israel is discovering, thousands of cheap, reasonably accurate missiles, TRUMP a small fleet of very, very, very expensive airplanes.

[adamben]

10:05 AM on 08/05/2011

well it is the old story of building a better mouse trap. this is why having the most up-to-date technology will win battles (israelis in nearly every war they fought; they will still defeat the iranian rockets but now will be bloodied on the homefront as well as the battlefront), unless you have overall numbers. this is how the us defeated the germans (our stuff was inferior but we had lots of it) or the chinese pushed us back from the yalu river and almost out of the korean peninsula.

[Kim Moore2011]

09:31 PM on 08/04/2011

The United States has been purchasing goods from China for years and now we are seeing what they are doing with all those good old dollars.

[any mouse]

03:29 AM on 08/05/2011

Yes China is using all those dollars to build a modern, comfortable country for themselves with a huge middle class, while the US is destroying both its infrastructure and middle class.

Which is the smarter country?

[adamben]

10:06 AM on 08/05/2011

they are doing what we are doing; creating a very small class of super wealthy individuals, with the majority making very little; real estate inflation is eating away at the middle classes savings; sound familiar?

[MajorKong]

09:10 PM on 08/04/2011

Obviously we would never want to export something as important as our manufacturing sector to such a crafty and determined foe as China.

Oh, wait....

[any mouse]

03:30 AM on 08/05/2011

I guess you missed the memo to get everything shipped from the US to China as soon as possible so we can turn off the lights in the US.

[Dr Oswald Spengler]

08:16 PM on 08/04/2011

Obama will mark the end our era.
A small mind is downsizing everything.
The Left won.

[any mouse]

03:32 AM on 08/05/2011

NOT Obama's fault!

BOTH political parties have done everything they can for the last 35 years to destroy the US by exporting all the jobs that can't be done by robots.

[Andrashka]

04:26 AM on 08/05/2011

I'm sorry, I missed the release of those statistics: trade with China started with the Obama presidency ?
"the end of [your] era" came when the US voted twice in a row for W. Not once, twice !

[Francois Bergeron]

05:33 AM on 08/05/2011

And when Bush doubled the debt.

[Y2KCockroach]

08:15 PM on 08/04/2011

Maybe this is the beginning of what will be designated the Chinese "Casino" class of aircraft carriers by NATO.

[jo smith456]

06:27 PM on 08/04/2011

wait a minute. Overall, China manages a significantly cheaper aircraft carrier than how we pay and manage ours.

Surely, the Chinese are smart. They get more defense per dollar spent. Ahhh... but a minute, Our wall-street-bankers and billionaires are the ones that benefit from our bloated military/defense budgets. We ordinary Americans are not smarter but certainly our millionaire/billionaire American countrymen are smarter!!!!

[factsaboutchina]

09:26 PM on 08/04/2011

Read the article. You clearly didn't.

The carrier is a stripped down, refurbished soviet style aircraft carrier built in 1998. It is a generation if not 2 generations behind US carriers.

The Chinese military is using it for training and tech mining. When they do build their own carriers, two of which are in production, their cost will be on par with the cost of a modern US carrier.

[Magic 62]

10:59 PM on 08/04/2011

It's actually a couple of generations ahead of HMS Ark Royal that is a 22000 ton VTOL carrier, and it can carry J-15 (SU-33 copies). That makes it plenty dangerous.

[any mouse]

03:35 AM on 08/05/2011

Actually the Chinese carrier that will soon be doing sea trials is more than adequate to cause the US lots of problems since it can launch some real effective jet fighters.

[MarcEdward]

05:41 PM on 08/04/2011

Good - let China keep the peace in that end of the world. I'm tired of paying for it!

[Dr Oswald Spengler]

08:15 PM on 08/04/2011

Adolescent group think above.

[colah]

10:16 PM on 08/04/2011

Nation-building, d^ck-measuring arrogance above.

[any mouse]

03:37 AM on 08/05/2011

I agree!

It is long past time for the US to pack up, close up our nearly 1000 bases and bring all our military home.

If people in Asia want to kill each other, let China mediate since it is in their back yard.

If people in Africa or the ME want to kill each other, we should just let them.

[FoxIslander]

05:33 PM on 08/04/2011

...Oh my god! a carrier gap!....oh wait...they have 1, we have 14. Their defence budget is $114B ours is $698B. The politics of fear.

[any mouse]

05:51 PM on 08/04/2011

Of course there is that "slight" problem that China has a ballistic anti-carrier missile that the US has NO DEFENSE against, so if those 14 get too close to China, they could end up cruising on the ocean floor.

[waldopepper]

01:19 AM on 08/05/2011

If the ballistic anti-carrier missile technology trumps carriers so effectively as your post suggests. Then it is a good think that the Chinese are throwing all their development energies into the obsolete development of their own carrier arm. One should never interrupt an enemy when they are making a mistake.

[bryanzth]

06:13 PM on 08/04/2011

Lovely! Haha!

BZ.